Three on a Meathook (1972) User Reviews

Gritty and Well-Intentioned Early Slasher

[annablair-19191 · 5/10 · 2 August 2020]

Taking a page from Psycho's playbook, Three on a Meathook opens with 4 young woman looking for a good time and finding themselves stranded when their car breaks down. They're found by a good samaritan named Billy who takes them back to the farmhouse that he and his odd father share in the country. As the night progresses, each girl comes to a nasty end and Billy's father is scared that his son has relapsed into his old murderous ways. As Billy struggles to keep his sanity, he meets a waitress who he falls for. Will he able able to keep her murderous cravings at bay and start a new life with her?

Three on a Meathook won't win any awards for fantastic cinematography or wonderful acting. If anything, these are the things that keep the film down. It feels like it's everyone's first time making a movie both in front of and behind the camera and some of the actors feel like they're playing to the back row of a community theatre house with every word overennunciated to freakish effect. It does give the film an odd quality that sometimes benefits low budget horror films like this.

The story itself is obviously a riff on Psycho, but had it been written with a little more skill and finesse, it could have really been something great. As is, it's still incredibly entertaining and, at about 70 minutes, it does get to the nitty gritty of things pretty quickly, but there's a more interesting psychological character study in here.

Proto slasher

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 15 October 2020]

While the slasher genre really starts in 1978 (or 1979, when Halloween really took off), there are movies before that are nascent starting points. This was William Girdler's second film after Asylum of Satan, made with money from his trust fund. It's based on Ed Gein, as are Psycho, Deranged, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and many, many, many more.

Filmed in and around Louisville, Kentucky, the home of the director (who also wrote and performed much of this film's score), this is the tale of Billy Townsend (James Carroll Pickett), who seems like such a nice boy. He helps four girls who have gone to the lake for vacation when their car breaks down. But Billy has secrets and a father (Charles Kissinger, who also appears in Girdler's films Abby, Grizzly, The Manitou, Asylum of Satan and Sheba, Baby) who loves his son so much that he'll help him get out of any trouble.

This has one of the best titles ever, as well as a great tagline - "WARNING: Not For The Bloody Mary For Lunch Bunch!" - and, as stated before, the notion of being an early slasher. It's worth checking out to see where the form got its start. When I was a kid, this film's cover freaked me out, as did the implications of its title. The actual film itself seems laid back and very 70's, including an anti-Vietnam speech delivered directly to the camera.

You have to love a movie that is willing to totally forget any forward progress by having its antagonist decide to head downtown, watch some bands, see The Graduate and ponder life instead of continually killing people. You never see Michael Myers decide to take a break and grab a beer, you know?

Not a Tobe Hopper Movie

[pmc-17741 · 3/10 · 7 April 2021]

I came across this movie in Psychotronic Movie Guide Vol I, and was surprised I could watch it on YouTube. I have done this for Ms. 45, went a few years back to the movie house re release and bought the Blu Ray. What I say on YouTube was unimpressive, the script really was the problem, as the story does not flow as in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I suspect this was the director first or one of his early movies and did not attend film school, and this is true for many independent directors who learned what they could from other directors and production staff including Clint Eastwood. While TCM plays like a reality movies TOaMC is more like a HS dropouts nightmare and I would not have done any better. Watch it, just to say you included it in your viewing history of B movies, but try to watch it free the first time before you invest in a copy.

Odd mix of cannibalism/psychodrama/love story

[thomandybish · 17 February 2001]

A group of shapely girls get stranded near an isolated farmhouse(so far so formulaic)and are given shelter by a young man and his father who inhabit the house. The father wants the girls out, hinting at disaster("Billy, I don't want to be unreasonable, but you know how you get around women...")which of course comes true when the chicks get the axe...literally.

Okay, so it looks to be shaping up to be a run-of-the-mill gore film, but insert a love interest for the confounded Billy, a college-dropout-turned-cocktail-waitress, and the love story element is underway. The couple wander through meadows of goldenrod while the girl explains all this(the college drop-out bit)and Billy agrees to invite his new squeeze and her friend to his farm, where there's more talky character development(on the part of the friend, who spouts some kind of florid anti-Vietnam rhetoric in regard to her dead boyfriend)and all the horror of the killings is revealed! And the epilogue is unusual in that it actually gives promise for Billy and his girlfriend's future!

