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.

Evil Wears Many Faces

Coming of age during the glory days of horror franchises in the '80s made me soft-hearted towards shitty horror sequels so I'm already predisposed to giving the latest installment in the Chainsaw saga (due January '13) a fair shake but that said, the above poster piques my interest in the new Chainsaw an extra notch.

I don't know what kind of approach I expected the marketing for this movie to take but this is definitely grislier than I expected so thumbs-up for that. Back when the '03 remake was released, the poster was a real ho-hum affair. Remember?

I guess they were trying to stay classy, what with remaking a classic, but when you're working with one of the most brilliantly exploitative titles in the history of horror, why not incorporate that spirit of exploitation in your advertizing? After all, it worked for the original:

To be fair, we're talking entirely different times. And hey, the remake's poster was still arguably better than the poster for TCM 2, which - for reasons I don't think have ever been explained - spoofed The Breakfast Club.

But anyhow, back to this new poster...

It's ironic that the most graphically gruesome Chainsaw poster yet is for the first film in the franchise to have no Massacre in the title but dropping "Massacre" is no more offensive than squeezing another buck out of Hooper's masterpiece in the first place so I'll let it slide.

My reaction to this poster is pretty simple - I like how straight-up nasty it is. It reminds me of the kind of garish VHS box art that would've demanded that I take a movie home back in the day. It revels in surface level grossness rather than promising to explore true terror (we'll see how the film itself is) but my inner adolescent will always have room for crassly marketed horror.

As genre franchises go, Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't have the best track record but it's no Howling or Return of the Living Dead either. It's true that post-Hooper, there's never been a great TCM movie but when you're talking horror sequels, "great" seldom enters into the equation. Sometimes the closest you get to that is with the marketing material.

That's not ideal, but you've got to take great where you can get it.

Cloudy With A Chance of Meat Hooks

Soon movie screens won't be able to contain the fury of Leatherface. According to a story in Variety, the next installment of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series will not only be under the auspices of Twisted Pictures (rather than Platinum Dunes) but will also be in 3-D.

Some say that in the case of horror movies that 3-D detracts from suspense or whatever but while I understand that complaint I think it's all in how the story is told. There's only been two big 3-D horror movies so far since the recent 3-D revival - My Bloody Valentine 3-D and The Final Destination - so it's a little early to tell how horror and 3-D will continue to develop together.

There's obviously a lot of resistance to the format among some genre fans but frankly, I'm stoked to see zombies (Resident Evil: Afterlife), vampires and werewolves (Underworld 4), man-eating fish (Piranha 3-D), Jason (Friday the 13th Part 2), Michael Myers (Halloween 3-D), and even Jigsaw (Saw VII) all in 3-D. Maybe the format is still a novelty but color film and sound must've seemed like novelties at one point, too. Besides, in the case of Texas Chainsaw, I know that meat hooks and chainsaws are going to play great in 3-D. I'm just stating the facts here.

If I could offer one suggestion to Lionsgate, though, the poster for TCM 3-D has got to bear the tagline "You Haven't Seen A Massacre Until You've Seen A Massacre In 3-D!" Granted, as taglines go it's no "Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Them" but I sure like the sound of it.

If You're Coming To Texas, You'd Better Bring Some Heat

While going through my back issues of FANGORIA, I came across this long-forgotten advertisement for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game. At the time I originally saw this ad, I hadn't seen the movie itself and I assumed that the lean fellow to the right taking deadly aim at Leatherface must be a character taken directly from the film, which prompted me to imagine this person's role in Texas Chainsaw.

Despite the gun, I didn't get a cop vibe from him; there was something above the law about this character. He looked like someone who'd be at home in a pulp novel. Maybe he was a private detective hired to investigate a disappearance that Leatherface was responsible for. Or maybe he was a self-appointed vigilante - someone whose wife or daughter had been slain by Leatherface and was out to score some Texas-style payback. All I knew was that I was excited to discover what I thought was one more piece to the puzzle when it came to unravelling TCM.

I don't know if I was still thinking of this imaginary character when I did finally see TCM but looking at this ad reminds me of a time before the ready availability of films on VHS and cable when even the classics had plenty of mystery to them. Unless you were old enough to have seen a film during its original release you'd know about a movie like Texas Chainsaw or The Exorcist by their reputation but have little else to go on. You couldn't instantly go online and find out every detail of a movie (or download it, for that matter). And it wasn't even like hearing about a film and speculating about it for a few weeks or months before seeing it for yourself - it was often a matter of waiting many years (the subject of a recent blog over at Arbogast on Film). And the longer a movie stayed out of reach, the more every new piece of info was able to take on a life of its own.

This unknown shooter was someone I wanted to know more about. I didn't know what had brought this mystery man up against Leatherface but he looked dangerous in his own right. This wasn't some barefoot hippie knocking on the wrong door looking for gas, this was a seasoned operator who showed up to kick some ass.

And I still can't help thinking there's a story left to be told about him.