The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Episode 96, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Well, Craig, it’s time to do another tribute episode. Am I right?

Craig: It seems like it’s just happening far too frequently lately, doesn’t it?

Todd: It sure does. Who did we have? Couple weeks ago, we had

Craig: No. No. Not no. Not Romero. Right?

Todd: We did Romero. Yep. We had Romero, before

Craig: And it’s just been a it’s just been a year since Wes Craven. We’re losing lots of people.

Todd: All kind of from the same era. We’re looking at, like, you know, the late seventies, Early eighties when these guys got their claim to fame, and, recently, we just found out that Tobe Hooper is now dead. At the ripe old age of 74, I believe.

Craig: I think so. Yeah.

Todd: Mhmm. Died, August 26th 2017. Died of natural causes. So at least that that’s pretty good and left 2 sons, behind. And, quite a body of work, not a huge body of work, but honestly, some of you know, he’s a ground what what can you say? He’s a trailblazer. True. Proke some serious ground. I had some hits, had some misses, but we are decided that the best way to pay tribute to Tobe Hooper, there’s really not nothing else more appropriate, than to review Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974.

Todd: I saw this movie pretty late in life. I think I probably picked it up. I might have been in high school. I I think I was in college, honestly, before I sat down and saw this. You know, this is one of those movies where you hear the title all the time. It’s parody. It’s kind of held up as How more exploitation can you get with a title like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Right. And, honestly, it’s funny because because even the film doesn’t quite do it justice.

Todd: I was talking to a guy, just the other day about our podcast, that I just met here in Beijing, And he was a filmmaker, and he pretty young pretty young guy. It’s funny because I’m we were talking about the the films we do when I mentioned we’re gonna be doing Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and he Yeah. He said, I don’t really go for the really gory the the the super gory films. I like the more cerebral ones. And I said, you know, I it’s I’m not saying it’s a cerebral film, but actually Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not as gory as you think it would be from the title. In fact, there’s almost no gore in it at all.

Craig: I know, and I was really surprised. I saw the movie later in life too, and I’ve really only actually watched it, Aside from watching it to record this, I’ve only seen it like twice, which I’m a rewatcher of movies, So I’m surprised that I’ve only really seen this a couple of times, but I was reading about it to prep for today and I was really Kind of shocked to find out that, Hooper intended this to be rated PG. Like, he wanted to keep, I know he wanted to keep as much of the gore and the violence, as, as subtle or implied or off screen as possible in the hopes that he would get a PG rating.

Todd: Oh my God. And

Craig: then of course he sent it off to the ratings board and they’re like X. And he had to do some trimming even to get it down to a bar. But you’re right. It’s a scary movie. It really is a scary movie, but as far as blood and gore, there’s some. It’s not like there’s not any. But when you compare it to The remakes and the sequels, the remake, the remake, the remake, especially, and the sequels of the remake, are very, very violent and very gory. And and by comparison, this one’s pretty tame, really.

Todd: It’s tame if with respect to, gallons of blood on screen. Right. But in its presentation, it really just goes to show that you don’t have to have gallons of blood on screen To have something pretty shocking and pretty gruesome, you know, your mind can fill in the blank blanks pretty quickly, and I’m pretty sure that’s what the MPAA Was going forward when they see this. Oh, yeah. This guy runs a chainsaw through a dude in a wheelchair. You don’t have to slick. You could still see it in shadow, and, Ed, you get the idea. And Right.

Craig: I know what I’m saying, which is actually I know exactly what you’re saying. Yeah. Absolutely.

Todd: I mean, he made this film for almost nothing. It was like a budget budget ranges anywhere between 60,000 to 300,000 depending on, you know, who you talk to. It sounds like it was more on the low end of that by the end of the day. And, it was only about $30 that he raised to make to shoot it. And then it was in the editing that it went over, and they had to raise a little more money. So, it it’s another sort of sad story on how A film had to make all these basically, make all these deals with the devil, to get this film made and distributed to the point where at the End of the day, even though it was super successful, the producers and the actors who worked for deferred payment, because they were pretty much unknown. And, again, they they were shooting us on a shoestring. The actors who were gonna get a percentage of the profits basically saw their percentage go down really, really low.

Todd: Even by the end of it, I think, its 1st theatrical run, they had $81100 to divide amongst all of them.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, like, it was a whole story, right? Like wasn’t one of the main producers, one of the main guys with the money, he was like, Like a mob boss or something, and they didn’t know that going in. But then it was the same guy who ended up getting in Trouble for Deep Throat, I think. And initially I think I read that the actors and the crew Each were paid about $400 or something like that for their work. Later on when it came out, like again, I don’t think Tobe Hooper or other people knew exactly who this guy was or what his connections were, where the money was coming from, but when it came out that he was this crime guy and he was exposed. I think there were lawsuits and I think eventually the actors and and crew ended up getting more money. Like, I wanna say like 125,000 a piece or something like that. Yeah.

Craig: I don’t know. It had kind

Todd: of a somewhat happy ending, in in that regard. Yeah. Because I think New Line picked it up, like, in the early eighties and Bought the rights to it and distributed it. And so everything beyond that, New Line was careful to give, a little more to the producers of the film. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. And it’s crazy too because when you see this movie and I have seen a lot of crap from the seventies.

Todd: It’s kind of something I like. Yeah. I I feel like Yeah. The 19 seventies, in particular, were just this golden age, I think, of a certain kind of filmmaking, of independent filmmaking, of just this balls out so experimental, everybody with a with a 16 millimeter camera and Connections to a mob boss Yeah. Was making some kind of movie. You’ve got the whole blaxploitation thing. You had the whole deep throat thing. Drive thru cinema was huge.

Todd: Grindhouse cinema, you know, was making money. And so all of these wild movies came out around this time, And they’re all interesting. I mean, honestly, like, even even the bad ones are are so fun to watch. And this movie, If it hadn’t been as well made as it was, it would have just been another one of those Schlock things that had played in the drive ins. I really honestly believe that Because you when you watch this, and again again, now watching with a real critical eye for this podcast, I was really struck At the camerawork, at the cinematography, at the acting for most of them Yeah. It really even though it’s a pretty Jlachi type, exploitation film at its core. It has some real craft behind it, and I sort of feel like that’s probably what saved it.

