I feel like it’s almost a shocking revelation to say that I had never heard of Nail Gun Massacre. It’s not even one of those situations where I can say something like “I’ve heard of it but I’ve never seen it,” because it’s simply not true. With a name like Nail Gun Massacre, I’m almost embarrassed to say that this little film has escaped me for my entire life. I’m walking into this blind. For the love of God, I’ve sat through four Misty Mundae films in a row; please let this at the most be entertaining and at the very least be competent.

Setting the tone from frame one, the film spends no time with character development or exposition, deciding to throw us directly into the action with the brutal rape of a young woman (hey, she was wearing a plaid gingham dress shirt, the bitch was obviously asking for it) followed by the immediate nail-gun killing of a Texas Good Old Boy. And that’s only the pre-credits sequence.

From there it’s pretty much the same formula over and over again: a few goofy guys (Hey, could they be the rapists from the first scene? Nahhhhhhh) stumble around like morons (my favorite dialogue: two men go out into the forest to chop down some wood, one turns to the other and says “Hey, there’s a tree over there!”) and get nailed by the killer. It’s I Spit On Your Grave with a higher concept.

And like I Spit On Your Grave, the plot is pretty disposable. Yes, a hopeless deputy and his more than capable doctor friend (was anyone referred to by name in this film? Seriously, I didn’t catch a single name) are hot on the trail of the wisecracking camouflaged killer, and the rape angle gives the killer some sort of motivation, but really, this isn’t even a stalk-n-slash film. There isn’t any stalk – it’s all slash.

This film manages to be so genuinely incompetent that it becomes sublime. Sure, a pneumatic nail gun might kill a person if you aim for the head, but that doesn’t really matter in this film – a shot or two to the shoulder has the magical ability to murder even the most hulking, denim-wearing Texan. And Christ, everyone wears denim in this film in one form or another. Denim jackets, denim jeans, denim shirts, denim skirts, denim nails, denim helmets, denim hair, denim teeth. Even during sex scenes, the best you’re going to see is a man’s denim-clad ass slamming against the denim-knit dashboard of a rather cramped car, which is made entirely out of denim and runs on liquefied denim. The denim is absolutely inescapable!

Video
When you consider this film is called Nail Gun Massacre, and consider that it was filmed in 1985, you’ll be thankful for what you get: a 1.78:1 widescreen image, full of grain and sharper than you would expect. The film is fairly free of dirt and specks, so I’m happy.

Audio
For the love of God, Synapse, you’re going to have to start including optional subtitles on films like this. The dialogue is so dull and muffled you’d have a hard time convincing me that it wasn’t recorded with the microphone jammed under a molasses-soaked pillow, especially when the score is being played over dialogue.

Extras  
While the disc isn’t packed, Nailed is a substantial 23-minute interview with director Terry Lofton that pretty much explains why the film is the way it is: an 80-page script whittled down to 25, ad-libbing and no money. While for the most part the director is completely honest with his film, I do question his honesty when he suggests that the film turned into an intentional comedy when they figured out just how ridiculous the story really was. But that’s my own cynicism.

Also included is the promotional trailer and outtake reel. The sound to the outtake reel is missing, and so Synapse replaced it with an additional interview with Terry Lofton where he talks about his early career, and the possibilities of a sequel titled Nail Gun Massacre 2: Son of a Gun – a title I can only assume he’s been thinking of for the last 20 years.

Overall
I cannot recommend this as an actual film. The plot is incomprehensible, the characters are interchangeable, and the technical achievements are limited. However, I sure had fun watching it under a possibly criminal amount of cough syrup. The kill scenes (and let’s not pretend that there’s any other reason to watch this film) are so astonishing ludicrous there’s only one word to describe them: Magnistoundiffic. Rent it for a giggle.