Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

tomgillespie2002 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.

InjunNose An isolated farmhouse, a surly middle-aged redneck who smokes an unusual kind of meat ("It's the only meat like it in these parts," avers his troubled son), and lots of slinky female victims are the ingredients of this dreary, no-budget "Psycho" knockoff. It's awkwardly funny in spots, but not fun: without all the horror props that played such a major part in his previous film "Asylum of Satan", director William Girdler's limitations are painfully evident. Charles Kissinger turns in a decent performance as the aforementioned purveyor of smoked meat, and there are some appropriately low-rent gore effects by former Herschell Gordon Lewis acolyte Pat Patterson, but the film loses steam about twenty minutes in and never recovers. If you grew up renting horror movies every Friday night at your local VHS outlet, you might be able to muster some affection for "Three on a Meathook"; if not, you'll probably just feel mildly annoyed.

bean-d "Three on a Meathook" (1972) should really be titled "Three on Three Meathooks" or "Three Each Having Her Own Meathook," but I suppose those latter two don't sound quite as good. The film rips off "Psycho" quite liberally. (I suppose if it had had a bigger budget and a better director we would have called it an homage.) The film opens with a woman making clandestine love to a man, although here we have nudity in contrast to "Psycho"'s mere intimations of sex. She leaves for the weekend with her girlfriends and they all skinny-dip in a remote part of the state. When their car breaks down, they hitch a ride with a nice farm boy named Billy who offers to let them stay the night at his place. Billy's father is angry that he brought the girls, insinuating that Billy is psychotic and he should never be around girls. (Billy's mother had been killed in an accident while he was living at his aunt's house a while before.) That night the girls are all brutally murdered (and predating "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by two years, this film is far gorier). Billy awakens in the morning and his father tells him to look in the house and see what he's done. He sends Billy to town for the day while he cleans up. Billy meets a nice girl and invites her to his farm. She brings her girlfriend and they spend the night. (An odd decision for someone who thinks he may be psychotic, and who knows that multiple murders have just taken place on his farm!) While "Three on a Meathook" is surprisingly explicit for 1972 with plenty of nudity and graphic gore, the film is quite interesting when considered as part of the emergence of the anti-rural film. The film is blatant in its use of the city and the country, the former representing sanity, the latter insanity. The girls who are first murdered are safe in the confines of the city; indeed, they are streetwise and sexually confident. When they find themselves in the country, however, they must rely on the kindness of strangers (to borrow a phrase). The clear message is that such trust is dangerous in the rural environs--and once the violence starts, all the street-wisdom in the world ain't a-gonna help. There are no policemen to call, no bargaining techniques to employ, no safe places to run.Billy is sent from the scene of the country carnage to the city where he encounters an uninhibited '70s college dropout named Sherry. She is a waitress in a bar, taking pity on this troubled farm boy as he gets drunker and drunker. When he is too drunk to leave the bar, Sherry takes him to her place rather than having him tossed out into the street. She even takes off his pants for him when he has an "accident" and puts him into her own bed where the two sleep together chastely naked. They spend the next day falling in love. Billy invites her to his farm that weekend and she accepts.When Sherry arrives at the farm with her girlfriend, the two city girls are entranced by the beauty of the place. Billy's father, however, is drunk and he offers less than a warm welcome. We are still not sure who is the killer, Billy or his father, but we know that this distant farmhouse is no place for two city girls. In the morning Sherry looks for her friend, discovers dead bodies in the barn, and is almost killed herself. Again, the insanity out here in the country seems plausible simply because there are no prying eyes, no methods of surveillance, no bureaucrats whose job it is to discover and regulate the insane. And when the violence starts, who can Sherry turn to? The concluding scene is of a big city high-rise. The camera holds the scene for a moment, and then closes in on one of the higher levels of the building. We feel an immediate sense of relief, knowing that the rural madness cannot come here, that the violent chaos of that world will find no purchase in such obvious civilization. We see Billy and his girlfriend talking to a refined and intelligent psychiatrist who explains in very banal terms the unfortunate madness that was allowed to flourish on the farm. Although it is not overtly stated, we clearly understand that had Billy's father and mother lived in the city, none of this would have taken place--or if it had taken place, it would have been caught and contained much sooner. The final scene shows Billy's insane father safely in a straitjacket in a rubber room. Civilization has contained and triumphed--as it so self-evidently should.While "Three on a Meathook" is a surprisingly vile film for 1972, it is a stellar example of the newly emerging anti-rural film--a genre that became even more entrenched that same year with "Deliverance."

lost1-1 What makes "Three on a Meathook" a balls-out real horror film? It's the fact that it looks like a home movie a serial killer would make. It looks like, after finding a 16mm camera in one of his victim's houses, some serial killer got a few of his demented buddy's together, put some ad in the paper for cheap talent, and tried to make a movie. In one of the earliest scenes where the father is berating the son you can see that, although the actors keep screwing up their lines they kept filming and left it in the final print. The grainy stock of the film, the inventive although cheap special effects, and the down-trodden feel of this picture really put you into the subconscious pocket of something brewing in a crude psychopath's mind. Scene after scene is dragged out mercilessly as the filmmakers try to fill the legal feature-length time. One scene has the son sitting in a bar watching the band AMERICAN XPRESS play through two lackluster 70's contemporary tunes. This had me wondering what ever happened to American Xpress, the band featured in some serial killer's home movie "Three on a Meathook"? I wont spoil the end for you, but I will say that you do not watch this movie with the expectation of being entertained: you watch it to experience something a blood-letter would dream.