October 27, 2024
# 1682

Halloween

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Cover and Story

It’s just about Halloween and Dom was kind enough to hand our cover story over to me, our resident movie reviewer. I was fortunate enough to come across Variety magazine’s ranking of the 50 best horror films of all time and found this a perfect opportunity to talk a little about their number 1 pick which I think is quite possibly the most effective horror film ever made. Happy Halloween!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at 50

Earlier this month, Variety published a list of the 100 best horror movies ever. Sitting at the top, like an exhumed corpse festering in the brilliant midday sun, was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This was not a controversial choice on the publication’s part, not in the year of our unholy lord of darkness 2024. Tobe Hooper’s deranged thriller, which roared into theaters 50 years ago, has been rising in critical esteem for decades, its reputation as a truly great movie — rather than merely a deeply upsetting and effective one — steadily cementing over the last half-century. Time, in other words, has been very kind to a savage, scandalous act of grindhouse exploitation once considered so shocking, it was banned in multiple countries. Yesterday’s outrage machine has become today’s lionized classic.

For as much as the movie deserves every drop of overdue recognition it’s increasingly earned, it’s still a little unusual seeing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre canonized by mainstream tastemakers. The next two films on Variety’s list, The Exorcist and Psycho, have more commonly wrestled for the title of horror’s pinnacle. Both of those movies were plenty shocking and controversial in their time, of course. But like most historic hair raisers, they’ve lost a little of their transgressive power over the decades since, as the standard of what gets under the skin of the average moviegoer evolves. Generally speaking, they don’t traumatize like they used to. They’re safer — which, in a sense, makes them easier to enshrine as the Mona Lisas of their video store aisle.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is different. This is not a safe movie. Though it’s now widely recognized as a masterpiece, it’s not something you appreciate from a respectful distance, admiring its historic qualities like an anthropologist of B-movie artifacts. It’s an experience, undiminished by everything that’s come after it. The primal immediacy of Hooper’s achievement — the sheer demented intensity of his 83-minute assault on the senses — has not waned. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will still mess you up. If it doesn’t, there might actually be something off about you.

John Larroquette provides the faux-true-crime narration of the opening scene — a dryly ominous introduction that frames the events to come as reenactments of real unspeakable crimes, which the wildly successful marketing campaign exploited. This is not a true story in any literal sense, though Hooper did base some of the violence on the very real mayhem of the serial killer Ed Gein. In a much more general sense, few films have felt more in touch with the madness of American culture, the evil lurking in our country’s heart and its forgotten corners.

Part of what remains so unnerving about the film, five decades later, is how it seems to straddle the line between a harsh, scraggly, almost documentary realism and something more hallucinatory. Even as Hooper rubs our noses in forensic evidence, he also begins to pull at the fabric of the reality he’s establishing, washing out the images, drowning out the audio with droning, atonal music. It’s as if the insanity of the Sawyer clan was already polluting the movie’s style, minutes before we’ve met a single one of them.

Rewatching the film, it’s striking how much its opening act functions as one long premonition of doom. Over and over again, Hooper seems to erect an existential “Turn back now” sign, giving his van of unlucky city slickers numerous warnings that something awful waits down the road they’re traversing. Hell, one of the abominable killers himself tries to warn them, in his own way, in a gas station scene that would become a cliché of the 1980s slasher movies Texas Chain Saw helped inspire. The early stretch of the film is littered with bad omens: roadkill, reports of violence on the radio, the roar of what just might be a chainsaw in the distance. Even the daily horoscope seems to be beaming in a red alert from the universe: “There are moments where we cannot believe what is happening is really true,” one of the kids reads aloud. She’ll grasp the meaning of those words when she’s hanging from a meat hook later in the afternoon.

So much has been written over the years about Leatherface’s iconic first appearance, that moment when he stumbles into a doorway without prelude or fanfare, and clocks someone dead with a hammer, before slamming the metal door behind him. It happens so fast, you can almost miss it. It’s like the “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” scene in Jaws, the multiplex phenomenon that opened a year later: a jump scare so unexpected and so off rhythm — a moment you can’t possibly anticipate — that it scrambles your sense of security. Nearly half a century earlier, Boris Karloff got a star’s entrance as Frankenstein’s monster, slowly turning to face the camera and reveal his hideous face. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre seemed to announce a scary new era of sudden lunacy, when the monster simply blips into our line of sight, too obscene for formal introduction. The scene almost plays like a hole has been torn in the fabric of time and space, depositing something horrible and beyond reason.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the most witheringly resonant movies ever made about the violent spirit of America, but it doesn’t do the interpretative work for you, the way so many modern festival-feted creepshows do. There’s a world of sociopolitical meaning in the one-line revelation that the Sawyers used to be factory workers before automation put them out to pasture. British censors certainly got the message, warning that the film might inspire something in the working class. Fearmongering? Of course. But you can’t say this isn’t a political movie. It just keeps its ideas draped in nightmare logic.

