Trick or Trailers: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Say what you will about Platinum Dunes' Texas Chainsaw remake but one thing that must be agreed on is that New Line totally sold the shit out of this movie.

When this project was announced, horror fans were apoplectic at the idea of remaking Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic. Sequels were one thing but a remake just seemed...sacrilegious. And the fact that it would be produced by Michael Bay was a further cause for concern.

One thing Michael Bay knows about, though, is making hits and whatever expertise he lent the new TCM paid off in terms of this movie's commercial appeal. Director Marcus Nispel (working with original TCM cinematographer Daniel Pearl) gave this movie a slick sheen, miles away from the raw vibe of Hooper's film and the trailer celebrated that, grabbing the attention of a new audience.

While my experience of watching TCM '03 with a very packed, amped up crowd on its opening night of October 17th, 2003, was as ideal as it gets, there was plenty to find fault with (No cannibalism in TCM? What?) and it's a movie I haven't felt the need to go back to since.

Platinum Dunes' subsequent remakes weren't any more memorable, with their 2005 revamp of The Amityville Horror probably being the best of the bunch.

Prior to this, it was assumed (at least by me) that the horror classics of the '70s were sacred ground - that they would forever stay untouched. Why I thought this, I don't know, because I grew up seeing classics of the '50s, like The Blob and The Thing, remade throughout the '80s. Somehow that seemed logical, though.

Special effects had made so many leaps since the '50s that it seemed reasonable to apply that new technology to older classics and go state of the art with them. The advantage of remaking films like Texas Chainsaw, on the other hand, seemed harder to figure.

Hard to figure or not, the TCM remake gave me and fans of my generation a rude awakening as we had to get accustomed to specifying "remake" or "original" whenever we referred to movies like TCM, Halloween, Dawn of the Dead, or The Hills Have Eyes.

And that is when I knew I had gotten old.

Chainsaw See-Saw

I fought a brief war with myself over whether or not to see Texas Chainsaw 3D. I had a glimmer of interest in it after the poster was released but that was quickly squelched by the first trailer, which looked absymal. So I was very much on the "don't bother" side of the fence. I thought it might be nice for a change to have the first horror movie I saw in 2013 to be something decent - or at least something with a chance of being decent. After all, with Mama due on the 18th I wouldn't have long to wait for a better prospect than Texas Chainsaw to come along.

So for the opening weekend, I sat Chainsaw out. And, as expected, the reports back on it only confirmed my sensible stance. So of course that meant I had to break down and watch it. Call me weak and foolish if you will but I reasoned that, in the end, it might prove to be a wise strategic move. After all, if it was as bad as people were saying, the rest of 2013 couldn't help but look better in comparison.

So was it really that bad? Oh yes, it was. In fact, it was kind of flabbergasting in its idiocy. Having said that, as a connoisseur of slasher cinema, I'm glad that I took the time to check it out. It was awful but it sure wasn't the worst of the Chainsaw series and as schlock goes, I found it giddily entertaining for the most part.

Tobe Hooper's brilliant original certainly deserves better films to carry on its legacy but, clearly, that's not going to happen. The only worthwhile successor to TCM to date remains Hooper's own sequel (a cracked masterpiece in its own right). Everything else has strived for mediocrity and mostly failed to even hit that mark. Of all the major horror franchises, TCM runs neck and neck with The Exorcist in terms of the biggest fail rate. I don't have the time to enumerate all the cataclysmic lapses in logic perpetrated by TC3D but as I watched the movie unfold I found myself helplessly laughing at much of it. But at least laughter means that I dervied some entertainment out of it - even if it's not exactly the kind that the makers were presumably shooting for. But hey, there are a lot of awful films that I slog through without even the slightest chuckle to show for it so I'm giving TC3D due credit for accomplishing something. And I'm sure that as the year goes on, lines like "You came from shit-apes!" (as said by an adoptive father to his twentysomething daughter, who was secretly snatched from the Sawyer clan when she was a baby), "What a fruitcake!" (the professional observation of a cop as he surveys Leatherface's secret lair), and "Do your thing, cuz!" (the context of which I won't reveal) will remain some of my favorite lines of 2013.

Also in the plus column for TC3D is the post-converted footage from the original, which looks pretty stunning in 3D. If not for the fact that there's no way I'd stomach seeing TCM with a modern audience of dipshits under any circumstances, I'd love to see a 3D release of the original. I also liked the assertion this movie makes that the worst thing about Texas isn't a cannibalistic clan of serial killers but rather corrupt redneck politicians. That's a message I can get behind.

