The Texas Chainsaw Sucktacular
Okay, so way back when on Halloween I saw, for the first time ever, the original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I saw it because everyone always says it's the greatest horror movie ever, you'll wet yourself with glee, you'll never be able to sleep well again, etc. etc. I now want to punch those people in the groin.
Let's start off with the premise of the movie; a bunch of kids (2 females, and 3 males, one of which is confined to a wheel-chair and just makes incredibly annoying noises throughout the entire film) go into the Middle of Nowhere, Texas, to ensure that their grandparents' graves have not been desecrated by grave robbers/vandals (because calling the operator of the cemetary was far too complicated). On the way there, they sit around and talk about random crap. Then, they see this guy, a hitchhiker who is clearly a bastion of sanity with only the best of intentions for those he interacts with. Proving their intellectual prowess, they decide to just pick that weirdo up, with very little objections from the inhabitants of the van. Whether or not they were on crack remains unclear. First, the hitchhiker sits around and has a long discussion with wheel-chair boy about how head-cheese is made, and wheel-chair boy is loving every minute of it (while everyone else is thoroughly grossed out), and then wheel-chair boy discusses how he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see his grandpa kill cows with a nailgun when he was younger. The hitchhiker then argues with wheel-chair boy that smashing cows over the head with a hammer was far superior to the automated method, and then starts playing with a knife, and cuts deeply into his own hand, and then eventually cuts wheel-chair boy. The hitchhiker gets kicked out of the van, and decides to rub his blood all over the van while they are speeding off.
At one point, they stop off at a nearby gas station to fill up the tank, but the gas station claims it's out of gas and is waiting for another shipment. At this point the group decides it wants to find a place to go swim, so they all run off to search... seperately. Remember, this is the '70s before cell-phones, so even if one of them did find what they were looking for, how would they contact the others? Telepathy? Who knows. One of the geniuses of this bunch spots a house and believes he hears a generator, so he moronically assumes that the owner(s) have gas for sale. Because whenever I hear a generator, I think gas for sale. So, this genius goes to the house, and decides to enter it for reasons that still remain unclear to me (I suppose since the front door wasn't locked, he assumed it meant he should come in?), and explore the house. At the end of the hall is a room painted red with animal skulls of various kinds, and he walks down the hall into that area. Sure enough, a big fat angry guy wearing a mask of human flesh appears, and smacks him in the head with a sledge hammer. Our genius goes down like a ton of bricks and starts quivering like he's having the world's worst seizure or something. 1 Down, 4 to go.
One of the girls, Victim #2, enters the house, spots the maniac, runs, gets captured, and gets intimately familiar with a meathook. The apron wearing maniac proceeds to rev up a chainsaw and do what appeared to be an interpretive dance of sorts with it in front of the girl. This scene just really served only to confuse me. The other guy, Victim #3, is offed by a hammer to the head. I will add that there is no attempt to make any of the deaths give you a "jump" scare or anything like that. They just get set up, and happen.
It's now nighttime, and annoying wheel-chair boy and the final girl are running around in the woods, aware of the danger they are in. All is going fine, when, *gasp* Leatherface shows up with a chainsaw! How you can sneak up on people when you're a big, clumsy, angry redneck weilding a chainsaw, possibly the noisiest weapon possible, is beyond me, but he pulls it off. In what is probably the best scene of the movie, he shoves the saw into wheelchair boy, multiple times, and finally shuts him up. There is no blood whatsoever when this happens, and it is clear that the saw is actually nowhere near him, but you can suspend disbelief I suppose. I think they really missed out on a golden opportunity to have the girl shove the guy into Leatherface. It would have made me laugh if she had purposefully used him as a decoy, but alas, that was not the case. What follows is a long chase, completely devoid of tension, I may add, through the woods, where Leatherface takes his time to cut down any braches that may be in his way. How he expects to catch up to a girl running approximately 3x as fast as he is, while taking breaks to trim the foliage, I don't know. But he does. Again, suspend disbelief, people. Ultimately, she is captured by the gas-station guy. Yes, we have a conspiracy on our hands. Call the FBI. Or better yet, any of the millions of people in Texas with really big guns, itchy trigger fingers, and fragile egos.
