Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

A Major Disappointment

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Low budget drive-in horror Three On A Meathook opens in fine exploitative fashion with a naked young blonde frolicking with her man (instant gratuitous female nudity: always a winner). She hops out of bed, slips into a vest top and hot-pants and goes to meet three girlfriends for a weekend of boating and skinny dipping (more nudity). Experiencing car trouble while driving back from the lake, the four girls find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere, but are rescued by passing motorist Billy (James Carroll Pickett), who invites them to stay the night at his pa's farm. None of them make it to the morning alive: one is stabbed while in the bath (even more nudity), two are blasted with a shotgun, and the last is beheaded with an axe. So far, so entertaining.Sadly, the film goes seriously downhill after this…Billy's father, shocked at his son's behaviour, sends the lad into town while he cleans up the mess. Cue an awful lot of padding to beef up the running time, Billy mooching through the streets, taking in a band (who play two songs in their entirety), and visiting a bar, where he meets lovely waitress Sherry (Sherry Steiner), who takes the lad home. Waking up the next morning in bed with Sherry, who is still very much alive, Billy decides to spend the day with the girl, which results in a whole lot more filler, as the couple get to know each other. Before Billy leaves, he invites Sherry to his home, who turns up at the farm a few days later with friend Becky (Madelyn Buzzard). Director William Girdler pads out the running time even further as Billy, Sherry and Becky enjoy the simple pleasures of the countryside. Boring, boring, boring.Thankfully, things pick up again for the finish, poor Becky getting a pick-axe in her chest, and Sherry confronted by the killer (who, in a not very clever twist, is exactly who you probably thought it was about an hour earlier). It's during this climax that we finally see the Three On A Meathook—for all of a couple of seconds.

"Three on a Meathook" (1972) should really be titled "Three on Three Meathooks" or "Three Each Having Her Own Meathook," but I suppose those latter two don't sound quite as good. The film rips off "Psycho" quite liberally. (I suppose if it had had a bigger budget and a better director we would have called it an homage.) The film opens with a woman making clandestine love to a man, although here we have nudity in contrast to "Psycho"'s mere intimations of sex. She leaves for the weekend with her girlfriends and they all skinny-dip in a remote part of the state. When their car breaks down, they hitch a ride with a nice farm boy named Billy who offers to let them stay the night at his place. Billy's father is angry that he brought the girls, insinuating that Billy is psychotic and he should never be around girls. (Billy's mother had been killed in an accident while he was living at his aunt's house a while before.) That night the girls are all brutally murdered (and predating "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by two years, this film is far gorier). Billy awakens in the morning and his father tells him to look in the house and see what he's done. He sends Billy to town for the day while he cleans up. Billy meets a nice girl and invites her to his farm. She brings her girlfriend and they spend the night. (An odd decision for someone who thinks he may be psychotic, and who knows that multiple murders have just taken place on his farm!) While "Three on a Meathook" is surprisingly explicit for 1972 with plenty of nudity and graphic gore, the film is quite interesting when considered as part of the emergence of the anti-rural film. The film is blatant in its use of the city and the country, the former representing sanity, the latter insanity. The girls who are first murdered are safe in the confines of the city; indeed, they are streetwise and sexually confident. When they find themselves in the country, however, they must rely on the kindness of strangers (to borrow a phrase). The clear message is that such trust is dangerous in the rural environs--and once the violence starts, all the street-wisdom in the world ain't a-gonna help. There are no policemen to call, no bargaining techniques to employ, no safe places to run.Billy is sent from the scene of the country carnage to the city where he encounters an uninhibited '70s college dropout named Sherry. She is a waitress in a bar, taking pity on this troubled farm boy as he gets drunker and drunker. When he is too drunk to leave the bar, Sherry takes him to her place rather than having him tossed out into the street. She even takes off his pants for him when he has an "accident" and puts him into her own bed where the two sleep together chastely naked. They spend the next day falling in love. Billy invites her to his farm that weekend and she accepts.When Sherry arrives at the farm with her girlfriend, the two city girls are entranced by the beauty of the place. Billy's father, however, is drunk and he offers less than a warm welcome. We are still not sure who is the killer, Billy or his father, but we know that this distant farmhouse is no place for two city girls. In the morning Sherry looks for her friend, discovers dead bodies in the barn, and is almost killed herself. Again, the insanity out here in the country seems plausible simply because there are no prying eyes, no methods of surveillance, no bureaucrats whose job it is to discover and regulate the insane. And when the violence starts, who can Sherry turn to? The concluding scene is of a big city high-rise. The camera holds the scene for a moment, and then closes in on one of the higher levels of the building. We feel an immediate sense of relief, knowing that the rural madness cannot come here, that the violent chaos of that world will find no purchase in such obvious civilization. We see Billy and his girlfriend talking to a refined and intelligent psychiatrist who explains in very banal terms the unfortunate madness that was allowed to flourish on the farm. Although it is not overtly stated, we clearly understand that had Billy's father and mother lived in the city, none of this would have taken place--or if it had taken place, it would have been caught and contained much sooner. The final scene shows Billy's insane father safely in a straitjacket in a rubber room. Civilization has contained and triumphed--as it so self-evidently should.While "Three on a Meathook" is a surprisingly vile film for 1972, it is a stellar example of the newly emerging anti-rural film--a genre that became even more entrenched that same year with "Deliverance."

This film starts out good but get's very very slow. A few kills in the beginning but then nothing for a long long time. I'd say more of a drama than a horror film as it's pretty slow and has a little romance thing going on. This movie doesn't even come close to the hype that the title portrays. It's not exactly lame but not far from it. Very slow and drama-like for most part of the movie. I had to ramble and repeat things because this requires that you use a minimum of 10 lines. All I really wanted to say was that this film is pretty slow outside the starting point but then gets really slow soon after. It's a kind of cool story but nowhere as near as notorious as the title offers. I'd almost call it a drama if not for the beginning.

Titles like this don't come along everyday.Sadly, the title is about the most appealing part if this little 70's oddity.<Spoilers>'Based on the true story of Ed Gein' (someone should really copyright that), it tells the tale of a young man who is accused of doing terrible things by his domineering father, or did he?The main problem with this film is the pacing. Despite its 80 minute run time there is an incredible amount of filler and very little action. The opening quadruple murder flashes by in a .. er .. flash yet a scene featuring characters walking through a field goes on for an age. The worst example however is a scene in which our protagonist goes to a bar to think. While he sits in meditation we are treated to TWO FULL SONGS by the bar band!The whole love interest sub plot does little to enhance the plot and just gives the excuse for more filler.Some credit must be given for the ludicrous ending. Part of the twist is patently guessable though the extra little family secret makes for an amusing surprise.If you're really into your Ed Gein films check out Deranged instead.