Edge of the Axe (1988) Finding the joy in ropey slashers (Review)

The world of boutique home video labels exposes you to genres, styles and voices that you would never hear of otherwise. And for the horror community who are in a constant state of discovery, there has never been a better time to be a fan. One of the latest names salvaged from history’s dumping ground is José Ramón Larraz who Arrow Video describe as “one of the great lost voices of Horror”. The number of times an overlooked voice has been described as such, they’d all, ironically, get lost amidst this sea of all great lost voices. The lost amongst the lost: there’s something poetic about that. Not sure his latest to see release in the UK, Edge of the Axe, can be classed as the work of a great lost voice, but they can’t all be winners.

A more apt descriptor is to say he is one of the more socially mobile components of the Euro-Horror scene as Larraz regularly worked in the UK & America. Or, at least, Madrid doubling for small-town California. Many purveyors of Euro-horror stuck to their traditional over-sexed and highly stylised guns; Larraz, on the other hand, produced those whilst diversifying for the American audiences by partaking in that most American of horror movements – the slasher. That slasher is 1988’s Edge of the Axe, out on a glorious remastered Arrow Video Blu-Ray.

A woman is driving through the car wash only to be confronted by a black-gloved and white-masked (more Mephisto than Halloween) assailant who jumps her with an axe, making short work of her windscreen before doing the same to her. Edge of the Axe plays like a regional hangout film where one friend is married to an older woman for her money yet can’t help but play the field. His friend has a relationship through the earliest of computer messenger services – they type, and the computer speaks on their behalf. The latter budding relationship is between Lilian (Christina Marie Lane) & Gerald (Barton Faulks). The stalk-kill sequences play out like intermissions every half an hour or so. While ferocious, the axe is wielded as if it was as light as air, and the violence comes with paint-like blood where no blow or strike penetrates – thus, the gore is at a bare minimum.

In America, the idea of regional film-making is returning as a cost-cutting measure away from the high prices of Los Angeles and New York. It was a cost-cutting method in the past too, but back then, away from the eyes of industry players, films tended to stray from the beaten path in other ways too. Between the 1960s-80s, regional horror was awash with weird creative & casting decisions. In Edge of the Axe, the cast is full of non-professionals but don’t think of the naturalist gold that certain directors have mined over the years. Think of productions that need actors but have no money to fill them, so they used locals with no acting experience and not having the luxury of choice, and no matter how bad, their characters make the final cut. Most of the cast, whether professional actors (a few have interviews in the extras) or non-professionals, do as is required of them. Which is to say, no one is good, yet no one is bad enough to draw attention to themselves – save for one character: the Sherriff.

Picture this scene. Uncle Dave owns the one car dealership in town; sons, fathers and grandfathers all bought their car from him, everyone knows and loves him. He is the fabric of small-town America; he is Uncle Dave to everyone. The only problem is Uncle Dave is getting close to retirement, so, he doesn’t work as much as he used to, and with him passing the management of the business down to his son. With all this newfound spare time, he needs something new to while away the hours. As luck would have it, Spanish filmmaker José Ramón Larraz is in town, and he is making one of those slasher movies that he’s heard so much about from Gary down at the video shop. Looking for locals to fill out the cast, Uncle Dave tries out for a role, and it is a pretty big one, too – the town Sherriff. Loving classic Westerns, this is a dream come true, a character he was born to play. The only problem is Uncle Dave has been Uncle Dave for so long, he doesn’t know how to be anything else – so he turns a gruff no-nonsense Sherriff into an affable man about town with a smile for every person he meets.

To cut this storytime short, he is bad but endearingly so as his character is one of my favourite horror tropes – the clueless cop. For the first hour, his reluctance to see these deaths as anything other than suicide is absolute. Woman with half her face eaten by rats? A rope around her throat and locked away in the attic? Suicide. Another woman is found after being battered by an axe – Suicide. It’s only after the third or fourth “suspicious death” that he finally concedes that there might be a masked killer about town.

Now, it might sound like I am singling out someone and pinning the film’s many problems on him – and I am, to a small extent. However, on another more important level, he is the most enjoyable thing about the Edge of the Axe. And I am not making such a grand statement on the premise of “so bad it is good” – it is fascinating how stark a contrast he is to the world Larraz created.

Like any sub-genre, if you watch enough, they will inevitably start to form one indistinguishable mass of interchangeable tropes. Whether you like wuxia, slashers or romantic comedies, it is important to find the little things that help a movie stand out from the crowd. Personally, it takes more than gore for a slasher to hold any power, now whether that unique factor is a character like the Sherriff is not my place to say. If tonally inconsistent and ill-judged performances don’t float your boat, you might also connect with the fact that this is one of the earliest computer-based horror movies. The music is also noteworthy, pivoting between crunchy synth and sounds that land somewhere between the Love Boat and soft-porn jazz. As bad as Edge of the Axe is, there’s much to grasp beyond the surface for the committed slasher completist and let’s be fair, this release from Arrow Video isn’t really for anyone else but the completist.

Thanks for reading our review of Edge of the Axe

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