As we often preach here at TG, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Yes, the remake of Texas Chainsaw is supposedly what started all these lame horror reboots we’ve been suffering through the last decade.
And now it seems as if the next step in movie karaoke innovation will be bringing Texas Chainsaw back in, you guessed it, 3D.
The funny thing is, anyone who sat through the gut-wrenching original knows it’s practically in 3D already. I love it when you forget you’re watching a movie, and this is what happens when you’re watching the original Massacre.
As Joe Bob Briggs, world’s foremost drive-in critic has noted in his book Profoundly Disturbing, newcomers to Texas Chainsaw are “inevitably stricken with a vaguely uneasy feeling, as though the film might have actually been made by maniac.”
Even the director of Last House on the Left was shaken.
”It looked like someone stole a camera and started killing people,” Wes Craven told Vanity Fair. “It had a wild, feral energy that I had never seen before, with none of the Band-Aids that soften things. I was scared shitless.”
It’s also somewhat in smell-o-vision in the sense that when you enter the house, you’re practically choking from the rotted bones and flesh inside. I don’t know what you’ll call this gimmick, but Texas Chainsaw also puts more subliminally in your mind than it actually shows on the screen.
Alison Macor, author of the Texas film history Chainsaws, Slackers and Spy Kids, says, “As often happens with some independently made films, the conditions of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s production, low budget, tight shooting schedule, lack of resources, actually made the film more convincing and realistic.
“That’s what makes it so successful as a horror film. Its realism and gritty look, even the awkwardness onscreen of some of its principal actors create a very effective tension throughout the film. As a viewer, you feel as hot and tired as the actors look by the time they find the Leatherface house and we witness the first kill.”
Macor says she first saw the film in college at the University of Notre Dame.
“We saw films for our classes in the campus museum, which was halfway across the campus from my dorm, and the screenings were at night,” she recalls.
”I came out of the museum after the screening and started walking back to the dorm. Then I started to walk faster. Then I broke into a run. I remember thinking, It wasn’t real. Why are you so scared?! Then I just thought, Those people down in TX are insane! And then I moved here. Go figure!”
You think having a chainsaw or some blood flying out of the screen’s gonna make this classic fright flick any scarier? Good luck.
