My 5 favorite films: Film 3: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Along with late Saturday night horror host presentations of classic Universal monster films, my love of the genre took root in the early days of the non-franchise, mom & pop video stores. There were several of those shops my father and I would visit. One was located in the same strip mall I got my hair cut at and that was where I first saw IT. The poster for Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was 5 or 6 at the time and I recall my mind being thrown into a maelstrom of unpleasant prognostication. What on earth could possibly happen in this movie?!?!? I was simultaneously too terrified to find out and too intrigued to stop thinking about it, which I believe is the precise mathematical equation that explains the allure of horror on an impressionable mind. I didn't dare ask my father to rent it for me for I knew, even at that young age, that request would be summarily shot down.

Fast forward 4 or 5 years, now at 10 or 11 years of age, I still hadn't forgotten about seeing the film, but it had slipped to the back of my to-do list. Then, one sunny summer afternoon, I look through the TV guide (the one that came as a supplement to the Sunday paper back in the day) and see that it is playing on broadcast TV in the middle of the day! Seeing that it was already running, I switched immediately to the station airing it right as it came back from commercial break with a card and voice over explaining that the film was being aired uncut and that viewer discretion was advised. The scene opened up on Sally pushing Franklin in the dark and I was taken aback by how dark, grainy and awful the image looked, like a bad dream being transmitted from a nightmare dimension. I became instantly quite nervous and felt dangerously unsafe even though it was the middle of a beautiful summer day and the sun was shining cheerily through the blinds behind me. Sally and Franklin's hopeless bickering led to a crescendo, then out popped Leatherface into the flashlight's glare and I bolted from my cross legged position in font of the cathode ray, frantically turned the television off and ran outside to play and to forget about such things... for a time.

In the interim, I became well versed with far more graphic films. Dead Alive, Bad Taste, Evil Dead 2 and so on and so forth. But, due to some unutterable and ingrained trepidation, never undertook seeing TCM in its entirety. Jump cut to age 19. I was well into the "sleeping on friends and girlfriends couches while being a jobless bum" phase of my life. I was spending the night at the apartment of my good friend Mr. Salty (nickname) when he and his old lady retired to the boudoir, leaving my insomniac self with his tiny tube TV, creaky VCR and collection of horror cassettes. Among the Full Moon features and other detritus, there was a copy of TCM that even in the year 1996 when I came across it was already certifiably ancient. I don't know what quaint distribution company of forgotten lore released it, but there, alone in the dark, inches away from the sickly glow of a minuscule, hand me down, off brand TV, I decided to at long last watch this much ballyhooed and habitually avoided film.

In retrospect, there was no other way to experience the film for the first time. The diminutive screen and need to keep the volume down due to the late hour compelled me to sit closely and strain to hear, which served only to suck me into the films degenerative web all the more. It felt dream like and mysterious, yet also visceral and punishing. The last 40 minutes was the closest I'd ever seen a film capture a descent into hell up to that point. It didn't feel like a titillating, voyeuristic viewing of a produced piece of entertainment so much as a transgressive intrusion on someones ultimate physical suffering and attendant mental collapse. As soon as it finished, I rewound it and instantly watched it again. Over the next several months, I probably watched the film 30 times myself and another 15 where I forced others to actually sit down and focus on it, cause if there was ever a film that the average person thinks they've seen, but in point of fact hasn't and can't begin to comprehend how horribly powerful and terrifically upsetting it is, it's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I still revisit it at least twice a year and its Herculean strength has diminished little over the decades.

I won't go into the subtext, cinematography and sundry reasons why the film is so majestic. I've expounded a great deal on that in written reviews elsewhere on the web. I would however like to make one final point. I am of the opinion that if you are one of those horror fans that drones on and on about how much you hate torture porn, you have no right being a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper's TCM is the prototypical torture porn film in the same manner that Halloween and Psycho are the forbears of the slasher film. It is a story of a group of youth's out of their element and captured by a sadistic, inhuman force that gleefully goes about psychologically and physically breaking them down until they eventually kill them. It is the bloody chamber archetype and is perhaps the most primal example of a horror story. The themes and base fears exploited by the core scenario are found everywhere throughout culture from The Passion of Jesus Christ to Hansel and Gretel to Hostel. For the love of god, the last 35 minutes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are Sally Hardesty strapped to a chair, screaming in revulsion, terror and agony as a group of slimy, sweat drenched inbreds paw, poke and prod her. If that doesn't qualify as torture porn, I have no idea what the hell does.

