Chainsaw Sally

Despite an engaging central performance from April Monique Burril as sexy schizophrenic Sally, the goth girl with a penchant for power-tool mayhem, this low budget trash horror didn't quite cut it for me, never attempting the true horror one might expect from a film that frequently references The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, nor delivering the gruesome graphic splatter from one that features a cameo from none other than the 'godfather of gore' himself, Herschell Gordon Lewis.

Director Jimmyo Burril, lucky spouse of leading lady April, clearly has a great love of the genre, and his script throws up plenty of suitably warped and offensive situations, but the full potential of his delightfully deviant material is often left unrealised: Sally's early murders are frustratingly gore-free, her severing of a guy's tally-whacker remains strictly out of frame (although the addition of the sparkler to the wound was a nice touch), the splattery demise of a woman forced to consume acid is regrettably brief, and some nail-gun action towards the end really could have been much nastier.

Whilst the absence of in-your-face, gross-out effects can probably be put down to budgetary restraints, no such excuse can be applied to the low standard of acting from all but its attractive star or the weak stabs at dark humour.

4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for IMDb (although I was tempted to round it down to 4 to counterbalance the suspiciously high proportion of over-enthusiastic reviews here on IMDb).