Director Tobe Hooper makes the most of the location in this splatter flick
Tobe Hooper's "Toolbox Murders" is one of those horror films where it becomes a running battle to see if the good parts are going to outweigh the bad by the time we get to the final credits. Since at the end of this 2004 film I was remembering the good parts rather more than the bad parts, I end up rounding up on this film. Ironically the last time I saw a horror film that managed to creep me out as much it was the recent remake of Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The good parts in this more are visual rather than narrative (to be specific, the nail gun victim is the one that keeps sticking out in my mind), which is why I think the director gets the credit for making this B-movie worth watching late at night in the dark. But while I think the hits outweigh the misses here, I certainly recognize that many horror fans but end up thinking the scale tips the other way on this one, which just reflects the problems with contemporary horror movies.
Nell Barrows (Angela Bettis) and her doctor husband, Steven (Brent Roam), move into the Lusman Arms apartment hotel. The place has certainly seen beter days, but it is the nights that Nell has to worry about. The Lusman Arms is crawling with quirk neighbors and with Steven working doctor's hours she has plenty of time to be alone and let her imagination get the better of her. The cops are tired of her calling them about somebody screaming bloody murder, which is when the bloody murders start happening. So Nell investigates on her own, which is how she discovers that the Lusman Arms has some interesting architectural secrets in its history. When Nell makes the classic mistake of going through the secret door she discovers, Hooper really starts going through his bag of cinematic tricks, the best of which the location (e.g., the stairwell).
Apparently this is a remake of the 1978 misogynistic splatter flick "The Toolbox Murders," which also involved a masked killer in an apartment building disposing of tenants with whatever tools he had at his disposal (apparently this is all loosely based on a true story, which may mean nothing more than at one point in history somebody in an apartment building killed somebody with a tool from a box). Besides the killer and his motivation the key difference is the use of the location, which in this case is actually the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, the site of the first Academy Awards and the place where Robert F. Kennedy was shot. Screenwriters Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch come up more than a list of tools to be used in the killings in this one with their building inside the building along with some attempts to confound expectations based on conventions of the genre. Unfortunately the explanation for the killer is one of those silly ideas that only makes sense if you insist on having an explanation and do not mind it being stupid (although Coffin Baby is certainly different as the name for the maniacal killer).
Fortunately the cast is above average for this type of film and most of the characters are given specific bits so you could think that they might be the killer behind the mask, which is just another way the script is having fun with the genre. I ended up watching it because I discovered Juliet Landau was in the cast, although she was given nothing that would make anybody forget her marvelous turns as Drusilla on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." But she is out of the picture before we get to the final act of "Toolbox Murders," which is the point where Hooper puts Nell through the wringer and shows what the director of a low-budget horror film can do. Bettis makes for an interesting heroine because she is smart enough to get herself into trouble but not smart enough to get herself out. Plus the art direction by Steven R. Miller, set decoration by Peggy Paola, and sculptures by Mark Shostrom make it so that even when Coffin Baby is not around Nell has ample reason to be just as freaked out as when he is there behind her with one of his tools (although notice that his choice for her is not something that would ever fit in a toolbox).
A surprising creep-out
Recently I've been trying to figure out for myself exactly what I enjoy about horror movies and how it is that I come to love some, laugh at some, and yawn at most. After seeing Toolbox Murders the remake, I'm starting to understand what it is exactly that makes a horror film work for me and what makes some of them laughably bad. I watched this movie with no notion of what it was about and found myself riveted. As you watch, you really don't have a sense of who the killer is at all, you figure the maintenance guy is the obvious red herring so you rule him out, and the film doesn't give you any real idea of what you're dealing with. The murder scenes are creative and you start to wonder why more filmmakers haven't used nailguns, drills or table saws as their weapons of choice as they are seemingly logical items to use in serial killing. LOL. But when the story line seems to be taking you down a path of the usual slasher psychopath, it suddenly turns and becomes the supernatural, leaving you with lots of questions and wondering who and what the killer is exactly. You never do get the answer to these questions and that, for me, is what I love about certain horror films. I LIKE unanswered questions in horror, especially when there IS no explanation for things; that is what makes some horror really disturbing and others just plain cliche and stupid. This is a fine line however, as some films throw a bunch of garbage in the movie that makes no sense and expect the audience to come up with a solution that isn't there but this can be done cleverly so it works, as it does in Toolbox Murders. For me, I like when everyday things are turned into mazes of confusion and I enjoy being led down one path only to discover I have ended up somewhere else. It is the genius horror filmmakers that can do this and it is clear why Tobe Hooper is one of the Great Masters in horror.
