Edge of the Axe was an international production, with scenes shot in Spain and the States. It's actually hard to tell which scenes are in Northern California and which ones are in Madrid, which makes it feel as if the action isn't happening anywhere. The mix of European and American sensibilities is uncanny, and this is especially obvious in the dialogue. A preponderance of lines sound as if they were written by someone learning English, and doing a pretty good job of it—but still learning, nonetheless. Even more damningly on the writing side, the film's ending is somewhat muddled, but I'll say more about that in the post-spoiler addendum.
If Edge of the Axe does anything right, it can be seen in the kill scenes. These don't benefit from their good gore effects (which are poor), but rather from their brutal realism. The eponymous axe hits the victims with blunt force, not making a clean and seamless cut as per the standard slasher flick. It's rather ironic, given the film's incisive title. And on the subject of cuts, the camera does not cut away when the blade makes contact, contra most mainstream slashers. Rather, the viewer is subjected to an unedited sequence of the killer pummeling screaming women with an axe as blood gradually crops up on their clothing.
With only one exception, the victims are all female, giving the film a decidedly misogynist vibe. This has not aged well, though it does afford Edge of the Axe a full-bodied meanspiritedness, marking it as archetypal exploitation fare. If axe bludgeonings and fairly unapologetic sexism are of interest to you, then check out Edge of the Axe. Otherwise, you're not missing much.
These next two paragraphs contain spoilers, as I'd like to add some further discussion of the ending of Edge of the Axe.
In the final scene, the at-times sketchy computer-geek male lead bursts into the female love-interest's house (after he's been solidly teased as the killer). He then holds the love-interest captive and insists that it is she who is the killer, explaining that, via a proto-internet "central database," he has found out that she's spent time in a mental hospital on account of having "psycho amnesia." Ergo, she must be the one doing the killings. There is, of course, total disbelief from the love-interest, and she escapes her captor. Police show up as he's chasing after her, and, in unadulterated American form, gun down the nerd without questions asked. Obviously, the police, working on chauvinistic assumptions, presume that being a male pursuer is sufficient evidence to pronounce the lead geek guilty on sight. When the love-interest leaps into the embrace of her police rescuer, we then get a shot of her eyes turning maniacal. The film closes on this shot, making her guilt seem incontrovertible, at least for the viewer.
But this viewer wasn't so convinced. The male lead still seems like the most plausible culprit, and not just because the rather petite female love-interest didn't match the body-type of the masked killer at all. Rather, time-period and technology factor heavily into my doubts. After all, I/we live in an era where the internet is not some esoteric niche pastime. Moreover, we've all seen how much misinformation is contained in computers. Indeed, entire political movements are based upon bad data. Since the male lead is an early adopter and the only civilian with an online presence in his rural American setting, wouldn't he be the most likely person to have planted the "fake news" in the terminal to convince the female love-interest that she was crazy? In the end, he certainly acted unhinged enough to seem capable of having orchestrated such a scheme. To me, Edge of the Axe contains a reminder that we can and do give computer nerds too much power, when many of them are morally dim basement dwellers who can't handle the fine-grain nuances of social responsibility or human relationships. That we have, since 1988, handed the keys to our society over to a caste of people easily agitated when forced to think outside the boundaries of binary, well, that is the real horror. Unlike the exploitative visuals in Edge of the Axe, this horror will burgeon through many decades to follow.