Product: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original Uncut) [Region 2] (1974)
Rating: 2.0
Ugly and sickening horror film garbage--2 stars for bonuses
The bonuses with the new Dark Sky Films edition of Tobe Hooper's cult classic, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), are outstanding. This two disk DVD is a labor of love by people who clearly love the movie. We have a 70 minute documentary on all-things CHAIN SAW--the production, the reputation after the fact, a tour of the refurbished farm house, everything you could want to know about this cult item. We have a seven part second 70 minute documentary--chat with cinematographer Daniel Pearl; an interview with the hitch-hiker, Edwin Neal; in memorium for those cast members who have recently passed away; the makeup designer; celebrity gatherings and exhibitions; and an amazing chat with Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen, who is a painter and writer in Maine when not at conventions. Also on disk two are a blooper reel, a second house tour (there is one with the first documentary), and outtakes and deleted scenes (not much).Unfortunately, we have the movie itself to also contend with, and it is one ugly and violent piece of garbage for at least me. And no amount of restoring and remastering the original negative can get rid of the nasty plot about a group of college kids in a van who stumble upon a Texas family of cannibals. Everyone seems dead, including a young woman stuffed in an ice chest. A guy named Leatherface, because he wears a mask of human skin, chases after everyone inside the house and surrounding countryside with a chain saw. He also hangs a screaming woman on a wall meat hook. The set piece, an elaborate dinner with corpses and an old man, took something like 27 straight hours to shoot because Grandpa's makeup took hours to put on. (Why use a young man, instead of an old man?) Is Leonard Maltin serious about lack of violence here?The movie is based on the life of notorious mass murderer and cannibal Ed Gein, who terrorized the Midwest in the 1950's. His life was also filmed as Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960), something that is curiously not mentioned anywhere on disk two. CHAIN SAW looks gorgeous and sounds superb, but it is still revolting for me--and I love horror films. But I have a tolerance level. I even like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD from George Romero. But a group of tiresome teenagers being chased all over a Texas farmhouse and surrounding countryside by a guy with a human skin face mask and chain saw is just not my idea of a good time. And that goes for a dinner with Leatherface and a group of corpses--or living cannibals, I forget which.Director/co-writer Tobe Hooper has done movies I have loved, including a knockout TV miniseries production of Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT and the magnificent Spielberg co-production, POLTERGEIST (1982). But with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE he has created cinematic garbage for me--and maybe the start of the "splatter film" style of horror movie my psyche cannot deal with. If you insist on seeing--much less buying--the movie, go with the remastered double disk Dark Sky edition in a metal box. Oh, and the movie comes with two audio commentaries.