The Toolbox Murders

Fifteen minutes of notoriety attached to seventy minutes of a different and much duller film.

The opening sequence is a series of killings in an apartment block, filmed at length, one of them scored to a gentle country ballad playing on the radio while it happens. That juxtaposition is why the film has a reputation and it is very effective.

Then the film becomes a slow kidnap drama with a religious motive, and the energy never returns.

Cameron Mitchell is doing real work in it, which is more than the material deserves.

Listed by the DPP, dropped, and passed uncut in 2000 after an earlier cut release. Remade by Tobe Hooper in 2004, unrelated in everything but title.