Nail Gun Massacre B-Movie Review

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NAIL GUN MASSACRE - Skull

Not Rated

Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 2 March 2008

The Characters:

Doc - He does not act or look like a doctor, but we are expected to accept him as being...a doctor.
Sheriff - Proof that Dan Haggerty had a fling with a female Sasquatch.
Mark & Brad - All they wanted to do was cut some firewood. Instead, they were nail gunned to death by a wisecracking killer.
Annie, Trish, Hal, & Ben - Trish is the only one to survive (though she finds out that she is pregnant, so her life is over anyway). A low point in the film was watching Annie and Hal having sex.
Numerous other people - Victims, but we rarely know their names, let alone how they fit into the plot or why they are killed. So, who cares?
John, Tom, & Maxine - These three survive. If that is not surprising, they also fit all of the lumber required to repair a dilapidated house into a Chevy Blazer without lowering the tailgate.
Linda - She gets raped. Her brother snaps.
The Nailer - Uses a nail gun to kill his victims, though he hates to mount his tank directly on the gun, so he uses a remote (but no slide check) setup. Until the very end of the film, we are certain that the killer is a woman, but when the motorcycle helmet comes off, it reveals Bubba, Linda's brother.

The Plot:

The film starts with an unexpected rape. Normally, this type of unsavory event is used to define characters or provide a clear reason to the viewers why subsequent actions take place. Since the film's title is "Nail Gun Massacre," we assume that the rapists are going to become victims of the Nailer. Quite a few of them are killed, but...so are a lot of people without any connection to the rape.

This is a serious problem throughout the movie. We never understand why the Nailer picks some people to be victims and, because characters are usually introduced and then immediately perforated with flying fasteners, we do not have a point of reference to care about their sudden deaths. Gosh darn it; I am not sure which victims were present at the actual rape and which are chosen at random! At one point, Doc and the Sheriff are standing over the body of a girl found dead near the town (most of the murders take place along a stretch of county road). We did not see her demise and are not given any clues why her death matters. I think that she was Brad's girlfriend, but I'm not sure. It would help if the actors and actresses clearly enunciated names when they speak.

Arrrgghhh! This is like watching somebody playing a first person shooter. Wait, that is not true. "Doom" and dozens of other FPS games have more plot than this movie.

First, a guy living in a run-down shack with his chubby wife is murdered. Next, a pair of men poaching firewood are attacked by the Nailer and killed. Nothing else to say about the latter two victims, but I wanted to mention how stupid it would be to get killed while you were illegally cutting down trees.

Oh, and the Nailer always delivers terrible wisecracks during the murders (that are often hard to understand due to the distortion effect applied or background sounds); he also drives around in a hearse that is the same color as baby caca.

Hal and Ben, accompanied by their girlfriends, Annie and Trish, are the next people who venture into the danger zone. They stop by the lumber yard, asking for work, and are sent out to a dilapidated old house in the woods. The couples enjoy a royal picnic with Ritz crackers and warm Dr. Pepper before pairing off for a little outdoors nookie. At this point, I was horrified. Not only does the film intentionally show me Hal's partially tanned ass, but he is wriggling it to simulate having sex with Annie. To make matters even worse, the guy is covered with straggly body hair. I guess that Annie likes that sort of thing, because she goes wild and starts licking her lover's hairy shoulders and neck. Annie's not all that attractive either, plus she is also moderately wooly. It's like watching Australopithecines mating.

I was born three million years after they died out. I shouldn't have to watch this crap.

To complete my descent into "I'm put off of sex for a few days," Annie's back is against a tree. At the very least, the female primate has a bunch of bark up her ass, at worst, a whole branch. Blessed be the Nailer for finally arriving and permanently ending the Pliocene love fest. Ben gets knocked off when he goes looking for his hairy friends. Trish survives; way to go, Trish!

Being nailed to death looks to be unpleasant. Nails are fired several feet through the air and the killer usually targets parts of the body that you would not want to put in front of a nail gun, such as your face, neck, or abdomen. Notice that a number of the victims end up with nails driven through the palms of their hands. I wonder if the filmmaker was trying to make a statement or allude to something else.

A scene with two carpenters (an awful lot of stuff happens in twos in this movie) having a shootout with nail guns caught me totally off guard. Do you remember any old World War II movies that end with a British commando engaging in a submachine gun duel against several Germans? The scene plays out just like that, including one of the men framed in a window as he blasts away, causing the other to take cover behind a pile of bricks. These guys are nuts! Playing around like this has "workman's comp" written all over it. After they finish horsing around, the Nailer drops in to demonstrate the correct way to maim and kill people with a nail gun.

