This should win an award for actually LIVING UP to its great title. This is probably the finest film we’ll ever see on the subject of naked girls who kill people with chainsaws. It’s one of director Fred Olen Ray’s best and all the more cool because he shot it in less than a week.
Most video stores in the long gone days stocked this in the horror section, but it’s every inch the campy comedy that the title indicates. The foundation is a spoof of 1940s hard-boiled detective flicks with plenty of nudity and splatter on top.
One of the smartest things Ray does here is play off the modest production values as part of the joke. The kill scenes are mostly simple shots of one of the girls hacking at an offscreen victim with a chainsaw while the crew behind the camera comically pelts her with novelty shop body parts and stage blood tossed out of Dixie cups and shot from spray bottles. It’s a riot.
Meanwhile, Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer are the perfect B-movie scream queens because A) they’re up for anything, B) they can be funny and C) they can do it in a movie where one take is all they get. Both play pivotal roles here. Who’s got the better scene? Linnea’s topless chainsaw dance or Michelle’s great first murder in which she wears nothing but a maniacal look on her face? I still can’t decide.
Bottom line: If you’re the kind of person who would rent a movie called Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, you’re probably going to like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.