 And welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten's Trash or Treasure. Before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we are drinking Lords of Death Hawk Rice Lager. They know your name. Today we are going to bring to you 1988's Edge of the Axe. As mentioned in our previous episode, we haven't seen this in ages, so we thought we'd revisit the movie and see if we remember it the way we thought we did. And if it's any good or not, so let's find out. This movie is directed by Jose Ramon Loraz. It stars Barton Fawkes in this as our main lead, Jack Taylor has actually been in lots of stuff using pieces that we covered as well as the ninth gate with Johnny Deep. So the movie starts off with this woman who's driving into this giant fucking car wash. She's all smoking inside the car. He can't even roll up the window if he wanted to. Let's just smoke out. That's how they did it in 1988. While the car is going through this car wash, all of a sudden there's this masked figure in this sort of plain white mask that throws this axe right through the windshield. Just puts it right through. It's over and it shows the medical symbol on the window, which is some kind of clue. Big clue! Huge clue! It cuts to Gerald, who's riding his motorcycle and he's moving into this new cabin. This huge cabin is like hexagon cabin, some new age thing. He gets the internet set up too with his new computer. That is new age stuff, right? His friend ends up being an exterminator. Gerald ends up coming along with his friend to this bar where this guy has been smelling this weird rotten smell. What are you keeping around here? What do you use this area for? Storage! Storage? It's like storage for what? Shit! We end up finding a corpse. The corpse ends up coming down and it's been sitting there for like weeks or it's all rotten. The cops come by and they start investigating and they find out that this is one of a string of murders that's been happening that's been going on. They're also not doing much, either on top of it, they're kind of shitting. They're not doing any investigating besides going to the crime, seeing the crime, and then going back. So Gerald and his buddy, they go to the bar and she all brings out like beers for them in the glass. Yeah, like while they're sitting in the car, like what the hell kind of bar is this? I don't know, but I want to go there drinking in the car. And he ends up meeting this girl Lillian, playing the arcade of course in the 80s. Exactly. Gerald befriends Lillian who works at the bar and takes her back to his weird octagon lodge. So they get to know each other and tell him that you know she's had some mental illness in her family and she actually accidentally injured her cousin once by pushing him on a swing and pushed him too hard and he fell off the swing and busted his head open and then he had to go to a mental institution. In the meantime these acts murders keep happening, women keep being killed off. Lillian is on Gerald's computer and she suspects something and she's kind of looking in and she sees a list of all these people on his computer and they're the people who have been murdered but they're all kind of tied back to her cousin who was at that mental institution. Right, they're all psychiatrists or nurses or whatever that worked at this mental institution at some point. In the meantime Gerald is also suspicious of Lillian about maybe being the murderer. That's right. And that's where we're going to end the plot. Now let's figure out if it's trash or treasure. Alright, let's start with the trash. Top of the list, acting. It is quite bad. Even the main characters, Gerald and his body, they're okay. They're just okay. It's like, man, I'm not buying it, I don't believe any of this shit, right? But the other characters are atrocious. There's that cop guy with the mustache, he's always kind of in the background. Yeah. You can see he's all like laughing, he's all smiling, waiting for his lines to be delivered. Civil War train guy. Train conductor guy. Like, where'd you get these people from? Did you just be like, hey you, are you free for a couple of seconds? Yeah, come here. They went to like the local. We're making a movie now. They went into the local homeless shelter or something and got like a bunch of bombs. You know that Civil War guy's all forgetting his lines? You can see clearly where he's like, you see, yeah, he's supposed to say something, then he stops and then he just, then he keeps going like you couldn't do a different take, you couldn't do it again. According to the driver of the train, this train did not run over anything. You can tell that the intentions are there to be kind of original and kind of interesting and smart, but it's way too convoluted, it's like, makes no sense, like every time a kill happens you're like, yeah but what the fuck does this have to do with anything? What does this person have to do with the story? Yeah. Why? Why