A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[bigshot]

Perhaps now. Perhaps in measure even 20 or 30 years ago. But not during TTCSM's initial release.

I distinctly remember when the film came out reading reviews after I saw the film and laughing about how the critics totally missed the point of the movie. My suspicion (and I think I was correct) was that reviewers saw the ads and reluctantly attended the preview screenings but walked out about twenty minutes in and filed a review anyway.

I only know why I went back to see it several times in theaters... it was because of the directoral audacity of starting out a movie making you think it is one kind of movie, then totally shifting gears and making it another kind of movie. I was well aware of what was going on there back in the day. It's also why I liked Videodrome. It started out like a stylish TV movie in the style of the build ups of some giallo movies, then completely shifted gears into absurd surrealism. One side of the coin is overt and the other is subtext through the first half, then it flip flops and the subtext becomes overt. That was very popular with film directors back in the late 70s / early 80s- subtext running counter to the surface of the film- using a genre like horror that has all kinds of expectations built in, then using those expectations to act as misdirection for something entirely different. Dawn of the Dead is a gold plated example of a movie from the same place and time that is really about something quite different than what it appears to be about. That film I didn't get on first viewing because the theater screened the reels out of order and no one realized it... the guy who got bit died and turned into a zombie and then he is fine again and working with them to barricade the place... then he turns into a zombie again. I was totally confused. I read a review and realized that there had been a mistake and went back and saw it again the next weekend.

I think there are two kinds of fans of these films. Those that take the film on face value and enjoy it for that... and those who appreciate the dichotomy that the director is setting up and maintaining so perfectly. For me, I can't stand slasher films. I watched about ten minutes of lots of slasher films and turned them right off because I found them to be aggressively stupid- playing out the same formulas over and over... oh look! a naked girl in the shower! oh look, she's cheating on her boyfriend! she sure deserves to be punished. oh look! here's the guy in the hockey mask to slice her up... I'm not overly fond of zombie films on the whole for the same reason. But Texas Chainsaw and Dawn of the Dead appealed to me from the very beginning, and I knew exactly what was going on the first time I saw them. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gone back to see them again. Same with Mulholland Drive. I figured that out as I was walking out to my car after the screening and wanted to go right back and see it again so I could analyze how such a clever flip flop was organized.

 

[ROclockCK]

Although I recognized those satirical elements too, this thing still gripped me by the throat.

So I still say you were in the minority in terms of how this film played during those sophomore engagements. I mean, I've never seen so many grown adults rattled raw by a horror movie*.

* Only The Exorcist even comes close. I never did see Psycho during first run, only its late-60s reissue.

 

[bigshot]

There was scattered laughter starting with the scene where he hits her with a stick in the bag on the floor of the truck. The "Look what your brother did" line completely broke the audience up... The dinner table scene and Grampa got lots of laughs too. It may have been because I started laughing. I messed up the preview night audience at Dune at the Chinese Theater too. I found it to be hilarious from the first scene. After about five minutes, there were 5 or 6 people laughing. By the end, half the audience was in hysterics and the rest of the audience was pissed. I later figured out that the dividing line between those who didn't find it funny and those who did was whether you had read the book before seeing the movie or not.

 

[ROclockCK]

I'm sure many of us are guilty of similar. I will never forget that opening week Love Story audience in Windsor, ON who demanded that 4 of us be escorted to the door over our involuntary laughter, despite our sincere best efforts to stifle it. And I really thought we were winning that battle...until the deathbed climax. To this day, I still lose it over clips showing Ali McGraw's nostrils flaring like a quarterhorse.

Sometimes an otherwise serious, earnestly played movie...just...does that to you.

 

[bujaki]

I'm sure many of us are guilty of similar. I will never forget that opening week Love Story audience in Windsor, ON who demanded that 4 of us be escorted to the door over our involuntary laughter, despite our sincere best efforts to stifle it. And I really thought we were winning that battle...until the deathbed climax. To this day, I still lose it over clips showing Ali McGraw's nostrils flaring like a quarterhorse.

Sometimes an otherwise serious, earnestly played movie...just...does that to you.

LOVE STORY. Wow. My now wife and I laughed throughout the whole thing. The more sniffles I heard in the theater, the harder I laughed. Couldn't help it. And I cry during Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Bambi, Dumbo, Toy Story 3, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Search; and many more. But they are not tears manufactured via cheap manipulation of feelings.

 

[ROclockCK]

I can even go to pieces over "cheap manipulation" Jose, providing it's really cheap and really manipulative (uhm...paging Mr. Banks), but there's just something about that damn Segal tale. I even tried watching Love Story on my own once with a few extra glasses of screw top vino in me, and I still split a gut!*

Anyway, back to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I think a different kind of thing was going on there. As mentioned earlier, some of it was "nervous laughter" no doubt, and some of it was just gallows humour you couldn't possibly miss (like the aforementioned 'arm' chair plus the toothless old goat who couldn't hold his 'hammer' up anymore). But Hooper's suspense and sense of dread were sustained regardless. I certainly don't recall many laughs, if any...and that was at a packed matinee showing.

