Filmmaker Hunter Johnson's three-character gore-fest derives from an obscure short graphic narrative published in a retro-style 1986 horror comic book. Fans of this kind of stuff may enjoy the bloodletting in the adaptation. Others can take a pass.
Old buddies, Jon (Jody Barton, who does the nakedness honors) and Frank (Trae Ireland) are spending a wilderness-hunting weekend at an old homestead cabin in remote woods, ancestral property of alluring Marjorie (Eva Hamilton), with whom both men had a relationship; hence a romantic triangle simmers. Early on, Marjorie yields the local-color detail that greedy white pioneers on this very land hunted and killed animals too non-sustainably and suffered a hideous curse from angry nature spirits (curiously, the wendigo, a Native American cannibal malediction recently rediscovered and exploited by B-level horror filmmakers, does not get billing here).
What happens next is even more explicit than the eco-message. Overcome in the brush by some sort of fit, Jon fires his rifle at what he sees as a deer but fatally shoots Frank instead. Fleeing back to the cabin, he encounters a very-much animated and angry Frank (with a hole blasted in him) and an oblivious Marjorie. It seems the two rival hunters can now "kill" each other an indefinite amount of times, though poor Frank is the one who seems to incur lasting damage—think Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her (1992), though more Monty Python and the Holy Grail imagery comes to mind, as the two antagonists go at each other with blades, blunt objects, and chainsaws. At least some of the humor is deliberate.
The acting is good, and a mixed-race cast gets inclusion points. Makeup f/x is occasionally clever. Alas, the dismembered-elephant-in-the-room is that Sawed Off is a little of a guignol-grotesque plot, better suited to a lively terror anthology like Creepshow (1982) or Two Evil Eyes (1991), and stretched awfully thin at feature length.
Profanity and sex would have also taken the material into R-rated territory as if prospective buyers have not already guessed. Wisconsin-area entertainment library shelves, especially those where backyard gruesomeness like the Evil Dead movies go over well, may want to pay special attention, as Sawed Off was shot in its entirety in that state. For other public librarians, it is an optional purchase for horror genre shelves.