SHITTY FLICKS: NAIL GUN MASSACRE

Shitty Flicks is a new and ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

There are three certainties in life:

1. You will die.

2.) You will pay taxes before you die.

3.) If a movie has the word “massacre” in the title, it’s either going to be great, or bad (slash great).

This particular rule continues to apply when it comes to Nail Gun Massacre, the second best movie with “massacre” in the title to be set in Texas.

The movie opens at a construction site. The men are busy at work with their hands, doing what they do best: raping. With nary a scene of aggressive flirting or hesitant foreplay to lead into said rape, the movie literally fades from black into a rape. These flannel-shirted good ol’ boys are going to show a crying woman a good time, and boy, do they. Thankfully, we are spared most of this bearded assault, after catching a glimpse of what appears to be one of the men delivering several man punches directly into the woman’s vagina.

Thanks, cinema.

Later that…day (?), one of the rapers, Leroy Johnston, toddles around in his home, looking for his shirt—the one with the least amount of stains on them, I am assuming. As his fat wife hangs some fresh linens on a clothesline in the backyard, a hulking figure, The Nailer, dressed like a punk astronaut—decked out in black vinyl, black helmet, and tinted-black face shield—enters the house. The Nailer grasps—you guessed it—a nail gun.

The man turns to see this intimidating figure and puts his hand out in front of him in defense, which The Nailer promptly shoots, nailing it to the man’s forehead.

“Those are the worst headaches—the ones right between the eyes,” chortles The Nailer in a very inauthentic baritone voice. A few more shots finish Leroy off, but The Nailer continues to shoot nails into his redneck body and guffaw a wet, robotic guffaw.

After a bout of completely randomly ordered credits, we meet a young couple enjoying a roll in the sack. And while I can’t tell you what muddled words they exchanged, I’ll assume it was nothing important, considering bare tits were onscreen the entire time. The woman, very intent on having sex for an entire day, pokes and prods her breasts in his direction.

“You’d rather go out and cut wood than stay here and play with these?” she asks.

Seems to be the case, as he throws on some clothes and vamooses, leaving her behind to stare awkwardly at the ceiling and then directly at the camera, waiting for the director to call cut.

Prefers Cutting Wood Over Tits guy (human name Brad), along with his partner, walk out into the woods with a chainsaw, ready to ignore bare tits and destroy nature.

Thankfully, someone shows up to help, pulling up behind the boys’ truck in an amber-colored hearse. It’s The Nailer, this time dressed in army fatigues, but still grasping the nail gun. One of the men, pissing on a tree, slowly turns when he hears someone approaching and splashes some fresh urine on The Nailer’s boots.

“Well, you just pissed me off,” replies The Nailer, with that voice that sounds like it was run through eight modulators and a washing machine.

The Nailer shoots a few nails into the man’s stomach, but then spies the man’s exposed, underwear-covered wang.

“This will stop that leak,” says The Nailer, and delivers a nail into his cock and balls.

The Nailer then quietly walks up behind Brad, who is busy sawing wood over a fallen tree, and shoots him, causing him to saw his own hand off and fall very fakely against a tree stump.

“You shouldn’t fall to pieces,” I think The Nailer says. If not, it’s probably just as shameless and tacky as the actual line, anyway.

"Brad man, I don't want to freak you out,
but the tiniest man in the world is right behind you..."

Moments later, the sheriff pulls up behind the now-dead boys’ sitting truck and calls it in.

The next scene, which takes place in a general store of sorts, is also completely unintelligible, thanks to the sound guy leaning against what sounds like the god damned refrigerator.

If asked to recite this scene as a monologue in an acting class, I would look forlornly at my audience, grasp at my suit lapels, and say “BRRRRAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM.”

The older woman working behind the counter recites her lines with as little emotion or enthusiasm as possible, all the while reading directly from her quite-visible script.

“Do you remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitoes and the killers?” she struggles, squinting her eyes to read the tiny print.

After this scene dies a slow death, the sheriff and the doctor check out the recently discovered grisly scene in the woods.

“Are you sure these two died in the same way Leroy Johnston did?” asks the doctor.

You mean…with nails? Nails shot into them?

It’s a safe bet, shit licker.

As the two men investigate the area, they moot over the idea that the killer might be Mrs. Bailey, a local woman who I guess is insane enough that she would be a suspect.

And we have our first red herring: Mrs. Bailey, an apparently eccentric local whom we never actually see in the flesh a single time in this movie.

Further down the road, a hitchhiker, dressed amusingly like Josh Brolin from The Goonies, flags down the hearse for a ride. Well, a ride he gets. WITH NAILS.