What follows is the girl getting introduced to the cannibalistic family. She spends the rest of the film (what seems like 30-45 minutes) just screaming and freaking out. It must have sucked to be that actress. She somehow escapes, and runs outside (after jumping out of a window for like the third time), and is chased by the hitchhiker from the beginning, and Leatherface. She is rescued by a semi-truck, which chunkifies the hitchhiker, earning him both a Darwin award and a closed-casket funeral. Leatherface comes and tries to saw his way into the truck. What does the truckdriver do? Drive off? Call for help? No, he grabs a large wrench, and jumps out of the truck. He then throws the wrench into Leatherface's face, causing him to fall over and slice himself with his chainsaw. At this point, our heroine jumps onto the bed of a truck rolling by and is effectively rescued.
Leatherface, realizing he has been defeated, does a dance with his chainsaw, presumably demonstrating how all cannibalistic mass-murderers with a fetish for gas-operated power tools vent their frustration.
What was wrong with this movie? Just about everything. Perhaps it was the fact that everyone and every review I ever saw for this movie hyped it up to no end, but it was just terrible. I seriously wonder if these people actually saw the film, or just decided to copy someone else's review. I am also particularly angry with this film because I watched it on Halloween , a holiday whose awesomeness is rivalled only by Christmas (primarily due to Halloween's propensity to cause cute and otherwise shy and introverted girls to dress up like complete sluts), and it effectively brought down the awesomeness of my Halloween by quite a few notches. Bastards.
Let's start off with the premise of the movie; a bunch of kids (2 females, and 3 males, one of which is confined to a wheel-chair and just makes incredibly annoying noises throughout the entire film) go into the Middle of Nowhere, Texas, to ensure that their grandparents' graves have not been desecrated by grave robbers/vandals (because calling the operator of the cemetary was far too complicated). On the way there, they sit around and talk about random crap. Then, they see this guy, a hitchhiker who is clearly a bastion of sanity with only the best of intentions for those he interacts with. Proving their intellectual prowess, they decide to just pick that weirdo up, with very little objections from the inhabitants of the van. Whether or not they were on crack remains unclear. First, the hitchhiker sits around and has a long discussion with wheel-chair boy about how head-cheese is made, and wheel-chair boy is loving every minute of it (while everyone else is thoroughly grossed out), and then wheel-chair boy discusses how he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see his grandpa kill cows with a nailgun when he was younger. The hitchhiker then argues with wheel-chair boy that smashing cows over the head with a hammer was far superior to the automated method, and then starts playing with a knife, and cuts deeply into his own hand, and then eventually cuts wheel-chair boy. The hitchhiker gets kicked out of the van, and decides to rub his blood all over the van while they are speeding off.
At one point, they stop off at a nearby gas station to fill up the tank, but the gas station claims it's out of gas and is waiting for another shipment. At this point the group decides it wants to find a place to go swim, so they all run off to search... seperately. Remember, this is the '70s before cell-phones, so even if one of them did find what they were looking for, how would they contact the others? Telepathy? Who knows. One of the geniuses of this bunch spots a house and believes he hears a generator, so he moronically assumes that the owner(s) have gas for sale. Because whenever I hear a generator, I think gas for sale. So, this genius goes to the house, and decides to enter it for reasons that still remain unclear to me (I suppose since the front door wasn't locked, he assumed it meant he should come in?), and explore the house. At the end of the hall is a room painted red with animal skulls of various kinds, and he walks down the hall into that area. Sure enough, a big fat angry guy wearing a mask of human flesh appears, and smacks him in the head with a sledge hammer. Our genius goes down like a ton of bricks and starts quivering like he's having the world's worst seizure or something. 1 Down, 4 to go.
