Chainsaw Sally (2004)

Undescribable Perfection

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie is really bad. I don't mean cheap or amateurish, as I understand low budget independent film making has many obstacles. My problem is that it is written terribly, acted even worse and is just a massive rip off of John Waters brilliant, Serial Mom. The title character ( played by the fleshy and comatose April Burrill ) kills those who offend her sensibilities by acting in ways she feels are unacceptable. Bad manners, talking in the library, not recycling ( whoops, that's from Serial Mom, sorry )... well, u get the picture. Basically the writer has taken Beverly Sutphin, Waters's domestic maniac, and put her in some punk rock ( read: I bought this cool gear at Hot Topic ) clothes. I could let the ripping off slide if the damn movie was even a little entertaining but it's not. I gave this one star. I do like to find one positive in any movie I hate, and in this, it's the actress Kristen Hudsen. She is beautiful, sexy and the only person who appears on screen that can act. Why isn't she Chainsaw Sally????

"Chainsaw Sally" is one of those movies that has a premise to die for. All I needed to know about this was that it was about a librarian by day and a chainsaw-wielding murderess by night. I can more than identify with that basic plot, so when "Chainsaw Sally" finally got its DVD release, I jumped on it immediately. Unfortunately, "Chainsaw Sally" comes across as a bad inside joke.The film follows Sally (April Monique Burril), a small-town librarian who likes to keep things in order. Everyone in town considers her the local frigid spinster. However, Sally and her irritating drag queen little brother form quite a macabre little pair who use their spare time at home to reenact chase scenes from horror movies. And when someone rubs Sally the wrong way, she trades in her stereotypical librarian garb for a mall-punk outfit (which has her looking like a sad Switchblade Symphony reject) and goes ballistic with her chainsaw. A stranger who inherits a house in town starts snooping around for information on the house's history, and turns to Sally for her librarian skills and perhaps a bit of wooing. Will he get too close and uncover her secret? Who cares? There's so much wrong with "Chainsaw Sally" that I don't know where to begin. Sally's victims never recognize her as the dorky local librarian, even though the only thing that's different about her is a costume downgrade. One of the local snots who makes fun of her is later wooed by her at a "goth" club, and they engage in a quick sapphic smooch--yet she never notices it's the same chick. What's more is no one seems to be concerned that so many people in such a small town are constantly disappearing or being murdered. The amateur actors, especially the lead, all come across as unenthusiastic. Burril seems to attempt channeling Pamela Sprinsteen's "Angela" from the "Sleepaway Camp" sequels, with her absurd moralizing before each kill. "DO YOU KNOW THAT LIBRARY BOOK WAS THREE WEEKS LATE?!" While this dialogue can be amusing at times, Burril is clueless as how do give a proper comedic delivery. She just sounds bored. The supporting cast doesn't fare much better and mostly sleepwalk through their roles. The genre vets are in this only to give the movie some cred: the original Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) pops up for a few seconds in a flashback, and gore-god HG Lewis has a throwaway role as the hardware store employee where Sally buys her weapons.What's just as distracting as the bad writing and acting is the awful editing. This completely unscary horror movie is filmed and edited like a daytime soap opera. Often a scene will end with characters talking and another scene will pickup with a different set of characters talking about something unrelated. Repeat. I will say that there are some interesting and inventive murder ideas here, but the execution of these scenes is very poor, usually not showing enough to satisfy even the slightest of gorehounds. Often the scene will cut to Sally's dopey mug instead of showing what she's doing to her victim, which just makes it all the more irritating.The most frustrating thing about the film for me (nerd alert! nerd alert!) is that the filmmakers obviously know nothing about libraries. The small town public library in "Chainsaw Sally" consists of a small room with a bunch of books strewn loosely about on shelving units against the walls. They don't even have call numbers on them! Sure, this is probably due to budget constraints, but they could have at least tried! To quote Parker Posey's character in "Party Girl," "We'll just put the books any damn place we please! We don't care!" That classic outburst pretty much sums up "Chainsaw Sally"--a poorly thrown together movie that leaves the viewer with a big mess and a headache.I was really looking forward to this one, and I'm sorry to say I do not recommend it.

As a big fan of horror and independent movies, I have been looking forward to Chainsaw Sally, there are cameos by both Hershell Gordon Lewis and Gunnar Hansen. They are more of small roles, but, not big enough that I want to discard the cameo title.- However, this movie carries it's own and the cameos are just a fun element thrown in for fun. That Gunnar Hansen, is Sallys father is more of a tribute to the old Texas chainsaw than a name, to draw audiences in -also, because even to this day, it is surprisingly few who actually know who Gunnar Hansen is. (weird) I definitely think we have a new cult icon on our hands here with Chainsaw Sally, she speaks both to punk, and goths alike, and she blends the style adding lots of blood.This was only the first movie, and I bet that with the sequel, she will have planted herself much more firmly into many other peoples minds. The idea is simple but, April has a style of her own that adds a lot to the character, she is not just another pretty face. The acting is in the vein of Tempes films, Mark Redfield reminding of James L. Edwards. The only main flaw, is the sound, sometimes the dialogue drowns out behind sound effects, or just seems as if the microphone was too far away. Making small films myself, I know this can be a tricky problem. While I mentioned there is blood in the movie (and plenty of it) it is surprisingly gore free for i's genre. (independent horror) This was a conscious decision made by the director; to get the point across, without showing too many graphic deaths.- this method especially works with ascene involving a razor, and a sparkler. it's both fun and gross. If you are abig fan of independent horror, or just want to see something new, I definitely suggest you go see Chainsaw Sally.

Chainsaw Sally was amazingly great! I was so surprised with the star quality of the film. From start to finish Sally was extremely entertaining, the acting was wonderful, locations and set design were superb. The story is of a woman who loses her parents at a young age to 3 escaped mental patients. This sets her on her path of "killing the bad". The shiesty villain in this film is Harvey Benton. He's wanting to build what he calls "Benton's Quest" but the one thing he needs to get his plans underway is a 200 acre plot of land, on this land is the little farmhouse that Sally once called home. Benton calls in the owner of the land, Steve Kellerman, to convince him to sell the property so that he can go about launching his renovation, and modernization of the town, that's when things get messy. Sally and her brother Ruby set out to rid themselves of the troublesome Harvey Benton. Sally stops to right some wrongs along her way, taking care of an asshole boyfriend, and a really nasty bitch who "needs spelling lessons". I found that the story for Chainsaw Sally was original using the idea that Sally could, in a way, be considered a super heroine. Chainsaw Sally's viewers are most certainly in for a treat when they pick up this film.