Okay, so maybe it's a stretch to say this is a decent movie, but come on, how many gore films even attempt any character development? You almost feel sorry for Billy and his plight. The dialogue leans toward more overripeness than camp, and so the dialogue seems more like TV movie of the week fare than Ed Wood. Still, it is an unusual flick.

Quick and Dirty

[jfgibson73 · 5/10 · 2 August 2009]

I don't really have anything to add that isn't already posted in the comment section for this movie. I am just going to summarize things that others have said that I agree with.

This is a gritty, low-budget exploitation movie with a 70's feel. You will notice similarities to Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and supposedly it is inspired by the same true-life serial killer. It has some gore and nudity, and quite a bit of slow-moving filler. If you are bothering to track this movie down, you probably already have seen several like it and know what to expect.

The plot involves an isolated farm boy who lives with his father. When the movie begins, four young ladies are traveling to his neck of the woods for a girls-only camping trip. Their car breaks down and he invites them to stay at his place, where he lives with his dad. Twenty minutes into the movie, and all four girls are dead.

I really had to keep watching to see what else the director would do for the rest of this full-length movie after accomplishing what most movies would take their entire running time to do. Instead of following the formula, this one switches things up and has the boy head into town to drink away his troubles. It seems he murdered the girls without realizing what he was doing, and apparently this was not the first time something like this happened. The shot of the young killer walking down the neon-light street with his hands in his pockets seems to suggest Peter Parker more than a pick-ax murderer. Luckily, he gets drunk and an attractive bartender takes him home, because that's what girls did in the seventies, isn't it? They end up getting along, and he invites her to stay at his farm. She accepts, and it looks like the horror will occur all over again.

I usually never even try to figure how movies are going to end, but I saw where this one was going VERY early on. It contains most of the elements of trashy 70's horror, such as a weird, repetitive "score," poor acting, ridiculous dialog, a grainy yet naturalistic look, and retro fashions. In the middle of the movie, there is a band playing in the bar where the main character goes to drink, and we watch them play two entire songs as if they were the musical guests on an episode of SNL. The movie is unintentionally funny, and I had to find something else to do during long stretches where very little was happening. However, as a fan of these sorts of curiosities, I enjoyed the experience overall, at least upon my first viewing. I don't think I could sit through it again.

I also want to say that I have seen the last movie this director made, titled Manitou. It is actually pretty impressive to see the progress he made in the time between these two movies. I was saddened to learn that he died at a young age after only six years of writing and directing horror movies. He seems like he was on track to becoming a very prolific filmmaker.

This movie sure does lie a lot.

[tacomunky303 · 3/10 · 14 November 2012]

Huh. Loosely based on the true story of Ed Gein, huh? How loosely, exactly?

Try not even remotely related.

Some girls are swimming gleefully naked in front of the camera to open the film, and then we have a broken down car. So, a friendly man allows the girls to stay at his house. And of course, since this was the 70's and everyone was trustworthy, the girls agree.

Once they get there, the man's father throws a big fit about how last time he had ladies over, things went, well, not so swimmingly. The son promises his father it won't happen again. But of course, it does.

So naturally, the father tries to help cover things up. And tries to convince the son that he's responsible. Meanwhile, the son starts falling in love with one of the girls. Wow. That happened fast.

And of course, in the end, there's a twist. But it's kind of stupid. There's only six characters in the film and based on the title, three of them are dead! Of course, the title is kind of lying. When the remaining girl opens the barn, she does find three, but on three different meat hooks. I guess the title "Three On Three Meathooks" didn't sound nearly as catchy, huh?

So these girls aren't used for furniture, they weren't dug up from graves, and no one wore their skin. So just out of curiosity, I wonder if this has even the slightest to do with Ed Gein. I'm gonna say no.

Dementedly Bad

[acidburn-10 · 3/10 · 11 February 2013]

This movie hits a whole new level of badness, I have seen some bad poorly made slasher movies in my time, but "Three On A Meathook" really takes it in its stride, seen as a sleazier take on "Psycho" and of course has none of its charm, intelligence or integrity, I knew from the very beginning that this movie was gonna be bad with its graininess hard to see scenes and horrible acting. We're introduced to 4 girls with no attempt at adding depth to they're parts, the only one that stood out was the blonde one and that's only because she was the first to get seen and naked I might add which added a kind of nice touch to the proceedings.

