The Toolbox Murders 4K UHD/ Blu-ray Review

After his teenage daughter dies in a car accident, Vance Kingsley has a mental breakdown and naturally goes on a killing spree. His victims all live in the apartment complex he owns and sometimes works as a handyman. Using such helpful tools as a hammer, screwdriver, nail gun and power drill, he leaves a trail of bloody corpses that have police baffled. His rampage ends when he sees pretty, young Laura Ballard, who reminds him of his daughter. He abducts Laura and takes her back to his house where he binds and gags her and proceeds to treat her like a child. Laura’s brother Joey doesn’t believe the police are capable of finding her, so he enlists the help of his friend Kent to help him search. What he finds is shocking and not at all what he expected.

In 1974, the slasher film was just coming into its infancy with the releases of Bob Clark’s Black Christmas and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Four years later, John Carpenter would influence the genre’s trajectory for decades with his breakout hit Halloween. Just a few months prior that same year, prolific television director Dennis Donnelly (Charlie’s Angels, Emergency!) made a movie far more salacious and reviled, one that embraced the value of a good exploitation title – The Toolbox Murders. If Leatherface can dispose of a bunch of trespassing hippies with a chainsaw, just think of what an average person could do with a whole box full of hardware tools!

Donnelly and producer Tony DiDio (Sunset Cove) use Chain Saw as inspiration when it comes to shock value, but where that film shows restraint in onscreen bloodshed, they open their picture with a twenty-minute string of gruesome murders that leave little to the imagination. Donnelly even busts out some titillating nudity in the process. Written by Neva Friedenn (Out for Blood), Robert Easter (Sworn to Justice), and Ann Kindberg (producer on The Shield and The Haunting of Hill House), Toolbox explores the mind of a man detached from reality, desperate to connect with his deceased daughter. The script lures audiences in after the brutal opening act only to pull the rug out from under them during the surprisingly dark finale. Upon release, critics despised the picture, but audiences were intrigued and it was instantly profitable. In the UK, it landed a spot on the ever growing Video Nasties list of banned films and its notoriety grew.

What keeps this film above board is the highly entertaining performance from the always-reliable Cameron Mitchell (Without Warning, From a Whisper to a Scream), who brings a humanity to the unhinged Vance. The film goes through the motions of disguising the killer’s identity in the opening act, but to anyone that has ever seen Mitchell, there is zero doubt that it is him behind the ski mask. The majority of his screen time is opposite his female captive, Laurie Ballard, played by Pamelyn Ferdin (The Beguiled). It’s hard to say they have great chemistry beyond victim and kidnapper, but their scenes are a highlight. Mitchell brings a complexity to the role with his idiosyncrasies – including his love of lollipops and singing.

The supporting cast is led by Nicolas Beauvy (The Cowboys) as Laurie’s brother Joey, a genuinely decent teen doing everything he can to find his sister. Wesley Eure (Land of the Lost) plays Kent Miller, who reluctantly agrees to help Joey search, even offering to ask his Uncle Vance if he has any insight. Eure gets to step away from his clean-cut TV image into a character with a lot more depth. Aneta Corsaut (The Blob, The Andy Griffith Show) is the concerned mother, Joanne Ballard, barely keeping it together while police look for her daughter. The director’s brother, Tim Donnelly (Emergency!), appears as Det. Jamison, the cop on the case who disappears for large sections of the movie, which is fine, as his subplot feels like filler and doesn’t really go anywhere.

The Toolbox Murders tells its story with a truly bizarre structure that will keep audiences surprised. Donnelly frontloads the first half-hour of the picture with the majority of the kills before settling in to spend time getting to know our hero, Joey. The killer’s identity is revealed almost immediately, removing the mystery of a whodunit and creating a character study. The final fifteen minutes are nowhere near as bloody as the opening, but the scenes are far more shocking. The script challenges what is typically expected from the hero, villain and victim and the final shot is a gut punch.

Longtime cinematographer Gary Graver (Mortuary) had a storied career shooting films with everyone from Orson Welles (The Other Side of the Wind) to Fred Olen Ray (Evil Toons), with a detour through the world of hardcore pornography through the 1980s. In this film there is an abundance of scenes set in bright daylight that are not particularly flashy, but the murder sequences and other nighttime settings are creatively lit and generate a disturbing atmosphere.

The Toolbox Murders has earned quite a reputation over the years, and in part rightly so, but the film is more than just blood, nudity and mayhem. The character of Vance is intriguing as we get to know more about him through his interactions with Laurie. He is a man consumed by grief over the loss of his daughter, spiraling out of control. Make no mistake, this movie is pretty trashy, but it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. It’s worth watching and will likely stick with you for a time. When Stephen King was asked to name his favorite horror movies of the 1970s, this was in his top five. Bringing things full circle, in 2004, Tobe Hooper directed an in-name-only remake.