Real-ly Scary: Fact, Fiction, and Chainsaws

The following is "real" crime footage from the epilogue and prologue of 2003's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

That Sweet Boy...

I'm awful tired of delusional old locals telling me that the town maniac is just a sweet misunderstood boy. Thomas Hewitt, to be fair, did it first. Before Jason and Michael. The result of a Maury-worthy fucked up childhood, Leatherface took much ridicule from the other residents of Middle-of-Nowehere, TX. When he'd had enough, he began hacking off their faces to wear as his own.

If you can't join 'em, cut 'em up with a gas-powered saw. Despite the mask and chainsaw, what's really scary is that he is a result of a not-so-rare Texas upbringing. Just look at this crazy bitch.

Fact and Fantasy: The Origins of a Legend

When the video above was first screened, it caused quite a buzz on the web. People argued the degree of validity. Were the tapes real? No, but really well done. Did Thomas Hewitt exist? No. Has anything like this ever really happened? Sort of.

Leatherface is the bastard child of urban legends and real life criminals. The most famous being Ed Gein, who also inspired Norman Bates. Gein was a madman with nearly twenty murders on file, the creator of the skin-mask, and a strong proponent of necrophilia. Gross.

Wisconsin's Ed Gein: Psycho, Murderer, Grave Robber, Packer Fan.

Gein being the primary influence on two of the most iconic slashers, his place in horror history is unquestionable. A real life monster with a body count that took fictional slashers three sequels to match.

Return of the Living Blog

Next week we'll be tackling another redo I don't hate: Dawn of the Dead. What a treat for all you reader(s). In addition to discussing the second film in Romero's undead franchise and Zach Snyder's remake, we'll also look at oddball Italian pseudo sequel Zombie 2. It features a zombie fighting a shark. No joke. More on that after the holiday.

Extreme Makeover: Leatherface Edition

In 1974, Tobe Hooper took a chainsaw to conventions of horror cinema. Through the iconic anti-hero Leatherface, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre assaulted the audience with innovative in-your-face gore. A blizzard of bloodlust and bizarre. More an experience than a motion picture.

Three decades later, the film was predictably remade. Surprisingly, the new polished take proved to be a frightening and worthy heir to Hooper's classic.

Shit Happens.

Just as the bumper sticker on the back of ill-fated van says. A major reason TCSM is so shocking is the realism. The original film makes a case for authenticity with shaky camerawork, eulogistic voiceover, and a lack of structure, more of an incident caught on tape than a narrative film. All of this is done make the audience believe that this could happen to them.

The reboot takes it further. In addition to the techniques borrowed from the original, we see "authentic" police footage, documents, and an epilogue. The film suggests not only that this could happen, but it already has.

Ed Gein + Folklore + Antique Effects = Truth = It could happen to you.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

In the 70's, gore flicks were underground. If you wanted to make a movie with naked beauties slaughtered by a masked maniac, you were doing it without the backing of a major studio. These rogue filmmakers soon caught the attention of mainstream distributors. I mean, how could one really ignore a six-foot speedster madman with a mask sewn from his victims.

Original films like Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were made entirely independently. Thus they strayed from conventional studio storytelling. The TCSM remake came during a second wave of studio horror films. Thus the new film took a film that broke the mold and boxed in a polished studio package.

The sun will come out tomorrow, but you'll still be missing a leg.

While maintaining the visuals from the original set, the reboot kicks it up a notch in detail. Bam! Grimy, dark, dusty, and disturbing, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre proved those who doubt a major studio could ever put together a worthwhile horror remake (usually including REELapse) wrong.

Just Keep Telling Yourself, "It's Only A Movie. It's Only a Movie..."

In the next post, we'll examine the psychology and mythology in the films. We'll also try to figure out where the hell Leatherface came from. Or maybe hell is the simple answer. Serious examination awaits.

A Sequel A Day Keeps The Doctor Away.

Or in the case of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, an absence of your series' central character keeps the audiences away. For those of you not terribly well versed in serial horror cinema, you may not know that Michael Myers, the star attraction of the Halloween pictures, was omitted from the third film. This puzzling move was done in an attempt to make the Halloween series an anthology of horrifying tales rather than overplay Michael. Turned out to be a worse mess than the victims of ol' Mike himself.

Quite the opposite problem came with Rob Zombie's reboot. Too much of a good thing can spoil it. Turns out, same goes for too much of an evil thing.

Michael Myers: Man or Bogeyman? 

To humanize or not to humanize, that is the question faced by all great horror filmmakers. When creating the face of evil that will stalk your protagonist and her friends, the creator must ask themself if they want the audience to feel for the foreman of their fears. John Carpenter clearly did not want the audience to relate with his monster. His turn to murder, unexplained and unprovoked, came packaged in a iconic thirty-second introduction.

The events covered in the original film's opening sequence stretch out over nearly forty minutes in the remake. In that time, we find motivation and explanation along with a dysfunctional family. Further, this time Michael talks. A lot. In this time we see a soul evaporate. While this strikes a cord in "realism" by creating a sense this or something like it could actually occur, it is much less horrifying than pure elemental evil.The way Michael Myers was meant to be.

Behind this mask is just a scared little boy. Someone named Zombie decided that was more terrifying than the Devil. Go figure.

It's All So Sad!

Zombie's film is less of a scare flick and more a melodrama. Far too much time is spent on presenting the cause for Michael's turn to evil. Upon his turn to darkness, he immediately kills one of his only three friends in the world by hurling a TV at him. I can't make this shit up. Really. Why spend 50 minutes humanizing a monster only to have his first act as an adult be entirely inhumane?

Zombie goes for the Frankenstein effect and begs for sympathy for his monster. The difference, and the problem, in this film is that Michael kills a lot of innocent people. Frankenstein didn't hurt anyone. Michael Myers is a murderous psychopath. He is thoroughly unlikable as well he should be. No matter how much time you waste trying to convince me otherwise. (51 minutes 31 seconds)

Another black-eyed, white-faced, long-haired Michael with Daddy issues. 

Who Will Survive? And What Will Be Left of Them? 

REELapse is headin' on down to Texas! Just when ya'll thought it was gon' be a good ole-fashioned swing dance of a time, the chainsaw revs up. It's all fun until someone loses an eye. And a leg. And an arm. Then a couple of heads. Leatherface is wreckin' up the joint as we explore The Texas Chainsaw Massacre(s).
Blood?
Allusions to real-life killers?
It's all here!
There's nothing to lose... other than your limbs.