The deaths were poorly done but had some nice touches of blood splatter, but I couldn't help but think that this movie felt more like a porno movie, I don't know it just had that feel to me and the so called twist ending was no surprise I figured it out as the murders happened. The dialogue was laughable and the music score was awful and just drags on and on making this movie feel longer than it actually is. But despite all its many flaws I did however find the father and son characters somewhat interesting and an odd character study.

All in all just keep your expectations low.

Slow moving gore trash from the golden days of the drive-in cinema

[Bogey Man · 2/10 · 1 March 2003]

William "Billy" Girdler's (Manitou) Three on a Meathook (1972) has a little cult reputation as it's supposed to be based on the infamous Ed Gein case, a case that has been the inspiration for some other films, too, like Deranged (Jeff Gillen & Alan Ormsby, 1974) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) and of course the 2000 production Ed Gein by Chuch Parello, the man behind the (awful) sequel Henry 2 (1998) to John McNaughton's masterful Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). Three on a Meathook however is a very poor and slow slasher attempt that hasn't got after all pretty much to do with the actual case from the real life, except that these both men kill people.

Billy (James Pickett) lives on the countryside with his father (Charles Kissinger). Billy is not allowed to see females as "they're filthy and evil" and so on, you know what I mean if you've seen some of these films that have a religiously paranoid parents that torture their kids, like Brian De Palma's masterpiece Carrie (1976), for example. Soon a bunch of attractive females break their car and have to stay at the two men's apartment for the night, the father of course opposing very much. The night comes and so comes some gory murders. Soon Billy meets another girl whom he falls in love with. What follows is extremely slow situations, laughable dialogue, some absurd scenes and some more gratuitous gore at the end.

The film is very slow as I've mentioned couple of times already. It has painfully long scenes of the seventies disco/bar music that don't have ANY other purpose than to make the film run nearly 80 minutes so that it can be called a feature film. It has long scenes of Billy wandering around the town and thinking about something as well as running in the fields, showing cars drive away and so on and these scenes are as meaningless and boring as they sound. If all the "necessary" bits were cut out and put together again, the film would run approximately 50 minutes I think!

The dialogue and some of the situations will make most of the fans of trash laugh and enjoy. The film tries to offer some kind of an explanation for the acts the killer does but none of it makes sense. Why is the boy so stupid and weak he cannot do anything about it? And what kind of a "cannibalistic disease" actually is their mother suffering from?? Also this kind of a setting could give a good premise for some effective parody and black humor (like Hooper did with his Chain Saw Massacre two years later) but in the "Meathook", both the town and the countryside are depicted as equally apathetic, boring and also dangerous places to be and all the potential the film could have is not used.

The film includes also plenty of quite graphic nudity and gore so this is pure drive-in exploitation in its most honest form. The murders are pretty graphic and gory (and towards women only) so this can be considered as one of the earliest slasher films but far away from the most noteworthy ones. The "leg" scene at the end is pretty absurd to say the least and again makes me think how much better Hooper, for example, used the same potential and ideas.

The editing and cinematography is nothing special, the former being awfully bad especially at the end. Rarely have I seen such bad and confusing editing as in the gore finale of Three on a Meathook. Also the music by the director/writer himself is pretty bad and not interesting at all. The acting is as apathetic as the characters but fortunately the actors are not as near as bad as they could be and at least they found very attractive young females to act in the film to make at least something shine in the piece.

There are not many merits in this film other than those negative sides that turn positive in the eyes of the fans of trash. Three on a Meathook is the kind of film that don't get made anymore and so they have and will have their fans around the world and even though I'm a fan of low budget, grade z cinema, too, I still cannot give Three on a Meathook more than 2/10 as it just should have been much more than it now manages to be.

Great start. Loads of guff in the middle. Fun ending.

[BA_Harrison · 5/10 · 18 June 2017]

Low budget drive-in horror Three On A Meathook opens in fine exploitative fashion with a naked young blonde frolicking with her man (instant gratuitous female nudity: always a winner). She hops out of bed, slips into a vest top and hot-pants and goes to meet three girlfriends for a weekend of boating and skinny dipping (more nudity). Experiencing car trouble while driving back from the lake, the four girls find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere, but are rescued by passing motorist Billy (James Carroll Pickett), who invites them to stay the night at his pa's farm. None of them make it to the morning alive: one is stabbed while in the bath (even more nudity), two are blasted with a shotgun, and the last is beheaded with an axe. So far, so entertaining.

