The Toolbox Murders

A grubby Los Angeles proto-slasher that arrived before Halloween codified the rules, and got itself onto Britain's video nasties list for a reason. A masked man works his way through an apartment building with the contents of a toolbox, and the opening reel of killings, one of them scored incongruously to a soft country ballad, is what earned the film its reputation. Then it pivots, roughly halfway, into a queasy kidnapping drama that has almost nothing to do with the marketing, and Cameron Mitchell turns up to chew the remaining scenery. It is mean and structurally deranged, and the first twenty minutes are far nastier than most of what followed. A grindhouse curio that a 2004 remake completely failed to understand.