Texas Chainsaw Massacre

[HighVoltage]

Just curious to know if anyone saw the new flick this weekend?

 

Gotta say I was pleasantly surprised! Of course, I had no expectations going in, so maybe that helped.

 

Seeing the freaky old house in the movie got me to wondering:

 

Would you brave ol' Leatherface & his family if you knew there was, somewhere in the house, a giant stack of old comics which contained the likes of Action #1, Supes #1, 'Tec #27, Cap #1, etc (the big stuff). All in, say... VG shape or a bit better (I mean, c'mon, it's Leatherface's house - you ain't gettin' NM). You get to take 3 of your best/bravest friends in... but NO guns or flamethrowers or C4 of any kind. Just knives/axes/tire irons/rocks/steel bars/etc. And just for fun - you go in at night.

 

Who's goin' in? Greggy? (Naw, he's Bronze Age) POV? Darth? JoeC?

[minutekev@50]

I'd take Chuck, toss him to 'Face and ske-daddle with the comic goodies!

[dam60]

I'd take Chuck, toss him to 'Face and ske-daddle with the comic goodies!

 

[HighVoltage]

I'd take Chuck, toss him to 'Face and ske-daddle with the comic goodies!

 

ROFLMAOV (vomiting)!!!

 

Oh, man, you *might* make it out alive if LF's saw got tangled up in Chuck's hair!

 

 

I can just see you proposing this to Chuck:

 

"Hey, Chuck. Remember how you ripped o... err... found the Church collection? Well check *this* place out! Think MH 3/4 (whatever we're up to now)! These dumb ol' folks don't know what they've got!"

 

Chuck: (walking towards the front door) "Ok! Let's goooooooooo!"

[minutekev@50]

The only problem is Chuck's a little lightweight and 'Face may make quick work of that skin and bones...

But if the saw got tangled up in his hair, yeah....that and his bolo tie...

[RTBrandy]

I'd bring Fred Karger, and maybe a couple of others......and then leave without them OR the books!

[HighVoltage]

But if the saw got tangled up in his hair, yeah....that and his bolo tie...

 

Woooo-Hoooo-Hoooooo..... Oh, Man! I am crying here, people!

 

The bolo tie... how could I forget about that.

 

That alone could buy you 30 seconds!

[drice6900]

Yeah, but Chuck is pretty quick in those stylin' red sneakers. I'm not sure Leatherface could keep up!

 

I can just see the Mile High Newsletter after he got away with this hoard:

 

WHAT DO CHUCK, INDIANA JONES, AND BILBO BAGGINS HAVE IN COMMON?

 

 

- D.

[FlyingDonut]

To get the thread BACK ON TOPIC...

 

Here's the review by Pulitzer-Prize winner Stephen Hunter from Friday's Washington Post.

 

Retooled 'Chainsaw' Cuts to the Chase

By Stephen Hunter

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, October 17, 2003; Page C01

 

Ah, the sounds of the Lone Star State. The gentle lowing of the cattle. The melodic warble of the Hill Country meadowlark. The soft murmur of a brook cascading through the prairie. The GHHHZZZZIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPFT! of a chainsaw ripping through a yuppie's tender limbs.

 

As evidence that we are in a new barbarian age, here's a remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," delivered with almost frightening precision. Ugh. Talk about your passionate intensity! Why did it have to be so good? You realize how hard this is on me, to have to tell you what a superb job director Marcus Nispel has done re-creating, yet also revising, 1974's grisly, gristly, protein-centric masterpiece.

 

Man: meat. Meat: man. Man, meet meat. Meat, meet man. That's pretty much the film in a nutshell. Kids high on grass and life's verdant possibility wander lessly into a zone of darkest taboo: people, people who eat people, the luckiest people in the world. Lots of death, lots of eating.

 

Underneath, what is on display here are two systems of deep American contempt facing each other across a gulf of suspicion and hatred, waging relentless war. It's urban vs. rural, soft vs. hard, educated, tasteful effete elitism vs. cretinous violence. It's red America vs. blue America, with each side representing the stereotype of the other's darkest imaginings.

 

On the one hand, there's urban, sensual, appetite-driven youth, sweet and innocent yet almost annoyingly vulnerable to predation. They have no idea that upon the darkling plain you are either the eater or the eaten; thus they become the eaten and, I suppose, a subversive pleasure of the film is watching this process play out. These are five darling youngsters, ripe and firm and adorable, crossing the Texas prairie in a minibus with Alfred E. Neuman's smug mug appliqued to the ceiling. When you see "What, me worry?" up there, you just know that a turbocharged Stihl buzz blade is going to come a-rippin' through Alfred's smile, amid a spray of sparks, exhaust clouds and shrapnel.

 

It's all-American hate time! It's a hatefest! Hippie vs. redneck. Those with teeth vs. those without them. Those who say "ain't" ironically, and those who ain't never heard of irony. You want irony, sonny? Here's yore irony -- GHHHHZZZZZIPPPPPPPFT!!!!

 

Nispel has looked very carefully at Tobe Hooper's original film and seen what was so good about it. It's not just the violence; it's that the camera forever notices things that the poor about-to-be-buzzed kids don't, all these signals that they have entered a grotesque world -- little bone constructions, strange, gloppy structures in jaws, hooks everywhere, the drip-drip-drip of mystery liquid, the slightly vacant eyes of the country numb and daft. It calls up, actually, traditions of disturbing photography: people who look a little off, as if they could catch the attention of Diane Arbus; eyes too big, too vacant, manner too hearty, teeth too protuberant.

