The Pencil Murders

"The Pencil Murders" is one of the dullest thrillers I have ever seen obviously influenced by Italian gialli.A maniac is on the loose and is murdering sexually active women.He kills them by sticking a pencil in their noses to the brain.There is no tension in "The Pencil Murders"-not even an ounce of suspense.The cinematography is ugly,the acting is disastrous and the characters are flat and repulsive.The film is very racist too with the inspector spurting racist dialogue.The music is annoying and the killings are off-screen.A tiny bit of sleaze helps to make the action more lively.I've heard that another Belgian giallo "The Antwerp Killer" is even worse.3 out of 10.Only for undemanding giallo completists.

Most likely the very first Belgian giallo ever! And that's about the only good thing I can say about it. The first time I saw this one, a couple of years ago, I thought it was bad enough to not deserve anymore points than 3/10. Mainly because the acting feels forced and especially because of the plot being too standard, offering no red herrings, no suspense... and the fact that I immediately guessed who the killer was the first time he appeared on the screen (which is in the beginning of the movie!). Not only me or your granny, but everyone who decides to watch this film can guess it. You don't even have to be familiar with whodunit thrillers in general. Not even an attempt at offering us several suspects is being made here.

However, somehow I enjoyed this movie a bit more when I saw it for the second time. The reason: the incredibly foul en vulgar language that was used throughout the whole movie. Now, a foreigner will probably have no fun with it, but because of those dirty dialogues me and my mate were grinning our way through this movie. That and the fact that this movie had such unbelievable racist undertones that I was scratching my head while I was watching it. Especially black people are being focused on here (at one point the police department even tries to arrest the whole black community on suspicion of murder), but also an Italian immigrant gets a piece of the racist cake.You have to see this to believe it. Also mildly entertaining is the killer's modus operandi: he kills by shoving a sharp pencil up the victim's nose right into the brain. Gotta love that! But in the end, the killer's motives are just a big pile of sad clichés.

On a trivial note: this movie features a song by Marcel Vanthilt (Who the hell is he, you ask?). The song is a cultish new-wave version (now long gone obscure) of another song which was most popular amongst your average Belgian house-wife during the very early 80's, called "De Dag Dat Het Zonlicht Niet Meer Scheen". Who cares, you ask? We Belgians with good taste do!

Raise your hand with pride if your country of origin is Belgium, just like this utterly brilliant (ahem…) and obscure horror movie! What? No response? Well, that's understandable because this movie is, in fact, a complete turkey and probably our country's worst export-product since that cargo of poisoned chocolates. Perhaps if you lived in Belgium all your life and grew up watching all the lackadaisical TV-shows of the 80's, you can still somewhat enjoy the stereotypes and typical clichés, but the awful script has absolutely nothing to offer to foreign horror fans. "The Pencil Murders" is Belgium's very own attempt to make a giallo. This magnificent sub genre is pretty much monopolized by the Italian horror industry, as they brought forward numerous compelling murder-mysteries with convoluted plots, fascinating killers and some of the world's most ingenious red herrings. "The Pencil Murders" is an extremely primitive imitation of the Italian giallo. Oh yes, there's a demented killer on the loose in the big city and the local police detective faces enormous difficulties to catch him/her, but that's it! Writer/director Guy Lee Thys is completely unable to create tension or even to mislead his viewers with red herrings. The cast of characters is very limited, so you can pick out the culprit pretty early in the film. Even if you don't bother to guess along who the killer is, it's still pretty obvious and you'll pity the 'heroic' cop for not being smarter. The only interesting element in "The Pencil Murders" is the killer's modus operandi. He/she carefully selects the female victims and rams a pencil up their noses and through their brains. The only thing that connects the victims is that they were all single/divorced women with the reputation of being sluts. Hence, the hunt is open for a deranged woman hater. The murders aren't as bloody as I expected (or hoped) and there's only a bit of sleaze, and yet this film somehow totally escaped the attention of the censorship committee! The use of language is overall very foul and vulgar and the screenplay is unbelievably racist! At a certain point in the film, the prime suspect is a black guy and the police promptly organize a hostile round up of every colored person in the city. The hero-cop's attitude towards the foreigners in his town is very aggressive and I hope from the bottom of my heart that this isn't an accurate portrayal of my country during the early 80's. Any police officer with such racist convictions would be taken from the job nowadays, and rightly so! Bottom line: "The Pencil Murders" is a very rare and hard-to-find horror film, but that's okay, since you shouldn't look for it.

A Belgian police inspector, Rick Van Houtte (Leslie de Gruyter), is given the task of solving the `pencil murders' case. Since a short while ago, beautiful young women have been found dead, a pencil pushed up their nose. To make things worst, Rick must face up to his cheating wife. But thanks to a new friendship with Rick, the forensic photographer, Rick will regain confidence in himself and soon discover the identity of the killer…

`He fills your head with lead!' could have been the tagline for this extremely bad suspense flick. Directed by a Belgian unknown, this turkey is very similar to the Italian gialli, however with absolutely no intrigue. Within the first ten minutes, even the dumbest viewer forms his own theory, and the film goes on, never trying to throw him off track. No red herrings. Not one! Needless to say that the murder scenes rank among the less spectacular ever filmed… The jazz soundtrack is rather out of context, and the direction of photography exposes electric blue night scenes and a budgeted storyboard. The film also proves to be very racist towards blacks; a reflection of 80's Belgian society? To sum it up, a waste of time. The writer should have taken his pencil out of his nose and changed the script!

-HumanoidZombie

This obscure Belgian horror was directed by Guy Lee Thys. this was his first attempt to direct a full feature, 7 years later he made Cruel Horizon and what a difference there is between those two flicks.

The Pencil Murders or De Potloodmoorden didn't deliver what I expected from it. Being made in a time when giallo's and slashers were the big thing this fails on both parts. Face it, the way he is trying to disguise the killer is in fact based on the giallo genre. The glove of the killer is shown, typical giallo. But it's script wise that it failed. The story do involves the killer but it's also about the detective Rick (Leslie De Gruyter) his relation with his wife. Due the reason that he's out to catch the killer his wife (Rosemarie Bergmans)is having an affair. Those two stories are the main part in this flick which gives us a lame flick without killings. Oh yes, there are killings but one is done off-camera. The only killing that's worth the name giallo is the one in the bath.

But this flick had other things to deliver. But that's only for viewers coming out of Belgium. Two songs are used by the band Arbeid Adelt, a notorious new wave band from the eighties and were reformed last year. It's funny, because the singer Marcel Van Tilt I do have to work a lot with due he's in the television business nowadays as I am. Also worth watching is the young Warre Borgmans (Carl) who became a well known actor in Belgium afterwards. Also in it is Bert André, sadly past away in 2008. Famous for being Buurman Neuteboom in the Flodder franchise.

It's weird to see that a first time director could get those names in his first attempt. Also to notice are the words used for the time being and the racism by the cops. Later on here in Belgium some riots happened due real life cops were racists. A thing that couldn't be filmed in that way any more, the words used for the black generation was 'neger' the same as n*gger and 'kwatta' which was a brand for chocolate back then.

It's so strange that Belgium doesn't really have a horror scene by which I mean making flicks. The Netherlands do have it called Nederhorror and they have a lot of famous flicks like S8N8, Doodeind, Sint or Amsterdamned and The Lift. Belgium do have a few, Cannibal (2008)or Daughters of Darkness (1971), but most of them were utterly sleazy like this one or Intensive Care (1991) with George Kennedy and Koen Wauters or The Flemish Vampire (2007). But De Potloodmoorden is really an obscure flick and very hard to get, only available on VHS.

Gore 0,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5