Tubi Thursday: The Carpenter (1988)

 A late entry due to a busy week.  Time to see if this cuts or, um...saws?  I'm not good with carpentry puns...

A woman suffers a nervous breakdown.  Her Husband, in turn, buys a fancy new House in a mostly-empty Town that is about 80% completed.

It all seems to be going fine until she notices a Handyman working late at night (Wings Hauser) with no explanation.  Hmm...

The House conveniently gives Hauser targets, be it a Worker who tries to rape the Wife or some fired Workers who try to steal from the house.

Ouch.

As our Heroine continues to lose her grip on sanity, her Husband has a secret: he's having an affair.

This won't end well.

Hauser continues to attempt to get close to our Heroine.

As it turns out, he was a Carpenter who went crazy, killed people, got executed and then came back to his House to 'finish it.'

Will she fall to temptation?  

Will her Sister help her out?
Will her awful Husband get killed?

To find out, stream the Film on Tubi.

It's...not bad.  It's not great.  The Carpenter is a different kind of Horror Film than the 'Guy in Outfit X kills Teenagers' that grew quite popular around this time.  It's attempts to be more psychological and more methodically-paced.  I'll give them points for not going too far into that cliché direction for most of this.  That said, I certainly have issues.  The slow Pacing is going to be an issue for many.  The Husband is clearly not a good guy from the get-go.  The sudden introduction of bad guys to be killed by Hauser is often quite sudden.  One guy goes from 'I'm gonna work on this house' to abruptly fawning over the Wife.  Minutes later, he's pushing his way into the House and trying to push himself onto her.  Likewise, the guys who get fired come back in like 10 minutes of screen time.  Speaking of screen time, did we need to have a random, abandoned Sub-Plot of her working at a Paint Store?  Not really.  Did we need a cartoonish Sheriff to explain Hauser's back-story?  Did we need him to show up for this one Scene and never again?  The Carpenter, as I said, is a bit different.  If you're looking for something that's not quite what you might expect from that crazy Poster of Hauser cutting through a door, give it a look.  The good is in strong contention with the bad though, so it's not perfect.  Is it better than this one though?

A decent, slow-burn of a Horror Film.  Hauser shines, even his Character can't do much with the Plot's limitations.