MicroCinema Scene

By day, Sally is a shy, reserved librarian, coldly shushing patrons for talking too loud and chiding those who use bad grammar and spelling. But, when darkness falls, she straps on a Hot Topic goth/club kid wardrobe and brandishes a chainsaw, slicing up anyone that infuriates her. That is the basic idea behind Shock-O-Rama’s long-in-production horror flick Chainsaw Sally, a low-budget feature that’s actually more entertaining than you’d think.

Sally lives in the woods with her ultra-gay (and ultra-awesome!) club kid brother, both of them rejects from Party Monster and the psychological product of viewing their parents murdered by a trio of loonies when they were ten years old. It doesn’t help that her last loving parental image is that of her dad (the original Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen) carving the criminals up with a handy chainsaw, telling Sally to always protect the family, right as he lay dying from an unspecified wound. It’s enough to turn anyone into a Juggalo.

So when greedy developers want to plow said homestead, of course Sally puts a ramshackle slice and dice plan into action to keep her and her brother safe. Somehow, a middle-age, bearded gent, who’s also a millionaire, comes to town to claim the property, also somehow claiming numerous pieces of ass, as every woman in town gets wet at the mere site of him, which is disturbing because he looks like Richard Karn, the bearded dude from Home Improvement. Soon enough, he’s all up in Sally’s business and as much as she finds herself falling for him, once she discovers that he’s about to sell the land, her feelings quickly change from crushing to family protectiveness, she comes up with a plan so convoluted and complicated to frame Al Borland, that I have to give it two Tim Allen-grunts up.

Let’s be honest: this film has a lot of things going against it—atrocious dinner theater-level acting, close-ups of chainsaws that are clearly not turned on and a series of plot-holes bigger than Rosie O’Donnell’s ass, but I’d lying if I say I wasn’t fully entertained the whole way through. One ridiculous set-piece after another, wonderfully set-up via many badly delivered lines, lead to a mixture of laughs and gore-drenched deaths that keep the viewer entertained throughout the 90 minute running time. Little bits of inspired insanity are so sprinkled masterfully through-out the film, from the grandfatherly cameo by Hershell Gordon Lewis to the décor of Sally’s house, help this out, and the filmmakers were obviously trying to reach a little higher than the average straight-to-video filmmaker.

Chainsaw Sally, for all it’s faults, and there are many, is a fun film that is as silly as it is gory. And sometimes, on a Saturday night, that’s all you want in a movie.

For more information, read our interview with Chainsaw Sally!

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