Another thing that’s easy to forget, if you haven’t seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in a while, is how elegant it is — especially for a film made on a shoestring budget and with such savage, unpretentious aims. The slaughterhouse ambiance of the film looms large in the imagination, but there’s nothing artless about how it’s put together; you could go shot for shot through Chain Saw Massacre, like Roger Ebert used to do with Citizen Kane and other art-house milestones in lecture halls, and find something to admire after every cut. It’s such a carefully, brilliantly assembled movie — maybe the ultimate example of how the best horror movies work your nerves with the how as well as the what of their dark vision.

It’s in the last half hour that the movie starts to feel truly wrong, like something you shouldn’t be watching, like something that short-circuits that old “it’s only a movie” rationale we use to get us through while we watch a movie through the gaps in fingers while we cover our eyes. It’s not the violence, which never gets all that explicit (to the point where Hooper hilariously reasoned that he might be able to secure a PG rating for the film, can you even imagine?). It’s the way The Texas Chain Saw Massacre devolves into pure, primal emotion, as Sally runs and screams and pleads for what feels like a grueling eternity, all while her tormentors buffoonishly giggle around her.

In the pantheon of scream queens, there is Marilyn Burns and then there is everyone else. No one has seemed as believably destroyed by terror as she does here. The film runs less than an hour and a half, but that dinner table scene — all bulging eyes in extreme close up, all slapstick near-death — seems to go on forever. That’s because Hooper has locked us into Sally’s crucible, and offered a vision of insanity that feels realer than what movies ever offer. It’s hard to think, too, of a more iconic ending to a horror movie — that frustrated chainsaw ballet in the sunrise, Sally laughing hysterically with a relief that tells you she’ll never be OK ever again, an abrupt cut to credits denying us the creature comfort of a denouement.

Yes, fear is subjective — one person’s phobia fuel is another’s sleeping pill, blah blah blah. You may have your own personal, idiosyncratic choice for scariest movie ever and you’d be right. That’s the beauty of the medium and how it impacts each one of us. But if we’re talking about consensus power to unsettle, there’s still nothing like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It simply doesn’t operate like a normal movie. It feels inherently touched by death from its opening frames. And it eventually cracks into a madness beyond plot or suspense — a total immersion into blinding panic and fear. It’s possible no movie has ever felt more like a nightmare. You wake up, but it’s still there, twirling like Leatherface in your head.

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Commentary
I took a wonderful trip south of the Mason-Dixon line. I will describe the trip over the next four weeks, starting with a marvelous meal at Le Bernardin, in NYC.

The luxurious, sophisticated, and elegant Le Bernardin in New York City, under the tutelage of Chef Eric Ripert, showcases the entire sensory journey and may be the best restaurant in America.
The offerings are extraordinary: a variety of fresh, simply prepared but exquisite seafood dishes that highlight the natural flavors and the presentation of the ingredients.
The service is attentive and the staff is knowledgeable, smoothly guiding you through the menu and wine pairings.
This is a must-visit destination for food enthusiasts looking to celebrate a special occasion.
Le Bernardin offers a three-course lunch (really a five-course meal, when you add in the amuses-bouches and the treats that follow dessert) for $127.00. Add in two glasses of wine and tip and the bill will be between $200.00 and $250.00 per person for one of the great food experiences of your life.

Kat looking like she belongs.
And she does.

I left Boston the day after Columbus Day [Note that here at existentialautotrip we pay homage to Indigenous People by celebrating their contributions to America on the day after Thanksgiving].

On Tuesday morning, at 6.00am, I took the MBTA blue line from Aquarium to Airport Station: three stops.
Then AI gave me precise directions to get from the train station to Terminal C, six- or seven-minutes walking. I saved $30.00 for an Uber and opened up my trip without any stress. Auspicious beginnings.

The non-stop flight to Savannah, Georgia was seamless, and my friend Tucker J was waiting to pick me up.