Sadly, the film goes seriously downhill after this…

Billy's father, shocked at his son's behaviour, sends the lad into town while he cleans up the mess. Cue an awful lot of padding to beef up the running time, Billy mooching through the streets, taking in a band (who play two songs in their entirety), and visiting a bar, where he meets lovely waitress Sherry (Sherry Steiner), who takes the lad home. Waking up the next morning in bed with Sherry, who is still very much alive, Billy decides to spend the day with the girl, which results in a whole lot more filler, as the couple get to know each other. Before Billy leaves, he invites Sherry to his home, who turns up at the farm a few days later with friend Becky (Madelyn Buzzard). Director William Girdler pads out the running time even further as Billy, Sherry and Becky enjoy the simple pleasures of the countryside. Boring, boring, boring.

Thankfully, things pick up again for the finish, poor Becky getting a pick-axe in her chest, and Sherry confronted by the killer (who, in a not very clever twist, is exactly who you probably thought it was about an hour earlier). It's during this climax that we finally see the Three On A Meathook—for all of a couple of seconds.

Oh Billy, Billy, Billy.....

[Nightman85 · 7/10 · 26 September 2005]

Ultra-low-budget, skid row version of Psycho lands firmly in the category of so-bad-its-good!

Why is it that every time handsome, young Billy brings a girl home that she ends up butchered?

One of a number of drive-in horror flicks that William Girdler made in the '70's, this one being fairly memorable. As with many films of its budget, the raw, natural settings add to the moody believability of the picture. James Pickett turns in a decent performance as the films main character, who seems to have some problems indeed. Charles Kissinger plays off well enough as Pickett's odd father. Girdler gives the film a gritty, but nicely moody music score.

As with many exploitation films of its day, there's plenty of gore and skin to see. After all, what would you expect from a movie with this memorable title!

All in all, Three on a Meathook is a film that's certainly not for all tastes! Fans of the B genre, especially from this era will likely enjoy this horrific and unintentional funny flick.

** 1/2 out of ****

Terrible

[Clayton · 1/10 · 15 October 1998]

Definitely the low point of your video rental hobby should you pick this one up off the shelves, it is a pseudo-Psycho tale about a looney father and his off-balanced son who kill the women that stay at their house one night. Even the prerequisital nudity and spotty gore doesn't save this mess of a film, done in by S-L-O-W spots, bad acting, you name it

An enjoyable piece of grainy horror!

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 9/10 · 17 March 2003]

William Girdler's "Three on a Meathook" is obviously inspired by the Ed Gein case.It's a very bizarre tale of a twisted murder and cannibalism in the tradition of Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chain Saw Massacre".There's plenty of nudity and cheesy gore,however the film is not as gory as the title suggests.Still there are some good kill scenes,a good amount of blood plus a nice plot twist at the end.The film is quite slow at times,but its low-budget gives it a raw look.Highly recommended and a good companion piece to "Daddy's Deadly Darling"(1972)-another grainy horror masterpiece from early 70's.

Pretty Entertaining

[kayrannells · 7/10 · 20 October 2020]

A young man is terrified to bring anyone home because, when he does, they always turn up dead. Is it his jealous father or maybe one of his alternate personalities? Everything is tested when he finally meets the girl of his dreams and wants to bring her home to meet daddy.

Three on a Meathook is Psycho filtered through a dusty and grimy grindhouse lens. You look at the way this is shot and it's a miracle that it makes any sense at all. Not a lot of coverage, all the actors seem amateurish, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn the main farmhouse location was given to the filmmakers for free by a relative or friend. That said, this is an interesting revamp of some classic themes and ideas and I found myself glued to the screen.

drama

[dominusluna · 5/10 · 1 November 2007]

This film starts out good but get's very very slow. A few kills in the beginning but then nothing for a long long time. I'd say more of a drama than a horror film as it's pretty slow and has a little romance thing going on. This movie doesn't even come close to the hype that the title portrays. It's not exactly lame but not far from it. Very slow and drama-like for most part of the movie. I had to ramble and repeat things because this requires that you use a minimum of 10 lines. All I really wanted to say was that this film is pretty slow outside the starting point but then gets really slow soon after. It's a kind of cool story but nowhere as near as notorious as the title offers. I'd almost call it a drama if not for the beginning.

TOTALLY AMAZING!!!!!!

