The Nail Gun Massacre

Think that Halloween's the best slasher movie? Well you may well be wrong, because finally I've found an obscure number that can rival definitive flicks such as Friday the 13th or Rosemary's Killer on pure enjoyment value. I kid ye not, when it comes to entertainment, Nail Gun Massacre offers it by the bucket load! What, you think I'm joking? Just let me assure you that this truly is a classic. but sadly, for all the wrong reasons!

In the opening a female is viciously raped by a group of construction workers. In the weeks that follow, all the abusers begin meeting grissly ends at the hands of a helmeted killer that's armed with a gas supplied nail gun. So has the victim taken it upon herself to make her own justice, or is someone else doing it for her?

Wow what a movie! This is arguably, no forget arguably, this *is* the cheesiest of all things slasher and that is one hell of a challenging accolade! There's so much to tell you about this movie that even if I attempted to write every unintentional laugh that I had down on this review, I could almost guarantee that you'd find yourself one or two that I'd missed! The only trouble with a feature as 'enjoyable' as this is, well, where do I start? As the zany ineptness is the most striking attribute, lets start there, shall we?

Firstly there are no 'actors' in this movie. Not even one cast member shows even the slightest sign of having any sort of talent. What on earth was the idea here? Walk around one day asking folks in the street if they'd like to be in a movie? But my favourite budding thespian (!) would have to be the sweet little old shop-keeping lady who cannot use the cash register she's working on and must've been on a weekend break from the local OAP home when they filmed this! Cringe whilst she blurts out in farcical monologue fashion, dialogue such as: `I remember when you could sit outside without worrying about the mosquitoes or the killers!' What? And then for no apparent reason in the same expressionless tone she goofs: `I bet you aint never seen butterflies, wild butterflies in these parts?' repeating words as if she's just that minute finished reading through the script and is already forgetting her lines! To make the scene even more hilarious, every one whom she's talking to COMPLETELY ignores her! If anything could have blossomed after the production of this lowest of lowbrow slashers, then it'd have to be a relationship between that cashier and the wonderfully hammy old guy from the town, who gives another unforgettable performance! I won't begin to try and describe how comical he actually is, but believe me when I tell you that those two would have been a match made in heaven! The 'acting' here is sooooo bad that the characters even have difficulty playing dead! One young girl blinks when she's trying to keep her eyes wide open and another is seen breathing when she's meant to be deceased. The best of the bunch is when the assassin shoots a guy and he falls conveniently over a barbecue. When it begins to topple under his weight, he pushes himself back to stabilise the stand so it doesn't fall over! I wouldn't have thought that a dead guy would really care where he landed, would you! Classic!

The Sheriff - whom you'll notice talks to himself - is a giggle too. He drives just a normal unmarked car and has no uniform, just a plastic looking badge stuck on a brown shirt! And the doctor doesn't wear any distinguishing garb either, but thankfully this is justified when the copper asks him: `When are you going to start dressing like a doctor?' to which he cheerily replies `I got fed up with wearing white!' Hmmm, sure it had nothing to do with a lack of funding Doc? The gruesome twosome can't be very good carers for the community anyway, because they leave a mutilated body UNCOVERED in fall view of the public beside a shop in the middle of town, telling someone that 'an ambulance will pick it up later!'

Aside from directing, Terry Lofton also did the special effects for this movie. Well actually, he wrote the screenplay, did some stunts, produced and executively produced and even acted in a small part. Does anyone get the feeling that this is an independent feature? Anyway back to the effects that include rubber nails that we never see enter the victims. In one bit, a guy gets shot in the back whilst he's holding a chainsaw. He looses control of the tool and next thing we know we're treated to a shot of a plastic looking hand lying on the floor splashed in blood. Meanwhile the arm that it was severed from is helpfully tucked behind a tree so we don't get to see the stump spurting, lucky for the producers, huh! This really has got to be the cheapest film made anywhere, ever. Why else would the maniac not have a tinted visor, but instead have insulating tape blacking it out? Unbelievable! The sound in the movie is atrocious, the score must've been made on a Casio keyboard and kicks in at the most unwelcome of times and when it's playing you can't hear the dialogue properly because the medley's been recorded much louder than the actors! They also ran the killer's voice through a synthesiser to make it sound deep and creepy, but half of the time, we can't make out what he is saying!

As for plus points: You get to have a stab at guessing the mystery of 'who's the killer' even though it's pathetically easy. I can't say why because I wouldn't want to spoil it for you, and it does add a little spice to the plot. But sadly even the 'plot' is ludicrous. Suspicion points us towards an old bag called Mrs Bailey, but we never get to meet her. Well I don't think we did, but it's impossible to tell, because characters only appear for 2 minutes tops and then as soon as they're killed new victims are introduced without any rhyme or reason! Sorry, I was meant to be describing the good bits.err let me see. Well, there were also loads of naked young lassies - which look like they were auditioning to be porn stars - that satisfy most viewers. And there's the cheaply effective gore that always brightens things up! What I really did enjoy was the corny black humoured one-liners from the assassin that are genuinely pretty funny. When the guy mentioned earlier chops his hand off, the psycho quips `Don't fall to pieces.over me!' And when he nails a hitch hiker to the road he cracks `All you hitch hikers are the same. Stuck on the road!' Maybe the reason he's psychotic is because he never got too fulfill his role in life and become a comedian!

What ingredients generally make a movie good? Well I suppose you have to enjoy watching it and it has to be entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Nail gun massacre and was 'entertained' from start to finish. It may not be award-winning excellence, but it's got to be the funniest 90 minutes I've had since I watched The Naked Gun for the first time. To make it even better, all the laughs here were shockingly unintentional! Put it this way, it would've been impossible for me to list every humourous moment, there are so many to choose from! It certainly isn't effective as any sort of horror movie, with plot holes that would drown an armada, but worth its weight in gold in the comedy stakes. Enjoy!