‘The world is changing. I can feel it – don’t you?” says black model Roxy (Adriane McLean), before donning her stars’n’stripes bikini and getting fabulous with white colleague Sunshine (Sarah French) for an American bicentenary magazine covershoot. This overcooked 1976-set slasher flick tries to bake in progressive political comment from the start, but it’s clear from the chainsaw-toting maniac in the prologue, and a reference to a then-recently released film, that director Marcel Walz really pledges allegiance to the flag of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – and that this will be essentially a throwback affair.
Makeup artist Sunshine is stepping in front of the camera after first-choice model Raquel (Gigi Gustin), seen ill-advisedly nosing around a set of desert tunnels with her girlfriend in the intro, fails to show. On the hunt for locations, the fashion squad – also including caftaned photographer Jordy (Adam Bucci), pothead driver Charlie (Robert Felsted Jr), and assorted hangers-on – stumble into prime ruin-porn in the wreckage-strewn outpost of Savage. The name prompts tittering meta chat about what things might happen to them there, and they ignore folksy bystander Mama Birdy (Dazelle Yvette) when she gives them the lowdown on the town’s violent past.
