The Toolbox Murders

Sometimes I think that there is something wrong with me.

Regular readers of this blog might be surprised that it has taken me so long to work that out, and may be disappointed when they realise that I am talking about a very small part of my personality. However, my interest in horror films sometimes makes me wonder what on earth makes me tick.

No, I am not one of those people who sits furtively masturbating along to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or scouring the Hallowe'en series for tips on mass murder, or wondering why I wasn't allowed to be born with the same hellish powers as Damien Thorn. I'm very aware of the difference between fiction and reality, and am glad that the reality I live in seems to have a merciful lack of masked psychopaths wanting to chop you up because you have a beer or a bit of rumpy-pumpy or some other mindlessly reactionary reason. However, whenever I am on Amazon looking for DVDs to rent, I some how end up gravitating towards the horror section and end up renting the sort of torpid slasher movies that should have stopped being produced circa 1989*. I then watch said movies ('course I do - I've paid for the frigging things), tutting and shaking my head throughout before ejecting the disc from my DVD player and wondering why the ruddy fuck I bothered with the film in the first place.

Take last night's offering. The remake (as if a remake was necessary) of The Toolbox Murders. It sounds just as clever as the title would suggest - as intelligent as a hillbilly with no arms and only one eye trying to work out quantum mechanics. It looks, on every level, cheap and nasty. The script appears to have been written by a manic teenager on crack, who ran out of plot after half an hour and deciding pointless padding was the way forward. The killer can't be killed (ho hum), even after being shot and hanged, no doubt to make way for a sequel. Yep, that's right. A shit sequel to a shit remake of a shit B-movie. A sure sign that Hollywood has run out of plots. Hell, if this sort of thing continues, I can't wait to see the remake of Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. That will be a bleeding humdinger of a movie.

In a movie so filled with pointless fucking mayhem and stupid action, it should be tough to choose one moment that seems more crass than the rest of the picture. However, so moronic are parts of The Toolbox Murders that one scene does manage to stand out. The killer (I forget who he is or why he was killing - something to do with being a coffin baby I think) stabs one of the more tediously cliched characters in the back. With some industrial clippers. He lifts the tedious character off his feet, whilst that character screams "just please, kill me!". I wanted to scream at the TV screen "Yes! Kill the fucking prick! Whilst you're at it, kill the rest of them! Preferably with some sort of bomb that takes you out as well! That would both entertain and cheer me up!" Needless to say, the killer does end the days of the moron, before stalking the rest of the cast for what felt like two to three days but was actually closer to 25 minutes.

Now I can feel at this point, dear reader, that I am losing you. I can practically hear you screaming "But, The Nameless One, it was called The Toolbox Murders. What were you expecting? A Clockwork Orange? Shaun of the Dead? On the Beach? Friday the 13th Part Six: Jason Lives?"** But that's my point: why would I go online and request to rent such a film?

I think it is an automated response to my teen years. I was never allowed to watch these sort of films. So they were built up in my mind as something forbidden, and a bit dangerous. Now I can rent such films with impunity I do so as an almost knee jerk reaction, without thinking just how shite the end product is likely to be. So I can blame the lack of crappy slasher movies in my teen years for my intermittent desire to rent shitty horror movies. On the plus side, I can also credit it with not feeling the need to furtively masturbate by way through The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So it is swings and roundabouts, really.

But have I learnt from the terrible mess that is The Toolbox Murders? Have I learnt from this blog post, that I have spent the last 15 minutes writing? Have I bollocks. I've just been onto Amazon and added Saw IV to my rental list. Despite the fact that I found the first three jaw-droppingly awful and utterly cliched.

*Sighs*. Some people never learn, do they?

*Not just slasher movies. Other recent rentals include marginally more mainstream fare like The Prestige, The Host, The Proposition and Blades of Glory. Sure, they aren't all singing, all dancing family flicks, but at least they aren't Good Friday 7: Stupid Masked Psycho Kills More People. For No Reason. Again.
**Seriously, I love that film. I really do. Watch it. It is a slasher sequel, but it realises it. And manages to be thoroughly tongue in cheek.