This movie has, and will continue to get, a shitload of flack from horror fans who feel that it's nothing less than a desecration of the TCM name (to be fair, it literally is as it doesn't even include the 'M'!) but I guarantee you that had this come out back in the '80s, it would be every bit as fondly recalled as any of the other slasher sequels of that era. I don't mean that it's good, mind you, just that it would be judged by a very different standard. For myself, I'll be judging it by that other yardstick - the same one that lets me enjoy Jason Takes Manhattan. When you're a slasher fan, you have to take your fun where you can get it. And, despite what the tagline to Pieces says, sometimes you do have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre.

You'll Enjoy Mr. Barlow...

For the first time since our holiday roundtable for The Curse of the Cat People (1944), the Horror Dads have reconvened - and this time we've rented the Marsten House to discuss Tobe Hooper's 1979 TV movie adaptation of Stephen King's second novel, Salem's Lot. A nostalgic touchstone for Gen-X horror fans who watched the two-night miniseries during its original airing on CBS in October of '79, Salem's Lot is often offered up as proof that Hooper's legacy in the horror field isn't just limited to the early triumph of Chainsaw. But how well does it hold up now, after over thirty (!) years?

Click here to join Dennis Cozzalio, Greg Ferrara, Paul Gaita, Nicholas McCarthy, head Horror Dad Richard Harland Smith and yours truly for a return to that quiet Maine town of Salem's Lot...

October Is Barlow Country

Tobe Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot originally aired in late November of '79 but for me, as soon as October arrives and the leaves start to crunch beneath my feet, I feel the itch to revisit this favorite. It isn't as easy as it used to be for me to clear the time to watch this in one sitting but I feel like it wouldn't be fall if I didn't. There might be a lot of mundane soap opera elements to be found in this mini-series but even if there had just been five minutes of Barlow in the entire four hours that Hooper took to tell this tale, it still would've been a high-ranking horror classic for me.

As anyone who's read the novel knows, in describing Barlow in the book, King never wrote anything along the lines of "looking at this dude made people want to eat their own faces off in fear". But to his credit, Hooper had other ideas. While there's an obvious debt to Max Schreck's appearance in Nosferatu, Nosferatu always struck me as a sad, frail figure. He may have been an immortal vampire but he seemed like someone you could goof on to their face and get away with it - if you were the type of person who would do that sort of thing, that is.

That's not the case with our friend Barlow, however. Studies prove it's hard to goof on someone after you've swallowed your own tongue.

The Funhouse

If it seemed like it took an inordinately long time for someone to finally get the bright idea to set a horror movie on Halloween, it seems nearly as odd that it took until 1981 for a horror movie to be set in the naturally scary environment of a funhouse. But luckily when it did finally happen, the honors fell to Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper, who didn't blow the opportunity.

Even though The Funhouse begins unpromisingly with an already-tired rip-off of Halloween's opening (with a POV shot of a knife-wielding masked figure approaching a female victim) and a beyond-tired reference to Psycho (the masked figure's victim is innocently showering, natch), only to reveal it all as a juvenile prank (the knife is a rubber novelty item) played by a kid brother (Shawn Carson as Joey) on his older sister (Elizabeth Berridge as Amy) there's a larger point that's being made. Joey uses a phony knife to "get" his sister but just a few scenes later, a total stranger in a pick-up truck will pull up next to Joey on the street and point a real shotgun at him, causing him to flee in terror and for the unknown driver to laugh at how well he "got" Joey.

Hooper pointedly shows throughout The Funhouse that safe facsimiles of horror and violence are always a step away from the real thing - and that one doesn't necessarily prepare us for the brutality of the other. Much as Peter Bogdanovich's Targets (1968) set everyday horror in contrast to fictional horror by depicting an aging horror star (Boris Karloff, in one of his last roles) confronting a sociopathic sniper, so to is Hooper's Funhouse concerned with the theme of fantasy horror vs. real horror as its four young heroes wander amid harmless prop ghouls, spiders, and skeletons as they try to elude a pair of actual killers. Ironically, as in Targets, the face of classic Hollywood horror is once again represented by Karloff with one character hiding his freakish appearance behind the 'acceptable' deformity of a Frankenstein's Monster mask.

