Nice effects though.

From my favorite movies..

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

"Das deutsche Kettensägen Massaker" or "The German Chainsaw Massacre" or "Blackest Heart" is a German 1-hour movie from 1990 (over 25 years old already) that came out shortly after Germany became one country again. It is writer and director Christoph Schlingensief's take on the German Reunification. And as you already see from the title, it is a very bloody take as, at the very same time, he pays homage to the American Chainsaw Massacre movies, only that he puts in in a historical context of West Germans and East Germans clashing with chain saws. Oh well, typical Schlingensief I guess. I am a great fan of the man and I think he was a very creative mind, but I still feel that this one here was too absurd even for my taste. There are entertaining moments, no doubt about it, but the whole thing is just so stylized and over the top that it was too much for my personal kind of taste. The cast includes a couple known names, some people who worked regularly with Fassbinder for example, Spengler, Kier, Edel and Hermann to mention only some names that also show how, even with how underground and low-budget this looks, Schlingensief was a well-respected artist and filmmaker, already at the age of under 30, and still is today, almost 6 years after his death. I really wish I would have liked this film more than I actually did, but, on the contrary, I was glad it was so short. I give it a thumbs-down and recommend you to watch something else from his body of work.

This film has to be understood in the correct context; Schlingensief did not try to make a splatter movie, he just uses elements of the splatter genre, just as in other movies he used pieces of "new German cinema", neorealism, and so on. His objective I think was to make a truthful film about the so-called German reunification, and if its weird, confusing, brutal, tasteless, and very badly acted, this only adds to its truthfulness, because that is what the "reunification" actually was like. Christoph Schlingensief made the first honest and adequate film on this event from Germany's most recent history, and up to date it remains the only one.

In "German Chainsaw Massacre" we meet a butcher family.They recognize cheap meat in the East Germans passing over the old border into the West and begin turning them into sausage.Clara fleeing the murder of her sleazy husband and the decaying East lands in the hands of butchers.She is kept alive because the daughter of the family falls in love with her."German Chainsaw Massacre" is a satirical splatter flick that offers lots of cheap gore.It's full of political overtones and owes a lot to Tobe Hooper's horror classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".I enjoyed this low-budget horror comedy and you should too,if you are a fan of German gore and absurdity.

Enfant terrible Schlingensief's view on the relationship between West and East Germans (Wessies and Ossies) is a very black, trash and low-budgeted horror film in which the Ossies are massacred and eaten by the Wessies; that is the way Schlingensief sees relationships between people in general. The story (such as there is) is hard to follow; Schlingensief seems more interested in showing atmosphere. Very gory horror effects, quite some faces are beaten to mash.There are some nice scenes, like the 5 former GDR customs officers who think the GDR still exists, but on the whole watching this film takes quite some perseverance not for the over the top horror (thàt over the top that it is hardly shocking), but for its heavy handed direction, ditto photography (very tiresome at moments), its grim view on life and lack of humour. On the other hand: to Mr. Schlingensief these four aspects may be going hand in hand, which would mean that he at least succeeded in making a very personal film. Hard core vegetarians better be ware.