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NAIL GUN MASSACRE
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“I’m as horny as a rooster in a Chinese henhouse!”
A staple of video
store shelves back in the bad old Reagan era, Nail Gun Massacre has
taken more than its share of critical kicks to the head over the years,
and to be perfectly honest, for good reasons. Even by the already low
standards of the decade, it’s a terrible movie, implausibly scripted and
horribly acted by an all-amateur cast, and rife with absurd moments like
the baffling verbal scrap between the guy in the very small car, an angry
Dairy Queen drive-in waitress, and his spacey girlfriend, or the sole
surviving member of the transient quartet, who works herself into a
full-blown crying jag – and can’t get out of it. And the killer’s penchant
for issuing echo-heavy, Freddy-style one-liners (“Well, you just pissed me
off,” he babbles at a terrified good ole boy whom he surprises in mid-whizz)
is no prize either. But, having sat through my share of homegrown,
shot-on-video horror movies, I will add that Nail Gun Massacre
clearly doesn’t take itself seriously for a moment, and moves along at a
breezy clip that prevents the more painful moments from really doing
damage. And writer/producer/co-director Synapse’s DVD is probably the best Nail Gun Massacre has or will ever look; yes, the low tech quality of the production means that the sound is often muffled and you can hear the whirr of the Arriflex camera under the dialogue, but the high-definition widescreen presentation is a definite improvement over the ratty old Magnum videotapes. Extras include the original promotional trailer (which I guess was intended European buyers, given the narrator’s fey Germanic voice) and a reel of silent outtakes, for which Lofton provides commentary. Lofton is also the subject of a long and good-natured interview featurette; in discussing the film’s shortcomings and troubled production, he comes across as a pretty nice guy who’s still a little bit hurt by the largely negative reaction his film has garnered over the last twenty-some-odd years. Terry, man, you don’t need to apologize to anyone. ________________________________________________________ |
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- Paul Gaita |
After a gang of
construction workers rape the lone female employee (Michelle Meyer) of a
Texas lumber yard, the assailants are visited by a camouflaged stranger in
a motorcycle helmet, who murders them with a special high-powered nail
gun. The local sheriff (Ron Queen) and denim-clad doctor (Rocky Patterson)
are baffled by the kill spree, which quickly encompasses a quartet of
horny transients looking for work, an amiable hitchhiker, another horny
couple in a very small car… um, this girl they find in a ditch… some other
girls who are wandering… basically, a lot of people. But despite the
killer’s eye-catching get-up, and the fact that he travels between crime
scenes in a huge butterscotch-colored hearse, the sheriff and doctor are
unable to connect the lumber yard rape with the murders until the end of
this ultra-low budget, regionally made feature. And best of all, when the
killer is finally unmasked, you aren’t going to believe who it is for a
second. Ah, ‘80s horror.