Terry Lofton and Bill Leslie's 1985 indie rape revenge slasher THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE isn't for everybody, but I count myself among its fans, charmed by the dirt cheap style and amused by the ridiculous lines like "Do you remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitos and the killers?"
Sadly, Lofton passed away in 2011 at the age of 48, but the film he made endures more than thirty years after its completion. Code Red brought THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE to Blu-ray in 2014, and now it has been announced that the story Lofton crafted is being brought back to the screen, as THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE is set to become the latest horror film with a recognizable title to receive the remake treatment.
That story:
Following the brutal rape of a young woman by a gang of construction workers, a mysterious figure wearing a motorcycle helmet and driving a gold hearse begins hunting the perpetrators down. The masked avenger's weapon of choice, obviously, is a nail gun, with which he (or could it be she?) takes out the rapists one by one. Just who is this murderous vigilante?
The remake is a collaboration between Texas Frightmare Weekend founder Loyd Cryer, who will produce the film; screenwriter Darren Bevill, who wrote the 2015 film APPETITES; and LAID TO REST / FEAR CLINIC director Robert Hall, who was friends with Lofton and had a hand in Code Red's release of the original.
According to Cryer, the possibility of remaking THE NAIL GUN MASSACRE is something he and Hall have been talking about for a couple years, and now they're finally moving forward with it.
What can we expect from this new take on the material? Hall says,
I’ve been really fortunate to have amazing casts in all my films despite the budget and although I can’t reveal anything just yet, Nail Gun will be no different and feature a familiar and stellar cast … It’s going to be a FUN MOVIE for sure, however the new screenplay is really smart and we are pulling back on the camp for sure. It’s an update for today’s demanding audience, bringing you WTF superb nail gun kills of course.
Hall was attached to helm a different remake a few years ago, preparing a new version of CHOPPING MALL that supposedly would have ditched the Killbots in favor of a supernatural approach. That would have killed any interest I would have had in seeing that film. The idea of the director who delivered some incredible slasher kills with LAID TO REST making a movie about a nail gun-wielding killer is much more appealing.