Axe – 1977, US, 68/72m. Director: Frederick R. Friedel. Streaming: N/A
The Convent – 2000, US, 78m. Director: Mike Mendez. Streaming: AMC, Shudder, Tubi
The Love Butcher – 1975, US, 85m. Director: Mikel Angel, Don Jones. Streaming: N/A
AXE (1977) (AKA: California Axe Massacre, Lisa Lisa) A thug named Steel (Jack Canon) and his two henchmen break into a hotel room to torture and kill a gay man who cheated them out of money. After they shove a lit cigar into the man’s mouth, his horrified lover jumps out of the window and plunges to his death. In response to questioning why someone would jump twelve stories down, one of Steel’s henchmen answers: “It’s only nine.” These are clearly criminal masterminds. After Steel humiliates a cashier at a convenient store because the apples weren’t fresh, the trio invade an isolated farmhouse where the occupants—young Lisa (Leslie Lee) and her paralyzed grandfather—don’t conform to their liking. That’s because Lisa is on the brink of mental collapse and has probably seen Last House on the Left one too many times. Using her expertise at chopping off the heads of chickens, Lisa wields her large axe and enacts bloody revenge. A gritty, ultra-low budget curiosity that’s not the gore-drenched epic its title suggests. That’s not to say Axe is a serious character study, because it ain’t. It does achieve a level of morbid entertainment, and a scene in which Lisa fights off a sexual attack by Steel is cleverly married with the voiceover narration of a football game playing on the background TV. A slightly amusing hodgepodge of oddly endearing trash cinema. B–
THE CONVENT (2000) This movie has more energy packed into its 78 minutes than most mainstream Hollywood films combined. A group of frat guys and their sorority girlfriends break into the neighborhood haunted house (in this case, an abandoned convent) for some late night fun. Along the way, they pick up goth queen Mo (Meghan Perry), who informs the college pals of the convent’s unsavory history—in which a Bettie Page-like woman named Christine slaughtered all of the nuns and priests inside the place forty years earlier. Unbeknownst to our protagonists, the convent has already been invaded by Satanists who conjure forth demons that systematically possess the characters. If you’re thinking you’ve heard this one before, you’re not wrong. Fortunately, The Convent is a hoot—a flashy throwback to splatter movies like The Evil Dead, Demons, and specifically Night of the Demons, which the makers of this flick are obviously fans of. Unlike the majority of those titles, The Convent never takes itself seriously and flourishes in its perverse sense of humor and comic book-style visuals. Unreleased until 2002, this demands cult classic status. B+
THE LOVE BUTCHER (1975) Caleb is a chrome-domed simpleton in Coke bottle glasses and overalls who speaks in a “yes’m” southern accent despite living in Southern California. He spends his days being berated by the women whose yards he attends to in an upscale suburban neighborhood (after Caleb asks his employer for a glass of water she calls him an irritation). Little do they know Caleb is a psychopath who takes on the personality of his “brother,” Lester, when he feels unjustly treated by society. A suave ladies’ man, Lester seduces the women who’ve treated Caleb like garbage and ultimately takes a knife/shears/pitchfork to them. Sort of the slasher movie version of Ethan Hunt, Caleb/Lester (both played by James Lemp) takes on disguises in order to infiltrate the homes of his victims. As if performing an overzealous theater pantomime, Lemp’s acting choices are often so hysterically overwrought the movie becomes almost mesmerizing in its awfulness. And Lemp is probably the best thing about the film! The rest of the story is filled with a typically dry police/newspaper investigation of the murders, in which the hard-boiled police captain and the overworked reporter scream their lines at each other until the veins in their foreheads nearly burst. The Love Butcher is either a misanthropic commentary on the seventies, an anti-feminist story, or a spoof of both. Either way, the viewer loses. C–