dir. William Girdler
Before getting into anything, I just wanna state that
Three on a Meathook is the fourth William Girdler movie (after
Grizzly,
Day of the Animals, and
The Manitou) I've reviewed on this site. I've never reviewed as many movies by any other filmmaker. How did this happen? Though not inept, Girdler was, nevertheless, a generally run-of-the-mill exploitation director—no one to write home about. I guess it's really just happenstance that I ended up here.
Grizzly and
Day of the Animals catered to my love of killer-animal movies;
The Manitou is batshit enough to deserve its own cult (and I mean there should be an actual cult based on this movie); and now
Three on a Meathook...well, to be honest, I've got no justification for spilling ink on this unremarkable
Psycho knock-off. Who knows, maybe I just decided that I'd like to examine Girdler's entire catalog. And seeing as he's only directed nine features, I'm almost halfway there anyway. Let's do this. Why not.
[Actually, the fact that Girdler is a total badass in this photo, completely justifies my apparent obsession with the man's work.]
If
Psycho didn't exist,
Three on a Meathook would be a revolutionary little film. But
Psycho does exist. And so does
Three on a Meathook. And
Psycho came first. And
Three on a Meathook didn't. 'Nuff said.
In one of many instances of Girdler following
Psycho's lead, he throws us for a loop by killing the apparent protagonist before the movie is a third of the way through.
Open on: A nude woman tells her boyfriend that she and the gals are going boating over the weekend.
Cut to: That weekend, woman and three gal pals go boating and skinny dipping.
(As we all know, and as Cinemax has taught us so well, when women get together to hang out, it is an epic struggle they face to keep from disrobing in front of each other.
“Hey, I forgot what everyone’s breasts looked like.”
“Well, why aren't we showing each other?”)
Cut to: Women go to car; car doesn't start. Kindly young farm hand Billy offers the women a chance to stay at his father's house where he totally promises the women will not get killed.
And then all four women get killed. Oh I see what you did there, movie; you gave us characters we thought would be central to the plot, and then you up and went and killed them off. That's really nov— no, wait,
Psycho did that.
Anywho, the next day Billy's father yells at the young man for killing yet another group of guests. Billy's father is just glad Billy's mother isn't alive to witness this. Though Billy doesn't remember killing anyone, he nevertheless takes his father's word for it, and heads to the city to get hammered and forget about it all. While there, he befriends kindly bartender Sherry, stays the night at her place and then spends a lovely, soft-focus, frolicking-through-fields, filled-with-romantic-music day with her the next day.
Huh?
Girdler, as you can see, reveals his hand too early. If it isn't obvious to the audience already that Billy's father, and not Billy, is the killer; then the middle third should relieve any doubt. But there's the problem. In the film's finale, it is clearly meant to be a big surprise that Billy is not the killer. This means that Girdler wants us to believe that Billy is a coldblooded killer for most of the movie. And yet Girdler also puts the supposed killer in an unambiguously romantic courtship scene. I don't think Girdler realized how fucked up this was. This would be like John Carpenter pausing
Halloween halfway through for a celebratory scene in which Michael Myers experiences his first kiss. It would be that fucked up.
Seriously, I can't stress enough how out-of-nowhere these courtship scenes are. It is almost as if they were taken from a different movie Girdler was filming concurrently but lost funding for, so decided to stick in the middle of this movie.
Anyway, after all that courtship stuff, Billy invites Sherry and her friend Becky to his father's place. After arriving at the place the two gals have some alone time and some girl talk. Becky asks Sherry if she thinks Billy (you know, the man she met a day ago) is the one, her true love. This, as it turns out, is just an excuse for Becky to get in a long, rambling dialogue with herself. In a great stab at pseudo-profundity/vague topicality, Girdler gives Becky a long monologue in which she remembers her first true love. The speech runs quite long, but here's the capper:
"...that night I sneaked away from camp and we had our first date. Then a month later we were married. Oh that was a wonderful summer. Each hour was a day in heaven. Then they sent him an invitation…to die in one of their wars; then they sent me a telegram that he had. But they were only half right—I died too. Take all the happiness you can. At best, life’s a short ride. And it isn’t always round trip."*
And then Billy's father kills her.
Sure enough, as was obvious all along, we find out in a dramatic plot-twist reveal that Billy's not actually the killer. It also turns out that Billy's mother didn't die those years prior; Billy's father—after discovering her love of cannibalism—hid her in the basement, told Billy that she died, and then killed random women to feed to her, meanwhile convincing Billy that he was the killer of those random women.
And now, of all the scenes he could have opted not to co-opt from
Psycho, Girdler decided to recreate the weakest section of Hitchcock's picture: A medical professional explains the father's motivations for the murders:
"Well, I hardly know where to begin. I do know that we must not blame this man. Billy, your father was motivated by love...for your mother.
But your mother was ill, terribly ill. And when he learned that the nature of her illness was cannibalistic, well, he should have had her institutionalized. Instead, he thought only of protecting her, by keeping everyone from knowing the nature of her illness—especially you, Billy."**
Well that seems pretty reason— wait, wa— what the fuck. Chrisity Christ fuck. No, not ok. Yes, you can blame this man. "Hey, Billy, it's ok that your father killed all those women and—let's not forget—destroyed any chance you had of leading a normal life after convincing you that you were a psycopath responsible for those murders. Yes, Billy, it's all ok because he did it because he loved your cannibal mother." What the fuck was wrong with doctors back in the day?
But, anyway, no, that's not even the topper. You see, while listening to the doctor give his spiel, Billy is comforted by Sherry, the woman who's known Billy for all of two days and whose best friend was just killed by Billy's father. Instead of, you know, sobbing somewhere or plotting revenge, Sherry has decided to give moral support to the acquaintance whose father killed her best friend, and whose mother ate the remains. Jesus Christ. Not that she should blame Billy, of course, but, realistically, this is the last place she'd want to be.
Perhaps I've been a little unfair to this movie. Honestly, theft from
Psycho and numerous flaws aside, Girdler's film is somewhat of a precursor to Tobe Hooper's
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You gotta give it some credit for that. Then again, all three flicks are based—to varying degrees—on real-life monster Ed Gein; so similarities are bound to abound. So no, you don't gotta give
Three on a Meathook credit for anything.
*(I wanted to put this in a block quote, but I was having trouble doing it for some reason.)
**(Again, sorry about my inability to block-quote. I have brought shame to my site.)
Dave's Rating:
