October 14th

Texas Chainsaw (2013) directed by John Luessenhop

Better than the overly dark remake series. This one feels more like an '80s slasher to me. It's sort of a gorier Halloween 4 in a way. The film goes back to the original movie, picking up right where the first left off. Fun! TCM vet Bill Moseley takes on the roll of Drayton in the prologue, with a maskless Gunnar Hansen playing another Sawyer who's come with rest of the clan to defend the family after Sally's wild tale draws both the police and a bunch of townsfolk to the house.

Past the prologue, the film starts out in typical TCM style. There's a group of friends driving in a van in Texas -- as always, 3 boys and 2 girls -- and they end up at Leatherface's house. He doesn't take kindly to strangers wandering in and starts chopping people up. Normally, this is the entire film, with the final girl escaping with her life but not her sanity. She does escape, but it's at the midpoint of the movie. From here, the movie takes a left turn. I'm guessing this is where it probably lost a lot fans.

Me, I liked the direction it went. The film declares early on "ain't nothing thicker than blood," and, by gum, it sticks to that philosophy. Heather finds out that the town slaughtered nearly her entire family and burned their house to the ground. This revelation kicks in a clannish reaction in her: she starts to see the townsfolk as the other and the Sawyers, even brutish Leatherface, as her own. The film argues that her lineage makes her a Sawyer in temperament and preference, overruling any influence from her adoptive parents. Not exactly in line with the tabula rasa idealism of today's culture.

Sure, it's hard to swallow why she would ever end up taking care of the man who chopped up her friends, but I'm willing to go with it for the sake of something different in TCM storytelling. If a crazy mayor of small town was trying to kill me, I'd probably look to my deranged cousin/uncle for help. too. And, in the real world, nearly every killer's mother is always declaring: "he's a good boy!", so perhaps this is not as big of a jump as it may seem.

I have to say I had a little trouble with the timeline. Just a baby in 1973, 26-year-old Alexandra Daddario plays the grown up Heather. She doesn't look anywhere near 39. Sheriff Hooper is still sheriff 39 years later. Leatherface is awfully spry for a man in his 60s. The movie goes to great pains to not associate "1973" with "August 19th" -- hiding the year on tombstones with grass, for example -- but they do slip up. Ah, whatever. They wanted a pretty twenty-something to star in the show and too much real world time had passed from the first film to make this possible. This is not important. I had fun with film and that's all that really matters with these types of films.

I Spit on Your Grave (2010) directed by Steven R. Monroe

It's sometimes a little hard to justify wanting to watch something like this. Rape-revenge films have exactly two extremely violent parts, with the first intending to horrify and the second intending to satisfy. These films force us to face that reptile part of the brain that we like to pretend we have under control. The worse Jennifer's experience in the first part of the film is, the more we enjoy the second part. We want see Jennifer destroy her tormentors. It makes us feel good to see her torture them to death. That's not something we're supposed to take pleasure in in polite society, but it's a darkness we all have buried in us. Bringing this to the surface for us to examine is a part of the considerable power of horror films.

It's been quite a while since I've seen the original, but I believe this is the superior version of the story. I like that the remake cut our Jennifer's recuperation. Instead, she begins to torment her rapists like a female Michael Myers, invisibly freaking them out with noises in the dark and dead birds and missing camcorder tapes. This allows us to see the rapists' anxiety as reminders of their crime intrude into their normal life. I also liked the Saw-inspired traps Jennifer devises for the men. In a post-Saw world, I don't think audiences would be impressed with the deaths in the 1978 version, and, honestly, the new deaths are more satisfying as a method of revenge. And, clever at times: I can't say I've ever seen someone's eyelids held open with fishhooks so that crows could feast.

If I had an quibbles with the production, it's that the rapists are a little too stereotypically rednecky. They're living in trailers in the woods, constantly wearing camo, one has a Confederate flag on his head, and they use the phrase "city folk" an awful lot. These guys are about two inches away from playing a banjo on porch. It's makes them a little cartoony and lessens the impact of the events somewhat.

October 13th

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Ever wanted to know what Leatherface was like as a baby? Were you curious as to how Hoyt lost his teeth? What happened to that old guy's legs? And just where did Leatherface get that chainsaw, anyways? Answers to every minor, unimportant question you may have had about the remake are revealed within!

Having made a successful movie, but making the mistake of chopping off one of the iconic villain's arms at the end of it, a prequel was nearly inevitable. The problem with prequels, as everyone well knows, is that they lack tension. We already know how this has to turn out: all of the Hewitts survive and all of the kids die. Any other way and the original remake can't happen. From there, it's just a process of getting from point A to point B.

