EdgeoftheAxe

Edge of the Axe (1988)

This movie opens up with a masked, axe-wielding killer taking out a woman in a car wash. Unfortunately the rest of the movie has difficulty living up to this awesome opening scene. After this kill the action moves to a small town where a killer (from the car wash) appears to be taking out random women from around town. Tossed into this are the main characters, computer whiz Gerald and the girl he is romancing Lillian. After finding a stack of research on Gerald’s computer Lillian is convinced that he is the killer. I mean why else would he have files on all the victims? The local cops who are overwhelmed by the crime spree are no help at all, so whom can Lillian turn to? Especially after Gerald shows up at her house!

This is another of those 80s slasher movies that tends to blend in with the rest. The story is very straightforward. You have a masked killer making short work of the locals, a police department unable to handle the situation, and several suspects in the cast. Now what I really enjoyed about Edge of the Axe is a certain plot twist that is out of nowhere, but is pulled off perfectly and works. Can’t say anymore than that, but the reveal of the killer is brilliant and sets up and ending that is memorable and fun. That said I do need to warn everyone that there is a stretch in the middle of the movie that I found to be a bit slow as the kills tail off and the romance between Gerald and Lillian is taking up screen time. But once the movie gets back to the killer things get fun again. The cast is good for a slasher movie, but really not asked to do a whole lot. I didn’t really see much chemistry between Barton Faulks (Gerald) and Christina Marie Lane (Lillian), which might explain why I found the romance bit to be the worst part of the movie.

Being a slasher movie the kills are important. The good news is that Edge of the Axe does a bang-up job in the execution of the kills. They use a neat trick to actually show the axe hitting the victim, which is cool. Though I almost get the feeling like there might be a bit more that was cut out of the attacks, but I have no idea if those scenes were chopped (pun intended). There is also a pretty goofy looking corpse that falls from the rafters that isn’t nearly as good looking as the kills end up being. But overall Edge of the Axe boasts some solid effects work.

I liked Edge of the Axe, but as I’ve already mentioned it does have some pacing issues and I’m not sure how well the movie will play when you already know the twist. Still this is well worth checking out, if you can find a copy somewhere. As far as I can tell there isn’t a DVD release of the movie, so it will be a VHS or a grey market DVD. Still if you are a fan of slasher movies I think this one is worth checking out at least once.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer