Chainsaw Sally Movie Review (2004)

20 years ago, you could still go to video stores and rent a handful of B-movie Horror flicks on a Friday night. That’s been the story of my life on the weekends when I wasn’t playing a show – the video store, the horror section and Horror movies. That was meat for the beast, the food of my soul! That would explain why my knowledge of Horror movies runs so deep. I’m sure several of us Horror geeks have the same story. Nowadays all we have is streaming, you can’t even go the damned Red Box! Streaming B-Horror doesn’t have the same feeling to me, it’s not quite as fun.

Today I’d like to speak about one of those movies that I randomly grabbed on a Friday night – Chainsaw Sally! The cover got me, it featured a cute girl wielding a chainsaw. I’m not a total pig, the young lady reminded me of a girl that I dated in my early teens – kind of nerdy looking but in the cutest of ways. I knew I had to check it out. The movie box also had Gunnar Hansen’s name on the cover, so yes, the OG Leatherface was in it, that’s all I needed to know. I added it to my pile and made my way to the front to check out. When I got home, I watched Chainsaw Sally first, my wife thought it was terrible, I didn’t feel the same, I loved it, I thought the story was well written and the acting wasn’t bad. I watched it twice before I took it back. A few months later, I’m in the video store and Chainsaw Sally is on sale for a few bucks, so I grab it without thinking twice about it. Over the course of the past 20 years, I think I’ve watched it several times. I just finished it up again, because I wanted to share my love of Sally for our 31 days of Horror!!
 
Sadly, today I realized while I find the character and actress who portrays Chainsaw Sally (April Monique Burril) to be absolutely striking, the movie isn’t very good. It’s not for the lack of story, it’s great and Sally herself is magnificent, it’s the camera shots, grade of the filming and the other actors and actresses that ruins the movie. It’s basically a Porno without ANY sex or well any that you can see, there’s only one tit shot and much to my dismay, they’re not Sally’s! Seriously, I thought my TV was set to “Games” from where I’d been watching Football, so I had to double check, nope it was set to “Movie”.
 
The synopsis of the movie is simple. Several years back a family was brutally attacked by some escaped mental patients and none of them were ever heard from again. As the movie unfolds you soon realize it was Sally’s family that was murdered, as they show lackluster dreamscapes of the horrific incident. And that’s where Gunnar Hansen makes his appearance, after being shot he still has it in him to fire up his Chainsaw and hack the mental patients up. And Sally bears witness to it all, in turn this madness turns her into a serial killer with a love for Chainsaws, vengeance and cannibalism. Both Sally and her brother Ruby are the only ones to survive the attack. Ruby is a crossdressing nutjob that tends the house and “cooks” their meals, which happen to be whomever Sally kills. In the daytime Sally is a lighthearted librarian with big round glasses, but don’t get loud in her library or she’ll fuck you up! The whole center of the movie is based off the family home - a rich real estate developer is trying to sell it to develop the land, the man who owns it is in town to entertain offers. There’s no background as to how this fella owns it or why Sally and Ruby are living in a trailer in the wooded area on the property as opposed to in the house, nobody knows they’re there either. The film gets huge bonus points for getting Herschell Gordon Lewis to make a cameo – the wizard of gore and that commands some serious respect! The music in the movie isn’t too bad either, it features Calabrese and Dead Elvi.

I loved this movie until this last viewing, this time it just didn’t go over well. I think I’m getting old, maybe it’s my lust for Sally that kept this movie on my shelves all these years. The filming is C grade at best with a few moments of D quality. The kills didn’t hold up well either, the effects are just poor. However, I can still say without a shred of doubt that Sally is a stone-cold fox and that’s reason enough to watch it. Plus, it’s a lighthearted take on Tobe Hooper’s classic, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Admittedly, this movie did have a significant influence on me – I wrote a song based on Sally although it never made it past the demo stage, I really liked the song and had high hopes for it. While I did write the song about the Sally character, I thought of the cute little girl that wore glasses when I was 13 who wouldn’t let me put my hands down her pants and would only let me rub her breasts over her shirt. I’m sure she has 6 kids now and still doesn’t like me. HA! The over the shirt groping was still fun! The soundtrack of the movie also influenced me a great deal, I thought if Calabrese are landing songs in movies I can too so I investigated it, and a side project band I had at the time called The Hangin’ Brainz landed the lead off track in a terrible movie called Splatter Disco that features the legendary Ken Foree. That was a really good time in my life and that band is still only a call away from being put back together for some more fucked up songs and good times! There’s an album worth of material ready to be recorded but we have other stuff happening in our lives.

The Chainsaw Sally universe has now been built up into a series, I believe they might have 3 or more seasons, I could be wrong. But I do know there’s more to it than just this movie. Look it up when you have a moment and don’t pass up on a quick viewing of this flick, although the filming is slack – April Monique Burril wielding a chainsaw is fucking stunning!