Along the way, as I mentioned, the film spends an inordinate amount of time explaining every little thing about the remake. Who really needed to see that Hoyt killed the original sheriff and took his car? That was strongly implied in the remake. Who cares that he lost his teeth fighting with a victim, or that Leatherface cut off the old man's legs, or the fact that Leatherface simply grabbed a chainsaw inexplicably sitting on a desk at the slaughterhouse. None of this stuff matters. How about answering why the rest of the family goes along with Hoyt when he suddenly starts serving them people meat? Why does his mother not care that her son ordered Leatherface to chop off her brother's legs? Why is she so damaged that she accepts all this?

The only real explanation for the family offered is that the meat packing plant closed and all of the jobs in town dried up. For some reason, this pushes both Leatherface and Hoyt over the edge into cannibalism. That seems a tad extreme to me, but I'm not from Texas.

October 12th

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) directed by Marcus Nipsel

Why set this in 1973? Aren't modern remakes supposed to update things to make them relevant for the kids buying the tickets? Supposedly, the lack of cellphones and Google confuses them too much to enjoy these otherwise. But, seriously, we've already got the perfect TCM movie set in 1973 and the time period has no relevance to the story. In fact, I found it annoying as the filmmakers were desperate to let us know "hey, it's the 1970s, everyone!" There's a goofy "space helmet" 8-track player in the van, as well as a MAD Magazine poster on the ceiling and a "Shit Happens" bumper sticker on the back. Plus. the kids are traveling to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert and are passing joints as they sing along to "Sweet Home Alabama." We get it.

This is sort of the problem with the whole movie. Why are they doing anything that they're doing? Because, "hey. this is a redneck horror movie, everyone!" There doesn't seem to be any story the filmmakers are trying to tell here. What are the Hewitts doing in Texas? Are they working at the meat packing plant we see at the end? Are they cannibals? Are they inbred? I have no idea. All they appear to do is facilitate Leatherface's hobby of chopping people up in his inexplicably raining basement.

The flavor found in the original is gone; this is a dry piece of meat. This move is so desaturated it almost looks gray. The characters are either pure evil or redneck simpletons. Where's Drayton yelling at Leatherface for ruining the door? Where's the crazy hitchhiker talking about head cheese? What about the dinner scene?

Though, as a purely horrific run through a carnival funhouse, the movie serves its purpose. It's packed with plenty of tension and horror. The set designs tend to be detailed and crazy. I like that the entire properly is littered with junk and teeth and old cars. The cinematography -- though washed of all color -- is really good, with beautiful shots of moonlight streaming through the trees, and a cool shot of the camera exiting the bullet hole in the window of the van.

I think this tends to describe the Platinum Dunes remakes in general: nice to look at, but lacking in story.

October 1st

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Original Cut) (1994) directed by Kim Henkel

Released, for some reason, on DVD by Lionsgate only in Canada, this was the version of the movie originally called The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and still called that in the end credits). Infamous both for starring pre-fame Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, and for its Illuminati subplot.

The opening text for this movie acknowledges all three of the previous movies and sets itself five years after part 3. Meek Jenny (Zellweger) is attending prom when she, her date, and another couple end up in a car accident in the middle of nowhere. They soon run into the cannibal family, which includes Leatherface, famous quote-spewing W.E., Texan beauty and real estate agent Darla, and crazy tow truck drive Vilmer (McConaughey). Vilmer has a homemade robotic brace on his bum leg -- complete with hydraulics and what appears to be a vacuum cleaner tube -- which is controlled by TV remote controls. If that alone doesn't tell you the tone the movie is shooting for, I don't know what will.

What follows is lots of standard TCM stuff: screaming girl jumps out window, Leatherface revs up a chainsaw in the woods and gives chase, girl thinks she's found help only to be captured again, etc. This would be tedious -- as it was in part 3 -- but the goofiness of the film makes it fun. McConaughey gives the part of Vilmer his all. He's energetic and insane and volatile. He defiantly shoves a shotgun barrel in his mouth when threatened by Jenny, cuts himself when frustrated, and has a ridiculous remote control duel for control of his own leg. Hell, he even spits thrice in Zellweger's face at one point. I loved watching him in this.