Craig: I don’t know. You know, to be honest, and and I know this is our tribute to Hooper, and and I I give him mad respect. I mean, He’s just, everybody just acknowledges that he was a groundbreaker, in horror cinema. I mean, There’s no denying that. But I really wasn’t all that excited about going back and watching this because I didn’t really particularly have very fond memories of I just remembered it kind of being okay. Watching it again, I appreciated it more. I think that I had appreciated it in the past, but You love these movies from the ’70s, and I do too. I really do, but there there are some of them, and I feel like this kind of falls in the same category as like Last house on the left and

Todd: I spit on your grave and

Craig: Yes. Yeah. And even the hills have eyes kind of. They’re very raw and very violent. And especially last house on the left, and I spit on your grave, they’re almost so violent and disturbing that they’re almost unpleasant to watch. For sure. And I think that, you know, those 2 especially deal with graphic rape, which always really bothers me, and this one doesn’t go there. But it’s got the same kind of Dark, gritty violence that almost feels so plausible that it’s difficult to watch.

Craig: But I did appreciate this one more this time around. You know? Like you said, watching it with a more critical eye, and and I actually enjoyed watching it. I I it wasn’t an unpleasant experience.

Todd: Let me try to put an adjective to what you’re trying to describe. Humorless.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: You know, a lot of horror films, especially nowadays and even then, Try to tamper the violence and the gruesomeness with a little bit of humor. There’s a little bit of tongue in cheek about what’s going on, and a lot of the films from this era and the ones, You know, the 2 specifically, rattled off. Like you said, I think they’re unpleasant to watch because they lack any real sense of humor. This movie maybe has 1 or 2 spots where you could kind of find it. But in, otherwise, when you’re watching it, it’s just this dreadful, Terrible thing happening to people, and then it’s over. You know? And and, honestly, Craig, it’s kinda funny hearing that coming from you considering how much you how much, Well, I shouldn’t say love, but there are a lot you have a lot of really nice things, to say about your enjoyment of, you know, some of the torture porn films that we’ve Yeah. And I’m usually the guy who’s, like, I don’t really see a point to this. I found it unpleasant to watch.

Todd: What’s the difference between the earlier ones and, like, the more modern ones? Because I would say this is almost this is like torture porn really in in many ways.

Craig: I I suppose so. I I I think that With things like Saw and, Hostel, in those movies you’re almost glad to see the characters In peril, they’re not particularly likable characters, or they’re so stereotyped, and you know what’s coming you just don’t care. Again, like I feel like this one and others like it, these just kind of feel and some of them are super annoying. Like Franklin in this movie is one of the most annoying characters in cinema history, I suppose. But, for the most part, it just, There’s almost and and I feel like this is intentional because in the beginning, there’s this opening narration, that John Larroquette does, which is pretty iconic.

Clip: The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of 5 youths. In particular, Sally Hardesty And her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But had they lived very, very long lives, They could not have expected, nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, the Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Craig: And so it’s almost got kind of a documentary feel to it. I mean, not in the sense that it’s shot like a documentary, but it It almost feels like something that could really happen. And of course as we know, you know, this is loosely based on, the story of Ed Guine, who killed a couple old people and was just a gross guy in general and was, you know, a grave robber and made, flesh suits and furniture out of bones and lamps out of flesh and stuff, so it’s loosely based on a real story. So these nightmarish things can happen, but there’s just something about The way, it’s different. In most movies, and I’m going out of sequence, I apologize. We’ll get to the plot in a second. But in most movies you’ve got a menacing villain who’s kind of stalking people around and people are frightened and running away and screaming. And In this movie it just feels more realistic that a guy just pops out and kills you.

Craig: Like boom. No. There’s no warning, there’s no build up, there’s no chase. It’s just like, Oh, I’m looking around and then all of a sudden I’m dead. And and and there’s some gritty realism to that that I think makes it a little scarier than than some of the more modern stuff that we see, which is gory and gross and and fun to watch, but there there is a difference. I don’t know if I can pinpoint what that difference is, but there is a difference.

Todd: I think what you said yeah. You’re right. You’re right. It’s a little more realistic. It’s a little more real life. And it’s worth saying because we’re paying tribute to him after all that Tobe Hooper started out as a documentary filmmaker. And so probably a lot of what makes this film what it is is due to his background. He spent most of his sixties, as a college professor and documentary filmmaker, and he stated that, making this film and attributing it to real life was in many ways his His cynicism at the time on TV news and real life.

Todd: And he just said, you know, you watch television, and there’s all this Terrible, horrible, stuff. They’re, you know, getting ratings by showing brains splattered across the road and stuff in of real life. And so he felt like by Saying that this was a true story was his commentary on that sort of thing. You know? And then, of course, you get into what is, you know, what is entertainment. Right? Why do we wanna watch this kind of thing?

Craig: Well, and maybe that’s why it resonated with me more yesterday when I watched it than it did when I watched it further. And again, like you, I was very much aware of it. How can you not be aware of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? But, I just didn’t get around to seeing it until I was a young adult. Maybe that’s why it resonates more with me now because I feel like that’s the climate in which we live, at at least here in the United States. I don’t know what it’s Like in China, but you know, you don’t need to watch horror movies. You can just watch the news, like Yeah. And and it just seems like It’s 1 terrible nightmarish thing after another. And and that really is focused on a lot here, in the beginning.

Craig: In the beginning we get a lot of news footage. Like I said, it opens up with that narration from John Larocque. John Larocque went on to Be famous for his role in Night Court. And he’s a funny guy and he’s got a great voice. Kind of an iconic introduction. And I read that, John Larroquette, has said, now who knows if this is true or not, but he said that, his payment for doing this was a joint. Which which in the grand scheme of things, you know, for reading, you know, a minute of narration in the beginning, that’s, You know, not a bad amen, I guess. He he’s also said that, he’s never seen the movie.

Craig: I he said that in 2008. I don’t know. I and I doubt his truthfulness there, but Yeah. It’s it starts out with that, but then it goes into these news reports.

