[miketardis]

THREE ON A MEATHOOK (1972)
Directed by William Girdler. Stars Charles Kissinger, James Pickett, Sherry Steiner. A solid opening, a bizarre twist ending, and some hilariously bad acting punctuate this amateurish gore movie, the second written and directed by Louisville, Kentucky’s own Girdler, who somehow went on to make several Hollywood exploitation movies before his untimely death in 1978. It owes a lot to PSYCHO.
Billy Townsend (Pickett) has woman problems, in that he keeps slaughtering them in his sleep, leaving it to widower pa Kissinger to clean up the mess. After Billy’s latest splatfest, Pa sends him into town to get his head together, where he sees a re-release of (the R-rated) THE GRADUATE and listens to a crummy bar band (American Xpress, likely buddies of Girdler’s). He gets drunk, wets his pants, and wakes up naked next to a surprisingly kind-hearted waitress (the robotic Steiner), who dragged him to her place so the cops wouldn’t roust him. They quickly fall in love, and make plans for Sherry to visit the Townsend farm that Sunday. Can Billy control his murderous urges around his new girlfriend?
The movie runs less than 80 minutes, but is still thickly padded with band footage and characters roaming around like in a shampoo commercial. This is obviously a cheap film, but not totally ineffective, in that Girdler found an authentically rustic farm to use as a location, and Pickett turns in a decent performance. The director made sure not to cheat with his delightfully crusty title too. Also with Hugh Smith (who starred with Pickett and Kissinger in Girdler’s follow-up, the obscure THE ZEBRA KILLER), Carolyn Thompson, Kiersten Laine, Linda Thompson and John Shaw. Girdler takes credit for the musical score.