The hitchhiker falls to the ground, nailed in several places.

“You should never hitch a ride from a hearse. Unless you’re dying.”

The hitchhiker cries.

“You hitchhikers are all alike: stuck out on the road.”

The hitchhiker cries.

“It’s nice to see someone praying at their own funeral.”

The hitchhiker cries.

“[unintelligible] give you a vaccination.”

The hitchhiker cries.

The Nailer shoots a nail into the crying hitchhiker’s shoulder, which for some reason is the one that does him in. Then The Nailer walks away to read the next chapter in Henny Youngman’s One Liners for Nail Deaths.

Later at a construction site, two motorocyclers pull up, looking for work. The foreman sends them over to the Bailey house.

“See ya later,” the bikers yell.

“Yeah…SOONER THAN YOU THINK,” grunts the man, the camera close on his face, as the filmmakers beg you to believe he is the killer.

Red herring number 2: the foreman, also a person we never see again in this movie.

The bikers make it to the Bailey place, but instead of working, they lay around and canoodle with their incredibly unattractive girl mates. The two couples separate to turn their making out into sex, and one of those couples enjoys a session of stand-up sex against a tree.

"You guys wanna play a round of cornhole? Oh."

The Nailer shows up to make it a threesome, and fires some nails into some hands and tits, and as usual, recites a mini-monologue of tepid jokes which I’m not even going to bother transcribing.

Their friend comes into the woods after them, but runs into The Nailer, who orders him to hug the tree.

A few nails later, the man isn’t going anywhere, as he begs for mercy.

Meanwhile, his girlfriend, who I guess suffers from emotional problems, begins to immediately cry when he doesn’t return quickly. And boy oh boy, we get to watch this for several minutes, as sounds of rattles and woodblocks pepper the already tension-filled scene.

John, one of the guys fixing up the Bailey property, lunges onscreen in an attempt to scare the world, and attempts to calm the girl by saying, “It’ll be alright, okay?” over and over. This goes on for several minutes, as the actor playing John is most likely following the direction: “Just keep saying 'It'll be okay', and then look around, and don’t stop until I call cut.”

Said director probably then left to have an eggcream.

This is a 25 page script, ladies and gentleman—no bullshit—and it shows.

At a nearby construction site, two men have a nail gun fight.

For serious.

Think paintball, but with nail guns.

The Nailer pops up to play, warbling that iconic laugh, and shoots some nails into some faces.

And then for the next twenty minutes, we are literally forced to hang out with a boring couple (this must be where that whole 25-page script issue comes into play) and have no choice but to watch them eat in real time, discuss various things as the audio for the scene is recorded across the street, and finally end up fucking on their car hood in the woods.

Yes, kids—even sex can be boring.

The Nailer shows up during the coitus to help add some flavor to the scene.

And then this happens:

The Nailer, still in army fatigues and jet black face mask, with a pneumatic nail gun strapped to his back, mind you, fires the nail gun and startles the couple.

“What are you, a cop?” the kid asks, as I fight the urge to kick the TV. “She had an itch, I was just helping her scratch it.”

“Shut up, asshole,” says The Nailer, reading my mind.

“You’re not a cop, are ya?” says the man, his brain twitching a single time. “You’re the guy they’ve been talking about on the radio!”

Glad to see that the guy was aware there was a maniac on the loose firing nails into people in the woods, but still opted to hang out in the woods at night, anyway.

The Nailer gives them each some nails and leaves to find the next person on the list, which is a round, bald, bearded man who looks creepily like ultra-flamboyant interior decorator Christopher Lowell.

Having been cleverly hidden in his pool, The Nailer lunges out of the water and fires several nails into him, causing him to flop over his sizzling grill. The Nailer laughs the typical laugh, not at all out of breath from having to wait under the water for several minutes.

Polo.

The sheriff and the doctor finally piece together who has been doing the killing and they both set out to stop The Nailer once and for all.

Having passed from vendetta to just plain lunacy, The Nailer kills two women who I’m pretty sure didn’t have shit to do with anything.

“This’ll be a gas,” The Nailer exclaims, shooting the girls, one of whom literally falls down dead with her arms straight up in the air.

In the movie’s finale, The Nailer is pursued to the nearby mill, chased by the doctor and some girl whose name I don’t think was ever spoken aloud. The car chase turns into a foot chase, which leads up into a cherry picker and results in The Nailer falling clumsily to his death.

Turns out the killer was Bubba.

Say, who’s Bubba?

The end.