is this happening? Yeah. What's going on? What do computers have to do with it? Yeah, like it's all that early computer shit too, like we connected to the main frame and all that early internet shit and it's like, what does that, all that's doing is muddling everything. And the computer's all talking back to them, like, I never had a computer that talked to me, especially not 1988, so this guy lives in the fucking woods in this lodge in 1988 and is able to get the internet in 1988 and get access to all these government files. He's all hacking in, like, yeah, right, come on. You can barely do that now, little in 1988, out in the woods. The pacing for this movie is pretty piss poor. It starts off good, right off the bat with that good kill, like okay, yeah. And then it just sinks, but then it doesn't come back up for a long, long time, like okay, it's understandable, it gets into a bit of character development with the main character. Which goes nowhere. Yeah, it kind of goes nowhere, and then meeting his friends and meeting, like, town's people and everything, okay, get somewhere with it, it goes nowhere and it's all useless. I really start telling you why everything's happening and giving you finally clues, it's like, well, I don't care anymore, like, throw you all these red herrings for, like, who is the killer? Yeah. Because it's kind of a who done it. Number one, it's way too many. Yeah. Usually most who done it's just, like, the first kind of beginning of the movie, they kind of lay it out, here's your characters, who could be the killer, 20 minutes left in the movie and it's still like, well, here's some more people who it could be, like, what? What is this happening? Then they have to explain that, though, too, and it's too late, you're like, well, fuck, I don't care. It's like, they're trying way too hard, like, I appreciate the effort, but it's like, just dumb it down a bit, like, you don't need to be so convoluted, and it's structured all wrong. So this brings us to the treasure, what is good about Edge of the Axe? The music. Yeah. I thought it was really good. The little soundtrack music is really good, it's like 80s and synth heavy and it's really like rhythmic and driving, and I thought that was really good. The effects are actually really, really good for this movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's bloody, it's gory, and the kills are really good, too, fingers come, so reaching for the shotgun shells, that hatchet, too, it looks good, you're like, ooh. Some of the kills themselves are brutal, like, when he kills that prostitute, he's got the axe and just fucking... Yeah, he's fucking giving her, too. And there's no cutting away, it just shows it, and it's like, whoa. The killer is actually kind of cool in this movie. Yeah, his look is good, like, even though it's kind of like a Michael Myers rip-off, but... Sort of. You can't, you know, it's a white mask, you can't call every white mask a Michael Myers rip-off because there's so many white masks. It's actually a more featureless than the one in Halloween 4. That's even a little more scary. It's got no mouth. It's got nothing, except eye holes, and so that's actually really creepy. And we're in that kind of raincoat thing, sometimes the hood on, sometimes the hood off. Right, and like, the mask is such a contrast to like the background, usually. The settings and the lighting in this movie is actually really good, it's like a good-looking movie. You can tell it's kind of inspired by the whole Italian jello style. We first watched this on VHS, and it kind of like... It's a little dull. It's grainy and dull, but when you watch the actual blu-ray proper transfer from the original negative, it looks fucking great. I think it's a really good-looking movie. The kills like the chase scenes when he kills that prostitute outside the bar. Yeah, yeah. Like around that rail yard and all that, like that's a wicked scene. It is a really good scene, you know? And then like the farmhouse, and like all the kill, all the scenes. So the chase here through those pigs and everything. Yeah, yeah, like they're all really laid out well and well thought out. So edge of the axe after reviewing it all these years later after finally seeing it again after on the VHS days. I'm gonna rate this one trash. Yeah? Yeah. I am actually gonna differ from you on this one, and I think it's a bit of a treasure. The reason being is because I just had a lot of fun watching it. I laughed for the wrong reasons I was laughing at it, but I still had a good time watching it. I didn't. I enjoyed the kills and I enjoyed the atmosphere and the lighting. But the acting and the dialogue is what put it over the top for me. Probably something I'd watch again just for shit. Yeah. See, I probably wouldn't. Okay. There you go. There you go. We actually disagree on this one, which is fine. That's what it's all about. But until next time, keep drinking.