Not quite a return to form for Tobe Hooper, but still worth seeing
Tobe Hooper, famed horror icon and director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist, and the original Salem's Lot, hasn't been heard from too much in the past few years, but while his re-working of the 1978 Toolbox Murders isn't quite a return to form for Hooper, it's a slightly above average shocker that is still worth seeing. The story begins with a married couple (May's Angela Bettis and Brent Roam) moving into an apartment in a run down one time hotel in Hollywood. Needless to say that strange noises (particularly hammering) in the middle of the night, the fact that nothing works right, and some inadequate maintenance men, make things somewhat distressing for the couple. And when tenants start getting picked off by a masked murderer using various tools, well, that just adds to the headaches. Hooper goes for the 70's style scares and jolts that are still apparent in horror movies today, but it doesn't work here. What does work here are some great gore effects and some creative kills, which elevate Toolbox Murders from the rest of the slasher heap. The cast, which also includes Rance "father of Ron" Howard, Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Juliet Landau, and Mrs. Rob Zombie Sheri Moon in an ill-fated opening sequence, is actually pretty good for the most part. All in all, Toolbox Murders isn't anything too special, but it's a step in the right direction for Hooper, and longtime fans of his will want to give this a look.
Picture it: Alabama, 1863. A band of southerners robs a bank and high-tails it for Mexico, with an escape route that calls for a pit stop in an abandoned farmhouse. The six fugitives hole up for the night in the empty home, which turns out to be a critically bad idea. Starring Henry Thomas as William, the gang's ringleader.
Once this movie had been underway for a few minutes, a rather shocking something occurred to both me and my significant other almost simultaneously: these guys sounded southern. And by "southern" I don't mean, "I took twenty hours of voice coach classes per week in order to nail down a y'all that would make anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line shoot French fries through his or her respective nose with laughter, because I'm a Damn Yankee and I'm not... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Alex Turner (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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i'm not sure whether or not this movie would exactally be considered a slaher film. it seems that way to me. others seem to disagree but i thougt the whole bank robbery thing was interesting it added something real to what would have been just another horror movie. also unlike the majority of movies like halloween you got to see the victims or mary at least being stabbed usually you just get the flash of the knife and then see a bloody corpse so i liked that but i have one major concern here that pretty much prevented me from giving this 5 stars.. where the f**k was the nudity? More Info about this DVD Director(s): Stevan Mena DVD Release Date: Released the 19 April 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Saw opens with a gruesome scenario: Two men are chained to the walls of a grimy bathroom with a bloody corpse lying on the floor between them. Tape recordings tell them that one of the men has to kill the other, or his wife and child will die. The corpse is holding a gun in one hand, but it's out of reach...but whoever has locked these two up has thoughtfully provided a hacksaw that can't cut through the heavy chain, but might cut through a little flesh and bone. From there, Saw jumps back and forth as the two men slowly unravel how they know each other and that their tormentor is one of those all-knowing, all-capable serial killers (it goes without saying that Saw is hugely influenced by Seven and the movies of Dario Argento), a fellow known as Jigsaw who... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Leigh Whannell - Cary Elwes - Danny Glover Director(s): James Wan DVD Release Date: Released the 15 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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When you consider its unfortunate production history, Cursed turned out surprisingly well as a werewolf thriller that horror buffs will appreciate. It's hardly the disaster critics made it out to be, but extensive rewriting, reshooting, recasting, and lengthy delays in production and release (including the elimination of R-rated gore to earn a PG-13 rating) clearly took their toll. The result is a fun but flawed monster-show that begins when a young talk-show producer (Christina Ricci) and her teenaged brother (Jesse Eisenberg) are bitten by a werewolf, setting the stage for a horror-in-Hollywood scenario that reunites director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson, creators of the Scream franchise. What could have been a classic horror comedy is instead a fairly... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jesse Eisenberg - Christina Ricci Director(s): Wes Craven DVD Release Date: Released the 21 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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It's not the scary hit that The Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake, set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy horror film. About the only significant difference between the two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version, which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Michelle Gellar - Jason Behr - Clea DuVall Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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