Three on a Meathook

1972 "A Padlocked Shed, Hooks of Cold Steel -- a Maniac on the loose"
4.4| 1h17m| R| en| More Info
Released: 07 October 1972 Released
Producted By: Studio 1 Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

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.

Genre

Horror

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Director

William Girdler

Production Companies

Studio 1 Productions

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Three on a Meathook Audience Reviews

Wordiezett So much average
Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
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.
BA_Harrison 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.
artpf 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.
Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki A badly sunburnt chick in a badly simulated sex scene opens this one, filling me not with hope for good horror/ exploitation fare, but with indigestion. Terribly out of sync audio ( which cuts to the next scene's audio many seconds too early, many times throughout ) didn't help, either. A lame skinny dipping scene goes on for several minutes, before several minutes in near total darkness, as this barely introduced quartet of female characters' car runs out of gas. Our future lead character, Billy, drives by, in his truck which comes with its own​ thunderstorm sound effects, and offers to let them stay at his creepy looking farmhouse overnight. We never learn these girls names ( except for when they're introduced , off camera! ) and it doesn't matter, because they're all killed in a Psycho-inspired twist within the first twenty minutes ( by the father, blaming his adult son, who is bonkers ) Spoiler alert, I guess. Psycho's infamous shower scene is ripped off here as a " bathtub scene ", to far lesser effect. Film awkwardly cuts to black at random times for a scene transition, and it looks as though ambient lighting only was used. Then, it's off to a bar, to listen to the awful local yokel bar band perform, and pad out the film's run time a bit further. ( "You gotta be free, cant you see, you gotta be free" for six minutes ) A dippy little love story between Billy and the admittedly attractive Sheree takes over the proceedings, and the film fritters away at least another half an hour of the run time on that issue, and melodramatics between Billy and his dad, before dad hacks away at anyone in sight in the penultimate scene. Finally, we even get a psychiatrist explaining the father's mania, and what drove him to kill, just like the final scene of Psycho. The meathooks ( more than the single meathook suggested by the film's title ) do not even appear until an hour and ten minutes into the film, and are only on screen for a couple of seconds. Speaking of that title, does it mean there are three people on a single meathook? If so, that never happens in this movie. On one hand, I'm surprised this isn't regarded as a minor cult classic, as this film might be taken as a sort of blueprint for later horror/ exploitation titles. I spotted inspiration for scenes later in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Amityville Horror. At the same time, though, I can understand why it's not. It's a very grimy, yellow looking movie, filled with plenty of padding, and decent enough gore, but not enough of it. Wiith more of a budget, more nudity and gore, this might have been a fun little exploitation title, but as it is, it's just a slowly paced grindhouse flick, with little to recommend it. Seriously, if you want to watch a movie loosely based on Ed Gein, watch Psycho, watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. There are far better titles inspired by him. This particular movie is a curio, at best.