CHAINSAW SALLY (2004) ** ½

Sally (April Monique Burril) is a seemingly innocent looking librarian by day, chainsaw-wielding maniac by night.  She murders people when they talk in the library and hunts them down if they don’t return their books or pay their late fees.  She was molded to become a killer at an early age, due to a traumatizing incident in her childhood and Sally sets out to kill anyone who threatens her family again.

Chainsaw Sally was shot on video and filmed in Baltimore.  As a Maryland resident, I enjoyed hearing some of the thick Maryland accents.  It’s also cool seeing local genre heroes like George Stover and Count Gore De Vol appearing in cameos.  We also get Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen playing Sally’s father and the Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis pops up as the owner of the local hardware store.  

All the stuff with Chainsaw Sally sawing up her victims is just fine.  I liked the scenes where she and her brother play a demented version of Twister as well as “Toolbox Murders:  The Home Game”.  We also get a great scene where Sally ties up a woman and pours acid down her throat until she pees something that looks like the consistency of baked beans.  

Unfortunately, there’s a subplot about a shady real estate deal that eats up a lot of screen time and is kinda dull.  It does give us at least one inexplicable Jaws reference though, so it can’t be all bad.  The weak stabs at Tarantino-esque humor and dialogue (like a conversation about Batman being gay) are obvious and aren’t very funny though.

Chainsaw Sally is better than most low budget shot-on-video horror movies.  However, it falls well short of being a classic of the genre.  Still, it’s nice seeing the future director of Gerald’s Game, Mike Flanagan getting his start as the director of photography (which is probably why the film looks better than a lot of its shot-on-video contemporaries).