At 12.30pm, we drove to a very nice Japanese restaurant and enjoyed wide, rice noodles in broth.

We walked around a bit and then stopped for an excellent coffee. We walked through the lovely squares that are Savannah and stopped for a delicious dinner @ Elizabeth’s. We said ‘Goodbye’ after dinner till the next time. Tucker and I are in constant communication, especially as we share the magazine. We won’t drift apart.

This first of four legs of the “Hello, Friends Tour” went off perfectly.

Panoramic view of Forsyth Park
Jim from Lexington, KY, USA - Forsyth Park
Panorama of Forsyth Park, Savannah, Georgia

Sherman’s March to the Sea destroyed a lot of Georgia cities and towns.
But not Savannah.
Old-time elegance remains.

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner
This week in photos

Billie Eilish sold out three nights at Madison Square Garden this past weekend. I scored last minute tickets with a friend. I had fun designing an outfit in Billie's classic style: backwards baseball hat, oversized T, baggy jeans, and eyeliner.

Lunch at Le Bernadin with my dad in Midtown was the best meal I've had since our trip to Florence two years ago. What a luxury to be able to share this culinary experience with people you love!

I might officially have a favorite restaurant in my neighborhood: Elea. It's a chic Greek spot just two avenues away from our apartment. It feels very adult and special to be able to have favorite dishes on their menu. (I've really only been there twice, but let's roll with it.) Will and I went there Saturday night after spending a spectacular 24 hours with my dad and cousin Grace.

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Tucker’s Corner

Smile 2

The shapeshifting demon of Smile and its new sequel, Smile 2, is a special kind of evil: It doesn’t just feast on the distress of its triggered victims, it meets that feeling with a mocking grin. Parker Finn’s ruthlessly nerve-jangling horror sleeper introduced this unholy monster– a trickster phantom that terminates its host via grisly, involuntary suicide and then passes, virus-style, to any unlucky witnesses. Along the way, the monster takes various human forms, all sporting a shit-eating, ear-to-ear rictus. There’s something rather sarcastic about that expression, isn’t there? “Don’t worry, be happy,” it sneers in the face of mounting terror.

If you’ve ever felt pressure to turn a frown upside down for public appearances, you might see a little of yourself in these exaggerated smiles. Slightly less relatable, at least for most of us, are the emotional circumstances that Smile 2 catches in its funhouse mirror. After all, the cursed heroine of this gory, spirited second installment, also written and directed by Finn, happens to be a pop star as famous as Ariana Grande. To her, that cruel Joker beam is the face of fame – of an industry machine demanding she always be on, of a paparazzi always saying “cheese,” of screaming fans tethering their own joy to hers. This time, the bogeyman is painting the grotesque downside of the showbiz dream pearly white. It’s a particularly resonant angle at the end of a summer ruled by Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Charli XCX.

The perfectly named Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) catches the self-harm hex after landing a front-row seat to her Vicodin dealer’s face-smashing session with an iron weight. The monster hit the burdened-psyche jackpot with Skye. The star is still recovering from a nearly life- and career-ending car accident – a coked-up joy ride that killed her movie-star boyfriend, which Finn shows us via horrific nightmare flashbacks. On top of her injuries and newfound sobriety, Skye has to contend with a pushy stage mother (Rosemarie DeWitt), a demanding record-label bigwig (Raúl Castillo), and her guilt about a friendship she torpedoed over that year of living narcotically. And of course there’s the pressure of a comeback tour kicking off in a matter of days.

The best moments in Smile 2 play off the specific stresses of music-biz stardom. There’s a great scene, barely supernatural in nature, where Skye – mouth smeared with blood-red lipstick – has to deliver some encouraging remarks at a charity event, and as the teleprompter freezes up, she launches into an uncomfortably honest, impromptu speech that would makes us as viewers blush with secondhand embarrassment. Earlier, an encounter with a crazed stalker at a meet-and-greet hammers home the point that danger already comes with a smile when you have a chart-topper to your name. Watching the film, you might think of Amy Winehouse one minute (Skye’s mental and physical wellbeing is constantly prioritized below her obligations to the machine), the newly and uncomfortably famous Chappell Roan the next.

