An inoffensive, unremarkable thriller about a young girl who murders the escaped convicts thatve invaded her home, Axes successful prosecution for obscenity remains something of a mystery. The Evil Dead, with its eye gouging and dismemberment, escaped prosecution but Axe was banned and unavailable in its uncut form until 2005. Since most of the grisly violence in Frederick R Friedels film is left offscreen, that might be due more to bad timing than anything else. Not only was the picture released in the same year as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it played under the title California Axe Massacre to cash-in on Tobe Hoopers film, and therefore may have become confused in the minds of censors. Hoopers movie was never listed as a Video Nasty, it was simply denied a BBFC certificate until 1999, initially because BBFC Secretary Stephen Murphy took issue with the level of terrorisation in the film, then in later years because Murphys replacement, James Ferman, considered the picture to be about the pornography of terror. This had a strange knock-on effect: Hoopers later films Eaten Alive and The Funhouse found their way onto the Video Nasty list, as did The Driller Killer and The Toolbox Murders, whose titles also seemed to reference murder committed with household items.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
