Dis­cov­er this clas­sic ​’80s slash­er with a con­tem­po­rary twist

In the ​“qui­et lit­tle town” of Pad­dock and its big­ger, more urbanised neigh­bour Pat­ter­son, a masked fig­ure is tak­ing an axe to the female pop­u­lace. First, a woman is attacked and killed in a car wash, and then anoth­er is ter­rorised by some­one who leaves the fresh­ly sev­ered head of a pig in her bed.

“I want him cap­tured!” insists Trevor (Con­ra­do San Mar­tin), the sec­ond victim’s hus­band. But Paddock’s police chief, Frank McIn­tosh (Fred Hol­l­i­day), a small-mind­ed, lazy man more con­cerned with his own record and rep­u­ta­tion than with the grow­ing threat in his town, only begins to take the case seri­ous­ly after sev­er­al more women are found hacked and stacked.

With its who­dun­nit frame and its reg­u­lar mur­der set-pieces, Edge of the Axe presents itself as a clas­sic slash­er. Yet as the open­ing cred­its appear to be being typed in lurid neon green over the screen – with an old-school block cur­sor vis­i­ble – it becomes clear that this film is not just look­ing back­wards to a mori­bund hor­ror sub-genre, but also for­wards to the then nascent dig­i­tal age, all in an attempt to refresh slash­er tropes that, by the late ​’80s, were already about half a decade past their use-by date. Here, in the absence of any will­ing, let alone com­pe­tent, law­man to inves­ti­gate the rapid­ly ris­ing death rate, it is left to com­put­ers to play detective.

Com­put­ers are intro­duced by the main char­ac­ter, Ger­ald Mar­tin (Bar­ton Faulks), a keen-nosed out-of-town­er and pro­to-geek who, helped by his local girl­friend Lil­lian Nebbs (Chris­tine Marie Lane), uses these mys­te­ri­ous new-fan­gled devices, with their mag­i­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty and their near omni­scient ​‘cen­tral ter­mi­nal’ (“You can ask it any­thing you like”), to uncov­er hid­den clues.

It is cer­tain­ly a nov­el way of han­dling expo­si­tion and lit­er­al­ly ​‘con­nect­ing’ nar­ra­tive dots, as the com­put­ers, with their (sig­nif­i­cant­ly) gen­der-neu­tral voice and their sub­lime lack of judg­ment, par­cel out key infor­ma­tion about char­ac­ters’ back­grounds while mask­ing any user intent. These sequences, appear­ing before the inter­net (at least as we know it) had yet entered pop­u­lar cur­ren­cy, have a strange­ly futur­ist, almost sci­ence-fic­tion qual­i­ty to them, that real­ly does – or at least did – bring some­thing fresh to an oth­er­wise tired genre. The name of Gerald’s com­put­er, ​‘Icarus’, hints at the hubris encod­ed in this tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle, and the poten­tial for life-threat­en­ing dan­ger in its use.

If almost all the killer’s vic­tims are female, then Pad­dock is a com­mu­ni­ty rife with unsavoury male-female rela­tions. It is an atti­tude clear­ly embod­ied by Gerald’s best friend, the local exter­mi­na­tor Richard Sim­mons (Paige Mose­ley), who open­ly states that the only rea­son he mar­ried the old­er Lau­ra (Pat­ty Shep­ard) was for her mon­ey, who jokes about one day ​‘fumi­gat­ing’ her, and who ogles, flirts (via fish­ing metaphors) and strays with younger women.

Then there’s Rita Miller (Ali­cia Moro), an ear­ly vic­tim who clear­ly knows her killer, and who has inti­mate links with most of Paddock’s men through her free­lance work as the town’s pros­ti­tute. So as, at anoth­er victim’s funer­al, Paddock’s male cit­i­zen­ry are parad­ed one-by-one in dis­tort­ing close-up, we know that every­one here has secrets, and every­one is a poten­tial sus­pect. That cer­tain­ly includes our pro­tag­o­nist Ger­ald, an out­sider fig­ure who is col­lect­ing some creepy data on his com­put­er, who makes a habit of lack­ing an ali­bi dur­ing the mur­ders, and who per­fect­ly – almost too per­fect­ly – fits the frame.

For any­one versed in the work­ings of gial­lo or slash­er cin­e­ma, or for any­one even half-atten­tive to the dia­logue, it is pret­ty obvi­ous ear­ly on who the killer is, as the film’s tone is as gen­der-blind as the blank voice of Gerald’s com­put­ers. Indeed, the final shot pays trib­ute to the freeze frame which end­ed Robert Hioltzik’s Sleep­away Camp, a mem­o­rable entry into the slash­er genre which played a much more elab­o­rate game with sex and identity.

Edge of the Axe is a less­er work from direc­tor José Ramón Lar­raz, fail­ing to match the per­verse idio­syn­crasy of his ear­li­er Symp­toms, Vampyres and The Com­ing of Sin. There is some good direc­tion here, and some great match cuts, but the dia­logue, at least in the Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion of the film, is per­func­to­ry, the many red her­rings are nev­er quite red enough. And while there is some­thing appeal­ing­ly arti­fi­cial about this Span­ish recon­struc­tion (almost a par­o­dy) of an all-Amer­i­can genre, it nev­er reach­es the unhinged inten­si­ty of, say, Juan Piquer Simon’s oth­er­wise sim­i­lar in intent Pieces.

Edge of the Axe is released on Blu-ray by Arrow Video in a brand new 2K restora­tion from the orig­i­nal cam­era neg­a­tive on 27 January.