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Released by: Retromedia/Bayview Entertainment
Released on: June 24th, 2014.
Director: Fred Olen Ray
Cast: Linnea Quigley, Gunnar Hansen, Jay Richardson, Michelle Bauer
Year: 1988
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The Movie:
Fred Olen Ray's Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers was first released to DVD in 2001 and then re-released for its twentieth anniversary in 2008. Both of those discs went out of print but through distributor Bayview Entertainment the twentieth anniversary edition lives again. For those who haven't seen it, the film (co-written by Ray and TL Lankford) follows a private dick named Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson). He's a broke ass detective tasked with tracking down an heiress named Samantha (Linnea Quigley) who has run away from home. As he combs the seedy side of the city of angels looking for her, the men in blue at the L.A.P.D. are trying to solve a rash of murders in which men have been hacked up with chainsaws.
Jack gets a big lead in his case when he finds out that the cops have brought in a young woman matching Samantha's description as a suspect in the chainsaw killings. He heads down to learn what he can learn but it's not her. He does, however, swipe a matchbook from the evidence pile that leads him to a hotel and to a hooker named Mercedes (Michelle Bauer). After taking her out, he finally finds Samantha working as a stripper in a seedy dive but before he can do much about it, the girls drug him and knock him out. When he wakes up he's bound and unable to free himself, forced to wait with the ladies for the arrival of The Master (Gunnar Hanson), the strange leader of an underground ancient Egyptian chainsaw worshipping cult!
There's no pretense here, not attempts to disguise this film as anything that it is not - the title (which was originally just Chainsaw Hookers, Hollywood was added later to make it sounds more like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) pretty much tells you exactly what you're in for. This is, quite literally, a movie about hookers with chainsaws and it just so happens to be set in Hollywood. Ray's film gleefully celebrates that truth in advertising and delivers pretty much exactly what anyone setting out to watch a movie with this title would want: nudity, chainsaws, goofy humor and hey, Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen as the cult leader. A pretty great casting choice there and he actually winds up doing quite well in the role.
The film really belongs to Richardson, in that he's the male lead and gets most of the dialogue. As the story centers around him and we pay close attention to his film noir/hardboiled detective style narration we travel along with him into the sordid underbelly of Los Angeles and meet the various bizarre characters that populate this world. Thankfully most of these characters are attractive ladies, the kind that take their clothes off a lot so the 'naked lady' factor in this one definitely helps to hold our attention (particularly when you factor in that both Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer spend most of the movie running around sans clothing). There aren't really any attempts to scare here, the whole thing plays out with a wink and a nod and tongue placed firmly in cheek, but it moves fast and delivers a pretty constant barrage of crazy set pieces. The effects are awful, the mostly consist of someone off camera throwing body parts and spraying fake blood at those on camera, but the movie plays this up too (at one point a fake hand lands on Bauer's breast, she gives it a dirty look and then swats it away).
Video/Audio/Extras:
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers arrives on DVD in 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen from a transfer taken from the only known existing 35mm elements, which Ray notes in the commentary is a theatrical print, hence the print damage that we see. And that's basically what this transfer looks like - a semi-tattered theatrical print. It could have been cleaned up more, sure, but the scratches and minor print damage don't really detract from the experience much. Some of the darker scenes are really dark but this has got more to do with the low budget origins and shooting conditions than anything else. Colors look reasonably good here though and it's nice to see the movie in widescreen.
The English language Dolby Digital Mono mix on the disc is about on par with the video. It's not perfect and it won't blow you away with reference quality sound but it feels like an accurate representation of the source material. Things are a little flat sounding but again, this is an older low budget movie, you have to expect that to a certain extent. Dialogue is typically easy to follow and understand and any hiss or distortion that does creep into the mix is minimal and not particularly distracting.
The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary with writer/director Fred Olen Ray and writer TL Lankford that actually offers up a pretty great overview of how and why this movie came to be. Ray does most of the talking here as he explains how pre-selling the home video rights helped him raise a good chunk of the budget before going on to talk about how he wound up borrowing equipment from a different shoot he was working on to film this feature in his spare time using short end film stock. He discusses the involvement of the cast and crew, while Lankford notes how he'd be writing away on the script off camera while Ray and company were filming just a few feet away. They talk about the locations that were used, what was shot on location versus what was shot in a studio, they point out that although the movie has a lot of nudity it doesn't have any actual sex in it and they talk about how the casting was done for this picture. It's a lively track with a good sense of humor that also manages to be interesting and informative.
The disc also includes a Making Of†Featurette that runs about twenty-five minutes in length and which features interviews with Ray, Quigley and Bauer. There's a lot of talk about how the two actresses became involved with Ray on this picture, what it was like dealing with some of the stunt scenes involving the actual chainsaws, some of the effects, how they worked around the nearly non-existent budget that they had to work with and quite a bit more.
Rounding out the extras are the film's original trailer, the five minute “Nite Owl Theater†episode in which we get to head into Fred's 'home' to witness his decadent lifestyle (originally shot for the old Retromedia VHS and DVD release way back when) where naked girls play twister and his wife Kim parades around with her knockers out. Menus and chapter selection are also included.
The Final Word:
Retromedia's reissue of the Twentieth Anniversary Edition of Fred Olen Ray's seminal Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers may not floor you with amazing audio and video quality but the extras are interesting and fun and the movie itself is a veritable trash classic. Funny, sexy and as goofy as they come, this is eighty minutes of ridiculous entertainment served up with all sorts of low budget laughs.