[MADMANMARZ · 23 May 1999]

I long for days when films like Three on a Meat hook painted the screen red. The year 1999 bloodless lame horror films with models and rap singers play your local multi-plexes. I was lucky enough to live through the 70's and 80's to see fun movies like this. Today horror is a shadow of what is used to be. I feel sorry for today's fans who watch such bloodless weak pieces of total garbage like Scream and Halloween H2o and call that horror!! This is horror. Mindless, poorly acted, edited, and basically just a lot of fun. Sorry to dwell on the past so much but Three On a Meat hook represents what will never be seen again thanks to Politically correct morons in today's film world!! Long live 3 on a Meathook!!!!

Big dissapointment (spoilers)

[lthseldy1 · 3/10 · 28 July 2002]

I bought this film simply because of all the stories about this film being similar to "Texas Chainsaw Massacure" when I watched it, it was not what I had expected. This movie is about three women that go off by themselves to get away from life and their car breaks down on the side of the road and in the middle of the night a strange young man comes along and offers them a place to stay for the night at his house. After bebaiting on whether or not to go along with the stranger they finally accepted and when they get there they meet with the mans crazy father that objects with the girls staying over night. During that night, the father kills the young girls and the next day blames the killings on his son who is also blamed for the murder of his mother when he was thirteen as well as many other murders involving young girls that are picked up by him and the old man. The son goes off by himself and ends up at a bar and gets picked up by the waitress. He falls in love with her and invites her to stay the weekend with him and his crazy father. The father kills the ladys friend that came with her and tries to blame her murder on his son. The father and son get into a misshap in the kitchen and out comes his ageing mother who was supposed to be dead. He finds out the truth that his dad was lying all along and wanted his son commited to a mental instution to be rid of him and continue feeding his mother who has by now become cannibalistic. The son and lady go off together and seek phyciatric help in dealing with this lie that has been haunting him all these years. This movie is a waste of time and in noway near "TCM". It is dumb and boring. The crazy way the women that were killed off in the beginning and never even mentioned or seen until the end left little excitement. They didn't even give the movie time to get to know the characters much less have a chance to stay at the house a little while longer before they were killed.

Could have been way better.

[artpf · 3/10 · 19 November 2013]

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.

Hot girl nudity from frame one.

Really low budget deal. There is one scene on a dock and the camera was going up and down with the waves. Very 70s schlock. This was the director's second film. He only made a few others for he died in Manilla in a plane accident at age 30. Who knows what other trash he could have made had he lived? There's actually a minute or two in the film where the frame is all blacked out but you can hear the girls talking!

The film has a bit of the flavor of I Spit on your Grave, which is a classic.

It's reasonably well directed for the genre. But unsure why this is called three on a meat hook. There aren't really any meat-hooks. And the film sort of disintegrates before you get to the middle. To bad. Could have been good.

5 minutes of horror and 80 minutes of melodrama

[tomgillespie2002 · 2/10 · 5 June 2018]

Like many grindhouse features from the 1970s, William Girdler's Three on a Meathook truly went for broke with its title, an eye-catching promise of blood, guts and mutilation to draw in a naive audience hoping for a terrifying time. What they got however, was two minutes of butchery thrown together with a $20,000 budget, followed by 80 minutes of melodrama with an uncomfortably drawn-out section dedicated to a naff rock band performing on stage. Three on a Meathook stays true to the grindhouse trend of failing to deliver on its enticing title, and instead treats us to a plethora of mannequin-like acting, dialogue no human has ever spoken before, and audio that sounds like it was recorded through a pillow.

Four attractive young ladies decide to go on a weekend trip to the lake, where they naturally embark on a bit of skinny-dipping and frolicking in the sun. Only little do they know, shy and handsome farmhand Billy Townsend (James Carroll Pickett) is watching them. Unfortunately for the girls, their vehicle breaks down on a country road, and it isn't too long until Billy's truck pulls up behind them to offer his services. He's no mechanic, so he instead provides a bed for the night at his farm. With his mother recently deceased, Billy lives alone his Pa (Charles Kissinger), who certainly isn't happy when he sees who his son has for company. It seems that Billy has a dark past involving women, and his Pa is quick to remind him of the dangers of having such a temptation in his very home. That night, the ladies are butchered one after the other: one is stabbed in the bath, two are shot, and the other has her head removed with an axe.