And then there's the Illuminati. Vilmer's boss is the mysterious Mr. Rothman. The suit-wearing, limo-riding Rothman bursts into Vilmer's house when the dinner scene doesn't quite go as planned. He yells at Vilmer, declaring events appalling and telling him "I want these people to know the meaning of horror." He later apologizes to Jenny, lamenting that this was supposed to provide her with a "spiritual experience." Henkel was way ahead of his time. There are shades of both The Cabin in the Woods and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, here. It's implied that all four TCM movies were the work of the Illuminati, who are spawning these cannibal families in Texas in order to give the "final girls" life-changing terror. Or, perhaps, there's something even darker going on, given Rothman's weird row of pierced belly nipples and his penchant for licking victims. It's hard to say. Had Henkel made this vision a little clearer, it may have worked better. As it is, it feels like twist for the sake of a twist and pretty easily pissed off the serious TCM fans by attempting to retcon the whole series.

We've already got the perfect, serious Texas chainsaw story in the original movie. There's never going to be another serious TCM that'll be worth a damn (that reminds me, I'm watching the remake next). Slasher series, as a rule, always trend towards self-parody the longer they go on. I say, bring on the Illumanti and bring on the future A-listers acting like maniacs!


Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1997) directed by Kim Henkel

How's that for stamina? I popped the Theatrical Cut in immediately after finishing the Original Cut. Frankly, I was expecting there to be greater differences between the two versions of the movie. Surely, all of the Illuminati stuff gave Sony execs headaches and they cut around it? Nope, every drop of that remains in the film.

The only two differences I noticed were that the scenes with Jenny's asshole stepdad at the very beginning were gone and most (all?) of the music was completely different. Apparently, according to IMDb, there are also some trims to some dialogue scenes and some color tinting going on, but I didn't notice. There's definitely no extra gore, so neither could be called "uncensored." The excised stepdad stuff, though, hurts Jenny's character development and the new music sucks, so I'll never be watching this version again.

September 30th

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) directed by Jeff Burr

There's not much special about this one. The introductory text ignores part 2 completely to tell us that W.E. Sawyer (presumably meaning Drayton) was given the gas chamber and Leatherface disappeared after the events of part 1. Somehow, the retarded Leatherface, with a chainsaw-chopped leg that later requires a brace, managed to drag his Grandpa to this mysterious other Sawyer household where even more brothers live amidst bones and taxidermy. At least, I assume that's who they are. We never learn their last name and "Mama" is too young to have been Drayton's mother. Whoever they are, they never feel like anything other than actors trying to pretend to be stereotypical scary rednecks. You can really tell this one was made in California and not Texas.

The film is just a bog-standard slasher film. The bad guys chase people around and catch them sometimes, the good guys get away and seemingly kill the bad guys, the bad guys come back for one more scare, etc. etc. Even Leatherface is more slasher-fied than he's ever been. Like Jason, he now has the ability to silently appear behind a victim for a scare. He's given a ridiculously large chainsaw with engraving on the bar that says "The Saw Is Family" (recall in part 1, he used a standard 12" saw). His mask has been made Halloween costume friendly: no longer is it a woman's face and hair. The mask is now just leathery skin sewn together, looking not like much of anything. Easier to get guys to buy an officially licensed Leatherface mask if it doesn't have lipstick on it, I'd imagine. I'm guessing that because New Line had just grabbed the rights to Leatherface and Jason at this time -- already being the "House that Freddy Built" -- and they had big plans for merchandising the three killers. I wouldn't doubt this had a little to do with this sequel's choices.

The Walking Dead 4.01: "Infected" (2013) directed by Guy Ferland
Captain Trips visits the prison. I'm having a real problem buying this. I get that the producers of the show wanted to tap into the whole swine flu / pandemic fear we have in society these days. But, c'mon, a highly infectious flu that kills suddenly within 24 hours by dramatically making you hemorrhage out of every orifice in your head? I guess it has to be so, so that they can have people dropping dead without warning to turn into zombies. Still, aren't zombies and bad humans enough? They are for the comic, which had no need to rip off the first few chapters of The Stand. Good way to save some money, though. I'm expecting a bunch of dull episodes starring a bunch of sick people trapping in the prison now.


Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) directed by Don Siegel

Fellow Six Weeker Kaedrin's review gave me a hankering to watch the Body Snatchers films again. This one's one of the better sci-fi films from the '50s, taking itself seriously and completely lacking in rubber-suited monsters. I remember watching this film in a college class. Their take, naturally, was that it was an anti-McCarthyism piece in line with The Crucible. The pod people demanded conformity and excised independent thought just as McCarthy did. I never really bought this. You can just as easily flip it around and say that the pod people are communists, doing the same thing. I think that fits even closer, in fact.

