Reaction & Review | Garden Tool Massacre

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a horror movie from 1997. That movie is "Garden Tool Massacre".

Now, this film has a little bit of an odd history. You see, it started life back in 1997, when it was originally shot with an Hi-8 camera. Or a camcorder, for those who don't know what an Hi-8 is. And at that time, the filmmakers only made about 20 minutes worth of film with their camcorder. And then later next year, they shot 45 more minutes on VHS. But because they didn't have enough footage to make it into a feature-length film, they apparently made several more short films from between 1997 and 1998 just so they had enough footage to make their movie into a feature film. I have no idea what those short films are, and how that's going to affect this movie, but I am really curious about that regardless.

I should also note that, even though this movie came out in 1997, there was never an official DVD release of this movie up until about a couple of years ago in 2020, when a company known as SRS Cinema finally decided to put this movie out on that format. Speaking of which, this DVD also claims to be an ultra rare SOV movie, and only a handful of copies of this movie exist from a man named David Hinds, the guy who co-wrote and directed this movie. And the only reason why I have a copy of this movie was because my local mini-mall was selling it there. So I decided to pick it up, because the cover of this thing, and from what I read on the back of the DVD case, looked and sounded just interesting enough for me to warrant covering for this series. By the way, on the off chance somebody might ask what SOV stands for, it basically stands for "shot on video", hence why I brought up the Hi-8 camera earlier on.

So...I have no idea what I'm getting myself into here. I didn't look up any trailers for this movie, because I'm really curious to find out how exactly this movie is going to turn out. I'm hoping for it to be interesting. I'm not totally sure if it's gonna be good, but it might still be interesting on a cheesy sorta level. But I have no idea if that's gonna be the case or not. So the only way I'm gonna find out how interesting this movie could possibly be, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Garden Tool Massacre".

5 minutes later

You know, guys, what I really like? I really like how this movie is just telling you what happened after Charles Scavolini brutally murdered his wife with nothing but a text screen. Rather than show us how he got caught after him killing his wife, or him being unable to stand trial, the movie just tells you all this with nothing but a warning about what happens after. So far, we're not off to a great start, guys.

4 minutes later

Wait, so this guy, who I'm gonna assume is Charles, just comes out of this door and puts his hand on this guy's face for about 3 seconds, and then he's dead. Really...? I'm pretty sure it's not possible to kill someone that quickly. And I probably wouldn't have a problem with this, if his hand applied more pressure to this guy's face. But it didn't. And the kill just comes off as kinda stupid, really.

8 minutes later

Guys, I'd love to hear what these actors are saying, but I can't, because, one, the sound-mix in this movie is terrible. And two, this actor's accent is so fucking thick that I can barely understand what he's trying to say. I'm not even 20 minutes into this movie, and yet, it's already becoming unwatchable. I seriously hope that the next hour and 10 minutes is gonna get better, but I honestly don't know if it's going to.

19 minutes later

So, guys, I was sort of hoping that I wouldn't have to ask this about a horror movie, but is ANYTHING interesting gonna happen in this fucking movie? I swear, guys, this movie's pacing is absolutely abysmal! And because of that, this movie has become boring as shit, and the dialogue is barely listenable, because I still can't hear a majority of it, even with the volume on my TV up at near max. This movie is fucking horrible, and I still got less than an hour to go! I'm not sure if I'm able to get through this movie, guys...

11 minutes later

Well, guys, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that I can actually hear the dialogue now because they actually bothered to fix the sound nearly 50 minutes into the movie! It took them that long, but at least we finally got that fixed. The bad news, however? Now that I can hear the dialogue, the acting is fucking horrible. Mind you, it was horrible back when I still couldn't hear the dialogue. But now that I can clearly hear it, it actuallly sounds kinda worse, thanks to this horrible acting. I'm hating this movie, guys...I'm hating it in ways that I didn't think were even possible. This movie sucks!

7 minutes later

Guys, I really wish this movie would be consistent with it's sound. Because we just had a scene with Tamara and this other guy, and the sound-mix there was horrible. And now that this guy just returned to the living room, the sound's now back to where I can hear it properly. Did NOBODY put any effort into the making of this movie? Well...considering how this movie's turned out so far, I'm gonna take a safe bet here and say no.

The Review

Oh...thank you, Jesus, this movie is fucking done! Oh my god, um...well, guys, that was "Garden Tool Massacre". Let's shut this garbage off...all right. Dear god, that was one of the most torturous movies I've ever had to sit through in my entire time doing this series. And now...the fun part begins. Which is me tearing the shit out of this thing!

