The Toolbox Murders

Kelly Nichols got the role of Dee Ann after the first two actresses backed out, because they didn't want to do the total nudity. She had no problem being nude on screen, because she had spent years as a nude model. This was her first of only two mainstream movie roles. The year after the film was released, she was selected Penthouse Pet of the Month in May 1979 and then began a career of making hardcore adult films.

In a 2002 interview, Kelly Nichols said she loved being included in the movie poster, especially since the artwork makes her boobs look much bigger than they actually are.

This was child star Pamelyn Ferdin's final film role. She did a few minor TV roles after this and then took up a nursing career in 1979. She later became an animal rights activist. She revealed in a 1995 interview that she never wanted to be an actress. Her mother made her do it. In fact, the only reason she took this role was because her mother pushed her into it. But afterward, she told her mother she was done with acting.

Kelly Nichols took her brothers to see the movie when it was first released, even though she is running around fully nude and masturbates in one scene. They saw it at the same theater she worked at as an usher when she was a teen.

Development for The Toolbox Murders began in 1977 when Los Angeles producer Tony Didio wanted to make a low-budget horror film after noticing a successful second release of Tobe Hooper's landmark horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). He got in touch with a writing team he knew, rented a print of the film, sat them down in a theater, and gave them one simple mandate: create a variation on this idea and movie. But, besides having a masked killer, this film has almost nothing to do with the plot of Chainsaw. Tobe Hooper did a remake of Toolbox Murders in 2004.