TOOLBOX MURDERS (2004)

Hollywood Toolbox Massacre

One should not refer to Tobe Hooper's Toolbox Murders as a remake, despite the existence of Dennis Donnely's 1978 film by that name starring Cameron Mitchell. Sure, both movies are centered around an apartment building where a fiend in a black ski mask is savagely killing residents using building repair implements. But beyond that the two pictures don't have all that much in common. Hooper, along with screenwriters Jace Anderson and Adam Geirasch (authors of Crocodile and Crocodile 2), reproduce the original's shocks, but their plot falls closer to Phantom of the Opera, or Lucio Fulci's House By the Cemetery.

Our heroine Nell Barrows (Angela Bettis of May) is seen only in passing during the opening sequence, as we follow her new neighbor Daisy (Sheri Moon of House of 1000 Corpses) home to her apartment in the historic Lusman Arms building. Daisy is dispatched in extremely brutal fashion with a claw hammer by a masked prowler who has somehow gotten into her apartment, though no one finds that out until later. Nell and her husband Steven (Brent Roam of Tremors 4) are beginning to regret having just moved into the Lusman, as the old building seems to be falling down faster than it can be repaired. All the repair and maintenance work going on throughout the film provides plenty of opportunity for saws, pliers and wrenches to show up in the frame, throwing suspicion on anyone nearby.

Steven is busy much of the time paying his dues as a scrub doctor at a nearby hospital, so Nell, an unemployed teacher, is left with a lot of time to puzzle over odd noises she hears through the paper thin walls and wonder at the disappearance of some of her neighbors. For example, her budding friendship with actress Julia (Juliet Landau from TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is derailed when Julia fails to keep a running date. She calls on the police, who soon peg Nell as a worrisome eccentric after being summoned by her more than once and finding nothing. But Nell is a stubborn and curious woman. Aided by some background information on the Lusman provided by an old actor resident (old actor Rance Howard), Nell learns that the Hollywood studio mogul who built the place added some odd features to the building, including mysterious symbols affixed as 'decoration', secret rooms and a hidden staircase. All of which lead to the horrifying solution to the mystery of the tool-using masked killer.

Tobe Hooper hasn't had a theatrically released film since 1995's The Mangler, and hasn't really had any kind of a hit since 1986's Invaders From Mars. It's not that he hasn't done some good work, but after the high expectations created by his classic first film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, his (perceived) overshadowing by Stephen Spielberg for Poltergeist, the odd pulpy sci-fi horror of Lifeforce, and the misunderstood comic nightmare Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, fans thought he'd sold out and the general public didn't know who he is. With all that taken into account, the man hasn't lived up to his legend in quite a while, making Toolbox Murders his strongest, most frightening film in decades. The film has a quirky flavor that keeps you off balance between humor and raw violence, while the walls of the old building seem to be closing in inch by inch. In the second half, tension builds steadily until the final 15 minutes or so, which take things back to 'saw territory rather insistently for a surrealistic spookhouse thrill ride.

Little Angela Bettis is once again very impressive as the plucky heroine, and with May, the Carrie TV remake, and Hooper's upcoming Brew, has quickly become the queen of the strange little horror girls.

Psycho killer phantom killer; haunted apartment building; blood & guts; power saw fu; hammer fu; saw fu; chainsaw fu; nail gun fu; chamber of horrors; mummy collection; p-faves Hooper, Bettis, Landau and Moon.

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