"...shot in 10 days in mid-April 1990 in response to the imminent dissolution of the communist German Democratic Republic and the integration (or, if you prefer, annexation) of its federated states into the democratic and capitalist Federal Republic of Germany, made official on October 3 of the same year. On November 9, the borders between the GDR and FRG were opened; on the 24th of that month, The German Chainsaw Massacre played for its first audiences in a now-unified Bundesrepublik Deutschland, exorcised of the specter that once haunted Europe, at the 24th edition of the Hof International Film Festival in Bavaria.

...a hasty, slapdash, febrile film for a hasty, slapdash, febrile time, as the leaders of a new Germany flung it heedlessly into a global community in which unfettered ravening capitalism would be law of the land, of all lands; an imbecilic film for a culture steeped in imbecility, a world governed by imbeciles. Against stupidity, as Schiller would have it, the Gods themselves contend in vain. As his gesture of protest, Schlingensief offers us giddy, gibbering surrender." - Nick Pinkerton