It is one of the most influential horror films ever made and the prime example of a movie being oft imitated yet never duplicated. It is lightning in a bottle. It is a window into hell. It is the diseased heart beating beneath the American dream. It is the one and only, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

My 5 favorite films: Film 2: Hellbound Hellraiser 2

Let me now relate to you the tale of the first time I saw Hellbound. I was about 12 years old and well into my Fangoria and Gorezone fuelled horror film obssession. My best friend and I would spend every weekend renting the films we read about, using the the words of Chas Balun and others to educate and guide us through the history of horror. That was a fantastic era of my life to say the least. I'd give anything to go back in time and witness films such as Phantasm, City of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead 1 and 2 and Re-Animator for the first time again. Ah, to be a caffeine addled lad adrift in the ephemera of all things dead! Despite now being married, a proud father and employed in the sort of 9 to 5 office job I never imagined I would be, little has changed. In any case, we had seen the first Hellraiser and having read wild reports of how unrelentingly gory the sequel was, made seeing it our top priority. One Friday night, we rented it only to be driven back home to find the clerk had mistakenly put Mystic Pizza (the Julia Robert's vehicle, not some esoteric Little Ceaser's creation) in the video box! We were incensed, but my compatriot's father was not in the mood to drive back to the video store, so it had to wait til' the next weekend.

The moment having arrived, we put it in the VCR at his house in fervored anticipation. Things were going swimmingly with the expository prologue and establishment of new characters and loony bin setting. Then, without warning, Dr. Channard gave that delusional inmate that scalpel on that matress and my life was changed forever. Never before or since have I felt such conflicting waves of terror, revulsion and fascination. It was common place in my viewing regimen to see a hulking brute do terrible things to dim witted teens with a sharp, blunt instrument, but to witness a character in a position of authority purposefully enable someone in his care to brutally mutilate themselves to further his own depraved interests was a whole new pool of sick that I wasn't at the time entirely certain I wanted to dip my toes into. I danced around behind the sofa, embarrassed by my difficulty with viewing the scene, which I now realize had more to do with my innate sense that I shouldn't be seeing something so transgressive at such a tender age than anything else. Needless to say, I have pushed beyond that early compunction and have made searching out boundary pushing, stomach turning experiences with much gusto. My film collection holds titles such as Cannibal Holocaust, Salo, Cannibal and VanBebber's The Manson Family and without hesitation, I can pinpoint my first time seeing that scene as the catalyst for all the heinous celluloid that has followed in the intervening 2 plus decades.

The scene still holds up, but the film is a gem for a million other reasons. I love the dime store, funhouse aesthetic of the labyrinth. A sterling example of imagination and atmosphere triumphing over budgetery limitations if ever there was one. I love the matte paintings which occupy a place both glorious and cheesily dated. The Peter Atkins script is a piece of fucking ART! It expands the universe brilliantly while effortlessly incorporating the characters and motif's of the first film. It also gives you lines as imminently quotable as "We have an eternity to know your flesh", "Your suffering will be legendary, even in Hell!" and of course, "To think, I hesitated." Doug Bradley owns Pinhead in this film. His intelligence shines through those shark eye contacts and he projects a marvelous weariness that makes the character so singular and interesting.

Which brings me to my absolute favorite aspect of the film. Kenneth Cranham's Dr. Channard. Easily the most impressive Cenobite of all time, the character is just as devious and despicable in his human incarnation. He exploits and hides behind his patients and before his forced transformation, is a cowardly voyeur unwilling to pay the price of pain to play at the Lovecraftian level he aspires to. He's a delightfully British twist on the Burroughsian evil physician archetype personified by Naked Lunch's Dr. Benway. A velvet voiced smooth talker who has your worst interests at heart and is nowhere to be found when the check arrives. The Cenobitization of Dr. Channard is one of the more fantastically repugnant moments of 80's gore and his phallic, serpentine head swivel more than speaks for itself. Such a great character and so expertly portrayed with such amazing make-up, it baffles me he isn't more referenced and celebrated in the genre appreciation circles I run.

This is a real desert island movie of mine. It has everything I love about horror films. Brooding atmosphere, outrageous gore, clever writing, mythic performances and a lush, operatic, grand guignol sensibility that infuses the darkest and most morbid humor imaginable to the grim proceedings. When people moan and wail about the demise of 80's horror, this is the film that springs to mind for me. I haven't seen the likes of its playfulness and creativity in a damn long time.