Finn keeps the horror on the edge of black comedy, mingling shocks with laughs, just as he did in the original. The joke of the first movie was at the expense of a whole slew of therapeutically metaphorical film-festival favorites, all insistent that the real monster is trauma. Smile made that notion rather literal, unleashing a creature that’s basically PTSD incarnate. But it also smirked at the comforting platitudes and happy endings of Babadook clones, arriving at the rather withering conclusion that we can’t really beat our demons. In other words, Finn made a mainstream scream machine as merciless as its grinning ghoul, while also proving that there’s no reason that a horror movie that’s “really about trauma” can’t also be scary as hell.

Smile 2 has plenty of jolts, including one quick cutaway to an appalling act of self-inflicted violence whose abruptness recalls a split-second moment from one of Finn’s plainest influences (and one of my all time favorites), The Ring. And there’s one really inspired sequence that pits Skye against a troupe of phantom backup dancers mounting a synchronized pursuit across her condo, slipping into a new funny-creepy interpretative pose every time she looks away. It plays like a hellish game of red light green light.

Smile 2 builds on the more sustained emotional terrorism of its predecessor when it’s keying into the anxiety of a life under the glow of the spotlight and flashbulbs, like a live action take on Satoshi Kon’s landmark psychodramatic anime, Perfect Blue. Scott, who’s a musician herself (she performs the movie’s Dua Lipa-ish club jams), is ferociously frazzled as Skye. It’s her first meaty big-screen performance after movie-star turns in lesser blockbuster fare like Disney’s live-action Aladdin and the Elizabeth Banks reboot of Charlie’s Angels, and Finn feeds off her emotiveness like a trauma parasite with a big appetite. The movie really doesn’t work without her. She’s brilliant.

Is the actress channeling her own experiences in the belly of the Hollywood beast? We’ve had plenty of films focus on the downside of fame, reaching all the way back to classic Hollywood. What’s changed in the intervening years is our parasocial relationship to celebrity – a subject broached by an ending no less wickedly satisfying for how inevitable it becomes. It’s a terrific ending. One you’ll find it hard not to smile at…if you can bear to look at the screen.

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Chuckles and Thoughts

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Six Word Stories
“Old book, dusty pages, hidden secrets.”

This file is a reproduction of the original work painted circa 1850 and housed at the Museum Georg Schäfer (Schweinfurt, Germany). A second exemplar of the work, painted circa 1851, is housed at the Central Library of Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA). A 3rd exemplar, painted in 1854, is believed to be housed in a private collection.
Carl Spitzweg - The Yorck Project (2002) *10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei* (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202.

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In the Mail
RE: Post 1682 B
This from our dear friend and contributor, Sally C:
Wed 10/16/2024 9:13 AM

Dear, dear Dom! You look great with a halo!!! May one crown your head when you go to that great reward!

In May I had a similar (though less dramatic) experience to yours with college youth. I donned my Civil War uniform and took my drum to the Millis Memorial Day ceremonies (which I always do, to support the American Legion there – old friends). Rather than have me drum all by myself for the American Legion members who marched, the event organizer talked to the leader of the high school band and asked if I might join the band for the parade. This was agreeable, and so, with my single, wooden, rope-tension snare drum, I played alongside three high school kids with those multiple-drum sets hanging from metal braces on their shoulders, in their band uniforms. Once we got going, I picked up their (very modern) street beats easily (which are about twice as fast as those played during the Civil War). They seemed to have as much fun with old-fogey me as I did with them.

I really enjoyed Tucker’s take on “Ed Wood,” the reality, the recognition, the compassion that Burton had for Wood. That film was no puff piece. I’ve known a number of individuals whose ambition far outstripped their ability (their skills at either not meshing well), but I agree with Burton and Tucker: Wood employed both with a weird kind of grace and aplomb. Wood did not apologize for who he was – he owned it and lived it fully. Would that we all aspired to that level of authenticity.

Go well, my friend, and enjoy your travels!

Sally

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Last Comment

Tucker and I have been close for seven years, most of the time with near daily contact.

He recently moved to Georgia and is loving being there, loving his job, especially the opportunity to work out of his home in Savannah.

Tucker is probably more culturally aware than anyone else that I know well. Of course, our readers know him from his amazing movie reviews in our ezine, existentialautotrip.

Besides being my tech advisor over these years, and besides working together on the magazine, Tucker and I have spent many wonderful dinners together enjoying the food and wonderful conversations.

He is a gentle, highly accomplished soul who loves the arts.

Gotta love the guy.

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Oct 23 October 27, 2024

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at 50

Smile 2