Ax 'Em

When I watched "Ax 'Em" I found myself wondering one simple thing: How did this movie get distributed? Honestly, it is that bad. The film quality and sound quality are non-existent. Honestly, I've seen better quality from a VHS camcorder in a dark room recording Barbies. The plot is so asinine that I can't believe Michael Mfume actually got as many people to be in it as he did. I guess the best comparison of this movie is "The Evil Dead" made by Sam Raimi and a bunch of his friends (including Bruce Campbell) when they were in college. You could compare it to that, the only difference is while "The Evil Dead" is extremely well done for its budget and limited crew, this movie is just plain awful.

The title is spelled differently on the box than it is on the movie itself. There is really no ax in the movie at all, there is a small hatchet though. Words are misspelled everywhere in the movie's introduction. The opening credits look like something that could have been made on a 1986 camcorder and there is no editing. The same scene appears in the movie twice in a row. You really can't understand anything that the characters say, the sound is that bad.

The movie starts out with a bunch of young people dancing when a "Yo Momma" contest breaks out, and from here it actually goes downhill if you can believe that. When a group of characters like Rock and Breakfast go on a trip to a cabin in the middle of nowhere they are stalked by some guy. I'm not really sure if there was some connection there, but it was just basically some guy whose family was killed or something and now he's out for revenge.

This is a good movie for people who like bad movies. There are many parts that are so bad they are funny, although usually this isn't a good things in movies. If there was a way to give this film a zero I would.

1 out of 10.

Normally I'm very cinematically tolerant, I can find good in very bad movies. For example I think "Invasion Of The Blood Farmers" is a great film. "Ax Em" has nothing redeeming about it. This is a backyard production but that does not always mean a bad viewing experience, there are several creative amateur productions on the video market. This is not one of them. The sound is inaudible most of the time, yet you can clearly hear the director say "cut" after every painful scene. The cast frequently all talks at once making it impossible to understand anything. There is not one effectively executed sequence in the whole production. It is absolutely amazing this film got distributed WIDELY on home video by a company which specializes in "Urban" features. If you subtract all the technical ineptness, you still have a poorly written, poorly directed, poorly photographed, creatively sterile waste of time. Take it from me I have watched 20 years worth of B horror movies.

To call "Ax 'Em" the worst movie in the history of motion pictures would be too easy. Because that would imply that it's unwatchable, which on so many levels it is. Yet it's the absolute utter incompetence on all levels, from the direction to the script to the acting, that makes it just so damn entertaining, because you are simply stupified that anyone thought this could ever make a coherent film. If you enjoy watching a film for its mistakes, "Ax 'Em" will never leave your DVD player, because from the mis-spelled words and incomprehsible grammar, to the nonsensical ending 72 minutes later, "Ax 'Em" proves that no matter how incompetent you are with a video camera, someone will distribute it.

What makes this film so wonderfully special is that the director's father, Kweisi Mfume, was a U.S. Congressman, and former head of the NAACP! There are moments of D.W. Griffith-esque racism that were they not made by a filmmaker of color, would pass as a scenes from a training video for the Klan. It is nearly impossible to understand what anyone says, simply because the video camera is set up for a wide shot, and nobody talks anywhere near a microphone. The film, if you could call it that, makes no sense on any level, but moments like the fat guy walking around in the back of one shot holding the slate will have you laughing for hours.

This is bad filmmaking at its best. Thank you, Michael Mfume, for this wonderful gift.

THis movie is amazing. I rented it from Hollywood Video after hearing it was the worst film ever, I though, "A movie worse than The Item? A Miracle!" No this is not worse than The Item. I rented it on VHS, and the small screen is funny as heck. Then I had to, I had to buy the DVD. The DVD sucks. No disc menu, and they enlarged the screen! The sound is supposed to be stereo sound or whatever but you still cant hear them....friggin hysterical. This movie has so many problems, it is just funny. I cant wait to show this crap to my friends. Check this one out if you wanna see a bad, bad, bad, bad movie. But get it on VHS cause of the small screen. Makes the movie funnier. Micheal Mfume we love you!!!!!!

AX EM, an "urban" flick purportedly about a slasher, is one of only two movies I have given a "1" rating here. The other is NIGHT OF THE GHOULS. I would place MANOS in the same category, but I forget if I ever wrote about it here. AX EM is not a film, and it is hardly even a home movie. It was shot using a camcorder and the cam's mike, so that the sound -- uncorrected, natch -- is beyond the point of muddy. AX EM makes that dancing killer scarecrow movie and that pot-bellied mummy movie look like CITIZEN KANE. A big piece of the running time is given over to footage of an actual urban parade! AX EM is truly unwatchable. I should have known better. I rented it from a store, behind which sits a huge Section 8 housing project. Truly a numbnuts film for numbnuts.