One of the girls, Victim #2, enters the house, spots the maniac, runs, gets captured, and gets intimately familiar with a meathook. The apron wearing maniac proceeds to rev up a chainsaw and do what appeared to be an interpretive dance of sorts with it in front of the girl. This scene just really served only to confuse me. The other guy, Victim #3, is offed by a hammer to the head. I will add that there is no attempt to make any of the deaths give you a "jump" scare or anything like that. They just get set up, and happen.
It's now nighttime, and annoying wheel-chair boy and the final girl are running around in the woods, aware of the danger they are in. All is going fine, when, *gasp* Leatherface shows up with a chainsaw! How you can sneak up on people when you're a big, clumsy, angry redneck weilding a chainsaw, possibly the noisiest weapon possible, is beyond me, but he pulls it off. In what is probably the best scene of the movie, he shoves the saw into wheelchair boy, multiple times, and finally shuts him up. There is no blood whatsoever when this happens, and it is clear that the saw is actually nowhere near him, but you can suspend disbelief I suppose. I think they really missed out on a golden opportunity to have the girl shove the guy into Leatherface. It would have made me laugh if she had purposefully used him as a decoy, but alas, that was not the case. What follows is a long chase, completely devoid of tension, I may add, through the woods, where Leatherface takes his time to cut down any braches that may be in his way. How he expects to catch up to a girl running approximately 3x as fast as he is, while taking breaks to trim the foliage, I don't know. But he does. Again, suspend disbelief, people. Ultimately, she is captured by the gas-station guy. Yes, we have a conspiracy on our hands. Call the FBI. Or better yet, any of the millions of people in Texas with really big guns, itchy trigger fingers, and fragile egos.
What follows is the girl getting introduced to the cannibalistic family. She spends the rest of the film (what seems like 30-45 minutes) just screaming and freaking out. It must have sucked to be that actress. She somehow escapes, and runs outside (after jumping out of a window for like the third time), and is chased by the hitchhiker from the beginning, and Leatherface. She is rescued by a semi-truck, which chunkifies the hitchhiker, earning him both a Darwin award and a closed-casket funeral. Leatherface comes and tries to saw his way into the truck. What does the truckdriver do? Drive off? Call for help? No, he grabs a large wrench, and jumps out of the truck. He then throws the wrench into Leatherface's face, causing him to fall over and slice himself with his chainsaw. At this point, our heroine jumps onto the bed of a truck rolling by and is effectively rescued.
Leatherface, realizing he has been defeated, does a dance with his chainsaw, presumably demonstrating how all cannibalistic mass-murderers with a fetish for gas-operated power tools vent their frustration.
What was wrong with this movie? Just about everything. Perhaps it was the fact that everyone and every review I ever saw for this movie hyped it up to no end, but it was just terrible. I seriously wonder if these people actually saw the film, or just decided to copy someone else's review. I am also particularly angry with this film because I watched it on Halloween , a holiday whose awesomeness is rivalled only by Christmas (primarily due to Halloween's propensity to cause cute and otherwise shy and introverted girls to dress up like complete sluts), and it effectively brought down the awesomeness of my Halloween by quite a few notches. Bastards.
posted by The Angry Frenchie at 12:50 AM
4 Comments:
You totally forgot the duper awesome person that both rented it becausse *YOU* asked for it and watched it with you. Oh yes, that would be me. And yeah, head cheese makes me want to puke.
Hey, I only asked for it because other people had said it was totally awesome. As I indicated in my entry, I want to hurt those people for being so misleading.
Also, at least your sitting through it with me made it at least somewhat tolerable, so I didn't have to go crazy and jump out of my window or something. Or just turn it off.
And is your renting it really that vital a detail?
Psh it's vital like your mom. And I'm glad I made it "somewhat tolerable." You SO know how to make a girl feel good.
It's what I do best baby.
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