Chainsaw Sally
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   284 of 563 readers found this review helpful.

If I wasn’t so full of myself that I love reading my own work, I could sum up this review in two sentences. “It’s about damned time.” and “Go buy this”. I’ve been waiting for this film since December 2004 when Chainsaw Sally (April Monique Burril) graced our pages in the very first “Christmas with the Scream Queens” special. Normally a 25 month wait would kill a movie for me – I’d build it up so much that it could never compare to my expectations.

“Chainsaw Sally” blew me away, and she’s the coolest freekin’ killer since Freddy Krueger. I waited two years to see this, and it was more than worth it.

Sally’s a librarian in a little Podunk town that’s poised to be overrun by developers. But behind her straitlaced persona lies something vicious, something terrifying, and something that takes a very unique approach to exacting justice on the ne’er-do-wells of the world. See, she has this mental condition that doctors called “f*cked in the head”, and she has a chainsaw. Get where this is headed? Oh yeah!

Besides some vicious chainsaw work, Sally branches out with other devices as well, making for some very creative and very gruesome death scenes. There’s certainly no lack of gore here, and I admire her stick-to-itiveness in her work.

The movie looks and sounds terrific too. Every location it seemed had its own mood lighting, from the starkness of the library to the creepy “Christmas of the damned” lighting of Sally & her brother Ruby’s trailer…which in a way went with the story, since Sally and Ruby had a pretty crappy Christmas a few years back – it’s almost as if their surroundings try to capture that moment in time right before their lives went to hell in a handbasket. The soundtrack had some great rockabilly tunes and helped create the scenes without turning into a series of music videos.

Thanks to some great flashback scenes, we get a feel for why Sally and Ruby are a bit off-kilter, and for us that don’t grasp symbolism very well, it’s pretty clear why Sally takes on a generally masculine role of protector and her brother Ruby…well…let’s just say the glitter store won’t be going out of business any time soon.

This little gem puts bigger budget productions to shame and is easily one of the best slasher films I’ve seen in a long, long time. The story was relevant to the characters, and the characters were well fleshed out, impressive to pull off in a scant 90 minutes.

I’ve never given a horror film a 5 can rating, there always seems to be some element that was lacking in my opinion. I’d normally say that a film of this ilk with very little T&A can’t possibly be a 5 canner, it does make up for it with girl on girl kissing. Hooray for open minded women I say…horray!

“Chainsaw Sally” has raised the bar for future slasher wannabes out there. I hope to see a lot more of her in the future, just as long as it’s not about those overdue books I have in my trunk. Sally is one of the most interesting and FUN characters to grace a horror film in quite some time. A rock solid 5 cans out of 5…and something I recommend you check out.

Added:  Monday, January 08, 2007

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