Bursting with ingenuity and good old fashioned, “come on pals, let’s make a movie!” can-do energy, Sander Maran’s debut feature, Chainsaws Were Singing, is a gleefully gory musical romantic horror comedy that really hits the spot and proves that sometimes fun is more than enough. A gloriously overstuffed mish-mash of influences from across the genre spectrum, Chainsaws Were Singing is a love letter to low budget cinema and also a love letter to love, itself. A hyper-violent cross between films like Cannibal! The Musical, Bad Taste, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; Chainsaws Were Singing celebrates lowbrow art in such a delightfully ridiculous way that it’s impossible not to smile.
There is a lot going on in Chainsaws Were Singing, almost too much – we’ll get to that later – but the main thread of the plot follows new lovers Tom (Karl Ilves) and Maria (Laura Niils) as they meet, get separated by a chainsaw killer named, well, Killer (Martin Russ), and his crazy backwoods family, and their journey to reconnect. While Maria is held captive by Killer and his family, Tom desperately searches for her in the wild Estonian woods, collecting an odd menagerie of allies along the way – not all of whom make it to the end of the movie.
While Tom and his motley crew are having their own adventures, Maria has to deal with Killer’s family which includes a domineering mother (Rita Rätsepp) – naturally – a pair of romantically involved twins, Pepe (Ra Ragnar Novod) and Kevin (Henryk Johan Novod) and their baby Desiree, and young Pelle (Peeter Maran), a killer with the heart of an artist. Maria’s side of the story is definitely the darker one, but even in the film’s most serious moments, Maran manages to find time and space to insert a song or a gag that reminds the viewer that we’re meant to be having fun, and it works every time.
The story behind Chainsaws Were Singing is over a decade long, with Maran not only directing the film, but also serving as the composer, editor, cinematographer, VFX supervisor, producer, and writer. For a film that’s been in post-production for ten years, Chainsaws Were Singing still smells fresh as a daisy, offering creative gags, musical numbers that range from laugh out loud funny to heartbreakingly romantic, and a never-ending enthusiasm for the art.
The only real hiccup with Chainsaws Were Singing is the tendency for a filmmaker working alone for ten years could lead end up with a person who gets precious with the material, and the film’s nearly two-hour running time is a bit intimidating. This preciousness is evidenced in Tom’s meandering adventure in which characters are picked up and quickly shed without much impact on the plot. A pair of bumbling cops don’t amount to much, and later a grizzled man in the woods lead’s Tom and his new friend Jaan (Janno Puusepp) on a wild goose chase that is entertaining, but doesn’t really go anywhere. There’s probably eighty minutes of plot in Chainsaws Were Singing, but it’s hard to complain when even the detours are entertaining, so it’s not much more than a nitpick.
The film more than makes up for its frequent tangents by packing them with hilarious gags, over-the-top gore, and some ridiculously entertaining diversions. Killer isn’t just a clever nickname, Martin Ruus takes this mute brute and turns him into a sympathetic psycho who kills because he thinks it’s the only thing that he’s good at. While it might not be the only thing, he definitely turns killing into an artform as he hacks and slashes his way through everyone in his path, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes as a form of self-therapy, and sometimes just for fun.
Fully committed performances, endless fun gore gags, and the kind of energy that brings to mind a young Sam Raimi, Chainsaws Were Singing is one of the most exciting debut features of the year. It’s a film that out-Troma’s Troma, taking all of the enthusiasm for extremity and mixing it with genuine heart and love for the genre in a way that just makes you want to give to aggressively silly slasher a big ol’ hug. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t take Sander Maran another ten years to get around to the next one, because once the world gets a look at Chainsaws Were Singing, they’re going to want more.