The Carpenter

Released from hospital after a nervous breakdown, Alice Jarett (Lynne Adams) moves into a country house with her philandering husband Martin (Pierre Lenoir), who has employed a team of workmen to renovate the property. At night, after the workmen have gone home and as Martin sleeps (having taken tranqs), Alice hears noises and investigates, discovering a lone carpenter (played by straight-to-video star Wings Hauser) hard at work. The genial craftsman befriends the flaky housewife, and becomes her guardian angel, using his handy array of power-tools to take care of those who mean to do her harm. It eventually transpires that Alice's new friend is the ghost of Ed, the man who originally built their home, and who was executed in the electric chair after killing those who tried to repossess his property.

I first saw The Carpenter in the wee hours at an all-night horror festival and struggled to stay focused thanks to the film's rather slow pace. But even with me wide awake this time around, the languorous approach still made this one drag quite a bit. As the carpenter with a screw loose (pun intended), Hauser absolutely nails it (pun also intended), being both charismatic and menacing, and there are a couple of reasonably bloody death scenes, but for much of the time I was bored (bored... board... geddit? OK, I was struggling with that one!).

THE CARPENTER is one of those forgettable direct-to-video films made in the 1980s that was filmed in Canada (probably financed by a Canadian cable network). There's almost nothing memorable about it. Bland cast and acting. Bland story. Bland music. Bland horror. Bland everything. The dull story doesn't fit any known horror category: is it supernatural? slasher? psychological horror? Probably but it's so shallow that calling it a psychological horror is too generous.

So this carpenter (a ghost?) kills all the people that annoy a mentally disturbed woman, who, during the beginning of the film, experienced a nervous breakdown (no reason is given for her breakdown). The film almost works on a feminist level: most of the victims are men and the nonsensical dialogue Wings Hauser spouts throughout the film sounds like feminism 101. But calling this boring horror a feminist statement would be an insult to feminism, whether if one agrees with feminism or not.

Anyway, too many words for a crappy film. There's almost nothing memorable about this film except for one scene: the woman is having a blissful dream with the carpenter. They're both dressed in white and dance cheek to cheek to music when the carpenter, at one point, unzips himself and the woman screams in horror at what she sees off-screen: we hear the sound of a drill. The carpenter has a drill for a penis. Totally ludicrous scene which made me laugh out loud. Had THE CARPENTER had more scenes like this, it would have been much more entertaining.

This movie is a classic horror movie in Norway. It's intensely scary yet sensitive. With the ever so talented Wing Hauser as the crazed carpenter, though it's special effects are rather outdated. But it's complex plot and intensely scary music more than makes up for it.

They just don't make them like this anymore. An instant classic.

10 out of 10. BRAVO

Wouldn't it be so much cooler if John Carpenter had directed this movie? Then the box of the VHS could loudly announce "John Carpenter's … The Carpenter"! And also, it probably would have been a much better film if John directed it… "The Carpenter" is a rather weak and laughable 80's slasher movie that desperately tries to add in some deeper psychological themes, but fails. It centers on a beautiful, thirty-something housewife that just got released from a period in a mental institution because she cut up her husband's business suits for no apparent reason. They move into a new countryside house that still needs a lot of renovation and Alice stays indoors whilst her husband cheats on her with a hot blond chick. Meanwhile Alice falls in love with the reincarnation of carpenter Ed (portrayed by 80's stud Wings Hauser). Ed is an old-fashioned workaholic who died in the electric chair 40 years earlier after he went a little berserk and killed some people that didn't allow him to finish his work. Together, Alice and Ed butcher a couple of lazy handymen and talk about dancing. How adorable! It's a pretty ridiculous film overall, with too much talking and only a couple of demented murder scenes to make up for it. The killings are similar to the ones in the 'video-nasty' cult classic "The Toolbox Murders" (a nail gun, a bench vice…) but not nearly as gross or memorable. I always thought Wings Hauser is a bit of an idiot and didn't really like him in this role, neither. His tedious speeches about how "handy-work is holy" are implausible and not exactly terrifying. The climax is just plain retarded.

The Carpenter would not appear to be a very well liked film, and it's really not difficult to see why. It seems that certain occupations lend themselves to horror; while dentistry, for example, has obvious horror themes that can spring from it, all carpentry has is the idea of someone murdering people with his tools, this idea has been used many times before and generally isn't all that interesting anyway. The fact that the plot here focuses on a dead carpenter who has come back for revenge doesn't really help since that idea is also massively overused. The plot is also rather boring in the way it plays out. However, I do have to say, in spite of all that I've already said, that The Carpenter isn't a film without any merits at all. Wings Hauser is good in the title role, and the scenes that see him taking some revenge on various people that he doesn't like are generally quite well done. The way he yacks on about 'the working man' etc can be a little dreary, but the delivery is good and Hauser makes for an effective villain. Overall, however, I have to say that The Carpenter is not a great film and there's not enough about it for me to recommend it.