Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

As Good As It Gets

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1987) * 1/2 (out of 4)This film seemed to become a cult favorite before it was even released due to the wonderful title and the VHS cover that featured some beautiful women carrying a large chainsaw. The movie deals with a P.I. (Jay Richardson) trying to locate a missing girl (Linnea Quigley) and discover a group of hooker who are chopping and dicing men with their chainsaws for a mysterious stranger (Gunnar Hansen). The title alone makes this a cult item but there's very little here to actually make a good movie. Horror fans will like seeing the cult genre stars and there's plenty of nudity but there's not enough here to carry the short 76-minute running time. We can start with some of the good stuff, which includes the rather non-stop nudity from the beautiful cast members. No one will ever accused Quigley and Michelle Bauer of not being incredibly attractive so seeing them running around in their birthday suits will certainly give many a reason to check this film out. The death scenes are all incredibly silly with fake looking body parts being thrown around along with buckets of fake looking blood. The few death scenes look campy enough to put a smile on your face but there's not nearly enough for a film like this. One really bad thing in the movie are all the lame jokes dealing with the Private 'Dick'. These jokes are quite childish and sadly they're never funny and we have to put up with way too many of them. The performances are what you'd expect from a film like this but outside the beauties we do get to see Hansen outside his Leatherface role. The movie has way too many dry spots to really work but I'm sure the title and the cast will have this thing getting new viewers for many years to come.

This is the Fred Olen Ray of his golden era, before start making soft core skinnemax flicks. An homage to The Chainsaw Texas Massacre, with the original Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and a chainsaw duel between two eighties b-movie goddess. What more do you want? Some gore? you got it. Cheese? this is beyond cheese. Fred Olen Ray is a b-movie fan and here he delivers entertainment from a fan to all the fans. Hope he come back to make this kind of stuff. Im a big fan of his old stuff like this one, like Evil Toons and all that kind of stuff. OK, the eighties are gone i understand it but the spirit of it can live. I heard that he will make a sequel to this movie. Hope so.

I wholeheartedly agree with earlier reviewers that said this movie is one of the best of its genre--unfortunately that genre is worthless crap. This is an early example of horror/comedy "scream queen" movies, featuring two of the more ubiquitous screams queens Michelle Bauer and Linnaea Quigley, and directed by one of the pioneers of these kind of films (along with Dave DeCoutea and Jim Wynorski)--Fred Olen Ray. This movie, however, is surprisingly creative and long on plot, and it actually has more than one set and a budget that approaches whole numbers. It is also genuinely funny in places.These kind of films were largely inspired by the 70's Roger Corman-produced films like "Hollywood Boulevard" or "Caged Heat" (Jim Wynorski actually got his start with Corman--thank's a lot, Roger), but there's a good reason many of the directors of those films went onto bigger and (usually) better things while the three amigos here have kept doing this same thing year after year. There's a big difference between seriously making schlocky films that nevertheless demonstrate real talent, and just mugging your way through self-consciously campy "cult films" in attempt to disguise a total lack of it. Olen Ray, at least, has a genuine love of film which shows in some of his best work (Wynorski, as he himself brags in every interview, is more interested in improving his own dating life than in making good movies, while the openly gay DeCouteau is just a hack by any standard).As for the "scream queens", Quigley and Bauer, they certainly camp it up as usual, but make enough of effort that they seem more like genuine actresses than strippers here. This is the kind of the movie that really floats to the top of the HUGE pool of worthless crap movies that have been churned out since the early 80's, but it also, mind you, doesn't quite float ABOVE that pool. If you like these kinds of movies, of course, you won't want to miss it. And for everyone else?--well, you could do worse, I guess.

With its tongue firmly planted in its cheek, this camp B-movie horror, by Fred Olen Ray, manages to be fairly infectious fun, delivering everything one could wish for in a movie with such a delightfully trashy title: a ridiculously silly plot, a half dozen women willing to strip off in front of the camera, some crap special effects (plastic body parts and a few gallons of fake blood), and a running time just short enough to ensure that the film doesn't outstay its welcome.Jay Richardson plays Jack Chandler, a sleazy private-eye searching for missing teenager Samantha (Linnea Quigley). During the course of his investigations, he meets Mercedes (Michelle Bauer), a sexy, but murderous hooker, and subsequently discovers the existence of a chainsaw worshipping cult, led by The Stranger, (Gunnar Hansen).With its deliberately cheesy film-noir voice-over, some very bad comedy, frequent nudity from scream queens Quigley and Bauer, and some daft OTT power-tool dismemberment, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers isn't as unwatchable as the title suggests. If you're in the mood for a spot of unpretentious low-budget fun, then check out this entertaining 80s cult classic.