Clip: Grave robbing in Texas is this hour’s top news story. An informant led officers of the Muerto County Sheriff’s Department to a cemetery just outside the small rural Texas community of Mute early this morning. Officers there discovered what appeared to be a grisly work of art, the remains of a badly decomposed body wired to a large monument.

Craig: That’s kind of the impetus for the beginning of the story. It really doesn’t have much to do with the action of the story but, even after that When we meet these 5 young people who are traveling together in this van, we can hear the radio news. And everything that you hear is just horrible. It’s just disgusting. It’s all violence and murder and mayhem and, so I hadn’t read apparently what you read about his inspiration for doing this, but it makes perfect sense because we we hear so much of it in these opening scenes.

Todd: Yeah. And and I love it too that it opens up, after we see this corpse, impaled on there before we see the van pull up. It’s in the foreground is one of the most Texan things in the world, which is a dead armadillo by the side of the road. Yeah. And Tobe Hooper himself is From Texas. So, Austin, Texas, actually. So, yeah, I just thought that was holy having having lived in Texas for a good 6 years myself, self. You can’t go, you know, 2 miles down the road without seeing a dead armadillo by the side.

Todd: It’s so funny. Yeah. And then, and then, of course, the first thing person we’re introduced to is what you call the the worst character in the world, which I kinda have to agree. And some of it a lot of it has to do with his acting. But it’s a guy named Franklin. So they pull over by the side of the road, and this guy gets Wheeled out on a wheelchair out of the van. And he starts to take a leak into a can, which I’m not quite sure why if He’s right? He’s just been by the side of the road anyway. I don’t know if they’re gonna save it for later or something.

Todd: He falls forward, and his sister, Sally, comes running to the rescue. And so we have Sally. We have Franklin, A brother and sister, then there’s a guy, who’s driving the van named Jerry who reminds me of, Stu Disco Stu from The Simpsons.

Craig: Yeah. Or or Bob Ross with his hair. He’s got a great perm.

Todd: He this guy’s seventies through it. Between him and Sally’s white bell bottoms, this they’re seventies through and through. And then Pam and Kirk, boyfriend and girlfriend, they’re out. And, apparently, they’re out because of the news Yeah. Broadcast. They’re going to see if their grandfather was one of the people who was dug up in the cemetery that they’re hearing the news. And then also, I guess, to just sort of visit the old family house with their friends. It’s a little vague kinda why they Yeah.

Todd: But it’s sort of like a big road trip.

Craig: Jerry kind of I mean, he seems very, I don’t know, nondescript, in the beginning. But

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Later on, he kind of picks on Franklin, which I might too. The kid is, he’s just so annoyed. Like he’s in a wheelchair so I guess you’re supposed to kind of feel sorry for him, I guess. But and there, it seems like Sally kinda looks out for him or whatever, but he’s just so annoying. Like, his voice is annoying. Yes. I don’t believe that he’s supposed to be mentally challenged. He just seems like Probably because of his physical disability, he’s been coddled all of his life, and so he’s whiny and, gosh.

Craig: I would guess I don’t know. They’re supposed to be, what, in their early twenties?

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: But he acts he acts like he’s about 9. Like, ugh. He’s just so obnoxious. That’s your slaughterhouse. That’s where grandpa used to sell his cattle. Hey. We got an uncle that works at one of Places outside of Fort Worth. Hey.

Craig: You see those buildings there? That’s where they kill them. They bash them in the head with a big sledgehammer. Oh, that’s awful. It usually wouldn’t kill them on the 1st leg. I mean, it starts squealing and freaking out and everything, then they have to come up and bash you 2 or 3 times. And then sometimes it wouldn’t kill them. I mean, they had skin on sometimes even before they were

Todd: eating them. That’s horrible. People shouldn’t kill animals for food.

Craig: Well, they don’t do it like that anymore. Now they got this big air gun that shoots a bolt into their skull and then retracts. It’s just booms. Just boom.

Todd: If Benjamin, if I like me, please take your project. And and then they decide to pick up a hitchhiker. You know, there are just parts of this movie that I just don’t get. And Franklin is one of them, and I just chalked that up almost to bad acting.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd: So annoying. And this hitchhiker’s another one. And before they pick him up, one of them says, g g, I don’t know. This guy looks a little weird. Yeah. But then they get him in this van, and they’re driving down the road. And this guy just gets is weirder and weirder. But the fact that they, As the scene progresses, they don’t really show any more than, like, bizarre fascination and then repulsion on their on their part before finally, they kick him out of the van.

Todd: It just seems like it goes on a little too long and goes a little too far before these these folks get the idea that don’t really need to be in the same van with this guy.

Craig: Right. You know? But yeah. But and okay. Alright. So the seventies were a very different time, you know, like, you know, we had just come off the 60s where it was all, you know, love the one you’re with and peace and all that stuff where, And, and hitchhiking was a thing. People did that and, and people picked up hitchhikers. But you’re right. Like one of them, it’s Pam who says, I don’t know, he looks really weird.

Craig: Let’s not pick him up, but they do anyway. And then he is just so bizarre, but I feel like that’s one of the things that makes this movie scary and so unsettling. Like they don’t know who they’re picking up. This could be anybody. And then he gets in and he’s just a total weirdo. I mean, first of all, he looked weird. I mean, he’s got like scabs on his face. He’s got a big mark on on his face by one of his eyes that I I I couldn’t tell if it was a birth mark or if it was supposed to be a a scar, a burn scar or something, but just his appearance is unsettling.

Craig: And then he’s he’s he’s like a kid with ADHD. Like, he’s he’s jumpy and he’s giggly and he he Hawk’s weird and Franklin has a knife that he’s playing with and the hitchhiker takes it and just cuts a big gash in his hand And and everybody’s like, oh, ah, but then they’re kind of over it. Like Yeah. That was like, that was weird. He’s bleeding

Todd: all over self. And I’m like, oh, what? And he just hands the knife back to to to Franklin who just kinda holds it Stares with a knife like,

Craig: oh, man. Hey. You you can take me to my house. I I live right off this road. Well, I

Todd: I don’t know, Man, we’re in pretty much in a hurry. How close is

Craig: it? It’s real close.

