Axe, a very low-budget North Carolina regional film, was shot in 1974 by a 20-something filmmaker, Frederick R. Friedel. The budget was only slightly more than $20,000. Harry Novak, who ran Boxoffice International Pictures, Inc., a now-cultish mostly grindhouse distributor, picked it up from Friedel, along with another micro-budget Friedel film, Kidnapped Coed.
I haven't seen the latter film but I always wanted to see Axe, mainly thanks to a creepy trailer Novak put together. (You can see the trailer at the IMDB link to Axe above) I saw ads for the video/DVD when Something Weird was pitching it, but never bit. A key reason was despite several exceptions, Novak-released films generally seemed to be wanna-be porn that skirted the gray area between X and XXX.
Axe popped up on YouTube recently and I decided to finally check it out. I had recently learned that it was one of the "video nasties" that England banned for a while long ago.
Axe kind of blew me away. It's only slightly longer than an hour, and it's no Novak-type sex film. It's an intense revenge film where the spare, bleak settings, buildings and emotionally spare characters create both a suspenseful and ultimately terrifying film. Novak, who was trying hard to stay in business in the mid to late '70s, was wise to pick up Axe. I hope it made a few bucks.
The film involves three criminals. Two are sadistic psychopaths. One is a weak man who goes along with the murdering and robbing. After killing one man and causing his terrified male lover to leap to his death, they take off for the country in search of plunder. In a small convenience store on the road, the two sadists casually terrorize and sexually humiliate the lone female employee. It's uncomfortable and gradually more frightening to watch. People shouldn't be allowed to terrorize innocents like this. They do in life, though. It's a harsh reality.
The trio eventually stop at a large house off the road, very southern style, wih a long front porch. Inside is a grandfather, who is paralyzed and cannot speak. He is tended to by granddaughter Lisa (Leslie Lee), a pretty girl/woman with an age difficult to ascertain. She is quiet, emotionless and solemn, speaking rarely and without emotion. She could have medical issues except in her bedroom there is art of girls laughing and smiling. They even look like Lisa. It's clear something traumatic has changed Lisa.
She is a stoic and does not emote when two of the criminals very soon become threatening to her and her granddad. The third, weaker criminal, develops a crush on Lisa. Director Friedel has set up an odd kidnapping situation where the "hostages" barely acknowledge their captors. When a police vehicle stops by looking for the criminals, Lisa blandly acquises with the kidnappers' ponderous threats not to tell.
The contrast to the terror victims experiences in the two previous scenes, a double murder, and a robbery, to what's occurring in this remote southern house, is striking. Stoicism without fear is being exhibited by Lisa. The criminals are too crudely dumb to be concerned.
That night, one of the psychopaths enters Lisa's girlish bedroom with an intent to rape her. But Lisa has a straight razor in bed with her. The criminal dies a graphic, painful, bloody death. Lisa, exerting tremendous strength, cleans up and tries to hide the body.
This is an intense film. We know there are flaws. We don't have a backstory as to how Lisa became an emotionless, almost robotic character. We don't know what spurs the fire inside her to fight back. But what Roger Ebert said in his review of Last House on the Left applies also to Axe, which at heart is a less explicit version of Last House ... Ebert said he was describing what occurs in this intense film, not trying to deconstruct it. It may be unpleasant. It may be horrific. But the story is lean and mean and told effectively. The music works in Axe, as well. It's haunting, with a kind of hopeless melody.
The scenery, the house, bedrooms, living room, kitchen, the shabby store where the clerk is terrified, all are "characters" that contribute to this grim tale of revenge. The scenes of Lisa feeding her disabled grandfather, without emotion, while evil hovers around her, are at first disconcerting but later forbidding. It becomes so clear that these criminals are way in over their heads with this 100-pound protagonist.
Axe eventually has garnered a very small cult. Severin Films has released a Blu Ray of it and Kidnapped Coed, which is a film I'll also see once I buy the Blu-Ray. The Blue-Ray includes a blending of both films that Friedel released 30 years later, called Bloody Brothers.
I urge readers to see Axe. I want to know what you think. It grabs me with its spare, devoid of emotion crude justice. It's only about 66 minutes. Edited for the times, of course, it would have been a superb idea for Monogram or PRC 80 years ago. You can watch Axe (for now) here. Also see a South Carolina 1974 release ad under its original title, Lisa, Lisa (below).
-- Doug Gibson
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