If you were not already aware, this is not a true story. Tobe Hooper purposely leads you to believe that it is. The closest thing to reality in this film is that Leatherface does some of the same things that real life killer Ed Gein (who inspired Psycho) did. That is all.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a road trip of  5 friends:  Sally and her wheelchair bound brother Franklin, her boyfriend Jerry, and 2 friends Pam and Kirk. They are going to Sally and Franklin’s grandfather’s grave, as it may have been vandalized and/or robbed. There has been quite a bit of that activity lately. During the trip they pick up a rather disturbing hitchhiker and end up having to ditch him. They pull into a gas station only to find out it has no gas, but is expecting a delivery later. They make it to an old family home and decide to hang out until they can go back for some gas. The events that follow are quite unnerving and horrific.

This film is truly a masterpiece from start to finish. Right from the start, you get the feeling that you are in for an unpleasant ride. Eerie music and images right away, John Larroquette’s disturbing narration and skeletal “art” all in the first 5 minutes of this thing really set the tone for the rest of it. It also has this grainy, kind of documentary look too it as well, as if to back up the claim that this is a true story, but it also sort of implants the idea that this is completely believable (which it actually is; nothing in it is the remote bit fantastical or implausible). I should at this point mention that I bought this on Blu-ray, which has been restored and remastered, but still has that grainy look intact, which is good.  This film perfectly balances gore and suspense. Not too much of either one. I really cannot accurately describe the level of terror in this film without swearing: Fucking disturbing. Sally’s incessant screaming through the latter part of the film really intensifies the terror. Marilyn Burns was fantastic as Sally, almost forcing her fear through the screen. Leatherface, the one that wields the chain saw, does not fuck around either. He doesn’t lumber and mysteriously disappear for a few minutes, he chases you down. I also loved that you continuously hear the chain saw, even when off camera, and you can tell how close Leatherface is by how loud the chain saw is. I wouldn’t say the acting is horrible, but it is not the best. However, that fits in just right with the documentary feel of this film. And, can I just say that the end of this film is awesome. It doesn’t wrap a bunch of story up, it just stops where it stops. Other than mentioning that the deaths were quite gruesome, I do not wish to get in to who dies and how. I want you (if there is anyone left who hasn’t seen this yet) to watch them all unprepared. During one of the killings, I did clench my teeth scowl my face a bit as it was quite brutal. If you have not seen this, I urge you to.

Many people consider Tobe Hooper’s classic horror to be one of the best ever made. Wes Craven, Steven King just to name a couple. It has its obvious influence on films like Halloween and House of 1000 Corpses and many many others. Even today, it holds up as a violent, brutal, horrible and yet completely engrossing film.

I was very disappointed in Exorcist II, the obvious follow up to William Friedkin‘s 1973 classic The Exorcist. My aggravation with the movie though is likely different than the rumored reactions of audiences during the film’s premiere. Commissioned by PBF while reviewing Netflix’s awesome Watch Instantly collection, I went into the film expecting it to be quite horrid based on my readings of previous reviews about the film. Normally, I try not to have any preconceived notions about a film prior to watching it as sometimes it can be hard to separate what you’ve heard from what you actually see in the film itself. I am happy to report though that all of the bashers of the film hit it dead on.

Taking place four years after the original, Reagan (played by a remarkably cute Linda Blair) is undergoing psychiatric treatment to deal with repressed memories of her possession. During a really stupid looking hypnosis treatment, she is intertwined with Father Lamont who is investigating the circumstances surrounding Father Merrin’s death at the hand of the demon in the first film. As Father Lamont digs deeper into Reagan’s subconscious (and thus that of the demon possessing her), he finds a clusterfuck of seemingly unrelated plot points and developments with some rather deplorable writing. There may be more to it, but that’s about all I cared to get out of it.

Now, as I said, I expected this to be a horrendous abomination of a horror franchise and a complete failure of a horror film. In the end, I got all of that with the exception of the horrendous adjective. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a bad movie, probably worthy of a good ripping from the folks at MST3K, but I’ve certainly seen worse films so I was disappointed that this movie just seemed to be incompetently made instead of butchered by a bunch of no-talent ass-clowns as I had expected. I fathom you can’t get the amount of talent on this film without at least starting good. From Richard Burton, Max von Sydow, James Earl Jones, and even all thirty seconds of Ned Beatty, there seems to be a good, or at least passable, movie desperate to get out. Whether this desire was squelched by director John Boorman‘s incompetence (unlikely for a guy nominated for several Oscars), studio tomfoolery, or retooling of the film late in the game remains up in the air. Allegedly though, the only reason Blair appears was due to a contractual obligation to the production prior to heavy rewrites.

Ultimately, the film falls on many fronts. For starters, as a sequel to a quite renowned and genuinely scary movie, Exorcist II had all the scares of a five-year-old’s birthday party. On the film’s Wikipedia page, Boorman is quoted in a mea culpa of sorts stating he did not meet the audiences expectations for a scary follow-up, instead going for a theme of journeys and goodness. In and of itself, this is a notable attempt to create a new advancement of the story without copying the original, but it certainly failed as it should have. Even though the movie may be shoe-horned into the expected horror genre does not mean it has to be a carbon-copy, there just has to be logical thought put into how to do it correctly. There is also the problem of the crazy aspects of the plot that come and go at will and do not add a thing to the story. Reagan has ESP abilities now? Oh well, there is no further expansion except a fleeting line an hour later. Lamont disobeys his orders to fly half-way around the world and meet a guy on a big boulder only to have rocks thrown at him. Yep, that was beneficial. Even the aspect of Merrin being investigated as a Satanist is never really resolved or even mentioned for the final thirty minutes or so. And for a continuation of a movie about demonic possession, I had expected Reagan to relapse and start the head-turning and spewing again or the demon to jump bodies or something. I think there was maybe a total of three minutes dedicated to someone actually being possessed.

Mostly, it seems that almost everything about the original was deliberately cast aside. Instead of a core group of a few characters, we now have a sprawling cast of decent actors with pretty worthless characters. So the original was mostly centered in one house? Let us go around the world now just to learn about the behavior of locust swarms. Now, admittedly it has probably been about six years or so since I last saw the original but I would likely have been less forgiving of this sequel if I had revisited it. So, in the end, we have what has been called the worst sequel ever but certainly not the worst movie ever meaning that I just watched two hours of this dreck for nothing. Instead of being able to make fun of the abysmal acting or story, I was just baffled as to why this movie was green lit in its present state. I hear Exorcist III is a much more worthy follow up so hopefully that will be the case when I get around to that.