 

The scariest of them all, in the new film, may be the sheriff, played by R. Lee Ermey, a squirrelly charismatic who could lead men into combat when he's being good or teenagers into hell when he's being bad. Ermey, who's always good, plays one of the Hewitt brothers, who occupy a strange mansion. It's like the set of "Giant" gone to rot and squalor. And the cinematographer, Daniel Pearl, does superb work, never quite losing touch with the natural world but conjuring up a tone of appalling menace and squalor with his weird lighting schemes.

 

The kids are played well enough by actors nobody has ever heard of, with the exception of Jessica Biel, once of TV's "7th Heaven." She's the only one who really registers, primarily because she's the only one who musters any sort of practical defense to the assaults inflicted upon her.

 

But this isn't an actor's film; it's a director's film. Nispel, mainly a music vid guy, has all the -- oh, I hate to use the word -- chops: Like Hooper, he has an extraordinary sense of the meanings concealed in faces and keeps wheeling in grotesques from Pluto and Uranus to populate the screen. A fat old lady in a trailer takes the cake. But Nispel's also got an action jackson, and can put together the mayhem with brilliant suggestibility, as when the legendary Leatherface (played by Andrew Bryniarski) goes on the hunt, his mechanical scythe belching smoke, the sparks flying, the wood splintering, the metal shearing. But Nispel stops short of the hideous; he prefers the disturbing. In his world, the less he shows, the scarier it is.

 

He has also worked a few revisions, all to the good. Borrowing from "The Blair Witch Project," he uses the framing device of "found" video, in this case a walk-through by police after the atrocity. He also evens the body count between the slaughterers and the slaughtered, courtesy of the energy of Biel's womanly warrior Erin. (You never saw a fighter with a better stomach, that I'll tell you.)

 

Those are minor points. The major point is that the new "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a GHHHHZZZZZIIIIPPPPPFT! of a ride.

 

 

[garthgantu]

I'm a huge fan of bad horror films. I've seen hundreds and hundreds, literally. I've actually sat through all of "I Spit on Your Grave" (in the theater!), "2,000 Maniacs," "Bucket of Blood," "Mother's Day," "Don't Go in the Woods" (young Rachel Ward...mmmm), etc etc.

 

I rented and watched the original TCM a couple of weeks ago, as I hadn't seen it in roughly 20 years. I couldn't believe how awful it was! As the above list illustrates, I'm big into mindless gore and violence, severed limb-fu, and all that good stuff. But the original TCM is just about the worst movie ever made, IMO. When I see all these reviews touting the orignal TCM as somehow ground-breaking and entertaining, and hear the critics gush about how the new version "stays true to the original," I really have to wonder... why the heck would you want to be true to the original? Take the concept and update it completely...then maybe you'll have something watchable.

 

I mean it's one thing to (mistakenly) update "Pyscho," which didn't need updating at all... it's another to basically 'remake' a truly awful film...

[minutekev@50]

I spit on your grave... one of the trashiest movies I've ever seen...

The other night I rented Last House on the Left just to see what the uproar was about...after seeing what happens to the two girls in the forest, now I know. Although it's not as bad or as graphic as I expected, it still is pretty sickening...it feels like you're watching an actual 'snuff' film at one point..

[RTBrandy]

Last house on the Left was a Wes Craven flick.....

 

One of his earlier ones, too...72 I think

[HighVoltage]

Donut,

 

Thanks for posting the review!

 

Garth,

 

I agree that the original TCM is bad. In fact, it's awful. And it sure doesn't seem "groundbreaking" in any possible aspect.

 

But, I've got to give kudos to this film. It was well-made (production), has a few good unexpected surprises (including the ending), has a lot of good 'jump' moments and action and doesn't seem to fall apart in a major way, like most horror flicks. Surprisingly, the best horror show I've seen in a long time!

[clobberintime]

I am a big horror flick fan too. Just got House of 1000 corpses - my wife left the room after about 30 minutes. It ios a pretty warped movie and reminds me a lot of those early 70s splatter/gore flicks like Dr. Butcher medical deviant, Blood Feast etc. Tomorrow 28 Days Later comes out which I have not seen. I have the original TCM on tape and was reluctant to see the remake but am now stoked - so thanks for the reviews. There have lots of pretty good horror movies around lately it seems.

[duncan36]

Oh I must disagree, for what horror flicks set out to do the original TCM is the worst/best ever depending on how you view murder movies.

No movie has matched the intensity or brutality of that flick with the minimal amount of gore that was used. The plot twists with people you assume are 'good' was masterful, and the end scene where the world turns upside down where insanity becomes normal which in turn becomes almost comical in its maliciousness is dastardly and creepy.

[supapimp]

NOT TO GOOD OF REVIEWS ebert HATED it!

[Kevin76]

NOT TO GOOD OF REVIEWS ebert HATED it!

 

looks like i won't be seeing that...Scary movie 3 i'll see though

[DiceX]

I'm a huge fan of bad horror films. I've seen hundreds and hundreds, literally. I've actually sat through all of "I Spit on Your Grave" (in the theater!), "2,000 Maniacs," "Bucket of Blood," "Mother's Day," "Don't Go in the Woods" (young Rachel Ward...mmmm), etc etc.

 

You've not seen a good cheap horror movie until you've seen "Redneck Zombies" and "Bloodsucking Freaks".

 

I give them both...

[duncan36]

How about 'Chopping Mall'

[HighVoltage]

NOT TO GOOD OF REVIEWS ebert HATED it!

 

That's just because Ebert's mad about the part of the 'fat lady in the trailer park' going to a woman instead of him...