THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE – Another entry in the 'power tool abuse' sub-genre, 'The Nail Gun Massacre' comes from 1985 although possibly seems much older because it looks as scuzzy as hell. This one definitely reeks of regional aesthetics – everything about its threadbare sets, ugly nudity, awful non-performances and woeful effects work points in the direction of a true poverty row indie. Although it's little more than some murder scenes interrupted by a mullet-oriented police investigation, there is some semblance of a story going on in the background, something about a woman who was raped in the grounds of a local DIY warehouse and a dude in sci-fi crash helmet who avenges her with titular nail gun. A few notes on said killer – clearly inspired by the era's prevailing hegemony around wise cracking slashers a la Freddie Kruger, 'The Nail Gun' massacre's bad guy can't get through a single slaying without garnishing it with at least a couple of tasty one liners, delivered in an android voice courtesy of his special helmet. Not many of these gags are in any way amusing, most are inaudible and some don't really make sense – my fave must be his little quip after offing two teens: “Sorry guys, I guess you just don't understand”. What, like “yes of course I understand your need to murder me, you f*cking arsehole”. Maybe he was speaking for the film as a whole though, because 'The Nail Gun Massacre' is pretty inexplicable. We've all seen movies this cheap before. Some of them are rubbish and feel like they've disappeared into oblivion before we've even finished watching them, but some of them glow with a strange luminescence even though everything about them shouldn't really work. 'The Nail Gun Massacre' is definitely one of the latter. There's just something about it all, the ultra drab landscape of run down work places, quarries, fast food joints and country roads, the oddness of the killer, the free-form repetitiveness of scene after scene, the fact that some of the players sound like they're making their stumbling lines up on the spot (and speaking them into a really bad tape recorder), the characters who are introduced, hang around for long enough to seem vaguely pivotal, then disappear, the fact that a bad sex scene is scored by a song called “Fussball” which plays twice in succession... it's an intoxicating brew when taken all at once. At least, it works that way for me as I write these words, now. I'll call it a minimalist trash classic before I do a double take and realise that it's actually boring, badly made sludge, which it could equally well be.
WE STILL KILL THE OLD WAY – Chavsploitation meets new skool Brit gangster flick in this preposterous but entertaining yarn with slightly curdled undertones. Basically, an old ex-East End type gangster is murdered by a 'crew' of leering tracksuit wearers, led by a spectacularly obnoxious Danny-Boy Hatchard. Ex-gangster's bother (the great Ian Ogilvy) rounds up a posse of similar elderly psychopaths with a view to eliminating these young whippersnappers. 'We Still Kill The Old Way' is structured like a revenge flick. It knows which buttons to press, and leaves its audience in no doubt who the righteous are and that the scum-who-must-be-killed richly deserve their fate a thousand times over. It's highly skillful in this department, because even a bleeding heart liberal with wannabe socialist tendencies such as myself was cheering those dear old guys on when they were driving spikes into the kneecaps of trembling hoodies. That's what's quite interesting about 'We Still Kill The Old Way' – yeah, on one level it's about good old British pension age geezers not taking any shit anymore and showing 'em how it's done, but take a step back and you have a nightmarish movie about a group of elderly men who clearly revel in the torture and murder of socially deprived youngsters... most slasher flicks have less dubious dynamics at base. Whether this realisation adds to or subtracts from your interest and enjoyment probably depends on how twisted you are, but whereas the viewing public saw an actioner based on generational conflict, I see a potentially quite mental exploitation film with a fairly nasty undercarriage. All of which serves to recommend it as far as I'm concerned. However you choose to see it, 'We Still Kill The Old Way' hurtles along at a frenetic pace, doling out violence and tension until the ridiculous climax, a hospital based shoot out. I don't know about you, but frankly I found the zombie hospital invasion of 'Nightmare City' to be a more realistic proposition. But maybe that's ultimately what works about 'We Still Kill The Old Way' – for all its urban realist trappings, it's really not that grounded in any kind of reality at all. Dynamic, winning, with the likes of Ogilvy and Lysette Anthony sometimes charming, but deep down pretty nasty and fairly bizarre... not that much different from one of those delightful old time murderer dudes, then.
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