Yet another couple drives into the film via a Fiat. Egad, when will this end? Sooner or later, the director has to run out of friends and associates with girlfriends who will take off their tops. Oh well, let's get back to the grind. The car's driver and his new girlfriend stop off at a Dairy Queen for burgers. It is too bad that the driver's previous girlfriend just happens to work there. She bends the flustered gent's car antenna and causes him to dump his burger into his lap. The new filly in the stable feels so sorry for her new beau that she agrees to park along an empty country road and have sex.

Ever try to have sex in a Fiat? It is a lesson in contortion and also all the places you don't want a stick shift. The pair ends up on the hood, because of the available headroom, legroom, and general lack of anything going up your butt. That is when the Nailer gets them.

This whole time, Doc and the Sheriff have been wracking their brains to make a connection between the murders. Heck, Doc has access to a computer and the script, but he still cannot figure it out. It's the Sheriff who finally says, "You know, a lot of these men were present at that alleged rape we had a while back and all of them worked in construction. I should question Linda and her brother."

Bravo, Sheriff. Bravo.

When the Nailer is finally unmasked, I was more than a little pissed off. The killer did wear a motorcycle helmet and camouflage the whole time, but the person inside the costume was obviously female. They were shorter than Bubba, had hips like a woman, and even ran like a woman (you know - arms straight down at the sides, swinging back and forth) - but Bubba was the killer. Reading the ending credits, I realized that the person(s) playing the Nailer throughout the film had indeed been a woman. I bet that the writer/director thought it was a neat twist to have the brother be the nail gun psycho. Yeah, you sure fooled us. We thought the Nailer was a woman the whole time...

That's because it was a woman, you freaking jerk!

Things I Learned From This Movie:

The last guy you expect to commit rape is one wearing a green polka dot hat.
Splitting wood is preferable to playing doctor (one of those is a euphemism, the other is literal).
The first thing you should do upon finding a decomposing corpse is to check for a pulse.
Your heart is located in your upper arm.
Sometimes the best entry in a wet t-shirt contest is a man.
Tree hugging can be fatal.
Burial shrouds were invented after picnic blankets.
Chinese roosters get a lot of tail.
The Viet Cong were known to use nail guns in 'Nam.
Camouflage renders the wearer completely invisible, regardless of the terrain.
Anyone interested in maintaining their anonymity should invest in duct tape.

Stuff To Watch For:

1 min - If she conceives, the baby will definitely be plaid.
5 mins - Great theme song. Is it all somebody moaning?
7 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT!
8 mins - We see them already. Does the director think that we failed to notice the breasts?
9 mins - Hey, you are missing twelve headlights.
25 mins - Country-fried SpaghettiOs. Yum!
43 mins - Is this girl normally on medication?
56 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A CAR ANTENNA!
60 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT!
65 mins - Look, put the chocolate bar inside the cage before you are turned into a gorilla. That way, after the scientist rushes out of the room, you can eat the chocolate bar, get a sugar rush, and bend the cage bars. Then you can escape.
73 mins - Based on the music and setting, this pair must be discussing their favorite brand of douche.

Quotes:

Nailer: "You hitchhikers are all alike - stuck out on the road."
Brad: "Yeah, well, just let that killer show up, 'cause I'll cut 'em up with this here chainsaw."

Audio clips in wav format

SOUNDS

Starving actors speak out

	File	Dialog
	nailgun1.wav	Nailer: "Those are the worst headaches - the ones between the eyes." (Distorted screaming and laughing follows.)
	nailgun2.wav	Brad: "What time is it?" Brad's Girlfriend: "It's time for the organ transplant, and you're the donor and I'm the recipient." Brad: "No, really. What time is it?"
	nailgun3.wav	Sheriff: "You know, it seems like someone's just gone plum loco with a hammer and a box of nails. What do you think would make someone do something like that?"
	nailgun4.wav	Nailer: "This'll be a gas!" (Screaming and nail gun shots.) "This must be two-for-one day."
	Theme Song	Listen to a clip from the soundtrack.

Click for a larger image

IMAGES

Scenes from the movie

Watch a scene

VIDEO

MPEG video files

	nailgun1.mpg - 3.8m
	Mark was taking a leak. He thinks that the person creeping up on him is Brad, but he is dead wrong. If someone used a nail gun on my genitals, I'd probably do more than just make a funny face.