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).

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????

OK - I know it is not a great movie (not really even a good one) but I have to admit that I LOVED this flick! There is something charming about a mild mannered librarian with an almost super-hero, goth, chainsaw wielding alter ego with a transvestite little brother. My friends and I laughed throughout the entire thing - and kept making comments like, "...if she were our local librarian - we'd totally hang out!" I also really enjoyed the music. We were all ready to absolutely hate (love/hate relationship) this movie, but by the end - we all had to admit that we liked it. I think I'm planning on a purchase so I can see it again!

"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.

All horror fans must see this. It is one of the best low budget horror films I have seen. I have just came from seeing the east coast premier in Baltimore. It had a pretty good story. and had some great bloody gory kill scenes(my personal favorite in horror films) Sally's brother Rudy was my favorite in the movie.He was a crazy drag queen in little skirts and high heel shoes.Gunner Hansen had a small role in the movie. It was great to see him return to the big screen. Let me just say the quite ones are the ones you have to watch for. I can't wait till it comes out on DVD. It is a must have. I wish this movie and all the people in it the best of luck.