Shot on a camcorder for $650, and endorsed by critic Michael Adams as the sh**tiest movie Ive ever seen, Ax Em is a slasher movie from an African-American filmmaker whose father headed the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, which means it takes a dim view of the treatment of ethnic minorities in horror movies, right, gang? No such luck writer/director/producer/actor Michael Mfume sticks to every cliché and caricature possible, from gangsta rappers who have Yo Mamma fights to playas whose idea of a come on is, You so fine ah could kiss yo daddys ass. If you gave a camera to a 12-year-old boy and told him to make an urban horror film, this is the movie hed make. For the first half of the picture nothing much happens, then suddenly a zombie with a machete appears and the uniformly terrible cast begin overacting wildly, literally unable to show their terror without running into walls and each other. Unreleased for a decade, the movie premiered in Washington DC in 2002 to an audience of understandably perplexed NAACP employees.
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.'
