adriangr Three hoodlums invade a farmhouse that belongs to a teenaged girl and her invalid grandfather. They get more than they bargained for.This is a very bad film. "Axe" is more well known that it remotely deserves to be, simply because it got caught up in the UK "video nasties" scare when it came out on home video. Most of the film is very slow and most of it is horribly photographed. The continuity is awful, natural sunlight seems to come and go randomly, along with what time of day it is. The editing tries to put together footage shot out of context and expects us to believe theres a method behind the erratic stitching together of what was presumably the best available shots that made it into the can...but it fails to result in an enjoyable viewing experience.The music is terrible, consisting of bone-rattling, electronic droning, and irritating piano doodling. Axe does deliver some gore for sure, but it's not very effective. There seems to be an in-joke in the movie about the "red stuff", with ketchup and tomato soup taking up screen time as well as actual human blood. On the plus side, the acting actually isn't too bad, and it's barely over an hour long, so you don't have to waste too much time on it. A creditable video nasty this ain't.

Mr_Ectoplasma This no-budget schlocker follows a group of criminals— two of them unabashed chauvinists — who murder two gay men and then take off into the countryside to hide from the police. They come across a rural farmhouse where a young woman lives with her mute paralyzed grandfather. Expecting Southern hospitality, they get a little more than they bargained for."Axe" (also known as "Lisa, Lisa") has been on my "must watch" list for years now, so I'm happy to have finally seen it. The plot here is nonessential; there really isn't a story to be told. Writer and director Frederick Friedel takes concepts from other indie schlock films of the era ("Last House on the Left" comes to mind, as well as "I Spit on Your Grave," though "Axe" predates it) and moulds them into a tight-knit mood piece that is engaging in spite of the fact that it really goes nowhere.There are few thrills to be had here and the unfolding of the skeletal narrative is lugubrious at best, but there is something to be said for the film's moody presentation. At times the cinematography evokes an almost documentary feel akin to Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and the languid farmhouse setting is quietly sinister. The characters are fairly one-dimensional; among the criminals are the two ruthless killers/chauvinists/rapists, and a sympathetic sidekick who actually possesses a conscience. The character of Lisa is inarguably the most ambiguous, lounging around the farm in a white prairie dress when she's not cutting herself in the bathroom or butchering chickens. The acting is sub-par but overall decent given the type of film this is.Maybe the strangest thing about it is how brisk it is. The film barely runs over an hour in length, and this fact paired with the loose narrative ends does give the sense of an underdeveloped concept, although the quirks that come with its underdevelopment are perhaps what make it most memorable. In spite of what the advertising would have you believe, the gore is minimal, but the film is appreciable on an aesthetic level— especially for genre fans who find the notion of an unhinged Laura Ingalls wielding a hatchet to be inexplicably fascinating. 7/10.

Scarecrow-88 Weird psycho-drama regarding a trio of killers, in suit and tie, who flee a city after pummeling someone to death(..the victim's gay lover takes a dive out a 12 story window to escape them!)barging in on a teenager and her senile grandfather, hiding out in their farmhouse, intruders demanding food and shelter. What the these three don't expect is that pretty Lisa doesn't hesitate in using a chopping ax to defend herself. Meanwhile, the grandfather, lost to the world around him, remains comatose, staring blankly, as the men offer danger to his granddaughter.At a mere 61 minutes, you'd think a film with a synopsis as this would be over-the-top and gratuitous, but director / writer Frederick R Friedel adopts a more minimalist approach instead and both the performances and mood are very low-key. Most of the characters(..what few there are)are rather vacuous, empty vessels and the film presents them all as outsiders from society, misfits "hiding away" from civilization. The score uses a lot of drum beats and tambourine, along with a rather depressing music box tune and some chilling piano chords..like many low budget movies during the 70's, the score has moments where it's very eerie, while other times it can be a bit overbearing due to an overuse. Despite the graphic nature of the titular weapon used by Lisa to escape two attempts at rape by her captors, there is very little violence shown on screen, I'm guessing due to little budget. The film looks like it cost 10 bucks, with limited locations, and rather claustrophobic story staging most of the action within the farmhouse. There's more dependency on film blood while the blunt blows of the ax is shot off-screen. Leslie Lee never breaks, as Lisa, from a look of other aloofness, seemingly off in another world. Perhaps her mundane existence and watching as her grandfather left her emotionally(..just a human shell, rotting away day by day) not to mention having no other family members, has created the person she is. Jack Cannon as ringleader Steele, plays him rather antagonistic, at times quite calm, with outbursts showing the kind of monster he truly is(..a little eccentric touch shows Steele cutting his finger nails before commencing to kill the fellow at the opening, and his toe nails the night they besiege Lisa's house). Ray Green, as tubby cigar-smoking Lomax, is about as depraved as Steele is, while Friedel(..the director of the movie), as Billy, seems to be a reasonable enough chap, along for the ride..Billy didn't partake in the clubbing of the victim, and openly chastises them for killing the man. But, even when they provoke and attempt to harm others(..like a supermarket check-out girl), they're more restrained than what you might see in other films concerning murderous bastards who enjoy hurting innocent people. While nothing exactly extraordinary, Axe might appeal to those who enjoy low-budget oddities..I imagine this would be perfect material for a drive-in double bill. The story itself is simple enough and doesn't waste time..the history of it's production might account for why this is the case. Axe is another representative of an era(..the glorious 70's) where film-making was a possibility for quite a many folks. I think the most memorable aspect of the film is the central character, Lisa, because Leslie Lee paints a haunting figure, a young woman without much of a future, who seems to be merely existing, her only purpose as caregiver.

BA_Harrison Having just killed two men, and tortured a convenience store assistant, three thugs (two thoroughly sadistic bastards and one 'nice' guy) decide to lie low, taking refuge at a deserted farmhouse, home to pretty young teenager Lisa and her paralysed war veteran grandfather. Naturally, it's not long before the more morally bankrupt members of the murderous trio decide that they wanna piece o' Lisa; to their horror, however, the girl proves to be not quite as defenceless as she at first appears...Axe is one of many low-budget pieces of trash that gained notoriety thanks to its inclusion on the Video Nasty list during the 1980s, and, as such, will forever be of interest to those who are compelled to check out the 'forbidden'. The irony is, of course, that if it hadn't been for the futile efforts of a handful of politicians, Britain's right-wing newspapers and certain clueless activists, the film would have been long forgotten by now (along with many other titles on the list).Although just over an hour long, this amateurish home-invasion exploitationer is still rather tedious stuff, being extremely slow and very predictable. It also features a poorly developed plot and characters (apparently due to a rather rushed production in order to meet distributors demands), several totally unbelievable moments (Lisa being able to dismember one attacker in the bath unseen, and then even convince the gullible 'nice guy' that his partner in crime did it!) and a dreadful score consisting of an abysmal aural assault by stylophone, bongos, piano and tambourine!.Also, whilst this is admittedly fairly grim stuff thematically, with endless scenes of humiliation, rape, murder, and the suggestion of cannibalism in the film's final moments (or so I understood—the whole soup thing was fairly confusing), there is nothing particularly shocking to see: a very weak neck slicing, a couple of off-screen axe attacks, and a headless chicken. Nasty, but all things unlikely to cause a problem for today's jaded horror audiences.