Axe (1974) review

Dir. Frederick R. Friedel

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Contemporary horror filmmaker Ti West owes a little something to Frederick R. Friedel’s Axe low-budget video nasty from 1974. West’s acclaimed film Pearl evidently borrowed some aesthetic elements from the film, notably in its titular anti-heroine’s use of an axe as a weapon and the house in which her and her family reside. Before you decry plagiaristic intentions, consider how Quentin Tarantino has been taking elements from films to repurpose for his own projects for years, including that iconic dance sequence from Pulp Fiction.

Axe is a grimy little thriller, less than 70 minutes in length, yet impactful. It’s rough around the edges, shot for a miniscule $25,000, its visual scuzziness adding to the unease cultivated by the leering POV fixated on three goons, the depths of their brutality ostensibly know no bounds.

The goons are played by Jack Canon, Ray Green, and writer/director/editor Friedel. Their names are irrelevant and their appearance, quite frankly, interchangeable. The first 15 minutes tell us all we need to know about them. They’re cold-blooded mobsters who wait for a man who owes them money to arrive home from work. They meet him in his apartment where one shoves a lit cigar down his throat before another beats him to death. The shock of the scene is enough for his partner to jump to his death from the 12th-floor complex window.

From there, one of the men shows their weakness and trepidation for his presumptive newfound life of crime, but refuses to turn back due to his own cowardice. The three terrorize a female clerk at a small grocery store, making her disrobe and taunt her with pistol games before turning a remote farmhouse into their hideaway. At this farmhouse is a young woman named Lisa (Leslie Lee), who is caring for her disabled, catatonic grandfather (Douglas Powers). She reluctantly allows them to spend the night, but is eventually left no choice but to fight back. What does she have to lose? She’s the one person with dignity in the film.

Friedel shoots Axe with a naturalistic glimpse into the life of rural living and petty crime. The film is as ugly as the violence it portrays. There’s no glamour nor sheen cast on the film’s photography. It’s gritty and grainy, and it adds a dimension to a film that’s paper-thin in plot but so fiercely watchable.

Then there’s the music by George Newman Shaw and John Willhelm. It’s heavily comprised of soundwaves and discordant synths that create unease when married to the subject matter. It’s bound to be polarizing, but I found it a heavy plus in a movie unafraid to personify evil while offering a glimmer of hope and retribution at the hands of an initially timid but progressively powerful female protagonist.

NOTE: As of this writing, Axe is available to watch on YouTube, free of charge.

Starring: Leslie Lee, Jack Cannon, Ray Green, Frederick R. Friedel, and Douglas Powers. Directed by: Frederick R. Friedel.