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The German Chainsaw Massacre – Movie Review

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Every now and then I like to educate people about German horror movies of the past and the present. And when I saw this movie, I had to review it.

About the Movie

Das Deutsche Kettensägenmassaker (also known as Blackest Heart) is an homage, or maybe more of a parody, of the 1974 movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as you might see by the title alone. In 1990, shortly after the wall fell and the borders between eastern and western Germany opened, Clara kills her husband and flees to west Germany, ready to meet a friend there. Instead she meets an inbred cannibal family. Chaos ensues.

German Chainsaw Massacre Review

No idea why former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is listed on this poster.

It’s written and directed by Christoph Schlingensief, who made this movie as part of his “German Trilogy”, after 100 Years of Adolf Hitler and before Terror 2000. The most notable actor to appear in this movie is Udo Kier as Jonny.

Its runtime is 63 minutes, and those 63 are more than enough.

Review

The German Chainsaw Massacre is a movie you have to see to believe. The first shot of the movie is of a woman cut in half, with her guts hanging out. It’s just a short flash, before the movie even starts. From the first scene everything just feels weird. Clara’s husband is played by a woman, masked as a man like you’d see it in a cheap theater production. Adding to that are many uses of the Dutch angle and other weird angles.

Later on we meet the family. One daughter is a lesbian, Margit, played by the same woman who played Clara’s husband. The other characters are just crazy and weird, Udo Kier at one point sets his hair on fire, running around the room singing “My hair is on fire”. That kind of crazy.

Blackest Heart movie Review

A young Udo Kier as Jonny (yes his hair is on fire)

The whole movie has an underground feeling to it, almost like a movie you shouldn’t be watching. Even though it is not scary, it surely is shocking and making you feel uncomfortable.

The gore is crazy. It is very cheap, but I feel it’s so cheap that they might have just used actual animal guts, which adds another level of creepy. The shot of the woman ripped in half is surely a gory highlight, and you get the full context of that shot later in the movie. But there are many more uses of gore, some not as good as others, but all in all still effective.

Final Thoughts

This movie is as much a horror movie as the Troma movies. It’s not scary, but excessive in gore and other taboo topics that make you feel uncomfortable instead of scared. It is cheaply made with some bad effects. But it still is interesting and worth a watch. Just know what you are getting into before you start it. It’s experimental film making mixed with strong social commentary.

If you like Troma or want to see something really out of the ordinary, or just plain weird, give The German Chainsaw Massacre a try.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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