Todd: Well, couldn’t you just Well, I mean, David some clubs.

Craig: You you you can have dinner with us. You like it? She’s my brother makes it Real good. You like it?

Todd: I think we better push on, man.

Craig: He’s got this camera that he wears around his neck, and he shows them some pictures he’s taken at the slaughterhouse. And then he takes a picture of Franklin, and hands it to, it’s a Polaroid camera, I guess, old timey camera. And, he gives the picture to Franklin, and Franklin’s like, Oh, it didn’t turn out very well. And he’s like, Well, you can pay, it’s a good picture, you can pay me now $2, $2 for the picture. But, Franklin won’t pay him, and so he takes the picture and, like, sprinkles some gunpowder on it and burns it up. And of course, they all freak out about that too. And then he whips a razor blade, a straight razor, out of his sock and slices Franklin’s arm with it, which I guess is finally the last straw. They pull over the van and kick him out.

Craig: But even after that, like They just wrap up Franklin’s arm and they’re like, man, that was weird. Like, what? And they don’t even Talk about going to a hospital or a doctor or anything. They’re like, keep on trucking or find a gas Station. Yep.

Todd: So they do. They pull over this gas station. I thought this was kinda cool. If you notice in the background of the sign on the gas station, It says, we slaughter, on the the left side of the sign, but then barbecue, you know, over on the right.

Craig: I didn’t notice that, but it’s funny.

Todd: And they pull over. And this is, you would say it’s maybe that old trope of the in fact, I wonder if this is where it came from. I don’t know. The old trope of pulling over at the gas station and the kids saying where they’re going, oh, we’re going to see the old Franklin House. And not only does this gas station not have any gas, but this guy seems very intent on telling them, you know, you don’t wanna go out there. You you the girls don’t wanna go out there. I got some barbecue in here. You should just stay and get some barbecue.

Todd: You know,

Craig: people own that house. Franklin says, well, actually, you know, my father owns that house. He’s like, oh, well. He’s like, People around these parts don’t take much to people snooping around their property. Yeah. I I think that you’re right, that maybe this trope comes from here. I don’t know, it may have come from somewhere else, but we’ve definitely seen it play out millions of times in horror movies since then. I mean, it it reminds me so much of that scene from Cabin in the Woods where it’s the exact same thing.

Craig: I mean, they’re they’re parodying it in Cabin in the Woods, but it’s the exact same thing. A bunch of 20 somethings pull up in a van to a gas station, and the gas station attendant says, oh, you don’t wanna go up that way. You know, like, We’ve we’ve we’ve seen it so many times at this point that it’s almost funny. It was probably a little more fresh 1974.

Todd: True. But but to go kind of on your earlier point, there’s really not a lot made of it. It’s not like since your music kicks in. It’s not like, you know, he he he just says it a few times. It’s kind of a suggestion, but he doesn’t really linger and try to keep them or whatever. You know? He just kinda leaves. And so this is a character who I’d say, 10 minutes from now, you’ve kinda forgotten about him. You you think you’re never gonna see this guy again.

Todd: So You know

Craig: But what’s what’s interesting about this one to me and what I had forgotten, you know, because I’ve seen the remake, and the remake’s pretty loose. I mean, they they they take some things from the original, but pretty loose remake. But, I remembered even from having seen this before that this guy from the gas station, Spoilers, spoilers if you don’t wanna, he ends up being one of the bad guys from this bad family. But I thought that this was interesting and that it really seemed like he was legit trying to avoid what eventually happens. Like, he really he was really trying to warn them, move along. You know? Don’t linger here. He wants.

Todd: I mean, for real. I don’t think he wanted it, you know, to kinda to go down. What what ends up going down? I mean, there’s there are cues to that later anyway that That, this family really probably just more more wants to be left alone, but these kids kinda got in the way a little bit.

Craig: Right.

Todd: By the way, before we pass over by Completely the hitchhiker. Of all of the people in these fill in this film who went on to do almost nothing, except for Marilyn, The, the lead actress did did a few things. The the hitchhiker guy, Edwin Neal, apparently, found a niche in the nineties Doing voice work for some video and also for video games.

Craig: I didn’t know that.

Todd: Isn’t that crazy?

Craig: I I kind of yeah. What I do know about him is that, You know I I I saw this suggested, several times in the stuff that I was reading, but I never saw anything explicit about it. Some of the actors and crew were not happy with Tobe Hooper and were not happy with the way that they were treated during the shooting of this. And Edwin Neal was one of those. He said that his experience filming this movie was worse than his experience in combat in Vietnam. And he, yeah. And he said it at one point that he hoped he never saw Toby Hooper again because he would kill him if he did. I don’t know if they ever did see each other again, but, yeah.

Craig: And you say that none of these people And you’re right. You know, most of these people were unknowns. They didn’t go on to do a lot. Several of them, including, Marilyn Burns, Sally, and and I think Edwin Neal too, I I don’t remember exactly, but they’ve made cameos in some of the sequels and and remakes and things. Gunnar Hansen though, Leatherface, he’s been still relatively prominent, especially in in the horror industry. But yeah, most of them were unknowns at the time and really didn’t go on to do much more. But I don’t know. Again, you know, Tobe Hooper, this is your tribute.

Craig: I’m not trying to disparage you in any way, but I I would be interested to read more about why some of These people had such a negative experience. I mean, I know that they, because they had such a limited budget, they were working 16 hour days, 7 days a week in the summer in Texas. So it was like a 100 plus degree weather, every day and, And they were doing this solid for like 4 weeks. And things got really unpleasant just because of the heat, you know, there, you’ve got all this, In certain scenes, you’ve got, you know, raw rotting meat in the summer heat. Gunnar Hansen, who plays Leatherface and, Sally, Marilyn Burns, they couldn’t afford to be constantly remaking their their costumes. So they had to wear the same thing Throughout, you know, long periods of time in the heat, they stank. And, you know, like it was so bad. It was so bad in some scenes, that Crew members were barfing and passing out because of the stench.

