Ax 'Em

Ax Em (1992)

Runtime: 71 minutes

“Directed” by: Michael Mfume

“Starring”: Michael Mfume, Sandra Pulley, Joe Clair, Racquel Price

From: Nubian Prince Pictures

Here’s a rather unique review for today. Not only is it more story-telling than talking about the actual movie, but the movie itself has to be the worst I’ve ever seen!

It all begins in the late 90’s, when a relative of mine gave my family and I a stack of old videotapes; many of them were taped off of the pay cable channels in the 80’s, which is pretty awesome. However-and I’ll never know how he got it-the stack also had an all-black horror movie called The Weekend It Lives. It was awful! It looked to be a student film and it was as awful as can be. The dialogue could hardly be heard, the “special” effects weren’t all that special, things dragged on forever, and it was often howlingly bad when it wasn’t painfully bad.

A few years later on a messageboard I see a thread where people are talking about a movie called Ax ‘Em. I look it over and then came to a horrifying conclusion; The Weekend It Lives was retitled Ax ‘Em and released on DVD! THAT movie getting a DVD release left me flabbergasted. But I never tracked that down.

Until, early this year when the Blockbuster located a few miles from me closed down (there’s still another one open, it’s just farther away) and one of the movies still on sale for a few bucks was Ax ‘Em. So, I finally got it and watched it. Aside from some minor things and it being shortened (not that it helped at all), it’s about the same as the original VHS tape.

By the way, in some strange trivia, the director/star’s father is Kweisi Mfume, a former President/CEO of the NAACP and a former Congressman! No kidding.

The movie is all about a group of African-American college students who go to a cabin for the weekend, but are attacked by a giant hulking killer who I presume is undead (I mean, his skin IS blue! Although, maybe he just uses colloidal silver…); that’s all you really need to know about the plot. The killer’s backstory is not important at all, trust me.

Besides the major problems I addressed already, there’s also such great moments as some of the awful stereotypes that are presented (shocking to me given who his dad is), the look of the film stock changing often-and all of it looking so awful it appears as if the film camera was a JVC camcorder from about 1985 or so. At least once you HEAR the director yell “Cut!” before the next scene starts. Characters often talk over each other, making the sound issues even worse.

If you’re extremely brave, you can actually watch the movie on YouTube! It takes a lot of nerve. Lest you don’t believe me, check out other reviews from the likes of Something Awful and Black Horror Movies. It is as bad as I’m saying it is! Why this movie (allegedly with a budget of SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS) ever made it past the student film stage is beyond my comprehension, except that it’s a part of the small “black horror movie” subgenre and there aren’t enough of those around. Well, I say it’s more a giant insult to that subgenre than anything else.

I'll be back Wednesday night, and I promise I'll review a movie far better than this one.