Horrified at what he doesn't remember doing, Billy takes a trip into the city to get himself together, where he meets beautiful barmaid Sherry (Sherry Steiner). Three on a Meathook blows its load way too early, focusing on the blossoming romance between the two youngsters after a violent opening twenty minutes, with Sherry proving to be one of the most unintentionally weird love interests in horror history. Not only does she bring home a drunk stranger muttering the words "I couldn't have done it," but sleeps naked beside him even after he wets the bed. The climax brings a twist that evokes the Ed Gein case, which seems to fit nicely with the creepy rural setting, but you'll be too beaten down by the tedium beforehand to care. Three on a Meathook isn't the worst example of the genre, but it will make you claw at your own face for the majority of its running time. Girdler would go on the direct the likes of Sheba, Baby and Grizzly.

Scary for the wrong reasons

[haildevilman · 5/10 · 16 June 2006]

Should have been a camp classic.

The so called shock scenes were so easily predictable it was hard to get excited. The corpses hanging in the barn were a nice touch if rather shoddily done.

And of course being an R-rated 70's film, all the ladies wore hot-pants or minis just so us males would get a second reason to watch this.

The horror I felt was based more on the 'parenting.' Some of those flashbacks might hit a bit to close to home for a certain type of survivor if you get my drift.

And figuring out that it was the father all along won't win you any prizes. It could not have BEEN more obvious.

this is grindhouse

[trashgang · 3/10 · 16 March 2010]

What's in a name, the title of this flick is never represented in the movie. Okay, there is one shot, maybe 5 seconds were you can see, euh, 4 girls on a meathook. Anyway, a title like that attracted the real geeks out there. So this movie became a cult favorite. But it never had a proper release. The only way to catch it is on VHS and even they are rare. What we have here is an OOP, oh yes, I know, there are some DVD releases, also OOP, but they were just rip offs of the VHS. That is what I have, a DVD release. What makes it unique is that it is signed by Linda Thompson. The blond one who's naked all the time and get killed earlier in the movie. So far I never found one on the Net signed. Enough of my pride. The movie itself, is really a grindhouse release. Due the fact that it was an US release we all know what that means, NTSC format. And being in the business we all know what that means here in Europe, Never The Same Color. Indeed, when they cut from on shot to another then yellow rules and next shot green appears as the main color. Oh yeah, never been colorized afterwards. So it's low budget. But the editing is okay, the score is okay, lipsync is sometimes a problem but the quality of the film they used is terrible. There are a lot of drops and scratches on it. But that makes it more and more grindhouse. The only failure the movie has is that it was advertised as based on the life of Ed Gein. No way it does. It starts of pretty well, you are only 10 seconds in the movie and Linda, who signed my DVD, yeah yeah, already appears in a T&A shot. No problems the first 20 minutes. You know the story, 4 birds go for a hike in the weekend, car breaks down, a guy passes by and take them to his place. Father isn't happy with girls in the house so they all die. The effects used are cheap but they used the red stuff very good. It never is gory but it works, watch the decapitation how they edited that. It works. But after 20 minutes the movie falls down, becomes slow and is nothing more than a love story. At the last 15 minutes the blood flows again. If they only had used the other 50 minutes to do something with it. Again, it never bored me due the grindhouse/ drive in style. It has a lot of gratuitous nudity, 70 style so full bush, anyway. If you come up to a copy of it don't hesitate to hook on it but you must have a grindhouse feeling.

Fiendish grindhouse nastiness!

[The_Void · 7/10 · 18 September 2006]

As the title suggests, Three on a Meathook is a grainy and grisly slice of seventies American horror, although it offers slightly more than similar genre films. The film is apparently based on the classic and influential story of Ed Gein, although aside from the rustic setting, mother themes and the fact that people die; this one strays a lot from the story, and actually takes more influence from Gein-inspired classics such as Psycho. It's obvious that the film was shot on a very low budget, as it doesn't feel completely finished, and that along with the bare locations, bad acting and short running time ensure the budget limitations shine through. The plot revolves around a father and son that live on a farm. The film opens with four girls breaking down while on a camping trip, and after taking up the son's nice offer of a bed at his farmhouse, they decide to stay there. However, they all wind up dead and the son is dismayed when he finds out that he is the killer! His father helps him clean up the mess, but when he brings another girl home; it looks as though history is going to repeat itself.