1956 Phillip Morris ad.

I kind of like star Kevin McCarthy's take, as noted in the IMDb trivia: the story is dig against Madison Avenue's attitudes. In the post-WWII era, the American people were being sold on "the American Dream." What that meant at the time was owning your own home with a white picket fence, wearing a gray suit to a steady job, a stay-at-home wife raising the kids, and all of the modern conveniences that make life easy. It was attractive, no doubt, but didn't leave a lot of leeway. Want to paint your house something other than white? But what will the neighbors think? Daughter get pregnant? Ship her away for 9 months. Wife want a job to help pay the bills? She's already got a job, keeping house and it's the man's responsibility for the bills. The culture of the time tended to trap people in their predetermined roles.

Why did Kevin's McCarthy's character end up being the lone survivor of Santa Mira? I think because he was already going against the grain of society from before any outer-space stuff started happening. Dr. Bennell was a 42-year-old divorced playboy who apparently hung out at a local bar so much that people knew to call him there where they couldn't find him. Becky, the penultimate survivor, also wasn't a typical Santa Miran. Near middle-aged and still unmarried, she'd just spent several years living in London on her own. This was no '50s poodle-skirt-wearing housewife. Together, they discovered that it was essentially impossible to hold out against the greater society surrounding them.

Tales from the Darkside 1.21: "Bigalow's Last Smoke" (1985) directed by Timna Ranon
A bit of a rip-off of Stephen King's short story "Quitters, Inc." that, strangely enough, appeared in Cat's Eye the same year this episode aired. Bigalow wakes up to find his windows and doors barred. A mysterious man appears on his TV screen, explaining that they've started a stop-smoking program that Bigalow had forgotten about signing up for. As long as Bigalow doesn't smoke, he won't be punished. The episode has a nicely creepy tone to it, helped by the deadpan performance of character actor Sam Anderson as Dr. Synapsis.


Tales from the Darkside 1.22: "Grandma's Last Wish" (1985) directed by Warner Shook
A grandmother uses a wish to turn her loud and obnoxious family into premature senior citizens. Worst. Grandma. Ever.


Tales from the Darkside 1.23: "The False Prophet" (1985) directed by Gerald Cotts
Ronee Blakley, looking way younger than she did in the prior year's A Nightmare on Elm Street, is a astrology-obsessed woman on a journey to meet her soul mate on the advice of a fortune telling vending machine. Along the way, she runs into an even more advanced fortune telling machine and a lively preacher. It's a neat criticism of folks obsessed with predicting their future, though the twist ending is predictable.

September 29th

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) directed by Tobe Hopper

How do make a sequel to one of the all-time classic horror movies? Do something different. Anyone trying to semi-remake the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre in order to attempt to recapture some of that magic is doomed to fail. Another group of kids running into the Sawyers and getting slaughtered is just going to be boring. Hooper and company wisely chose a different tack.

TCM2 is big and loud and gooey and goofy. This is a movie in which Franklin's uncle Lt. Lefty -- played Dennis Hopper in the same year he starred as Frank in Blue Velvet! -- decides to visit a chainsaw shop in order to arm himself for a fight with the Sawyers. There's absolutely no reason for this. A Texas lawman is going to already have plenty of guns he could easily use to pick off the cannibals from far beyond chainsaw-gouging distance. Nope, Lefty buys three chainsaws and straps them to his body. Why? Because it leads to an awesome duel with Leatherface, that's why. The film needs no other reason, nor should we. This isn't a study in the darkness of human nature. This is maestro Tom Savini showing us what we weren't allowed to see in the original: what happens when a chainsaw plunges into someone's guts?

But, how's this for an alternate theory? The introductory text tells us that Sally sank into catatonia after telling of her experience with the Sawyers. Maybe TCM2 is actually a delusion in poor, broken Sally's head? Think it through: who would Sally think could save her from her tormentors and get revenge? Well, her daddy's dead -- otherwise, we'd expect him to be living in the house they traveled to in the first picture -- but her uncle is a badass Texas policeman. Her madness cast him as the warrior to chase and destroy her demons, and she cast herself as Stretch. Stretch finds herself in exactly the same situation that Sally did -- captured by the Sawyers with grandpa trying to bash her head in -- in an exaggerated, funhouse version of the Sawyer's original house. When all is said and done, Stretch is not cowering in the back of a pickup truck. Nope, she's dancing wildly with a chainsaw, having conquered the Hitchhiker replacement Chop-Top. Hell, I bet Sally woke up right after this, feeling much better.

