MY CALL: Raunchy but not sleazy, this horror-comedy B-movie brings some satisfying gore and incredibly non-mainstream themes and humor to the table. MORE MOVIES LIKE Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh: I’d go with Frankenhooker (1990), Brain Damage (1988) and Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988). Alternate Title: Picking Up the Pieces.
“Two cops and a detective’s daughter go after a chainsaw killer.” –IMDB
This cheap, B-movie, horror comedy boasts a tone that falls somewhere between a dark rated-R The Naked Gun (1988) and a more tasteful Troma film (if there is such a thing). This off-color atmosphere doesn’t really do it for me, or perhaps it was just the lousy dialogue and acting. However, its campiness was appreciated and by the end of the movie I found myself enjoying it. Maybe I just had to get into the right mindset. This is, after all, really ridiculous.
Getting past the weird tone, this cheesy movie dishes out a lot of premium B-movie cheap gore. As our detectives investigate a series of murders, the crime scenes are joyously messy with macabre chunkery. Culling the guts and brain matter aside, they discover obscure notes (inside the victims) written in Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The gore effects include an elaborate skull-sliced head, a silly autopsy, and an outstanding face-peeling scene. But the suction death was my favorite even though we see very little of it happening as the killer sucks the entire digestive tract through a woman’s mouth.
In order to conduct these murders, our killer travels about with a generator into which one must plug in the various killing implements which include industrial sucking machines, chainsaws and jackhammers—pretty much the kind of stuff you’d see on sale at Home Depot.
That moment when the Egyptian priestess in the sexy underwear and high heels strangles a hostage with a whip, taunts you with a chainsaw, and threatens to smush her in the trash compactor… that’s when you know you’ve hit quality B-movie territory.
My greatest issue with this film is how misleading the title is—not that this is an unusual case in B-movie history. The “blood-sucking” is limited to the suction death (which, yes, I did enjoy). I was hoping for a kooky kind of mummified Dusk til Dawn (1996) theme rather than a blood-bathing Egyptian ritual. But throw in some sexy Egyptian lady ninjas, a loony addiction clinic for smokers and a scantily clad chainsaw priestess (Veronica Hart), and I guess ass can be forgiven.
