Blackest Heart: German Chainsaw Massacre (1990)

AKA: Das Deutsche Kettensägen Massaker
Year: 1990
Directed by: Christoph Schlingensief
Starring: Karina Fallenstein (Clara), Susanne Bredehöft (Margit), Brigitte Kausch (Brigitte)
Country: Germany, European Cinema
Language: German, English Subs
Runtime: 01:05:45
Genres: Bizarre, Cannibalism, Gore-Splatter, Lesbian, Sexual-Violence against Men, Sexual-Violence against Women

Plot – Spoilers:
The German Chainsaw Massacre is one from Christoph Schlingensief’s ‘Germany Trilogy’ and doesn’t really have any connection with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, apart from a few visual nods. There is a basic semblance of a plot but this is more a bizarre indulgence in insanity.

It’s the time of East and West Germany getting together and the media is in full force out to convince everyone that happy times loom ahead for both sides of the Berlin Wall. Clara is a young East German woman with a miserable-looking husband (a woman plays this part for some bizarre reason). She murders him and their dog and drives across the now-defunct border to meet her West German lover Artur. Artur appears to have gone a little crazy and is obsessed with proving he is sexually capable of functioning as a man. At this point the couple encounters a ridiculous family who are into the business of making wurst (sausage) out of human meat that is mostly of East German origin.

Das Deutsche Kettensägen Massaker is probably some sort of political commentary on the fleeing of East Germans to the West in the hope of a better future and the absorption of this ‘easy East German meat’ into the consumerist West.

The acting is loud and over-the-top but works well for characters who are beautifully insane.