Daily Awesome #120

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Starring: Jordana Brewster, Matt Bomer, Diora Baird
My Rating: Liked it

The story hasn't changed and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning doesn't shed any new light on Leatherface or his family, but I think this is the best TCM since 1 and 2. It definitely helps The Beginning's case that TCM3, The Next Generation, and 2004's remake range from bad to horrendously awful.

The Beginning is easily the most brutal in the franchise. I would argue that sometimes it's too graphic, even. This is also the only movie in the franchise in which there isn't a survivor at the end. It's been a staple of the series to have a survivor girl, and I'm glad that The Beginning changes this because it makes more sense, quite frankly. If people kept on escaping, this family would undoubtedly be in jail.

The main character of The Beginning is Uncle Hewitt/"Sheriff" and I think R. Lee Ermey (who also plays this character in 2003's TCM) plays this character extremely well. I could do without the birthing intro and the excessive amounts of blood, but I really like the quality of this movie because it's more reminiscent of the original than any of the other sequels. It's beautifully minimalist and in your face the whole time, just like Tobe Hooper's direction.

If you can handle the blood, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, while snubbed by critics, is a surprisingly competent slasher flick and a very solid entry for Leatherface.

Daily Awesome #119

Daily Awesome #118

Daily Awesome #117

Black Christmas (1974)

Black Christmas
Director: Bob Clark
Starring: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea
My Rating: Loved It!!

I've read in many places online that Black Christmas was the first movie to "start" the slasher genre, but that never made much sense to me. Years before this movie there were movies like My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, etc, so I'm not quite sure why so many people claim this is the first one, but I digress.

Black Christmas is about a sorority house that is terrorized by a psycho killer. The biggest thing that sets Black Christmas apart from other movies before it is the complete lack of motive by the killer. If horror has proven anything, it's that fear of the unknown is just as scary as the known. Seems that this fellow is killing simply for the heck of it. It should be noted that the script is unusually smart for a slasher movie. All of these people have normal sense, from the sorority sisters to the detectives, and the events and proceedings of each person are weaved in such a brilliant manner that the killer is able to stealthily take out his victims and not raise any red flags right away.

Right off the bat Black Christmas goes into first person view from the killers perspective, a technique more famously used in John Carpenter's Halloween several years later. I enjoyed the creativity of the killing scenes as well. There is one beautiful (I know I'm sick, calling a killing scene beautiful) scene in which a sorority sister is killed by being stabbed with a glass unicorn statue.

Black Christmas is definitely a seminal film in the slasher genre; it's a shame it's not revered up with the likes of Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It may not be the most nail-biting, scary, or exciting slasher/horror, but it's smart, realistic, and subtly psychotic.

Daily Awesome #116

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Director: Marcus Nispel
Starring: Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker
My Rating: Didn't like it

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't a horribly made film, it's just a film that should not have been made. The original is so freaking good. Why make this? Oh yeah, because hollywood. And this remake changes the good parts about it just to have a lot of gore. Instead of a hitchhiker who cuts his hand and bleeds a teeny tiny bit, this movie has a hitchhiker who blows her brains out. Seriously, the hitchhiker was a vital role in the original film and it's completely ignored just to show some brains and to have a couple of cool camera shots that travel through the hole in the women's head. It's these kind of changes that baffle me. If you want more gore, fine, gore has become common place these days, but don't take out a key character that made the original the movie that it was.

See, I think hollywood has this whole "remake" thing wrong. All the films they re-make are really great older movies. Remakes should be of older movies that showed potential, but didn't come out all that great. In other words, movies/stories that could be improved upon. A really good example is The Last House on the Left. The original isn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's kind of sloppily put together, and it really shows its age 40+ years later. The remake didn't change a whole lot about the story, but it's a better movie, by far; it's way more watchable. The original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so good that it really does not show its age and it's put together incredibly well; it didn't need a remake.

Texas Chainsaw (2013)

Texas Chainsaw

Director: John Luessenhop

Starring: Alexandra Daddario, Tania Raymonde, Scott Eastwood

My Rating: Liked it

I saw Texas Chainsaw when it was first released on DVD and I hated it. In the past week I've watched every Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie created, and now I see this 2013 entry in a whole new light. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation make Texas Chainsaw look like a god damned masterpiece. Neither of those movies have much of a story. TCM3 is dreadfully boring and derivative, and The Next Generation is incoherent nonsense. Truth is, Texas Chainsaw does more for the TCM mythos than any other sequel. I enjoy The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 more than this one, but only because of its eccentricity. Texas Chainsaw is the only sequel to move this franchise forward.

That doesn't mean that Texas Chainsaw isn't without faults. A few of the young characters make some bonehead decisions that lead to gruesome demises. And a policeman makes some questionable calls; just call for back up, man. Also, the story moves at least 20 years from the events of the original movie, so how old does that make Leatherface? At least 50 years old, but I guess it doesn't really matter how old he is. These things aren't complete turnoffs, especially after seeing the other TCM sequels.

The story gives Leatherface a new reason to kill: revenge. Before it was always just to feed himself and his psycho family, so it was genuinely refreshing to see him take out the cops who had killed his family. I don't think Texas Chainsaw is the cream of the crop when it comes to recent horror/slashers at all; but if you think this movie is bad, have a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie marathon, you might have a new perspective on this movie. To be honest, I want another sequel that continues this story, with Leatherface and his cousin living together.

Daily Awesome #115

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Director: Kim Henkel
Starring: Renee Zellweger, Matthew McConoughey
My Rating: Didn't like it

Seriously, what the fuck did I just watch? The last fifteen minutes of this movie make zero sense. It throws in random characters and fails to explain what in the fuck is actually going on. The whole thing is non-sensical, though. Leatherface is downgraded to a big cross-dressing baby in this movie. Not one person is killed with a chainsaw; in fact, leatherface's body count in The Next Generation is one - only one.

If there is one good thing that can be said about this movie, it's that it features two budding super stars in Matthew McConoughey and Renee Zellweger. Not surprisingly they both play their respective roles well; or as well as they could with what they were given.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is an absolute mess of a movie. Who okays garbage like this? I have no more to say. Just don't watch this movie.