People have weird heroes. I, being a well-rounded person myself, count among my idols the director (slash producer, etc,etc.) Fred Olen Ray. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, at night I dream that he comes to me. In this very normal recurring fantasy, I'm wasting away at work when the legend of trash cinema himself emerges only to whisk me away from my mundane IT job and teach me the almost Kung Fu like ways of his sudo-Coremen film style. He takes me to a mountain top where a training montage plays in which I learn how to make a movie in a few days with very little more to go on than a title, all while he makes 7 straight to video films including 3 about sharks and a kids movie at the same time. Afterwords we hang out with scream queens around a Jacuzzi Andy Sidaris style and Fred-o, which I call him because we are buds, films 2 more movies both with bikini in the title. Unfortunately, when I awake the next day he never shows up to save me at my shit job. The man has stocked the bottom shelf of the new release rack over the span of several formats providing everything from cable booby flicks to family Redbox shit about a road trip on Christmas with a dog in lead role and the douche pilot guy from Starship Troopers. He famously makes movies in record time and with very little. Sometimes these films, with no small help from some of my favorite cult celebrities, become straight up classics as is the case with Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988).
Jack (John Henry Richardson), our hero, is a wisecracking cliche-noir style detective, think a little more Mike Hammer and less Picard in those holodeck episodes. He has been charged with locating a runaway (Linnea Quigley) and tracks her to the local seedy underbelly, that recently has been plagued with prostitute related murders. Attempting to recover the girl the private dick uncovers a chainsaw-wielding death cult of beautiful 80's ladies led by a madman (Gunnar Hansen). Some awesome naked chainsaw dancing goes down along with some limb removal. Pretty much what you thought the plot was going to be but with slapstick gusto.
The film has a cast of genre legends and despite lacking the third Nightmare Sister it feels perfectly matched in tone. It is all goofy as shit, which is the case with most of Mr. Olen Ray's stuff, but between the golden casting and perfectly not funny gags, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is something special. In the realm of parody films, it surpasses big-budget output like the Scary Movie franchise and places itself alongside films of a higher caliber like Naked Gun, or at least Spy Hard. Altogether it's grindhouse Airplane! full of genre callbacks, completed with extra blood and tits.
John Henry Richardson a regular in the straight to video market gives hands-down his best channeling Leslie Nielsen and Stacy Keach at the same time. Leatherface, himself, is a fun meta addition and looks like he is having fun as the stranger. We get great chainsaw equipped performances from Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer (listed as one of her many aliases Michelle McLellan) including some surprisingly well-meshed fan service.
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers is an unrecognized gold standard for horror parody. At the very least one of the true classics of its type. I probably shouldn't go around telling people its one of my favorite films, but I probably shouldn't do a lot of shit, like type out movie rants, post them on the internet and call them reviews.
1h 15min | 1988
Director: Fred Olen Ray
Writers: Fred Olen Ray (screenplay) (as Dr. S. Carver), T.L. Lankford (screenplay) (as B.J. Nestles)
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