By Todd Garbarini
Dennis Donnelly directed this film that was made as a result of the success of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and hoped to cash in on its success. Predating the slasher film cycle that came about following John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), which itself was originally planned as a sequel to Bob Clark’s Black Christmas made four years earlier, The Toolbox Murders (1978) was one of the earliest titles available on home video in the early 1980s. A schematically-paced thriller, The Toolbox Murders takes places in a Los Angeles apartment building wherein a toolbox-carrying killer who dons a ski-mask offs several of the residents, among them then-porn actress Kelly Nichols, who was featured prominently in her birthday suit in the film’s advertising art and is dispatched by a nail gun (puns abound).
Cameron Mitchell gives a very good performance as the creep who keeps a young woman, played by Pamelyn Ferdin, tied up in his bedroom. The rest of the cast is rounded out by the director’s brother, Tony Donnelly, as a detective and Nicholas Beauvy and Wesley Eure (from TV’s Land of the Lost) playing sleuths.
The Blu-ray extras on the Blue Underground release include:
• Audio Commentary by actress Pamela Ferdin, cinematographer Gary Graver, and producer
Tony Didio
• I Got Nailed in: THE TOOLBOX MURDERS - interview with actress Marianne Walter, aka Kelly Nichols
• Theatrical Trailer
• TV Spots
• Radio Spots
• Improved audio and video. The audio is available in the standard monaural mix, 7.1 DTS-HD, and 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX.
Missing from the Blu-ray are the poster/stills gallery and Cameron Mitchell biography that was included on the standard DVD in 2003.
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