There are two kinds of film festival-goers: those who look forward to seeing that year’s Oscar contenders a few weeks before everybody else; and those who go out of their way for their only opportunity to see a splatter comedy musical from Estonia in a prestige theater screening. At my hometown’s own Virginia Film Festival every fall, I find myself taking a punk-rock pass on the gala films (like this year’s Anora) in favor of some underground weirdness.
Chainsaws Were Singing, which reportedly spent a decade in post-production, follows the parallel stories of down-on-his-luck Tom (Karl Ilves) and Maria (Laura Niils), whom he meets during a suicide attempt and falls for in a whirlwind romance. When Maria is abducted by a chainsaw-wielding killer, whose name is literally “Killer,” Tom enlists the help of a screwball passerby named Jan (Janno Puusepp) to follow Killer into the backwoods and rescue Maria from his cannibalistic family.
Chainsaws Were Singing’s clearest antecedent is early Peter Jackson—particularly Bad Taste—both in its freewheeling anarchy and its video-store-kid allusions to films both obvious (Texas Chainsaw, Wrong Turn) and unexpected (Return of the Jedi). Gags of both verbal and sight varieties fly nonstop at the viewer, and if it wasn’t shot on 16mm, the grain and color grading do a damn good job of faking it. In short, this is thorough grindhouse pastiche.
So I have to wonder if that decade of post-production hurt its chances for broader appeal, considering it was made at the peak of a wave that has since receded. Joe Begos is the only one doing retro grindhouse to any acclaim these days, despite my fondness for the overtly revisionist experiments of Angie de Alba and Paul Ragsdale. Even Cattet and Forzani seem to have pumped the brakes on their arthouse Eurosleaze revival.
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Furthermore, Chainsaws Were Singing displays a politically incorrect streak that feels out of step with the times, but despite its parodic tone, its earnestness saves it from Astron-6-style cynicism. Still, I imagine it would have made more of a splash had it landed in Jason Eisener’s heyday instead of riding the bench to the tune of 11 years.
Which brings me to the songs. In the interest of full disclosure, I do not like musicals. Chainsaws Were Singing does nothing to threaten that stance. Still, someone with an affinity for the form might find more to like in these undercooked, overproduced numbers, complete with an excess of choruses and a “chainsaw solo” that sounds great in theory but is tuneless in practice. Since the film already runs long at 117 minutes, I wouldn’t mind if the songs were cut altogether.
Chainsaws Were Singing is basically critic-proof since it defies you to take it any more seriously than it takes itself. You have to admire the bravado and pluck it takes to pull something like this off, especially in a country without much of a global cinema presence. Even when the jokes or songs fall flat, the scrappy splatstick enthusiasm is infectious. If it manages to find distribution after its festival run, I’d encourage a detour to Estonia on your next road trip to Tromaville.
