The Five Stages of Grief as They Pertain to Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

     I've been mulling over my viewing of Texas Chainsaw 3D now for four days.  I've been wringing my hands in front of the laptop trying to come up with an angle.  I've given up.

     It's wretched.  Don't let morbid curiosity get the better of you.  If you must go, make sure you put on  your 3D glasses in time to enjoy that wild, clockworky Lionsgate thingy, then thrill to the archival footage of the 1974 original that opens the movie, then get the f**k outta Dodge.  Those bad reviews you've read don't even scratch the surface.  I composed a better script on the way home from the theater.  At most, it was a fifteen minute drive.  Somebody owes me $48.00.

     Why then, you may ask, did it take me four days to post about it?  I wondered that myself.  Writing a scathing review should be a snap, right?  Then, as I sat here bathed in the glow of an empty laptop screen, it finally occurred to me.  I'd been experiencing the Five Stages Of Grief.



     Stage 1 - Denial
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     Tobe Hooper wouldn't executive produce anything that pisses all over the legacy of his brilliant, genre defining 1974 masterpiece, right?  It can't possibly be as bad as it seemed at first blush.  I'm probably being too hard on it, holding it up to an impossible standard.  Never review the movie you wanted it to be, review the movie it is.  I kind of enjoyed the (telegraphed) twist at the end, right?

     I'll live with it a few days, and then I'll be able to appreciate the misunderstood glory of Texas Chainsaw 3D.



     Stage 2 - Anger
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     But wait . . . I'm just making excuses for this shameful exhibition.  This miserable excuse for a movie squandered every opportunity!  How can you waste the terror inherent in creeping into Leatherface's basement lair alone by having the unfortunate soul doing so holding his cellphone aloft so the two ninnies back in the police station can monitor his progress, thereby insuring that the movie will keep cutting from the dank, creepy basement back to the safe, brightly lit police station every few seconds and destroy any potential for suspense?  Has anyone involved with this travesty ever even seen a horror movie?

     Where do you get off telling the whole world to disregard Tobe Hooper's first "real" sequel so you can rewrite canon to accommodate this dreck?  And what about that carnival business?  Why have Leatherface storm a crowded carnival and then just do nothing with it?  This is actively pissing me off!  Now who do I see about that $48.00?




     Stage 3 - Bargaining
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     Look, man, I'll forgive everything if you promise me a director's cut on disc that eliminates the first two thirds of the movie, completely restages the final third, and adds about eighty minutes of the 1974 original to the opening sequence. 



     Stage 4 - Depression
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     I could have spent that $48.00 on tickets to Django Unchained.



     Stage 5 - Acceptance
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     I already knew it would be like this.  I wasn't surprised.  Horror fans will keep getting movies like this as long as we keep lining up to buy tickets to them.   General audiences don't expect much from movies anymore, and they expect even less from movies that reside in the ghettoized genre of horror.



     There will undoubtedly be a Texas Chainsaw 4 (the studio's math, not mine), and that's scarier than anything Texas Chainsaw 3D had to offer.  

Leatherface, U.S. Ambassador

Welcome to the U.N. Mr. Ambassador!

     It seems I may have spared myself  from stepping into a steaming pile of cinematic failure last weekend by being unable to attend a showing of Texas Chainsaw 3D.  By extension, I avoided writing yet another review of yet another apparently lackluster sequel to one of the most beleaguered and inconsistent franchises in horror.  Good.  If I feel differently after viewing the film myself, I'll gladly post a retraction.  I do have a history of championing movies everyone else loathes.  I simply can't believe that anyone intentionally makes a bad movie, even if the movie's genesis is commercially driven.

     I have, however, had the Chainsaw movies on the brain this week.  I've also been fascinated recently by the fact that Movies At Dog Farm has been getting hits from foreign countries, something that it just never occurred to me might happen when I launched this blog on Thanksgiving day, 2012.  The two seemingly disparate topics have been marinating in my brainpan together,  and I arrived at the following conclusion: director Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is the most uniquely American franchise spawning horror movie around.

     The United States is a big country.  I believe the U.S. is still imagined by much of the world beyond our borders as a Wild West free-for-all that tolerates - and even encourages - an egocentric and often violently destructive self-sufficiency for the individual.  In particular, I suspect that to much of the world the great state of Texas epitomizes the U.S. as a whole.  It's perceived as a vast, lawless frontier populated by loud, arrogant, gun-toting, giant-belt-buckle-wearing blowhards with cowboy hats.  This is an erroneous stereotype, of course - so please, no hate mail - but one that our history, media, and (let's be honest) our interaction with other countries often reinforces.

TCM's Grandpa, conserving energy

     Consider for a moment the character of Grandpa (John Dugan) in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a symbolic representation of the United States.  Grandpa use to be the best killer in the slaughterhouse, and the entire Sawyer family delusionally believes he still is.  They're determined to keep alive the memories of past glories, and they still revere the last remaining symbolic vestige of their former preeminence - a symbol now old, frail, and almost comically unable to swing a hammer.  He perks up when he gets a taste of blood, though . . .

     Consider, also, how the character of The Cook (Jim Siedow) is more concerned with the inconvenience of replacing a chainsawed door than with the wholesale slaughter that's been occurring in his home all day.  The slaughterhouse is closed, and the gas station has no gas.  The Sawyers are doing what they feel they must to survive.  The entire family's actions are based upon a flawed morality that suggests that because they're doing what they must to get by that it's kinda sorta O.K. 

TCM's deceptively tranquil farmhouse

     What else should they be expected to do, though, when interloping outsiders keep encroaching on their territory?  It's interesting to note, however, that the territory the Sawyers perceive as their own appears to be theirs only by virtue of the fact that they're squatting on it, and the outside world is too indifferent or oblivious to force them out.  They've staked their claim, taken something that wasn't theirs, and then fiercely defended their "ownership" of what they've taken against all comers. 

Leatherface pauses for reflection

     Perhaps only Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) himself might be absolved of his trespasses, because he seems to be the only member of the Sawyer clan who displays any anxiety or remorse about what he's doing, and he's too simple to know any better.  He's defending the family's home and doing his part to provide for their needs.  He's following orders.  He's but one microscopic cog in an infernal machine that leaves death and destruction in its wake, and all he's trying to do is get dinner ready.

     . . . and really, what's more uniquely American than the whole family joining together at the dinner table for some quality time?