What a beautiful movie!

That was an excellent one.

Sadly Over-hyped

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

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.

Three on a Meathook (1972) ** 1/2 (out of 4) William Girdler directed this horror film, which is another variation of the Ed Gein story. Four girls go camping but their car breaks down. Thankfully a young man named Billy comes by and offers them a chance to spend the night at his house along with his father. To say any more would ruin a few surprises the film has to offer. This low budget film was clearly influenced by Psycho and offers a couple nice homages to the Hitchcock film. However, it's also rather clear that this film influenced two future Gein based films, Deranged and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For the most part the film works fine with some nice direction and a couple good performance but even at 80-minutes this thing drags in certain spots. It seems the movie would have only ran fifty-minutes but there are several scenes that just drag on for no reason.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase coined in horror film history I'd be a millionaire! Here is yet another schlock filled shocker that tries to cash in on the infamous true-life ghoul Ed Gein. Although this film can legitimately stand on it's own merit as well. It is a decent piece of grainy, drive-in style schlock with a "surprise" twist ending. The love-story angle is a bit drawn out and this film could use a bit more blood and guts but otherwise this isn't nearly as dreadful a film as you might expect. With a title like "Three on a Meathook" one expects to see lots of gore so the film is a slight let down in that department but it is definitely worth at least a one time glance.

Should have been a camp classic.The so called shock scenes were so easily predictable it was hard to get excited. The corpses hanging in the barn were a nice touch if rather shoddily done.And of course being an R-rated 70's film, all the ladies wore hot-pants or minis just so us males would get a second reason to watch this.The horror I felt was based more on the 'parenting.' Some of those flashbacks might hit a bit to close to home for a certain type of survivor if you get my drift.And figuring out that it was the father all along won't win you any prizes. It could not have BEEN more obvious.