Nail-Gun Massacre

There is dreadful, and there is shocking, and there is utterly and hopelessly inept, but often the worst cinematic dud is saved by an abundance of charm simply because it is so genuinely appalling. Nail Gun Massacre almost falls into this category but isn’t over the top enough to quite make it. The film, made back in the mid-1980s just as the slasher wave was beginning to get rather stale, is an entry from Texas hoping to cash in with a name that intended to emulate the Chainsaw with a Nail Gun sadly that never quite materializes.

The film begins with a rather gratuitous gang rape where a group of rural yobs sets upon a helpless young woman. The scene drags on as the men leer at her while their mates wait their turn. In the very next scene set 5 months after the rape, we have what seems like a woman dressed in a combat suit with a motorcycle helmet and what looks like an oxygen tank. A nail gun gets to work with shooting the man and leaving him for dead with several nails sticking out of him from various places. The sadistic killer enjoys the kills judging by the humorous quips he or she makes while carrying out his savagery. But it’s impossible to tell if he is a man or a woman because he uses a voice changer way before they became famous post-Wes Craven’s Scream.

Oddly enough for a slasher killer, this one almost always strikes in bright daylight and strikes so frequently that there appears to be no time for any character development of any of the movies many characters who are simply there as fodder for the nail gun. The kills and the quips are meted out in rapid succession with some interludes of some pretty make out scenes to satisfy those who watch slasher movies for the titty count. There is much flesh on display, including loving close-ups of female breasts, male buttocks and a rare full male frontal of one of the victims as icing on the cake.

The victims are spiked at regular intervals as the film attempts to become a bit of a whodunnit with unfortunate effects. The gore is plentiful, but you never actually see any of the kills as they happen but only get to see the bodies with nails jutting out of various body parts as well as smeared with lashings of blood. There is nothing gruesome enough to make you squirm anything like as much as the lengthy make-out scenes. The acting is beyond wooden, making the performances from Don’t Go in The Woods appear to be on a Meryl Streep level, and the camerawork and production values make John Waters early films look like Gone with the Wind.

This film is the pits on so many levels that you have to be inebriated or dead to derive any amusement from it. Nail Gun Massacre is such a hideous experience, yet you feel compelled to watch it to the conclusion. Just to see what the grand reveal is and learn the killer’s identity.

Is there any redeeming feature at all? Is it so awful that it has a certain charm to it? Maybe this viewer wanted to nail himself for wasting 90 minutes of my life enduring this piece of garbage. As difficult to watch as any film ever encountered. Dire in every way with no redemption.