Craig: So I can imagine to some extent why it may have been, unpleasant. But, I feel like there’s there’s history there that would be very interesting, but I don’t know, that I’m unaware of at this You

Todd: know, maybe we’ll we’ll hear more of it now that he’s gone. You know? Because Maybe. It’s interesting because, coincidentally, not not I fairly shortly before he died, there’s always been this rumor that Tobe Hooper didn’t really direct Poltergeist. It was mostly Steven Spielberg. And it was shoot. Just just less than a month ago, I think, that, there a few of the actors from Poltergeist spoke out for the first time it said, yeah. Absolutely. Steven Spielberg was on the set the whole time, and Tobe Hooper was there.

Todd: And the way they said, they said he was a nice guy. He all he was he was cool. He always gave good suggestions and things like that, but it was really Spielberg running the show. So you got this impression at least from what they said was, yeah. He was a pretty chill dude who just sat there and smiled the whole time. So to hear that he was terrible on this set, you know, seems like a complete 180, but who knows? You know?

Craig: Who knows?

Todd: So, they leave there, and they go up to the old house and explore it, basically. So, Sally goes upstairs with some of the people. I mean, this house is nothing. It’s just some walls, and it’s completely overgrown with green. And but, like, they’ve gone up, and they’re gallivanting around this house laughing and goofing off. And, apparently, they’ve just left Frank went in the van. Yeah.

Craig: And he’s he’s fascinated by okay. The when the hitchhiker, When they kicked him out, he smeared some of his blood on the van, and Franklin is convinced that, like, he has marked the van so he can find them later, and so he’s fascinated by that. But then they leave him and humorless, you said before, you know, I understand what you mean, but there is a little bit. It’s laughing at Franklin’s expense, really, I mean, he’s so annoying. And then he’s trying to wheel himself into the house and he’s like, He’s like grunting and he’s screaming for Sally, and like he can’t get himself over this debris and like into the house. And then when he finally gets in the house, he throws a tantrum like a blanket.

Todd: Come on, Franklin. It’s gonna be a fun trip. If I have any more fun today, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to take it.

Craig: It’s a little bit bizarre, frankly, but

Todd: Kind of an embarrassing scene, I think. Honestly, like, if I had been the director, I would’ve been like, alright. We’re not we’re not doing this. You know?

Craig: Or or yeah. Like, Good try, buddy. That will end up on the cutting room floor for sure.

Todd: But he does see something ominous. He sees a pillow with a bunch of Crazy bones in it. It’s some feathers. Something that was obviously put there. But before he can really say anything about it, Pam and Kirk decided to go to the swimming hole that, Franklin apparently earlier on had told them was down down the way from the house.

Craig: It’s just there’s a path off behind those old 2 sheds down there.

Todd: Exactly. So they go down the path, and the swimming hole’s Completely dried up. But, down there near the swimming hole, they see another house just a little ways beyond, and he’s thinking Because, Jerry is pretty worried, I guess, as the driver that they’re gonna run out of gas. He said it a few times. So, he thinks maybe if they can go down there, and he’s like, I can leave my guitar with them as, like, collateral. You know? He’s got this all worked out. And, as he’s walking up to this place, it’s really just a there’s a big Shed out there. There’s, some things that should look pretty ominous.

Craig: Now if I’ve learned anything from horror movies, If you stumble onto a property and there’s a whole bunch of old cars on the property, get the hell out of there. Yeah.

Todd: Especially if they’re covered with camouflage. There’s big camouflage netting all over. Nobody wants anybody to know these old cars are here. But, of course, you know, the Same people who are throwing camouflage netting over these old cars are cheerfully, hanging up mobiles of creepy things Dangling just outside. Right?

Craig: Right. Right. One thing that I really appreciated about this movie, you and I are terrible Ramblers, you know, we can stretch things out for days. But the truth is this, this, everything happens so quickly like It just moves like, oh, we go to the old swimming hole. Oh, it’s dry. Oh, look, here’s the new house. And, and they, they knock on the door and Keith, you know, nobody answers. So, Keith goes in while, Pam goes out and sits on a porch swing, which is not on the porch, it’s out in the yard.

Craig: And He goes in and he’s like, Hello, hello, is anybody here? Boom, out steps Leatherface, nails him in the head with a sledgehammer, He’s down on the ground, convulsing, and, and then he gets another smack to the head with the sledgehammer And he’s done. You know, you get this iconic scene of this like big metal door slamming, as Leatherface takes him into his lair or whatever. And then immediately, Pam goes up to the house and is like, Kirk, where are you? Blah blah blah. And she goes in and, she stumbles into a room full of bones and again more of this morbid You know, kind of bone sculpture kind of stuff. A lot of it is clearly, human remains. And she barfs and, she runs out of that room, Leatherface appears, and again, I think it’s one of the more iconic images from the movie. She tries to run out the front door, but he grabs her around the waist from behind and just picks her up and pulls her kicking and screaming back into the house, and then hangs her up on a meat hook and proceeds to carve up Kirk right in front of her. And all of this happens in like 4 to 5 minutes.

Craig: Like, it’s just so fast. It’s so fast paced. And I appreciate that, and I think that it works really well, and it adds to the tension and the fear that these things aren’t drawn out. I mean, it’s just boom, boom, boom right in a row with all this violence.

Todd: It’s an interesting juxtaposition, Really, of pacing because when Pam stumbles into that room, into a pile of chicken feathers on the floor and it’s freaking out and staring around, The movie takes a good 2 minutes at least to linger around that room and show you close ups of this and close ups of That. They show you the bone sofa. They show you that bones hanging up. They show you this crazy little altar thing that looks like it’s made out of bones. Then every now and then, they’re showing the chicken in the cage, you know, Walking at them.

Craig: It Uh-huh.

Todd: It takes its time really showing you and lingering on all of these things. But then, like you say, The brutal horrible things that happen to the people just happen so quickly then they’re over. It it’s part of what makes it so shocking is because, I think is that juxtaposition. That pacing throws you off. You know, what we described sounds horrific, and it comes across as terribly horrific. There’s almost no gore. Right. What’s horrible about it is not just what’s happening, but how matter of fact it is.

Todd: There’s a very Dispassionate camera at work here.

