Directed by Dennis Donnelly
Starring Cameron Mitchell
Nicolas Beauvy
Pamelyn Ferdin
Tim Donnelly Wesley Eure
Tasteless, amateurish and dull, this pathetic low-budgeter received a much-needed boost when Phil Donahue showed the graphic "nail-gun" scene from it on his daytime talk show during a discussion about disturbing slasher movies. He even included nudity and the uncut killing scene. "Nightline" also featured film, as did "60 Minutes." The splash it made occurred years after the film had hit theaters, when it found new life as a video. Few can deny that this movie was a phenomenon -- it made serious waves. But the bottom line is it's simply a bad movie.
The film came about after producer Tony Didio learned that "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" had been a box office smash, and he wanted to replicate that film's success. But he didn't even have the heart to watch "Texas." He simply hired a director and told him to use the film as a blueprint. Needless to say, "Texas" is infinitely superior. But the making of "Toolbox" is an interesting story, and the film did receive plenty of media attention and did excellent box office. "Toolbox" actually was made in 1977, but didn't really become well-known until after hitting video in the early 1980s, at the height of the slasher craze. Demand for sleazy horror films was at an all-time high, and "Toolbox" hit the video rental market at exactly the right time.
Frequent cheesy horror star Mitchell plays a ski-masked hardware-wielding killer who uses drills, hammers and nail guns to kill women in an L.A. apartment complex. Ferdyn was a frequent kids' show star, appearing in "Lassie" and "Space Academy," before starring as the protagonist in this, the second-to-last film of her career. Director Donnelly also was known chiefly for his work in TV, most notably the "Charlie's Angels" series.
There's not much to recommend here, aside from the ability to see Mitchell in one of the most embarrassing horror film roles of his life, which, given this guy's spotty resume, is saying a lot. He does play it enthusiastically, and even sang (!) while performing the role, although the singing had to be cut out of the movie. Unfortunately, the film gets way too talky toward the end. All the action takes place in an apartment complex, not the eeriest of locales.
Stephen King and Michael Weldon actually had positive things to say about this movie, but it's a mystery to me why. King even ranked it as the Number One horror video in a TV Guide article in the early '80s. Great publicity for the movie, but there were certainly way better horror films out on tape at the time. It's only worth catching if only to see the kind of sleaze that was being cranked out in the late '70s and early '80s. True, they don't make 'em like this anymore. But seeing "Toolbox" actually makes some of us happy that they don't.
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-- Review by Lucius Gore
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