Sorry, this movie sucks

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Best movie of this year hands down!

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Women are being butchered by some wacko in a white mask, using an ax. Each murder victim is tied to an "acute psychopath". Richard(Page Mosely) is an exterminator married to an older woman named Laura(Patty Shepard). Richard's friend is Gerald(Barton Faulks) who is currently living in a room at an old man's place, I guess some friend of his estranged family's. Gerald takes a shine to a troubled girl named Lillian Nebbs(Christina Marie Lane), the daughter of a local fishing shop owner. Richard becomes involved with a younger, more attractive girl near his own age and Laura has lost all her riches to bad investments. All this boring melodrama aside, bodies continue to turn up, hacked to pieces. You can bet one of the principles has something to do with the killer. Computers used and this supposed cousin named Charlie factor into the revelation of the identity of the killer.EDGE OF THE AXE moves at a languid pace, and the characters, particularly Richard and Gerald, are about as appealing as a wart on the face. And, this Chief of Police, Frank(Fred Holliday), is a real piece of work..I mean, he's unbelievable, this guy, dead bodies keep turning up and he will continue to insist that they be ruled anything other than murder, just so the locals won't panic. The problem is that if you could care less about any of the characters in this movie, your mind wandering elsewhere, how will the result of the plot leave any sort of impact? The murders themselves are explained at the end, but how the women are all connected is rather weak in execution. The axe attacks are savage(the ones we actually see on screen, that is), but not necessarily effective. I think it comes ultimately down to how the story is developed and if the characters are interesting. I think it fails miserably on both accounts, but others could feel differently. There just isn't anything in the movie that was interesting enough to keep my attention..and, I'm an undemanding person who just asks for story and characters that are worth investing my time. I can't believe such a waste of time was directed by José Ramón Larraz, it's all so uninspired and formulaic.

Late 80s slasher Edge of the Axe not only features quite a few brutal, bloody murders, each involving several hefty whacks from the killer's shiny axe, but also the discovery of a severed pig's head, and the gruesome, decomposed remains of a couple of earlier victims, (which naturally pop into shot all of a sudden to provide some cheap scares). Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, it would be, if only the bits in-between the murders weren't so incredibly dull.José Ramón Larraz, the director best known for his 70s lesbian vampire classic 'Vampyres', pads out the non-horrific parts of his film with some incredibly boring guff that introduces several possible suspects and has them engage in some particularly lame activities, such as boating on a lake and playing video games, whilst sharing banal banter (which I suppose at least has the effect of making the killings seem that bit more exciting); meanwhile, the town's useless sheriff makes zero progress in solving the case.To make matters worse, Larraz can't even be bothered to include any of that staple of the slasher genre, gratuitous nudity—surprising considering that the two other Larraz films that I have seen so far, the aforementioned Vampyres and soft-core sex comedy El Periscopio, were loaded with T&A.

Well I'm not a big fan of slasher flicks and the reason for that is mostly because they're all too similar. This film didn't do anything to change my opinion of slashers or like the genre any more than I did before seeing it; but as a strictly by the book slash-fest, it's not too bad and I have seen worse. The film is a Spanish and American co-production and is directed by one José Ramón Larraz - the man behind a number of trash 'classics' including Vampyres and Black Candles. Being a partly Spanish film, the film does seem to take a little bit of influence from Giallo tradition (that being prominent mostly in Italy, but also in Spain) as we do get a little bit of mystery towards the killer's identity. The plot is very simple as you would expect from a film like this and simply follows a man that goes round hacking up women with an axe. Naturally this soon attracts some attention from the local police force and an inept investigation into the murders is started.The title suggests that the murders will be committed with an axe - and indeed they are, and this is the film's strongest element. There are a couple of sequences that are quite brutal, but there's not a great deal of blood and this is unfortunate. The main problem with the film is the parts between the murders, which are largely very boring. The story surrounding the main characters is lacklustre at best and doesn't do much to hold the audience's interest. The mystery towards the killer's identity is slightly more interesting than the characters themselves; but even this is spoiled by the fact that it becomes obvious who the killer is far too early. The direction courtesy of José Ramón Larraz is decent enough - he builds suspense well in places, although the low budget gets in the way often and the film never rises above its trashiness. Overall, I really wouldn't recommend anyone goes out of their way to find this one. Slasher fans may find something to like but it's not one of the best of the genre.

Routine and by-the-numbers 80's slasher, but nonetheless a very entertaining one albeit a bit slow in places. "Edge of the Axe" is remotely gorier and creepier than most of the contemporary slasher efforts, because the killer wears an uncanny plaster mask and uses (like the title makes pretty clear) a sharp 'n shiny axe to turn his victims into – and I quote one of the cop characters here – hamburger meat! The killer targets yummy women living in two remote neighbor towns named Patterson and Paddock. The exaggeratedly imbecilic police officers try to pretend that even the most obvious murder cases are ordinary accidents, or in the best case, unfortunate suicide. The plot doesn't provide too many clues for the audiences to join guessing who the killer is, but don't bother anyway, as there are a couple of delightfully absurd and unpredictable twists near the end of the film. Downright AWESOME end shot, by the way. The direction in "Edge of the Axe" is much better and more stylish than in most 80's slasher, but I didn't except anything else, since José Ramón Larraz isn't just some randomly assigned director, but the creator of a couple of underrated and marvelous 70's gems, like "Vampyres", "The Blood Virgin" and "The House that Vanished". Mostly thanks to his skills and experience, "Edge of the Axe" is occasionally atmospheric and even suspenseful in places. The special effects are adequate and the imagery (like chopped off heads floating in the water and decomposed corpses falling from attics) is suitably nasty, making this an above average and recommendable effort. Larraz was also responsible for another obscure slasher puppy with an appealing title, namely "Rest in Pieces". Based on this movie, I think I should start looking for the other one, too.