The Rosetta shot: “The Toolbox Murders” (1978)
So, yeah. A naked, bruised woman with a nail gun held point-blank at her head by a black-gloved figure. That’s… blunt.
Look at that debased image. No, really. Look at it. Process it, roll it around in your mind. That is an actual shot from an actual movie that was actually released in general release. What does that say about the film that contains it?
For one thing, it says that the people who made this film do not want you to feel safe. Like it or not, The Toolbox Murders does not fuck around when it comes to being, you know, a horror movie. If the primary purpose of a horror film is to either A) frighten and scare, or B) disturb the senses, then the people who made this film decided to go straight for the throat and choose B. Toolbox is, above all, a truly nasty and unclean film, a movie where you can practically see the sickness oozing off the screen. The question is, is that necessarily a bad thing? If the intent is to make a film that leaves you feeling sucker-punched by the feeling that nothing is going to be okay any time soon, shouldn’t the makers commit to the idea? This film, if nothing else, is god-damned committed. The first act is nearly contextless unmitigated stalk-and-slaughter fodder, like a giallo with the plotty bits removed. The second act then slows down to fall into a half-hearted sort of investigative-plot routine, with the brother of an abducted teen working to find her and, ostensibly, the slasher of the first act. The slasher, incidentally, is deranged Puritanical apartment superintendent Cameron Mitchell at his most drunkenly, sweatily fervent. This bit hits all the expected marks, but you can tell that it’s there because it has to be. Then you get to the bleak, bleak third act, and suddenly the air of dutifulness makes a horrid, nihilistic sense.
The hell of it is, this isn’t poorly made. This is crafted by people who knew what they were doing and spent all their talent on visuals, dialogue and plot beats that serve only to repel and discomfit. During the first body-discovery scene, the filmmakers toy with expectations (and later revelations) by having Mitchell bobbing up and down, out of focus but recognizable, in the background while the cops on the scene discuss whoever could have done such a horrid thing. There’s a long sequence with Mitchell and the kidnapped girl, where Mitchell treats her with nothing but genial patriarchal concern - while sucking on a fucking lollipop, no less! - that ranks as one of the most skin-crawling things I’ve seen in a film.
Given the talent and skill on display, I suspect that the wallow in extreme violence and extreme imagery has less to do with callow shock and more with the expulsion of psychic damage (which sets it apart from pathetic “provocative” dreck like David DeFalco’s Chaos). Director Dennis Donnelly spent his entire career working in television working on things like “Simon & Simon,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Hart to Hart.” This was his only feature film, and after viewing it you understand why. The Toolbox Murders is not a film you make if you’re trying to secure future career prospects. This is a film you make if you have something terrible and icky inside of you welling up, and you need to expel it and turn it into art. This is a film you make if you desperately need to deal with your own darkness so you can continue on with life.
Toolbox is not a great film. I can’t even really defend it as a good film - unlike, say, I Spit on Your Grave, there’s no real point here to the degradation aside from, possibly, personal catharsis. But it is undeniably effective. Its bluntness means to get under your skin, and it does.
