The German Chainsaw Massacre

A Sausage Chaos of Political and Cultural Anarchy.

Sold as a parody of the cult classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” this 1990 film written and directed by Christoph Schlingensief—part of his German Trilogy, “100 Years of Adolf Hitler” and “Terror 2000”—is by far my favourite of the three.

Rather than mere parody, it’s a grotesque satire, a blood-soaked critique of the anarchic chaos that consumed Germany, and particularly Berlin, after the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989.

The film opens during the reunification ceremonies. People are cheering, bells are ringing, fireworks light up the sky.

A united crowd sings the national anthem—until we cut to a woman cleaved in half, her entrails spilling onto the ground, as a car speeds past with a couple inside singing merrily.

A nation reunited, yet instead of celebrating newfound freedom, it descends into disorder—no laws, no direction, just citizens clinging to the habits of their former lives.

Suddenly, East and West must learn to be flatmates in a world where the walls have fallen, but no one has told them how to deal with the shared trauma now exposed.

After this historical prologue, “The German Chainsaw Massacre” introduces Clara, an East German woman fed up with her life and her husband.

She leaves her home for her lover in the West—only to find herself in the hands of butchers who turn every human they find into sausages. It couldn’t, of course, be anything other than Germany’s national treasure—no jokes; I love German sausages.

The natural outcome? Pure mayhem—something still vivid decades later, both for those who lived it and for those desperate to preserve a bygone way of life.

Germany remains a country haunted by the stigma of its past, still yearning to move forward while never fully escaping its ghosts.

“The German Chainsaw Massacre” is one of those films you must see to believe. It radiates that underground aura—the kind of film that feels almost forbidden.

It’s not frightening in the traditional sense, but it is profoundly unsettling. The gore is outrageous. It’s cheap, yes—but so cheap that it becomes its own charm.

That’s precisely what I adore about C-movies: their raw absurdity steeped in cultural and political undertones, crafted with enough chaos to create a truly visceral (in the truest sense of the word) cinematic nightmare.

This isn’t horror in the conventional sense—much like a Troma production, it’s not about fear but excess. It revels in gore, taboo, and discomfort. The effects are laughable, the filmmaking rough, yet it’s impossible to look away.

“The German Chainsaw Massacre” may be a cinematic mess, but it’s one that slices right into the heart of post-reunification madness.