* ...and then I puked...for real...nothing to do with the movie.

 

[Oblivion138]

But The Exorcist had a certain - gloss - to it, with name actors. Still, I refused to see it during its initial run - I finally caught up with it years later and liked it very much, save for the spinal thing.

The arteriogram scene is the one that always gets to me, as well. For some reason, medical scenes like that unnerve me much more than scenes of demonic possession or horrific violence.

 

[Charles Smith]

Same here. That scene, and the context in which Mr. Friedkin placed it and filmed it, was one of the most unnerving things in a film chock full of unnerving things.

I forget the details, but there was a scene either not filmed or not used that made it more clear that that was not the procedure referred to when the doc says they may need to do "another spinal". Many people, including me, had no idea what was what. And not that it mattered one bit. We were all blown away by it.

I loved The Exorcist, even though I was surprisingly (for a 24-year-old who loved all things horror) freaked out by it for the first few times I saw it.

 

[Reed Grele]

When I was a child back in the sixties, the 'B' sci-fi and horror films that WPIX New York used to show Saturday evenings on Chiller Theater used to scare the pants off me.First time I saw NOTLD (1968) at a midnight showing in my small town, I was shocked, horrified, and scared beyond belief!When I saw TTCSM at a local drive-in..... Same story.Hell, when I was 12, even the trailer for Planet of the Apes that was shown on TV gave me nightmares. Apes on horseback, hunting humans? Incredible!You had to be there.

 

[bigshot]

Love Story would make a great double feature with Texas Chainsaw.

I saw Texas Chainsaw back in the day in Hollywood and Westwood. The audience was mostly hooligan college kids. They were scared in parts, but they (like me, another hooligan except in high school) were there to laugh and have fun with the scares. Even in high school, I figured out what was going on in the movie and I liked it.

Exorcist was totally different. That movie only had one scene that evoked laughs. I am not allowed to describe it, but when the teachers at school weren't looking, we would recreate it for each other and roll on the floor laughing. But most of the Exorcist was serious, and we took the scares in that one very seriously.

 

[TravisR]

I saw Texas Chainsaw back in the day in Hollywood and Westwood. The audience was mostly hooligan college kids. They were scared in parts, but they (like me, another hooligan except in high school) were there to laugh and have fun with the scares. Even in high school, I figured out what was going on in the movie and I liked it.

I'm glad I saw it at home as a young kid and that it scared the hell out of me because I'd much rather have viewed the movie that way for the first time than having seen it with a bunch of guys in their early 20's laughing at everything in an effort to prove to their girls or friends that they're not scared by it.

 

[EddieLarkin]

The mistakes in the new restoration discussed earlier in the thread will be fixed on the UK Blu-ray:

https://www.facebook.com/SecondSightFilms/posts/506960436105061

 

[hanshotfirst1138]

The mistakes in the new restoration discussed earlier in the thread will be fixed on the UK Blu-ray:https://www.facebook.com/SecondSightFilms/posts/506960436105061

The mono track, you mean? So the BR will be Region and the DVD will be 25 FPS . I'm glad I'm region free then! That's if they're telling the truth, mind.

 

[EddieLarkin]

Primarily the fix to the fade in the opening, though also the inclusion of the actual original mono, missing on the U.S. disc.

I see no reason why they would make a public claim like that if they were lying. The change to the opening will be completely obvious once people have the disc.

 

[moviebuff75]

We thought we WERE getting the original mono in the US. They should have a replacement program for us. It's not right.

 

[TravisR]

We thought we WERE getting the original mono in the US. They should have a replacement program for us. It's not right.

It's going back a number of years now so I may be misremembering but when Dark Sky screwed up the two disc DVD, didn't they do a replacement program? If they did it the first time, hopefully they'll do it the second time too.

 

[hanshotfirst1138]

If anyone hears, keep us posted. It'd be a hell of a lot easier than importing it.

 

[haineshisway]

It's going back a number of years now so I may be misremembering but when Dark Sky screwed up the two disc DVD, didn't they do a replacement program? If they did it the first time, hopefully they'll do it the second time too.

Well, from what I'm reading here, Dark Sky didn't screw up anything - the fade/hard cut and the audio was done under the supervision and wished of Tobe Hooper. Blame him, if, of course, that's true.

 

[Vincent_P]

Well, from what I'm reading here, Dark Sky didn't screw up anything - the fade/hard cut and the audio was done under the supervision and wished of Tobe Hooper. Blame him, if, of course, that's true.

I don't believe that explanation at all.

Vincent

 

[AshJW]

I don't believe that explanation at all.

Vincent

The producers of the German BD says it too.