Tales from the Darkside 1.20: "It All Comes Out in the Wash" (1985) directed by Frank De Palma
A businessman orders a laundry's secret special service: they have the ability to wash away your guilt. Free from any guilt for anything he does, the businessman spirals downwards into eviler acts, even going so far as to order the murder of his son's friend's dad for a small slight. A great one-room performance by Vince Edwards.


The Real Ghostbusters 1.01: "Ghosts Я Us" (1986) directed by Richard Raynis
Sets up the show nicely. Right from the start there's that classic Real Ghostbusters mixture of silliness -- the family of idiot ghosts they chase at first -- and surprising darkness. The Elder God-like entity that the ghosts wake up in the toy factory is no joke. It's initial appearance is very creepy, looking like a giant gray worm with an eyeball at the front, and it threatens to destroy all of NYC. That darkness is what attracted me to the show as a kid, as it wasn't something you saw much in cartoons (with a notable exception of the contemporaneous Inhumanoids). I appreciated that the Ghostbusters always had a serious job to do.

Why are they the "real" Ghostbusters? Because in this first episode, the trio of ghosts pretend to be ghost catchers in order to run the real Ghostbusters out of business. It had nothing to do with any crappy Filmation cartoon that may have existed at the time, no sir!

September 28th

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) directed by Tobe Hooper

"If I have any more fun today, I don't think I can take it!" The universe was screaming at Franklin that day to turn around and go home. Pam reads him a very bad horoscope. A passing truck makes him fall down a hill while peeing. A crazy hitchhiker mysteriously burns a picture of Franklin, slashes him with a straight razor, and writes an arcane symbol on the side of the van in blood. A gas station owner directly tells them not to go and strongly suggests that the locals don't like trespassers. Once Franklin enters the house, he discovers a weirdly arranged pile of bones and feathers on the floor, and a mobile made of bones hanging directly over his head. This all makes Crazy Ralph shouting "You're all doomed!" in Friday the 13th looked like chopped liver.

On one level, this is comforting to us in the audience. Those dumb kids ignored all the warnings! What did they expect would happen? The Cabin in the Woods has this take as well, telling us that the kids are choosing their fate. But, on another level, it adds to the fear the movie creates. Would we alter our travel plans in real life if those things had happened to us? What if we're not paying proper attention to signs like this in our own lives? What if that flock of crows bursting out of the trees as you turn down a side road to take a scenic detour was a warning? What if that bum who cursed at you when you refused to give him change is something worse that just a bum? We often like to think that if we could just listen closely enough to what life / the universe / the stars / our intuition / God is trying to tell us, we could figure out what lies on the path before us. I think that's a terrifying thought if true, as it makes everything that happens to us completely our responsibility. That's a heavy weight.

On a completely different subject, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre could be seen as a pro-vegetarian film. As I see it, vegetarians -- at least, the moral ones, not necessarily the "for health reasons" ones -- extend their empathy further than us omnivores. Some will even tell you that killing cows for food is just as bad as murdering a person. Perhaps they have a point. Why do us meat-eaters draw the lines that we do? I won't eat dog meat or monkey meat, but I find the very intelligent pig to be quite tasty. What the cannibalistic Sawyers are doing is just adding one more meat to their internal good-to-eat list. Why is that wrong, but it's OK for me to eat pigs?

There's also an implication that participating in the slaughterhouse industry desensitized the family. Decades of slamming a sledgehammer into cows' heads must have an effect on a person. After a while, and it's clear by the decor of the house, the Sawyers had no problem killing any kind of animal at all. A vegan might argue that once you're OK with killing animals, moving on to killing people isn't a great leap. And, they also might have a point there. Serial killers almost always start by killing animals first.

I think I'll go make myself a bacon sandwich, just the same.

The Walking Dead 4.01: "30 Days Without an Accident" (2013) directed by Greg Nicotero
I can't say I was terribly excited to start watching this show again once season 4 appeared on Netflix. Outside of the fantastic first episode of season 1, The Walking Dead has mostly been a long chain of disappointments. I'm not expecting anything different for this year, though this premiere episode was a pretty good start. In fact, the scene in which the zombies fall through the rotted ceiling of the grocery store is one of the best zombie set pieces I've ever seen. I especially loved the first zombie to fall through whose entrails get tangled up in the broken ceiling, causing him to dangle like a flesh chandelier. I suspect this was 80% of the season's zombie budget, though, and we'll not being seeing anything so flashy until perhaps the finale.

It was nice to see the colony in the prison farming and, in general, being more practical about their survival (they've finally learned to poke zombies through the fence!). Hopefully, the Governor attacks in his tank as he did in the comic on this more settled prison later in the season.