a review of 工具箱杀手

2022 CULT MOVIE CHALLENGE WEEK 3: CAMERON MITCHELL WEEK This has a few redeeming qualities, mostly in terms of being shot and scored reasonably well, having some memorable slasher kills, and a moderately gonzo performance by (not really a spoiler) Cameron Mitchell as the killer. I can imagine that Mitchell probably took the role purely on the basis of getting to deliver the handful of monologues he's given here. That said, even when compared to other slasher films of the era, this movie has a real sadistic and arguably misogynist tinge to its violence. The movie's first 30 minutes are front-loaded with multiple sequences of women being attacked and killed, with the cinematography and editing really luxuriating in a voyeur's-eye view of the female characters' suffering at the hands of the maniac. Several of the kills we see in the film are overtly framed as home-invasion/rape scenarios, with one scene in particular playing out as literal softcore pornography. Other slashers make this kind of sexualized violence into a thematic subtext, whereas this movie treats them as its literal text. It's very telling that when the movie dispatches its handful of male victims, these deaths are depicted with far more artfulness, with one kill happening in the space of an edit between a foregrounded pair of scissors and an empty parking lot.