My 5 favorite films: Film 1: Natural Born Killers

My five favorite films are as follows (in no particular order): Natural Born Killers, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, Videodrome and Tetsuo: the Iron Man. The works of Fulci, Argento, Stuart Gordon and the Coen brothers are in their own respective stratospheres, thereby breaking apart into extraordinarily malleable subdivisions of relative perfection. My top 5 though, have attained their esteemed placement through years worth of rigorous examination not to mention studious, attentive and innumerable viewings. They appeal to me on an aesthetic, visceral and intellectual level. I can vividly recall the first time I saw them and how profoundly I was affected. I would like to write a bit about each of these films (again, in no particular order) starting with Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.



Natural Born Killers came out at the tail end of the summer before my senior year of High School. I was 17 and already a lifelong film fan not to mention horror aficionado, having been reading Fangoria and Gorezone since I was 10 and with multiple viewings of films such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, City of the Living Dead and Bad Taste under my belt. I went to NBK opening night and was blown the fuck away. It was a rock concert, art house pastiche, violent road and prison picture, black satire, experimental mind fuck and creative supernova all rolled into one. It was the cinematic Burning Man for the Grunge/NIN generation and arguably the last interesting film to come out of the 90's. Our heroes were dead and our culture was a bloated, disingenuous whore. We watched wars and murder trials on TV as if they were situation comedies designed for our amusement and destined to be discarded and summarily replaced by another equally inconsequential batch. The film was a warning that we as a country were on a seriously disgusting path and the subsequently salacious and despicable sixteen years since its release would seem to indicate the admonishment went unheeded.



I saw NBK 7 nights in a row, from Friday, opening night to the following Friday, a Herculean feat no film since has compelled me to repeat. The more I saw it, the more the film opened up to me. Every nuance of acting, editing and shot selection became a gorgeous universe unto itself. For example: take the scene when Tom Sizemore's (remember when that name meant something?) Jack Scagnetti is relating the story of losing his mother during the Charles Whitman rampage to Tommy Lee Jones' Warden Dwight McCloskey. It begins as a highly comical interaction betwixt two caricatures of the most vile aspects of control. Then, as the story's emotional intensity begins to escalate, Oliver Stone opts to drop out the dialog track and bring up the hauntingly serene Trent Reznor synth music and as that swells, cuts outside the washed out prison walls to refreshingly vibrant shots of lovely green grass and flowers swaying in the Spring breeze. I'm incapable of accurately and adequately describing how heart wrenching and brilliant I find that several minutes of film to be. No other film I can think of has a moment with elements alternatingly touching, laughable and grotesque in such an unlikely combination and with such a disconcerting, yet comforting effect. That's roughly 2 minutes in a film filled with 118 others I find just as memorable, achingly beautiful and hilariously compelling.
View the scene

It's Robert Downey Jr's finest work hands down. Sure, dude might have been coked to the gills, but the potency of Wayne Gale as a metaphor for everything slimy, insidious, yet imminently likable about the media cannot be understated. Not a day goes by that at one point or another I don't either think or outright give voice to one of his immortal lines such as "Repitition works David, Repitition works David", "Don't put anything down on paper...ever." or my personal favorite, "This is the Nixon/Frost interviews, this is Wallace and Noriega, this is Elton John confessing his BI-SEXUALITY TO ROLLING STONE!" Tarantino wrote a great script (of which how much remains in the finished film I have no idea), but without performances the caliber Downey, Harrelson, Lewis, Jones, Sizemore, and Dangerfield turned in, you'd have been left with simply inert verbal wordplay. Much like the blog you're currently reading....Ha!

The point is, this film is on the top 5 list for perhaps the most reasons of any. It connects me to a time when I was getting into my first romantic relationships and Mickey and Mallory's psychotic purity as a coupling was inspiring, terrifying and oddly adorable. It reminds me of an age when I had no other responsibilities than enjoying movies with my friends and endlessly discussing them at all night gas station hang sessions that Kevin Smith seemed to have pilfered for script inspiration. There are certain friends of mine that to this day, even if we haven't spoken in months, can perform word for word recitations of our favorite bits with me at the drop of a hat. I don't think I have seen a film as visually schizophrenic or relentlessly inventive since. It employs more film techniques in its first 5 minutes than 97% of today's films (including Oliver Stones current, lamentable output) do in their entire runtime. It's a snapshot of a time in this country before our last vestiges of originality, ingenuity and individuality would forever be washed away by the internet, 9/11 and reality television. It's a film that makes me feel young. It makes me feel sad. It makes me laugh. It makes me think. It does all that and a hell of a lot more.