Ax 'Em

I was once happy. There was a time for me when life seemed worth living. There was a time when my mind wasn't constantly flooded with images of my own eviscerated corpse hanging from a noose. That was the time before I saw Ax 'Em.

The term "worst movie ever made" is thrown around quite often to describe films of this nature. No one ever anticipates, however, that somewhere in the world, there honestly is a worst movie ever made. I'm not one to make assumptions, but I seriously believe that this is, in fact, the greatest cinematic travesty in history. It's like this Mfume guy sat down and wrote a list of every movie-making no-no that could ever be committed, and then made it a point to stuff every single one of these into one incredibly terrible film (and I use the term "film" quite loosely).

The first thing you'll notice is that there seem to be about six or seven different cameras used, each one more awful than the last. The sound quality is horrendous in ways that simply cannot be understood until you see the movie. The plot seems to be that a bunch of African American individuals dressed in clothing that would've been considered fashionable in 1991 running around trying not to get killed by some sort of zombie/psycho or something. I think. I'm really not sure.

Despite the title, the killer guy only uses an ax like, once. He mostly uses a machete or a gun.

The horrid nature of this film is absolutely mind-boggling in a way that makes you wonder how such a thing even exists.

I've still not completely banished the theory that Mfune made this with the intention of creating some sort of bizarre ironic comedy movie. If this is true, then he should be hailed as a genius.

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.

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.

A group of African-American college students head out to the country for a weekend of fun and find themselves being slaughtered instead in this film written and directed by Michael Mfume. Sadly, the killer's first victim must've been the sound man because barely a word spoken in this film is audible. Now let's be honest folks. We users of the IMDb tend to be a little too quick in declaring that this or that film the worst one ever made. People have certainly done that about this film too. The difference is that this time they are right! This film is simply unwatchable. Even cheese-lovers will be tempted to poke their eyes out. So many people have complained the time they wasted watching this DVD. Well, I'm one up on you. I actually saw this movie in the theater! That's right, back when it was made, around 1992, the film managed to get limited theatrical release in Mfume's hometown of Baltimore. (This disservice to the movie-going public was probably as a result of the fact that Mfume's father was a US Congressman from Baltimore at the time.) The film was originally called "The Weekend It Lives." I don't think I walked out on the movie. I was with some friends and I believe we were all too stunned to move. As stunned as I was at the time, I am even more stunned that someone actually released it on DVD. It's not simply that the movie is bad. There are plenty of bad movies out there, and I enjoy many of them. What surprises me about this film is it's total lack of film-making competence. The sound is horrible, as if they were only using the built-in microphone on a camcorder. The picture is almost as bad. I have seen better films made by grade school students.

If there is one saving grace to "Ax 'Em", it's that there is about a 10-minute window where the film becomes the funniest movie I've ever seen in a long time. Unfortunately it's just 10 minutes worth of laughs (including a white victim who keeps falling down as per the usual black critique of white victims in horror movies). The film itself is visually atrocious. I don't really know what happened, but my bet would be that the filmmaker shot the film in 16MM, transferred to tape in order to edit it, but somehow forgot about tape degradation that comes with generational dubbing. As a result, nearly half of "Ax 'Em" looks like a grainy home video, only that would be insulting rainy home videos. This is, incidentally, perfect fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000, if only that show was still around.