Now...let's start this all off by talking about the writing. What fucking writing...? I don't believe that there was a script for this. I truly don't. I think that everybody in this movie had bullet points that they were given to, and they all just phoned in a bullshit, lifeless showing. But I'll save that for when I get into the acting. Now, the story here...could've worked. I mean, it is a very stereotypical, cliche story that's not really doing anything new or different, but it still could've worked. Basically, our story here is about a killer named Charles Scavolini, who killed his wife that committed adultery and was sentenced to life to a mental hospital after being deemed unable to stand up in court, and was declared legally insane. And all of that was told to us in the opening prologue with nothing but text. Because why bother showing us all this when you could just TELL us what happened to Charles after he murdered his wife? But whatever, he's sentenced there for life and is never to be released outside to the public again. And then 7 years later, he escapes and begins his killing spree as he goes back to his home, to which it's now being occupied by our shallow and lifeless characters. And I'm not kidding about that, NOBODY has any depth or personality in this movie whatsoever. In fact, these characters don't even have a soul. These are honestly some of the most lifeless characters I've seen in ANY horror movie. I mean, shit, I've seen quite a bit of horror movies this year for this series, but even they had more life to them than any of these piss-weak characters! Everybody here is shallow and you're not gonna have any reason to care about them by the time that this movie is done.

Hell, guys, I can't even remember most of their fucking names because they are THAT lifeless. The only names I could remember were Mike, Ash, Jimbo, and Tamara. And the only reason why I could remember their names was because the movie was gracious enough to list off who played these lifeless characters. I could remember Mike's name, because he was one of the only characters who gets called by his name. That, and he was also the guy who wore a green sombrero. Ash, I think, is suppose to be our main character, but again, he's just as lifeless as everyone else is in this fucking movie. Speaking of which, that also includes our killer Charles Scavolini. He is, quite possibly, one of the most lifeless horror villains I've seen from any horror movie I've ever seen. And that's saying a lot, especially since I had the unfortunate displeasure of watching the fucking "Killjoy" movies earlier this year. And even Killjoy, as painfully annoying as he was, at least he had some semblance of character and depth to him. Charles Scavolini, though, doesn't. Like I said, the only thing we know about him is that he killed his adulterous wife, and was sent to a mental hospital for life. And that's all the 'depth' he gets. Now, I understand that he's mostly just a silent killer. But even silent killers such as Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees had more depth and background to them rather than Charles did. The only trait that Charles even has in this movie is when, in a couple of first-person view shots, you get to hear him breathing. Meaning that he's either about to kill his next victim, or he's just standing there doing nothing. Beyond that, there's nothing interesting about Charles Scavolini whatsoever. Now, like I said earlier, this story could've worked better had we had more depth to these characters. In fact, this is one of those movies that I think would work better if given a remake. Because I think you could do a whole lot more if this movie were given a chance to be remade in modern times. Give it an actual script, and give more depth to these characters. I strongly doubt that's going to happen, but that's just my own theory. So, you can just take that for what it's worth.

But beyond that, there is no writing here. The characters suck, our killer sucks, there's just nothing here about the writing that I would even consider passable. It's all terrible. Speaking of which, I would also consider the acting to be terrible. Now it's very well possible that, since this movie was filmed on an ultra low budget, David Hinds probably just had a few of his friends over to help film this movie. And, lull and behold, none of them can fucking act. The only decent bits of acting is whenever you get to hear Charles breathing in his POV shots. Yeah, that's the ONLY bit of a decent acting that I was able to pick up from this movie. That is just terrible, guys. But anyway, like I said, the acting here is horrible. Nobody here tried. Everybody here sounds wooden and lifeless as all hell. I would say that the acting sounds incredibly robotic, but that would be an insult to fucking robots. This acting is just horrible. It's not even horrible in a 'so bad it's good' kind of way. It's just horrible. And again, I probably shouldn't be expecting that from people who sounded like they never acted a day in their lives, but I was, at least, expecting a little bit of effort. But no, I didn't get that. So the acting is horrible from, just about, the entire cast in this movie.

Normally, I would be talking about the special effects next, but I'm gonna save that for later. Instead, I want to talk about the WORST problem that this movie has. Yes, it's worse than the writing, and worse than the acting. The worst thing about this movie is the absolutely atrocious sound-mix. Oh dear god...the sound-mix. Now, I briefly mentioned this movie's history earlier. About how this movie was filmed between 1997 and 1998 because they wanted to film enough footage to make their movie into a feature film. Well, I'm going to assume that, between that time, somebody fucked up with the sound-mix. Probably David Hinds, because he was the guy who, like I said earlier, wrote and directed this movie. But he also was in charge of the photography AND editing. I'm gonna mention the editing in a bit, but first, I want to talk about the sound-mix. This movie has some of the most inconsistent sound-mixing I have heard in a long, LONG time. Because for the first 45 minutes or so, the sound-mix is atrocious. The big reason why is because you can BARELY, if at all, hear the actors dialogue in this movie. A lot of it is drowned out by background noise. And I totally understand that when your filming your movie with a camcorder, you are bound to run that risk, but I was sorta hoping that they would be able to fix some of this when they were done filming. And they did...sort of. You see, this movie's sound-mix takes a dramatic turn after the first 45 minutes, in which you can finally hear the actor's dialogue. But that also presents another problem. Well, besides the acting being terrible, I mean. You see, when the sound-mix is drastically changed 45 minutes into the movie, you can only hear about two things at that point. You will either hear the actor's looped-in dialogue, which is one of the big changes from the previous 45 minutes, or you will hear the music playing at this party. Everything else involving sound and sound effects is almost completely gone, save for some sounds of stabbing coming from our killer. And for some bizarre reason, the sound doesn't entirely stay consistent, because it would go back and forth to this awful sound-mix from before the 45 minutes and to our current sound-mix, where it involved the looped-in acting and almost non-existent sound effects.

