Lisa, Lisa

Lisa, Lisa (1974)

You'll DIE To Know Her Secret ...

A group of three criminals on the run from the law, go about terrorizing the local townsfolk of a small community, before descending on an isolated farm which is home to a young girl named Lisa and her paralyzed grandfather. After being sexually assaulted by two of the gangsters, she retaliates using an axe and a razor blade.

Date of release
1974-12-09
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (49)
Runtime
1h 8m
Genres
Horror, Thriller
Director
Frederick R. Friedel

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: North Carolina

Axe is a 1974 American independent horror film written and directed by Frederick R. Friedel and starring Leslie Lee. Its plot follows a trio of criminals who lodge at a rural farmhouse where a teenage girl resides with her disabled grandfather. After one of the men attempts to rape her, she enacts revenge.

Production

Writer-director Frederick R. Friedel had aspired to make a feature film by age 25, an aspiration fueled by Orson Welles's having directed Citizen Kane (1941) at that age. "I had no pretensions that I was directing Citizen Kane," Friedel recalled, but he had long wanted to make a film, and had been living in Los Angeles trying to break into the film business. Friedel pitched his idea for a horror film to producer J.G.

Axe was shot over a period of nine days in the winter of 1974. It was shot on 35 mm film stock, largely consisting of short-end film that had been returned to the Kodak distributor, which was cheaper than new rolls of film.

Principal photography took place on location in a farmhouse outside Charlotte, North Carolina on a budget of US$25,000. The production paid a total of $25 to shoot in the house for around three days, and much of the decorations and dressings inside were already present. The Charlotte area was chosen by Friedel due to the low productions costs; J.G. Patterson, the film's producer had used the area for past films he had produced because of this.

Ray Green portrayed Lomax, the leader of the gang, while Jack Cannon portrayed Steele, one of Lomax's henchmen. Director Friedel cast himself in the role of Billy, the guilt-ridden third member of the gang, primarily to help alleviate the production cost of hiring another actor. Frank Jones, who appears as Aubrey, was in fact a local regional film distributor.

Leslie Lee, who portrayed the withdrawn teenage Lisa, was actually 23 years old at the time of filming. According to Friedel, Lee had claimed to have done modeling prior to auditioning for the role, and he felt she embodied "a lot of the feeling" he envisioned for the character.

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