As you might expect, there's a fair amount of gore here - although perhaps not as much as in other similar films. Still, what there is in terms of gore is well done, and Three on a Meathook features some excellent kill scenes, most of which are misogynistic. The film constantly hints at a twisted ending, and indeed the mystery behind the murderer is so obvious that I'm convinced the audience is supposed to guess that straight away - but luckily, William Girdler's film has more in reserve, and the twist that comes at the conclusion is a definite surprise...although it does hint at how much more shocking the film could have been if it had been incorporated properly into the story rather than just being rolled out at the end. The acting is nothing special, although the director obviously rates his lead stars James Pickett and Charles Kissenger as they both went on to star in two more of his films, The Zebra Killer and Asylum of Satan, both of which may be worth tracking down. The climax to the film is an obvious nod to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and overall; while this is not exactly great cinema, grindhouse fans will definitely find a lot to like.

Worst EVER!

[Ryan-39 · 1/10 · 20 November 1998]

The scariest thing about this movie is the box cover. Then, somebody had the gall to refer to the classic "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", on the video's packaging. This is a pathetic "love story" and should be moved out of the horror section and displayed next to Sophie's Choice under Romance, or Saturday Night Fever under "Disco"

Billy's Been a Bad, Bad Boy?

[Coventry · 8/10 · 23 March 2008]

Okay, admittedly, "Three on a Meathook" is a pretty damn terrible, god-awful film and most normal people will probably find it an unendurable cinematic experience to sit through. The production values are unimaginably poor, the supposedly shocking plot twists are laughably predictable, the acting performances are miserable, the photography and editing are hideously amateurish and, even with a running time of barely 80 minutes, at least half of the film is purely redundant padding footage. But still, regardless of all its shortcoming and stupidities, I can list numerous reasons why this sickly gem ranks amongst my all-time favorite early 70's grindhouse flicks. So, in case you insist on reading an unbiased and twenty-four carat objective review, you should probably quit reading mine right now…

First and foremost, "Three on a Meathook" was the debut of devoted horror writer/director William Girdler. Girdler was clearly horror-obsessed at young age already and remained extremely busy during the next six years of his well-filled but painfully too short career. He was barely 25 years old when he debuted with this gritty "Psycho"-inspired shocker, but the film itself also inspired a whole series of grainy redneck-horrors, maybe even including Tobe Hooper's classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Girdler then quickly specialized in cashing in on contemporary popular trends in the horror industry. He made his very own violent-cop-above-the-law flick ("The Zebra Killer"), as well as Blaxploitation films ("Sheba, Baby", "Abby") and a Satanic Cult movie ("Asylum of Satan"). His most famous films are the notorious Jaws-on-land classic "Grizzly" and his supremely demented imitation of "The Exorcist", entitled "The Manitou". William Girdler died at the tender age of 30, when his helicopter crashed whilst spotting locations for already another film. With NINE fine movies in just 6 years, imagine what he could have achieved if he hadn't sat foot in that helicopter …

Back to "Three on a Meathook" specifically; this film is to me the purest embodiment of devoted early 70's grindhouse film-making. Girdler didn't have much of a budget to work with, but nearly every penny he did have went straight to the accomplishment of bloody make-up effects and scenery to make the film appear more grim & disturbing. This film is politically incorrect as hell, with uncompromising gore and gratuitous nudity aplenty, and the main characters are your average and stereotypical "dumb" countryside folks. Clumsily disguised as a tragic love-story, "Three on a Meathook" serves one deviant story twisted after another (although, admittedly, with some dreadful musical interludes and pointless "we're falling in love" montages in between) and the wholesome works towards an indescribably frenzied climax.

The film opens with the clichéd premise of four young girls deciding to go camping in a remote woodsy area. One topless swimming party and multiple girlish chuckles later, their car breaks down in the middle of the night, but the simple-minded farmer's boy Billy – who previously observed the girls as they were skinny dipping - comes to the rescue and invites them to spend the night at the farm with himself and pa. The father worriedly warns Billy about what happens when he gets "too close" to girls, but the next morning the girls are all reduced to lifeless corpses. When going into town to drink away his misery, Billy falls in love with a waitress and takes her and a friend back to the farm where the horror threatens to repeat itself. You don't exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out the truth behind the murders, but still the script provides an extra ingenious (and practically unpredictable) twist at the very end of the film. The narrative structure is wildly uneven and the padding footage is horrible, but the at least sequences that truly matter are morbidly atmospheric and misogynistic. If you're into this type of questionable cinema, I can't recommend "Three on a Meathook" wholeheartedly enough. That's a guarantee, because I have yet to encounter a grindhouse fanatic who doesn't appreciate hatchet murders, pick-axe horror, stabbing and nasty meat-cleavers.

