Three on a Meathook (1972)

Director: William Girdler

Writer: William Girdler

Composer: William Girdler

Starring: Charles Kissinger, James Carroll Pickett, Sherry Steiner, Madelyn Buzzard, John Shaw, Marsha Tarbis, Carolyn Thompson, Kiersten Laine, Linda Thompson, Hugh Smith, Thomas Todd, Smith Haynie, Alice Summers

More info:  IMDb

Tagline: A Padlocked Shed, Hooks of Cold Steel -- a Maniac on the loose

Plot: Four girls go on a romping weekend at a lake, and have car problems on the way home. A nice local boy takes them back to his farm, where he lives with his father. Something ghastly happens, but the father helps his son as he has in the past. When the boy meets a girl and begins falling in love, the father worries about a repeat performance.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

SPOILERS ON A MEATHOOK!!!! YARRRRRR!!!

Let me save you some time here if you're thinking about watching this.  There's nudity in the first five minutes and no more for the rest of the film.  The setup is promising with four girls spending the weekend in the woods near a lake.  What's this?  Our car won't start!  Awwww.  That's because Billy (Pickett) fucked with their car and then shows up to whisk them back to his country farm house where he lives alone with his pa.  Everyone with pussy is brutally murdered that night.  The next morning Pa (Kissinger) berates Billy for killing the girls just like he'd done before and, like before, Billy has no recollection of the murders.  He visits his dead ma's grave asking her for answers and then heads to town to get liquored up.  The barmaid, Sherry (Steiner) felt sorry for him and took his passed out drunk ass to her place.  She sleeps nude so we see her naked ass the next morning when she wakes up.  Nothing happened between the two so Billy's feeling good that he didn't do "anything wrong".  He invites Sherry to visit the farm for the weekend.  She brings a blonde friend, Becky, who owns a pussy.  Guess what happens that night?  Yup, Pa kills Becky in her bed with a pick axe.  After the first kills I figured it was Pa when he blamed it on his son.  The next morning Sherry goes out looking for Becky and finds the title of the movie (with only 7 minutes from the end!).

Sherry runs into the kitchen and finds Pa and Billy.  Billy's mom runs into the kitchen and comes between Pa and Sherry and takes Pa's knife in the back by accident.  Cut to Billy getting 'spained by a shrink what happened regarding his mother and Pa's mental illness.  He also works in how Ma was a cannibal and Pa killed for her.  THA FUCK?

Now, the first twenty minutes are promising and then it's at least 45 minutes of boring as shit drama while Billy ponders his demons and falls in love.  There's a couple of moments before Pa's jig is up that are OK and then there's the fucked up back story about Ma and Pa.  The ending is a blatant PSYCHO (1960) ripoff.  The internet says writer/director Girdler was inspired by Ed Gein, which was also the inspiration for PSYCHO.  There's a sprinkling of nudity in two spaces, a handful of kills that rob you of almost any blood and gore as they happen very quickly and this picture is mostly dull, low budget drama.  Had Girlder taken the shrink's story about Ma and Pa and made that the focus of the movie instead of a surprise ending then you'd have at least the potential of a more entertaining flick.  I've now seen at least 5 of the 9 films he directed and they're almost all better than this one.  I don't know the story on this guy but it's a shame he died so young.  He was 30 in 1978 when his helicopter crashed.  I'm really disappointed with this flick.  It's almost a complete letdown.  If you have a killer title like that you should have a better movie poster than this and a better film than this.