Craig: Well, and I I think that it is. I mean, it says something and again, I’ve said this a 1000000 times. You know so much more about cinematography than I do. But from my limited perspective, it it’s kind of like a documentary in a sense that it lingers on things, like it’s showing us details, But it also feels very nightmarish in that it’s very focused on individual images. Like Let’s take a few seconds to linger on this, isn’t this scary? Let’s take a few seconds to linger on this. And it does intense close ups on the actors’ faces and eyes, especially. It’s nightmarish. It feels like a nightmare.

Craig: It feels like you feel often in a nightmare where certain imagery or at least, you know, you you you wake up and you have those flashes of those scary and intense moments. And I feel like Hooper captured that well in in his direction.

Todd: Yeah. And a thing that I guess he captured well too and what Gunnar Hansen in his acting did very well is the fact that Leatherface seems like he is a guy working in a slaughterhouse just doing a job. Yeah. You know? He just does all this without like, he’s done it a 1000000 times and, like, it’s part of his day. And, again, it’s not like the camera zooms in on his face or really makes a dramatic big deal about it. He doesn’t make these dramatic entrances. They’re not these Moments where they’re creeping around this quiet house, and you’re just waiting for the jump scare. It just these guys wandered into the room.

Todd: He was there. He whacks them. It’s pretty much over, and then he does what he what he does with the cows, you know, hangs 1 up on a meat hook, except this one’s alive, And she gets to watch as her boyfriend gets, gets carved up in front of her.

Craig: Well, and we kinda we kinda touched on this earlier by saying, you know, the gas station guy kinda seems like He was trying to avoid this, but that’s what makes Leatherface in this movie. Now there, there are so many Texas Chainsaw movies at this point and and they really have gone all over the place in terms of tone and and violence and all that stuff, but in this movie It really just seems like these people stumbled into his lair. He doesn’t have an agenda. You know, like, he’s not out intentionally Stalking and murdering people, you know, there’s no vendetta or anything. It’s just these people were stupid enough to intrude into his space and so He killed them. You know? Like Exactly. Like, if they would’ve just gone away, you know, like, if if When nobody answered the door, if they had just gone away and not, you know, gone into his house, they probably would have been fine. And and I think that makes him interesting as a villain he’s also interesting, you know, I read that gunnerhansen And really wanted to get into the character of of this guy and he decided through his character study that this was somebody who was mentally handicapped and had not had the opportunity to ever be socialized.

Craig: He was never sent School, he was never you know, even, you know, in a school for for people with special needs, he never had, that kind of opportunity. And so his development was just stunted, and he just all he knew was what he knew from his own environment, which included the slaughterhouse. And he tried to, you know, portray that, that he was somebody who was challenged mentally. And and you can see it, and I feel like you see it more in this iteration than in any other. His his his voice It’s high pitched and almost childlike. Yeah. I guess in the script that he he it was scripted that he had lines, but it was just mumbles and incoherent, and then it would also have next to that what he was trying to say so that Gunnar Hansen knew what he was trying to say, But it comes out as totally incoherent to us, the audience, and maybe partially coherent to The other men that he lives with because he’s lived with them for so long, but there’s there’s almost a childlike quality to him. And, you know, he’s the big one.

Craig: He’s the tough one, but he cowers to the other guys Yeah. In his family in a very childlike way. Again, I read this I don’t know how accurate this was but, I I guess that critics and even proponents or or advocates for the mentally challenged or disabled have said that he actually did a pretty good job of of portraying somebody with those kinds of challenges. Now, you know, to an extent, I mean, it’s a horror movie. He’s a villain, but, at at at the very least, It’s interesting, and it’s it’s it’s cool to know that he really put thought into it. His, acting is is pretty good.

Todd: I think another thing, like a lot of these kind of movies, the actors wouldn’t have gone to those lengths and wouldn’t have put so much thought into their characters as, as he did, you know, which Right. Was another reason why it sets us apart a little bit.

Craig: Well and it just goes to show. You know? It this was shot on a very low budget, and they all went in knowing that. They all knew that this was not gonna be something that was necessarily gonna be personally profitable for them, but they put their heart and soul into it. And maybe that’s What made it so good? I don’t know. But from this point and up to this point, you know, the movie is fast paced in general. The the first, I don’t know, 15 minutes maybe drag a little bit, but not so much that you’re bored necessarily. But then once once we get, you know, these first kills, It moves super fast Jerry goes off to find the other 2 who had already gone. He ends up at the house Same thing.

Craig: He goes in the house and and finds kind of the slaughter room. Something is rumbling in the freezer and he opens it up and there’s Pam in the freezer and then boom. Here’s Leatherface, another another, sledgehammer to the head for another one of these characters, and he’s done. That’s it. We cut back to, Sally and and Franklin at

Todd: Franklin who have endless patients.

Craig: Well, they’re getting, they’re getting nervous and scared, and Franklin wants to leave. He wants to go get help, But they they realize that they don’t have the keys, somebody else has the keys, so they have to go looking, which this is just Kind of ridiculous. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense that she would be able to push his wheelchair through the terrain that we have seen other people go through, but they do. I mean, they don’t have any other voice. So they go and then they’re walking through the forest and then

Todd: Right in front of them.

Craig: Franklin just gets Sliced right down the middle. But again, like you said, we see it from behind Franklin and it’s very dark and it’s in the forest. So we don’t actually see a lot of gore, But we definitely can paint the picture in our own mind of what is happening here. And Sally runs off screaming. And then this is one of the things that put me off of this movie the first couple times I watched it. It didn’t bother me so much this time around, But the next 15 minutes is just this girl running around screaming like a howler monkey. Like and I I feel for this actress Because her 4th throat must have just

Todd: been destroyed because she

Craig: is literally just screaming and screaming. And and they run through the forest, and he’s Chasing her and, you know, I read no matter how quickly she ran, Governor Hanson was always faster than her, so he had to try to do things to try to make it believable that he couldn’t catch up with her. So he’s, like, sawing through is in the forest. Waving the chainsaw around, and they’re running and running and running. And they get to the house, and She goes up the stairs and she finds what appears to be 2 old corpses, and she finds all these bones and things, and then Leatherface is right behind her, so she jumps out of a 2 story window, and then they he chases her back through the forest, and they end up back at the gas station. And this, you know, I’ve already spoiled it. The gas station manager is one of them. But I felt like this was Probably one of the more unsettling scenes for me.

