Veteran Scottish actor David Hayman plays the title character, a survivor of the notorious Scottish cannibal clan, who in the present day abducts pretty women using a faux taxi service so that he can chain them up, rape and eat them in his grim cavernous home. Extremely well shot for a small budget horror pic, SAWNEY gains considerable production value and atmosphere from its spectacular location filming in the Scottish highlands. It gets weighed down by clumsy expositional stuff including microfiche research scenes (yawn!) and a developing love story between the two conventional protagonists (double yawn!), but has enough inventively grim and offbeat touches to stand out from the crowd of straight to DVD torture movies. With strong echoes of grisly 70’s Brit horror flicks including DEATHLINE and HORROR HOSPITAL, it comes to life in the more horrific sequences, notably the moment in which Sawney wanks to a victim’s photo using a fresh severed hand. Heyman’s performance as a “thigh man” who prefers the taste of women to men and recommends garnishing meat well for maximum flavour helps raise the movie’s game above the mediocre.

Review by Steven West