Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Fred Olen Ray
• Written by S. Carver, T.L. Lankford, B.J. Nestles, and Fred Olen Ray
• Starring
  • Gunnar Hansen
  • Linnea Quigley
  • Jay Richardson
  • Dawn Wildsmith
  • Michelle Bauer

The CHAINSAWS used in this Motion Picture are REAL
and DANGEROUS! They are handled here by seasoned
PROFESSIONALS. The makers of this Motion Picture advise
strongly against anyone attempting to perform these stunts
at home. Especially if you are naked and about to engage
in strenuous SEX.
My Conscience is Clear
Fred Olen Ray Now I ask you — with a prologue like that, how could you hold anything against this movie, no matter how bad it may be?As it turns out, arguments about how bad it is would probably degenerate into foul-mouthed shouting contests. This flick has all the earmarks of an indiosyncratic favorite — a movie that some people will just love for no reason they can articulate, while it leaves others cold. I also suspect that watching it in a group raises the fun quotient considerably (says the guy who watched it alone).Another great credit, before we get started:

Screenplay by
Dr. S. Carver
&
B.J. NelsonScreenplay Drastically Rewritten
and Improved Upon by
FRED OLEN RAY
&
T.L. LANKFORD Draw your own conclusions.Anyway: After a brief prologue of a whacked-out prostitute in an interrogation room showing exactly what she did with a power tool to her last customer, we meet Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson), the ultimate hard-boiled private dick (yes, every conceivable joke uses that as a punchline), typing up the notes of his last case. Seems he was hired to find a runaway girl from Oxnard… Little did he know etc. etc.We now go to one of this picture’s main features: Michelle Bauer (credited here as Michelle McLellan) trying resolutely to act. Now, before I become the target of the Michelle Bauer Fan Club Jihad, let me qualify that. Think of the head cheerleader in high school; now put her in the lead of the school play. She’s got the confidence to be in front of crowds, and the perkiness to really emote and belt it out. That doesn’t mean she can act her way out of a wet paper bag, but she does perform.

And of course, that’s a double entendre when talking about Michelle Bauer, playing a hooker called Mercedes, who picks up a construction worker in a bar and takes him back to her place. She throws on some Elvis music, strips down to her birthmark, drapes a plastic sheet over her portrait of Elvis (hunh? says the john), and pulls out a chainsaw.

These death scenes, I think, were meant to be crude to the point of comedy. Here’s what we see, in every case (except the last one, in which they sprange for a prop torso): the victim’s face as he screams, covered with blood (this seems to be an odd corollary to Ken’s Rule of High Altitude Mortality, as described at Jabootu.net; even though obviously the john isn’t falling from a great height, he still manages to give a bloodcurdling shriek despite the fact that his lungs have already been julienned); and the chainsaw hooker, laughing maniacally as she pokes the chainsaw out of camera range. Blood spurts on her from a direction that obviously isn’t where she’s aiming the saw; body parts also fly, also obviously lobbed by a stage hand from somewhere to the side of the saw.

Gotta love it.

Anyway, back to Jack. He meets with his cop friend Harrison, and checks his photo of the runaway against the psycho hooker in custody; no match, but he sees that she recognizes the picture. The cops also have a bag of personal effects found on the beach, including some chainsawed fingers, and deduce that there’s more than one chainsaw killer. There’s also a matchbook among the effects, which Jack smoothly swipes. (Because every matchbook in any detective movie contains a clue. Didn’t you know that?)

In this case, the clue is Mercedes’ name and number. Jack calls her and arranges to meet her at that same little bar.

Meanwhile, across town, we have to squeeze in another death scene. In this one, C. Everett Koop (okay, the character’s name is Hermie, and he’s ostensibly played by one Jerry Fox, but he’s a dead ringer for the former Surgeon General) nervously hires a hooker to pose for some shots for his calendar; he sells baseball bats. Naturally, after a number of slinky poses, he gets a Slugger to the head, and she whips out her chainsaw; see the notes above, minus the screaming.

So Jack meets Mercedes, and also notices that the “dancer” (read: stripper) at the bar is his little runaway, Samantha (Linnea Quigley, introducing to her assets anyone who didn’t already see them in Return of the Living Dead). But before he can put two and two together, Mercedes slips him a drugged drink.

He wakes up tied to a bed, and is introduced to a face that we’ve already seen smirking from corners earlier in the movie. It’s Gunnar Hansen, who is refered to by the hookers as “our Master” and listed in the credits as “The Stranger”; I just called him Dark N. Hairy, because that’s what he was. Anyway, he enters and, in contrast to Michelle Bauer, steadfastly refuses to attempt to act; he merely reads to Jack the exposition: that he’s the Egyptian leader of a cult of chainsaw-worshipers, dating back to ancient times (who says they didn’t have chainsaw in Egypt? They had the Chainsaws of the Gods!), and Jack’s to be a special sacrifice at their temple. They leave him alone with Samantha, who immediately switches sides; she’d only joined the cult to avenge her girlfriend who was carved up by the cultists a few months back.

So she and Jack set out to stop them, and there’s the inevitable confrontation at the temple, with more chainsaws, and more nudity, and a drugged Samantha performing The Virgin Dance of the Double Chainsaws (which looks about as difficult as I’d imagine it would be, trying to dance wearing nothing but body paint and a thong, holding a 30-lb power tool in each hand).

And the closing credits begin with: “Coming soon - STUDENT CHAINSAW NURSES!”

A special note: The bartender, also a cultist, is credited as “Dukey Flyswatter” (the IMDb gives his name as Michael Sonye), and he looks like Lester the Molester. I mean, really — he’s a perfect illustration of the dregs of the gene pool coming together and spontaneously forming a human being. If his career had gone a little farther than a handful of Fred Olen Ray films, I’d add him to my Weird-Ass Actors list, right beside Michael Berryman and Vincent Schiavelli.

A Notable Quotable:

“I’d stumbled into the middle of an evil, insidious cult of chainsaw-worshipping maniacs. I had to wonder if we’d let our religious freedom go too far in this country.”

- Jack

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 5
• breasts: 12
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0