Oddly engaging yet boring, too..

[ablebravo · 6/10 · 18 April 2012]

Weird.

First, this is obviously an attempt to grab on the "son-mother" "Psychoesque" dynamic - but on a serious budget. A seriously limited one. I give high points for above the standard for the genre writing and overall story structure then am forced to downgrade it all because the acting of several key characters was so gawdalmighty bad the whole secret was telegraphed in the first third of the film.

Running only 77 minutes and feeling as if it ran MUCH longer, actually (enough of the guitar music and the golden fields, okay??) we get well-written and uncharacteristically introspective speeches coming from characters which could have been played by better actors. It tried so hard to be deep, perhaps profound, but no. Bad acting. That snarled the whole business up more than anything else. This film also holds the record as having the worst, the most horrible audio blooper in the history of talkie films IMO. It goes like this: There's a sequence in the first third or so ... let's just say "the morning after..." where Dad and Son are having a conversation. Outside on a farm. Opening and closing doors and gates with all sorts of normal country life activity, yet their conversation sounds as if it had been recorded in the Grand Canyon. Damn distracting, especially the closeups where you could really see the dialog dubbed and that which was filmed were nowhere near in synch.

Now, what did come out particularly nasty were the kills. Coupled with the gritty, cheap (16mm?) stock they were using, and the real location shooting (really nice house BTW.I liked it), the whole work carried almost the appearance of an early snuff film with a raw documentary feel to the cinematography.

The music score was utterly bizarre. Ranging from some bizarre tweetling like the dying gasp of an ancient Farfisa organ to wildly inappropriate jamming in places best kept quiet, it alternated between excellent and "PLEASE STFU!!" There was also an extended bar scene with a not-too-bad late 60s style Strawberry Alarm Clock/Doors-ish mod psych group which - mostly for padding purposes - got rather a lot of screen time.

I FFWD just a little bit, to get the two of them across that damn golden field and get on with the story.

Not utterly unwatchable, but don't expect even bush-grade acting chops here. 61/100

How You Going to Axe Them Down on the Farm After They've Seen This Film?

[BaronBl00d · 4/10 · 29 June 2008]

Definitely cheaply-made, bad horror film from the early 1970s that is oddly fascinating as when one catches a forest on fire and cannot turn away. Director William Girdler's first feature is interesting to say the least and problematic as well. Girdler you may remember directed those wonderful cheesy 70s horror films such as The Manitou, Asylum of Satan, Day of the Animals, and Grizzly. His films often have lamentable qualities but are always watchable. Three on a Meathook is no exception though still largely unpolished as it is his first. The film is very - grainy - of course I was going to use that word! The set designs, on-location shots, costumes, and what little special effects we are given pale in comparison to other Girdler films(okay, maybe NOT Asylum of Satan!). The acting is sub-par with no one really giving a good performance but the two male leads - James Pickett as Billy a boy told that he cannot stay around women otherwise he will butcher them and Charles Kissenger as his Pa - alcoholic and seemingly in a trance through much of the film - do fair enough work. The girls that die are, well, basically talentless though all beautiful. Watch for Elvis squeeze Linda Thompson looking ever so delicious(no pun here either). You get what you would expect in a movie like this: gratuitous sex, nudity, and violence. The nudity is almost immediate and stays the course throughout; however, the violence is not nearly as hyperbolic as the title Three on a Meathook might suggest. There are a lot of talking scenes with long drawn points being made. I particularly loved the scene where Billy's girlfriend Sherry and her friend Becky come up to the farm and run through fields and Becky fakes falling down and hiding while some ridiculous music plays. She falls then again and laughs. Sickening. Or how about the speech Becky gives us about her camp counselor husband going to fight in the war? Man, that was Oscar worthy! Okay, I am being facetious. The corny scenes and dialog abound and wait until you see that hokey ending that makes little sense. Or how about the band that plays two whole songs just to make the movie long enough? It is easy to go on and on, but for what it is Three on a Meathook is fun if anything in a so-bad-its-good vein. I was entertained and given a few hearty laughs as well.