Meanwhile, Gerald Martin, an eccentric young man who is obsessed with computers, has recently moved into a cabin on the property of an elderly hermit named Brock.

During a windstorm one night, another local woman is attacked by the killer, who has infiltrated her home for a second time, having previously broken in and left one of her hogs' severed heads in her bed.

Lillian confides in Gerald that she has recently discovered her cousin, Charlie, was released from a mental hospital he was admitted to years earlier following a head injury caused when she pushed him from a swing set.

That evening, Laura, Richard's middle-aged artist wife, gets drunk with local Christopher Caplin at the Nebbs' tavern after discovering she is bankrupt.

The next morning, Richard arrives at Gerald's, and tells him Laura never returned home; he claims that she emptied their bank account before disappearing.

At the crime scene, McIntosh finds a pin from the Nebbs' tavern, leading him and his officers to go question Lillian and her father.

He responds by telling her that Charlie is a figment of her imagination; on the computer, he confronts Lillian with supposed medical records of a head injury she sustained years prior, as well as documentation of her psychiatric confinement.

Additionally, he produces a list of all the victims, each of whom were either hospital employees who cared for Lillian, or women who were romantically interested in her father.

Edge of the Axe was produced by the Florida-based Calepas International, Inc., who partnered with several Spanish filmmakers on such films as The Sea Seperent (1985) and Pulsebeat (1985).

[9][10] The majority of the exterior scenes were filmed in Big Bear Lake, including the opening credits sequence in which Faulks' character rides his motorcycle through town.

[16] Film scholar Scott Aaron Stine praised the film's production values as the "best Larraz ever had to work with," adding that Edge of the Axe "manages to be an engaging psycho-on-the-loose flick" despite the fact that it "degenerates into a fairly generic slasher flick, having traded the mystery elements for the more standard stalk'n'slash routine.