The Toolbox Murders

The Toolbox Murders (1977)

During the Late 70’s all the way through the mid to late 80’s,The slasher flick was born and ran rampant across America.It seems that theatre goers could not get enough of the High on blood and gore ,Low on plotlines style ,People just wanted to see others go under the knife literally.Some good some god awful,it didn’t matter the public would watch it no matter what.Luckily today I review on of the better slasher flicks of the time.Toolbox Murders pulls no punches letting you know what you’re in for ,within the first five minutes of the film by raising the body count to 2 .People start getting killed in blood splattering fashion in a small apartment building ,and of course the toolbox carrying ski mask wearing assailant goes unnoticed by neighbors until the police really get involved in the case once a 15 year old girl is kidnapped.Toolbox murder is a pretty decent little slasher,it has some nice ,innovative (for the time) kills and it does have somewhat of a sub-plot along with it.The murderer is a religous fanatic (Big surpirise there) who kills women he deems unclean,it is pretty obvious who the killer is about midway through but still ,this is a slasher not a suspence thriller.The killer kidnaps a 15 year old girl , because he wants to "keep her pure" ,and he ties her up and starts calling her kathy after his dead daughter.The film kinda slows down about 30 mins or so into it but before that we get back to back kills involving a Drill, a claw hammer,a puty knife and a nailgun and some of them are pretty graphic.
This is though pretty much your typical slash by numbers joint and honestly I think you know what you are getting if you pick this one up,I mean it is called Toolbox Murders afterall.In the end you could do worse in the genre but there are quite a few better ones out there as well (Maniac or Twitch of the death nerve come to mind.)
Final verdict on The Toolbox Murders 3.25 out of 5.