Craig: Did you feel the same way?

Todd: Oh, absolutely. And I remember that when I first saw this. I really wasn’t expecting him to, I was expecting him to get it. You know? I wasn’t expecting him to be one of them.

Craig: Right. Right.

Todd: And she’s like, we have to call the we have to call the cops. He says, well, there’s no phone here, but there’s a phone in the nearby town. I’ll go get the truck. And he leaves, and she just sits there. And, Again, this is one of those scenes that’s just like the other girl stumbling into the bone room. And she’s sitting here in this gas station, and she sees the oven with the meat hanging in there. And it just lingers over this barbecue, which is the last thing she wants to see after she saw her brother getting cut up. But then he comes back in, and he has a rope and he has a bag, and he’s smiling.

Todd: Yeah. It gets Pretty brutal here. This guy’s a real jerk and, seems to take real delight in torturing people. And so, he there’s just a very uncomfortable scene where he wrestles her down, hits her a few times, ties her up, Puts this bag overhead, drags him into his car truck. Oh, and then he runs back in because he forgot to turn off the lights. So yeah. Yeah. Does And then as he says Well, and

Craig: Go ahead. Well, I feel like you were gonna maybe say the same thing that I was gonna say. Part of what makes it so unsettling is that he talks to her in kind of a gentle manner. Like he’s trying to comfort her and, like, he’s got her in this sack down in the floorboard of the passenger side of his truck. And he’s like, Are you okay down there? Are you feeling okay? Meanwhile, he’s jabbing her with a big stick and enjoying it. Like, it’s just a a weird juxtaposition of the way that he talks to her, and then the fact that he’s also tormenting her physically at the same Time. I mean, he’s he’s he’s messed up. You know? He’s obviously part of this messed up family, and they’re all messed up.

Todd: And then he pulls in, to the the house again. And on the way in, there’s our hitchhiker again, his headlights, he runs out, and he says

Craig: I told you, and I told you I told you never to leave your Run her, mom, you little bit. Get at her and get that girl out of

Clip: the car.

Craig: Get out get her out of the car. Get her out of the car.

Todd: Then there’s This whole scene, I think, is probably what most people remember the most about this movie. Yeah. And I and from what I remember reading It’s the part that drove all these actors to pretty much wanna Toby Hooper’s head on a platter in front of them.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: She wakes up. It’s in this dining room of this house, and sitting around the table are the hitchhiker, Leatherface, the guy from the gas station and the corpse from upstairs.

Craig: Right. Who turns out not to be a corpse. He looks like a corpse.

Clip: Oh my gosh.

Craig: And it’s it’s so gross. He looks he it’s disgusting. And one of the first things that happens is the hitchhiker and Leatherface restrain her, and one of them cuts her finger and puts it in the corpse’s mouth, and the corpse starts sucking on her finger. And again, we get these intense close ups of her eyes. And she’s been screaming, screaming, screaming, and then this happens, and she’s so horrified that she falls silent, and we just see the terror in in the close-up in our eye.

Todd: It’s so offensive. It’s so offensive.

Craig: Yeah. And and Part of the reason that this ended up being so torturous is because I read that the guy who played Grandpa, When they did his makeup, it took, like, 5 or more hours or something to do that. And he said, I’m not doing this again. I’m not going this again, so you better film everything that you want of me now. And again, you know I’m reading all this stuff online. I can’t verify its truth, but What I read was that they ended up shooting for like 36 hours straight just so that they could get this this Most of it was this scene. It’s an intense scene, and it’s a lot of her screaming and them mocking her, you know? And that’s like, She she wakes up and she immediately starts screaming, and they immediately start mocking her. Like, they’re like, they scream, and then they howl like dogs, and they’re laughing at her.

Craig: And there’s some weird, dynamics going on between these guys. Like it seems like the gas station guy is kind of the patriarch, aside from grandpa who’s basically a corpse, he’s kind of the patriarch and he’s in charge, But he also doesn’t like doing the dirty work. And so the hitchhiker kind of gives him some crap for that saying, Oh, he talks big, but he’s really just the cook. And and the old guy says, Yeah. I just can’t take no pleasure in killing. But but it’s obvious that they’re they’re going to kill her. And the scene goes on for a little while, and it’s very tense. Basically, what it ends up is yes, we are going to kill you.

Craig: Here’s how it’s gonna happen. It’ll be fast. Don’t worry about it. But but then the the I think it’s the hitchhiker says, let’s let grandpa do this one. He was the he was the best killer of them all. And so they she’s been tied up to a chair. The hitchhiker unties her and takes her and holds her over a metal tub. And Leatherface is trying to give grandpa the sledgehammer, but grandpa, being a corpse, doesn’t have the strength to hold it.

Craig: And so, like, he keeps trying to hit her, and he misses several times. And then he starts actually hitting her, but just like

Todd: Like a glancing blows.

Craig: Right. Right. Like, the sledgehammer is just kind of dropping on her head, which, of course, would Hurt terribly, but it’s not enough to knock her out or to kill her.

Todd: And, apparently, they used a real hammer for some of these.

Craig: Oh my god.

Todd: And and and so, like, yeah, maybe that’s where this hatred for Hooper came in. I read even the The earlier scene with the guy in the, in the chair when I guess when they shot it, even though I didn’t see anything, it was Seem to all be in shadow to me. Apparently, when they shot it, you know, they he was swinging a real chainsaw within, like, 3 inches of this guy’s Oh my god. This guy’s face. Yeah. It also gets kinda wackadoodle too. Like, he really throws in this almost psychedelic shots where the music and sound effects just go all over the place. It’s it’s like audio chaos of bongs and bangs and timpanies and things.

Todd: And, visually, it gets that way too. We get, like, all kinds of close ups and medium shots and extreme close ups and stuff on her eyes and these different angles, and it just kinda flips out, you know, visually to portray, I think, her own panic and and terror in here, and I think it’s pretty effective. Although at times, it gets a little a little too artsy.