In fact, do you want to know how bad the sound-mix really is in this movie? Well, first off, I want you to imagine yourself watching old home videos of your childhood that you've probably watched about once or twice in your lifetime. I can guarantee you that they probably had better fucking sound than this piece of shit did. But that's honestly just an observation more than anything else. Now, the other reason why the sound-mix in this thing is so awful has to do with this DVD. You see, as I mentioned earlier, this movie was re-released on DVD in 2020 by SRS Cinema. They remastered it, which looks OK to a degree, but what they REALLY should've done was add in subtitles. Because this movie does not have an option in which you can watch this movie with subtitles. I checked the extras on this DVD to make sure, and sure enough, that is unfortunately the case. So that means that if you are dumb enough to watch this movie on DVD, good luck trying to hear what the actors are saying for the first 45 minutes, because most of that dialogue is inaudible. The only way you could MAYBE hear it is if you had the volume up at near max. Because this movie's dialogue is almost unlistenable. Now part of that has to do with the acting being incredibly lifeless, but I'm also putting the blame on SRS Cinema's release on this DVD, because they were too fucking lazy to get off their asses to add in something as simple as subtitles. I think it would've made the movie a little bit more tolerable. It wouldn't have been good, mind you, but at least it would've made the movie a little bit less painful to watch.

Camerawork, for what it is, is OK, considering the limitations they had to work with involving the Hi-8 camera. Lighting here is mostly shit, thanks to most of the dark areas that are in the latter half of the movie. But again, considering the limitations that had to work with involving the Hi-8, I'm gonna give some of that pass, as well. I do need to talk about editing, though. You see, I totally understand that they needed to film some extra footage in order for the movie to be made into a feature-length film. However...they could've filmed something better. Because this is gonna tie into the horrible pacing that this movie has. A lot of this movie, whenver it's not focusing on our killer, is just needless padding. There is a lot of footage in this movie that has no reason to exist. For example, we didn't need footage of our female character, Tamara, going into her house, changing, and then getting a phone call from one of her friends that they're having a party. That roughly takes about 5-6 minutes, and nothing of interest happens. We also didn't need excessive footage of Ash just doing his mundane activities. We didn't need footage of him trying to get dressed, making breakfast, and him watching TV while nothing is happening. And that latter bit happens after we get through our prologue. We also didn't need pointless scenes where he's doing, almost, the exact same thing again! Only this time, he's not only having dreams of our killer (which makes no sense), but he also spends a lot of time shaving. Which is, again, something that this movie did not need. If David Hinds REALLY wanted to pad this film out, he could've filmed something different. He could've probably filmed more story and depth involving our killer, such as him going to court and being declared legally insane. Or maybe have a scene or two of him in the mental hospital where we see how he's being treated there. He could've done something like that. But instead, it's just pointless filler that contributes nothing to the overall movie. And that is sad on a whole host of levels.

Special effects are mostly cheap. However, being that this is a low budget movie, I'm gonna give some of that a pass, because what is here for special effects isn't the worst thing in the world, nor is it the best. Music here is also shit, but considering that most of it is just party music, and being that party music is shit in general, I guess that's just par for the course when it comes to party music.

So...when all is said and done, guys, can I recommend "Garden Tool Massacre"? No! In no way, can I recommend this movie. This is, by far, one of the worst horror movies I've ever had the displeasure of watching. And I've seen a lot of bad horror movies in my time. But this shit ranks high up there in terms of one of the worst out there. It's awful by low budget standards. And I'm shocked that this movie was released the way it is on DVD. It's really not worth your time, unless if you have some morbid curiosity to check this thing out. If you ABSOLUTELY have to watch this movie, then you could go to SRS Cinema's website and purchase the movie off there. But seriously, do not waste your time on this movie. It is awful on just about every level that I didn't think was even possible. This movie is just unwatchable from start to fucking finish. And I can't wait until I trade this awful fucking movie in the moment that I get that chance. Now...I'm gonna go watch something else. Something better. And I was thinking about this earlier, but when I was watching it, it kinda reminded me of "Stitches". So, I'm gonna go and watch that next. Because I REALLY need to watch something better than this awful thing that I had to sit through for over an hour.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.