Three on a Meathook

A young man is terrified to bring anyone home because, when he does, they always turn up dead. Is it his jealous father or maybe one of his alternate personalities? Everything is tested when he finally meets the girl of his dreams and wants to bring her home to meet daddy.

Three on a Meathook is Psycho filtered through a dusty and grimy grindhouse lens. You look at the way this is shot and it's a miracle that it makes any sense at all. Not a lot of coverage, all the actors seem amateurish, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn the main farmhouse location was given to the filmmakers for free by a relative or friend. That said, this is an interesting revamp of some classic themes and ideas and I found myself glued to the screen.

What makes "Three on a Meathook" a balls-out real horror film? It's the fact that it looks like a home movie a serial killer would make. It looks like, after finding a 16mm camera in one of his victim's houses, some serial killer got a few of his demented buddy's together, put some ad in the paper for cheap talent, and tried to make a movie. In one of the earliest scenes where the father is berating the son you can see that, although the actors keep screwing up their lines they kept filming and left it in the final print. The grainy stock of the film, the inventive although cheap special effects, and the down-trodden feel of this picture really put you into the subconscious pocket of something brewing in a crude psychopath's mind. Scene after scene is dragged out mercilessly as the filmmakers try to fill the legal feature-length time. One scene has the son sitting in a bar watching the band AMERICAN XPRESS play through two lackluster 70's contemporary tunes. This had me wondering what ever happened to American Xpress, the band featured in some serial killer's home movie "Three on a Meathook"? I wont spoil the end for you, but I will say that you do not watch this movie with the expectation of being entertained: you watch it to experience something a blood-letter would dream.

A group of shapely girls get stranded near an isolated farmhouse(so far so formulaic)and are given shelter by a young man and his father who inhabit the house. The father wants the girls out, hinting at disaster("Billy, I don't want to be unreasonable, but you know how you get around women...")which of course comes true when the chicks get the axe...literally.

Okay, so it looks to be shaping up to be a run-of-the-mill gore film, but insert a love interest for the confounded Billy, a college-dropout-turned-cocktail-waitress, and the love story element is underway. The couple wander through meadows of goldenrod while the girl explains all this(the college drop-out bit)and Billy agrees to invite his new squeeze and her friend to his farm, where there's more talky character development(on the part of the friend, who spouts some kind of florid anti-Vietnam rhetoric in regard to her dead boyfriend)and all the horror of the killings is revealed! And the epilogue is unusual in that it actually gives promise for Billy and his girlfriend's future!

Okay, so maybe it's a stretch to say this is a decent movie, but come on, how many gore films even attempt any character development? You almost feel sorry for Billy and his plight. The dialogue leans toward more overripeness than camp, and so the dialogue seems more like TV movie of the week fare than Ed Wood. Still, it is an unusual flick.

Taking a page from Psycho's playbook, Three on a Meathook opens with 4 young woman looking for a good time and finding themselves stranded when their car breaks down. They're found by a good samaritan named Billy who takes them back to the farmhouse that he and his odd father share in the country. As the night progresses, each girl comes to a nasty end and Billy's father is scared that his son has relapsed into his old murderous ways. As Billy struggles to keep his sanity, he meets a waitress who he falls for. Will he able able to keep her murderous cravings at bay and start a new life with her?

Three on a Meathook won't win any awards for fantastic cinematography or wonderful acting. If anything, these are the things that keep the film down. It feels like it's everyone's first time making a movie both in front of and behind the camera and some of the actors feel like they're playing to the back row of a community theatre house with every word overennunciated to freakish effect. It does give the film an odd quality that sometimes benefits low budget horror films like this.

The story itself is obviously a riff on Psycho, but had it been written with a little more skill and finesse, it could have really been something great. As is, it's still incredibly entertaining and, at about 70 minutes, it does get to the nitty gritty of things pretty quickly, but there's a more interesting psychological character study in here.

As the title suggests, Three on a Meathook is a grainy and grisly slice of seventies American horror, although it offers slightly more than similar genre films. The film is apparently based on the classic and influential story of Ed Gein, although aside from the rustic setting, mother themes and the fact that people die; this one strays a lot from the story, and actually takes more influence from Gein-inspired classics such as Psycho. It's obvious that the film was shot on a very low budget, as it doesn't feel completely finished, and that along with the bare locations, bad acting and short running time ensure the budget limitations shine through. The plot revolves around a father and son that live on a farm. The film opens with four girls breaking down while on a camping trip, and after taking up the son's nice offer of a bed at his farmhouse, they decide to stay there. However, they all wind up dead and the son is dismayed when he finds out that he is the killer! His father helps him clean up the mess, but when he brings another girl home; it looks as though history is going to repeat itself.

As you might expect, there's a fair amount of gore here - although perhaps not as much as in other similar films. Still, what there is in terms of gore is well done, and Three on a Meathook features some excellent kill scenes, most of which are misogynistic. The film constantly hints at a twisted ending, and indeed the mystery behind the murderer is so obvious that I'm convinced the audience is supposed to guess that straight away - but luckily, William Girdler's film has more in reserve, and the twist that comes at the conclusion is a definite surprise...although it does hint at how much more shocking the film could have been if it had been incorporated properly into the story rather than just being rolled out at the end. The acting is nothing special, although the director obviously rates his lead stars James Pickett and Charles Kissenger as they both went on to star in two more of his films, The Zebra Killer and Asylum of Satan, both of which may be worth tracking down. The climax to the film is an obvious nod to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and overall; while this is not exactly great cinema, grindhouse fans will definitely find a lot to like.