Once Funhouse's double-dating protagonists (Amy, her date Buzz - played by Cooper Huckabee - and a second couple, Liz and Ritchie - played by Largo Woodruff and Miles Chapin) begin their night out at a traveling carnival (a carnival that Amy's parents cautioned her to stay away from, of course), strolling the grounds, sampling the rides, and exploring the carnival's many tents (including a magic act and exhibits of real-life freaks of nature, like a cleft-headed cow), they wander past the funhouse many times before going in, as though unconsciously circling their own doom (in a nice touch, the funhouse itself is ringed with red-white-and-blue pleated flags and bunting as though Hooper is noting that there's something just as all-American about the inescapable darkness and misery of those living within its walls as there is about the carefree kids who venture inside on a lark). Today, no studio would permit such a leisurely build-up but many of The Funhouse's best moments take place prior to its characters entering the funhouse - including brief appearances by actors William Finley as Marco the Magnificent and Sylvia Miles as fortune teller Madame Zena.

Inside the funhouse, where the thrill-seeking foursome impetuously decide to hide overnight, the kids inadvertently witness the murder of Madame Zena at the hands of the carnival barker's deformed son. Determined not to let the kids leave the funhouse alive, the carnival barker (Kevin Conway, seen earlier as two other entirely different barkers - as though he represents an omnipresent figure of fate) and his son (well-played by mime Wayne Doba, with make-up designed by Rick Baker) stalk the kids and even though they're out-numbered, the barker and his son possess the homefield advantage, making the funhouse itself their ally. The Funhouse is mounted with much style - thanks in great part to the contributions of production designer Mort Rabinowitz (all the props seen in the funhouse are terrific) and cinematographer Andrew Laszio, who somehow makes the film appear both authentically seedy and yet lushly cinematic (For a low budget film, this has a really striking look to it. One scene in an air shaft looks as though it was inspired - in its cramped claustrophobia and strobe lighting - by Ridley Scott's then-recent Alien).

As Amy's friends are slain one by one and she inevitably becomes the film's Final Girl, her survival depends in part on her ability to discern the real threats she faces from the inanimate props of the funhouse (as the tagline cautioned "Something is alive in the funhouse!"). In The Funhouse's last ten minutes, Hooper delivers a frenetic, frenzied finale as the son becomes crushed within the giant gears of the funhouse itself.

Hooper's post-Chainsaw work has often been slagged as being sub-par but while a lot of troubled films do bear his name, I think he has a better body of work than most have bothered to acknowledge. And for me, The Funhouse remains one of his best efforts. Self-aware about the role horror plays in our fantasy lives, Hooper's film illustrates how easily play horror can be switched with the real thing.

Laundry Day

I knew as soon as this film's release on DVD was announced that I would add it to my collection one day. It wouldn't happen immediately, and indeed this film has been out for some time, but it would happen and I've never tried to fool myself into believing otherwise. And this week that time, that implacable destined day, came. Yes, I now finally own Tobe Hooper's The Mangler on DVD.

At the irresistible sale price of just $4.99 at my local Best Buy, you can hardly blame me, can you? I mean, it's not as though my child had to go hungry for me to buy it. Right? Yes, but it wasn't free and that still means I Bought The Mangler. Now, I'm sure a fair amount of fans have also added this to their collections since its DVD release several years ago. But then again, it's likely that it was a blind buy in those cases, from people having never seen the movie during its brief theatrical run back in March 1995. Maybe they were too young at the time, or maybe they were busy flocking to that month's more high profile genre flicks like Hideaway, Outbreak or even Candyman II.

But you see, I did make the time to see The Mangler on the big screen. As a matter of fact, I saw it twice. And I didn't see it twice because I had to confirm that it was really as bad as I thought it was. No, I saw it twice because I thought it was kind of...great. Not Exoricst great, no. Blood still gets to my brain on occasion. But it was definitely "this is pretty cool" great. Like, hey man, Tobe Hooper's still got some fire in his belly! He doesn't have much sense, unfortunately, because no reasonable soul would ever try to make a real horror movie with a demonic laundry press as its villain but the fact that Hooper tried and tried with full sincerity makes him a hero - or at least a Holy Fool - in my book. I mean, this is the textbook definition of a valiant effort. To make this movie and not cover your ass by winking your way through it is pretty awesome in my opinion. And really, the only reason I didn't buy this on DVD sooner is because I was lamenting the lack of special features - surely The Mangler deserved more, no?

I realize that Hooper's effort fell on deaf ears and hard hearts since Day 1 but I'll always champion it. So to Tobe Hooper, let me just say this: Thanks, man. Thanks for trying to scare the sheet out of me!