Bad Movie Club: Ax 'Em

1992 horror movie

Rating: 1/20 (Josh: 0/20; Fred: **/20; Libby: didn't make it; Jeremy: not sure if he made it)

Plot: A bunch of black people go out to the woods for some reason and are chased around by a murderous brute who doesn't have an ax.

Michael Mfume's only film, ostensibly because the film's writer, director, and star accomplished every single thing he set out to do here. And his grandmother, I'm sure, is proud. Why am I bringing her up? Well, at the end of the movie, there's a dedication to the poor woman. And I'm sure that's the cinematic equivalent of unearthing a person's corpse and putting it in a series of compromising positions while your friends and you take pictures. That dedication has to be the worst thing one human being has ever done to a dead woman. I don't even know where the begin with this one, quite possibly the worst we've encountered as Bad Movie Clubbers. In a way, it reminds me of Finnegan's Wake or something, some piece of art that you could spend your entire life with and never quite unravel. Ax 'Em is a movie that you could watch over and over again, just get lost in the thing if you wanted to, and still never discover everything that is wrong with it. First, let's look at the title card this movie starts with:

It's like the poetry of a deranged hobo, something he wrote on a can of beans with a nail or something. I think it shows just how much time Mfume spent with his movie. I'm a middle school teacher when I'm not watching bad movies with people or practicing my ventriloquism so that I can someday not be a middle school teacher, and this is the exact kind of thing I get on my students about. "You didn't proofread!" This is your first impression of Ax 'Em, and there are enough randomly capitalized words, grammatical errors, and ambiguity to make you eject the bad boy before you even see a character. Or an ax. Actually, speaking of that titular weapon--there really isn't one. There's a hatchet used hilariously in an early scene of dimly-lit and hard-to-hear violence, but this guy right here:

doesn't use an ax even once. He uses a telephone though to kill one character, and the events leading up to that murder have to be seen to be believed. I'd name these characters, by the way, but the movie doesn't and therefore, I can't. They don't have names, and you can't understand a word they're saying. I know there are a bunch of "Yo Mama" jokes at the beginning. I caught that. Other than that, I got nothing. You get to watch the characters eat a lot though. I think there are twelve dinner table scenes in all, and that's a little strange because I think the movie takes place in a 24 hour period. Mfume himself plays a role because why wouldn't he? I'm not sure which character Mfume played, but if it's the one I thought it was, he was good, real good. He gets a great scene where he sort of dances and another where he uses a fake accent for reasons that are never explained. Mfume is the son of a congressman named Kweisi Mfume who was probably just as happy as Grandma with this display of young Michael's talents. Actually, Michael Mfume was arrested for rape in George, and I seriously doubt that was as embarrassing to the congressman as this movie was. Hell, dad might have been embarrassed enough because his son apparently owns a jean jacket with Mickey Mouse on it!

Oh, and you know how I said you couldn't hear any of the characters? You definitely can't, but you can hear somebody say "action" at one point and "cut" at another. That's just glorious. And there's another scene where a character is pissing, and that, for whatever reason, is loud and clear. Another inexplicable moment:  character looks directly into the camera and says, "Get a piece of the rock." And this title screen:

Any title screen that I could make using PowerPoint is probably not very professional looking.

Seriously. He dedicated this shit to his dead grandmother. Way to kick an old lady when she's down, Mfume.