In Bed and Streaming: The Toolbox Murders

The Toolbox Murders is a chipper low-budget slasher film from 1978 that combines elements of the Book of Matthew and The Catcher in the Rye.  It is, in essence, a low-budget horror flick designed to rattle adolescents watching on late-night television.  The acting is stiff, the script minimal and laced with non-sequiturs, and some continuity errors exist.  The depiction of the flashback of the fatal car accident in the first scene looks as though it was edited while driving a riding lawnmower through a gravel pit. What the film does achieve is a creepiness driven by the overall aesthetic.  

Vance is the owner and superintendent of the El Patio de Sequoia apartment complex in Canoga Park.  After losing his daughter in a gruesome car accident, he turns to using his passkey to gain access to tenants’ apartments where he murders them using–you guessed it–the contents of his toolbox. 

 

                                                    "I understand you have a slow drain?"

Now, murdering your customers seems like a bad business model on the surface, though Big Tobacco has done pretty well with it historically.  On the other hand, Vance pays his semi-retarded nephew 20 bucks per, to refurbish these crime scenes units so that they can be leased again at a higher rate.  

In the first twenty minutes, Vance, wearing a ski mask and carrying a toolbox, kills a young woman using a 1” wood drill bit.  The blood looks like grape juice.  Another young woman is killed with a claw hammer.  An oversized Philips screwdriver is the weapon of choice to off a third young woman.  Finally, Vance kills a lady using a nail gun after spying her masturbating in the bathtub.  

While the violence and gore are comical, the filmmaker conveys a real sense of creepiness in other ways.  “Pretty Lady,” a very 1970s country duet by George Deaton and Terri Stubbs is played during one of the murders.  The units at the El  Patio de Sequoia are cheap and gross.  Dimly lit, with deep green shag carpeting, stucco walls, butcherblock counters, etc.  The whole aesthetic reeks of Haig Gold, Viceroy kings, and domestic violence.

After racking up an early impressive body count, Vance pulls a surprising about-face when entering the apartment of a widow living with her two teenage children.  Mom works the late shift at a scuzzy beer joint and the son sometimes pals with the semi-retarded nephew.  When Vance enters, the only person home is 14-year-old Laurie.  Instead of attacking her with a set of Allen keys, he shifts to kidnapping (hey, progress!) and takes her back to his place where he keeps her bound and gagged in his dead daughter’s bedroom.  

Somehow, the El Patio de Sequoia apartment complex is not under 24-hour surveillance. Laurie’s older brother, Joey, is hauled in for questioning.  The primary on the case is none other than Tim Donnelly, Chet from Emergency!  Without his mustache and Gage to pick on, his Lt. Jamison is a hapless dimwit.  In fact, it’s Joey who first posits the idea that the killer is likely someone who had easy access to the apartments.

Meanwhile, we learn that Laurie is the de facto replacement for Vince’s dead daughter though he points out Laurie isn’t as pretty as his girl was. As he talks to Laurie, we become hip to Vance’s motives.  The women were murdered because they were sexually loose. Gouge out the other eye?  Hell, take out the entire body, just to be safe. Laurie was abducted to preserve her purity, with Vance playing Holden Caufield’s catcher.

                                                       This is not weird or anything.

With the bloodied, empty units piling up, the semi-retarded nephew, Kent, hires Joey to help him rehabilitate crime scenes.  When visiting Vance’s garage for supplies, Joey detects the titular toolbox, covered in blood. For some reason, Kent also visits Vance’s garage where Joey shares his hypothesis that Vance is the killer.

Since blood is thicker than grape juice, Kent turns on Joey, first dousing him with flammable liquid, then throwing lit matches at him.  Though Joey has access to the door, he inexplicably fails to use it and is eventually set on fire.  

With the garage engulfed in flames, Kent heads inside to find his uncle redlining on the creepy meter with Laurie.  Somehow, not only does the fire not spread, but it also evidently extinguishes itself as the fire department never arrives and the flames never spread to the house. 

Good thing, as Kent goes full-on creep, imagining Laurie as his deceased cousin with whom he claims to have shared a torrid incestuous relationship.  Vance, who is cool with serial killing, but can’t tolerate fornication and starts to flip.  Moving to the kitchen, Kent and Vance have words, ending with Kent sticking a butcher knife through his uncle’s torso.  This is an enormous opportunity missed. Imagine the irony of the Toolbox Murderer being killed by, say, a few raps to the head with a pair of channel locks.

Kent returns to the bedroom and unbinds Laurie.  Thinking the ordeal is finally over, Laurie is instead raped by Kent, who in addition to semi-retarded, adds murderer and rapist to his already impressive resume.  After the forced consummation, Kent suddenly announces he and Laurie are semi-retarded murderer/rapist and wife. During the subsequent pillow talk, Kent admits to killing both Vance and Joey.  Understandably upset, Laurie spies a pair of scissors on the nightstand and offs Kent (we are spared this killing for some reason). The film closes with her dazed and walking across a parking lot at dusk, wearing a bloodied gown and carrying the murder weapon.  A chyron indicates what we have just witnessed is based on a true story though the claim has yet to be corroborated, forty-plus years later.  

I doubt this story is true, but it’s even disturbing to think somebody imagined the events depicted. It’s most certainly bizarre.  If you are so inclined, it can be found on Pluto, the Five Below of streaming services.