Blu-ray

The search for a teenage runaway (Linnea Quigley) lands Los Angeles private investigator Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson) in hot water when it turns out that she's involved with an ancient Egyptian cult that worships chainsaws. Naturally.

Low-budget filmmaking has a proud history of cooking up genre flicks with the most outlandish titles imaginable. Schlock auteur Fred Olen Ray's 1988 comedy-horror Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers stands out from the pack as being one of the very few to live up to its name. Fans of cartoonish violence, gratuitous nudity and iconic '80s scream queens need look no further…

Picture: First impressions of the 1.78:1-framed Blu-ray encode aren't particularly strong. Not only does the image look over-processed, but it's also riddled with small scratches and larger 'tramlines'. However, as the director reveals in his commentary, this is because the first reel of negatives has been lost, so in restoring the film for Blu-ray they were forced to use the first reel from a (pretty rough-looking) 35mm answer print to plug the gap.

Once those first seven minutes are over and the source moves to a 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negatives, the image quality picks up hugely. It is, quite simply, the best this film has ever looked.
Picture rating: 3.5/5

Audio: While dialogue and music are both well handled, the disc's DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 mixes both fall some way short of the picture quality. The main problem is that there's a lot of unwanted background audio (such as camera noise) inherent in the original recordings.
Audio rating: 2.5/5

Extras: In addition to plenty of extras devoted to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers itself (including two enjoyable chat tracks and a new 22-min retrospective doc), this Blu-ray also finds space for the brilliantly awful 1990 hour-long Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout (with its own commentary from the director and star).
Extras rating: 4.5/5

We say: Loaded with brilliant extras and looking better than ever, this is a must-own BD for exploitation fans

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, 88 Films, Region B BD, £18 Approx
HCC VERDICT: 3.5/5