Director: Fred Olen Ray

Written by: Fred Olen Ray & T.L. Lankford

Starring: Jay Richardson, Gunnar Hansen, Linnea Quigley, Dawn Wildsmith, Michelle Bauer, Esther Elise, Tricia Burns

Music by: Michael Perilstein

Taglines: “They charge an arm and a leg!”

STORY

Following some bizarre chainsaw murders, a private detective is hired to track down a missing girl. He finds her as part of a cult of chainsaw-wielding hookers who sacrifice their victims to an ancient Egyptian god.

OPINION

Fred Olen Ray is one of the quintessential crap merchants in the early VHS era, along with Charles BandCharles Band[/cbc] and other contemporaries. Working largely out of Florida, Ray churned out large numbers of low grade, very cheap movies with just enough violence and nudity to regain their meagre budgets. A couple of his movies became iconic titles of the era, with Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers probably being the one everybody remembers. It’s not hard to see why – interesting artwork, a cameo appearance by the original Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen (in only his 2nd movie since that classic), scream queen legend Linnea Quigley and a catchy title made sure that it made more than its mere $96,000 budget.

Now before watching this movie for the review, I admit that I had only seen 2 of Ray’s movies despite being very familiar with his name. Despite having 113 credits on IMDB to date, I’ve tended to avoid his movies purely because of their low-grade crapness. The two I had seen were Evil Toons (no truth in advertising there – it only has one toon and delivers none of the adult Roger Rabbit escapades promised by its title and box art) and The Alien Dead (absolutely atrocious and amateurish, albeit his début to be fair).

So, I had few hopes for this movie. What I got was a fairly enjoyable, supremely cheesy and stilted movie that’s a worthy time-waster. The film is set up as a kind of hard-boiled detective pastiche with Richardson playing private detective Jack Chandler. He’s hired to find Samantha (Quigley), and goes through the usual motions of a low-budget detective story – that is, all the clues are fairly obvious and Chandler stumbles across things mostly by chance.

Of course, we’ve already seen what’s happening to the bodies that have been found – hookers pick them up in a bar, take them back, tie them up and dismember them with chainsaws. Don’t get too hopeful over the gore aspect though – most of the effects here consist of the chainsaws being pointed just off-camera, while blood is throw from somewhere off-screen. There’s a cheesy charm about it, though. Oh, and of course every female member of the cast gets to take their tops off and wiggle a bit while these scenes are happening!

Overall, it’s a silly romp probably best enjoyed by a group of men after a few beers. It’s not classic, but reasonable for what it is. As a movie, though, it’s terrible – very stilted acting and dialogue, dumb plotting and it does drag in places despite only being 75 minutes long. Oh, and if you want a real taste of how cheesy and silly this movie can be, check out the opening title card, a “heartfelt warning” from Olen Ray himself:

“The CHAINSAWS used in this Motion Picture are REAL and DANGEROUS! They are handled here by seasoned PROFESSIONALS. The makers of this Motion Picture advise strongly against anyone attempting to perform these stunts at home. Especially if you are naked and about to engage in strenuous SEX.
My conscience is clear, (signed) Fred Olen Ray.”

CENSORSHIP

This was a rather contentious movie in its day for a couple of reasons. First of all, the idiocy of 80s BBFC thinking really shone through as the cover art was not allowed to have the word “chainsaw” displayed (although a silhouette of a chainsaw was OK in its place for some reason). So, the UK version was known as Hollywood hookers for some time. According to the BBFC website, 1 minute 6 seconds was cut from its original VHS release, but I haven’t been able to track down information on exactly what. Given that movies like Body Double were routinely censored for the sight of blood on breasts in fear that such imagery was a trigger for rapists, I’d imagine that the murder scenes involving topless women & chainsaws were cut rather than the softcore nudity itself.

The current UK DVD is uncut.

Rating:

TRAILER

Tags: comedic, fred olen ray, linnea quigley, michelle bauer, nudity, power tools

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