They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore (1985)

Directed by Nathan Schiff [Other horror films: Weasels Rip My Flesh (1979), The Long Island Cannibal Massacre (1980)]

Among the most repulsive films I’ve witnessed, They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore is somewhat of a classic, in my eyes. The gore effects here, while often looking exceptionally fake, are absolutely gruesome, and if you want an extreme movie, this is one you have to see.

The plot here is pretty much non-existent. Two southern gardeners in a well-to-do northern community kill and mutilate people. And that’s it. It’s 70 minutes of these two gardeners killing and mutilating people, occasionally taking time off to go to the movies to watch other people kill and mutilate. It’s a good time.

Nathan Schiff is a director I’ve long respected for this movie alone. I’ve not seen his other films (most well-known ones including The Long Island Cannibal Massacre and Weasels Rip My Flesh), but I saw They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore a long time ago, and while I never loved it, it stuck with me, because the gore effects are simply as tasteless as one could imagine.

I won’t spend much time talking about the gore – you have to see the movie for yourself. I can tell you that if you want to see people’s legs and arms cut off with chainsaws and handsaws, then They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore is your movie. If you want to see intestines pulled out of peoples’ stomachs and vaginas and then beat to an unrecognizable pulp, They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore is your movie. And if you want to see faces ripped and torn up, all the way to the bone, with the jaws ripped off and the tongues ripped out, their eyes squeezed from their sockets (and they always made a point of squishing them in their hands), then I need only repeat myself once more:

They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore is your movie.

The dialogue is often quite flat and stale, but it’s also some of the most hilarious stuff I’ve ever heard. From the weak and utterly without emotion “Please don’t rape me,” to the way these two women get out of captivity – wait, no, I need to explain this scene in detail.

See, two women have been captured by the maniac gardeners, but luckily, one of the women is a psychiatrist. She knows how to deal with the mentally disturbed (“You are in great need of psychiatric help”), and will use those skills to get out of the situation. So when one of the men comes in, she asks him to grab her mirror and look at himself. Once he does, and he looks into the mirror, she says, her tone helpful, “Look, look how fucking ugly you are. You’re a disgrace.”

I lol’d. A lot.

Or when two cops are discussing a murder – they’re standing over a body (we don’t see the body – we don’t see an inkling of a body – but it’s apparently there), and one of the cops is quite negative when considering the killers, thinking that the boxcars happened 40 years too soon (referring to the Holocaust). The other cop says they still need to solve the crime, and the cop replies “Fuck that, I’m going home to listen to my Billie Holiday tape.”

I lol’d. A lot. It’s funnier because these cops literally never show up again. They were in this single scene that had zero relevance, and that’s it.

Another point here – we get some musical numbers. One is a song that is played on the radio that these two women are listening to. The song, sung by a woman, is about how stupid she [the singer] is, and the catchy chorus goes “That’s why he calls me Dumb Dumb Yummy Yummy Dumb Dumb.” I couldn’t make that up if I tried.

Also, toward the end of the film, the killers are laying back and relaxing, one of them strumming a guitar, the other playing a harmonica. And they sing for us, and here’s the whole song:

“We came up here from Texas / But it didn’t work out for us / We met a lot of fine people / But they ain’t around no more / We were professional gardeners / But it got to be a bore / So seek some new adventure / Cause we don’t cut the grass no more.”

Genius.

Oh, and I forgot one of my favorite lines in the movie. While a woman is attempting to defend herself, and beating on one of the gardeners (played by John Smihula, who does beautifully), the gardener says “Keep this up, bitch. There’s going to be a lot of irate neighbors complaining about their uncut lawns.”

I lol’d.

This movie is a mess, and it’s not a good movie, but it can be quite an amusing movie if you’re into low-budget, ultra-gory films. They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore is something special, and while I can’t honestly give it a high rating, I can say that it’s a treat in many ways.

6/10