Craig: Yeah. I I guess. I I I understand what you’re saying, but I actually did find this to be very effective. You know, it it kind of puts you in her shoes a little bit where She’s so panicked and so scared that things are very fragmented, and, yeah, I I thought it worked well. I liked it.

Todd: Well, then, the way that she escapes is just in the chaos of this whole all this this trying to hit her in the head with a hammer. Somehow, I guess her bonds get free, and, she jumps up and is able to run away. And she jumps out a window and comes out into daylight

Craig: Mhmm.

Todd: Which I took it’s it’s kind of shocking, actually, because you imagine it’s night. That’s That’s what you’re getting here. But we’ve seen a whole cycle from from night, today again. They’re very he’s very deliberate about that too. We get to have shots of the sun as it goes down, the different shots of the moon as the movie goes. I almost interpreted this as a kind of waking up from the nightmare. I’m kinda Mhmm. Where suddenly, the scene changes so much kind of like in a dream where you can be dreaming about 1 thing, and then suddenly the scene just completely changes.

Todd: Seems to be what happens to her. And now she’s out running down the road, and, the hitchhiker chases after her, In a very satisfying moment, they end up on the road, and he’s chasing her down the road, and there’s a big truck coming down, a big semi, And it takes him out, pretty brutally. I mean, I don’t know if you expected that to fly on a PG movie or not. But,

Craig: you see, shots from this movie, scenes from this movie in clips a lot if you’re watching anything about horror. And this is one of the ones you see of Leatherface chasing her down the road and a semi pulls over and the driver jumps out and helps her into the cab of his truck. Leatherface is right there, and he’s, like, got, he’s going at the door with this chainsaw, so they both jump out passenger side and start running. I kinda had forgotten this. I kind of felt like she got rescued and that was it, but the 2 of them, the driver and she go off running, And then this happened so quickly. I feel like I may have even missed something. Does the driver just turn around and punch Leatherface? No. Is that what He picks up do?

Todd: He picks up a wrench, and he turns around, and he chucks it at him and hits him in the head with it.

Craig: Okay. I think I must have been writing because I I think I missed that. So Leatherface falls over backwards and, that he he drops the chainsaw so that it it cuts into his own leg. But then he gets up and runs off, or or or continues to chase them. And here’s something else that I think that I missed, because this pickup truck Flies by, but sees what’s going on and slams on the brakes and kinda does a 180 in the road. And she jumps in the back of the pickup, and it’s like the pick the driver can’t get it started again, but at the last minute, he does get it start get it started, takes off down the road, And we see her screaming and kind of maniacally laughing in the back as she drives away, and Leatherface in his frustration just Stands in the highway and swings around, the the chainsaw. Yeah. Yeah.

Craig: Swinging around the chainsaw. And then it cuts to black, and that’s the end. And and it’s kinda you know, it’s fairly iconic as as far as scenes go. But what happened to the other truck driver? Did we see what happened there?

Todd: No. I guess I guess he just Stood there and watched it all, or maybe he got back in his truck and took off or something?

Craig: I didn’t remember that at all, but and I was you know, as she was, I’m glad that she’s being rescued, but I’m like, wait. What happened to that other guy?

Todd: Well, It’s just it’s so sudden, and I remember thinking this too when I watched this movie the first time, like, wow. This is it. It I mean, It again, just like everything else, it all happens quite fast. And, again, I I have to say much like what you said about this movie from the beginning, It all plays fairly true. It’s not overly dramatic. It all seems very sloppy like how things might go in real life. The fact that a guy just turns around and and chokes a wrench at him, you know, which causes him to fall and you know, except for the fact that he can get up and walk after a chainsaw’s fallen on his leg. Right.

Todd: But she’s really only saved by the fact that this truck driver just happened to come by, and then he just takes off again. We don’t know who he is. We never know who he is. He’s just a guy. There’s no victory in it anywhere. It just ends, and it ends in silence. We’ve had

Craig: Yes.

Todd: We’ve had quite a bit of music throughout this movie. And, again, a lot of it was mostly ethereal, And then it gets pretty crazy, but it’s a very good use of music, I think, in the film. It’s mostly atmospheric.

Craig: I was gonna say it’s interesting that you call it music because there, there is some music like in the gas station, there’s the radio playing, But they said that with the sound design, they wanted to stay away from traditional orchestration. They wanted to try to use sounds That an animal would hear in a slaughterhouse. This movie is considered a classic, And it’s it’s and I and and I understand why. I I think that it should be. You know, I do think that it was groundbreaking, And it clearly paved the way for so many things. First of all, you know, there have been I I don’t even know how many sequels And and remakes and and sequels to remakes. I mean, we’re getting probably up close to 10 at this point, I would say. It’s it’s so different than any other franchise, and that most of the other franchises try to maintain some sense of continuity.

Craig: And The people behind this franchise just really kind of seem not to care. So so the backstory changes, the characters change from movie to movie, sequel to sequel, remake to remake. Of course, Leatherface is always central. But even, you know, Tobe Hooper directed the second one too, if I remember correctly, and they went in a completely different direction. The second movie could be considered a comedy just as easily as it could be considered a horror movie. Right. I mean, it’s it’s wackadoodle and and silly, but fun. Like, it it really is fun.

Craig: And I’ve seen them all. I feel like the third one had Dennis Hopper as, like, the or maybe it was 2nd I

Todd: get the 2nd and the

Craig: 3rd one mixed up. And then the 4th one had a young Matthew and Rene Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey really was off the wall and crazy but it was fun. And then you had the remakes Then the sequels to the remake which went really dark, and then there was Texas Chainsaw three d which totally retconned it and made things different and set it in modern day. And tried to kinda tie it to the first one, but it was loosely connected. And we’ve got a new one coming out too. I think that it the new one, I think, is called Leatherface, but that’s gonna kind of handle the backstory of, how Leatherface became Leatherface. So it’s this kind of crazy madcap series of movies, but it works. People want more of it.

Craig: You know? And and Really, it has established itself and and maintained its popularity as much, if not more so, than some of its contemporaries Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday 13th and and all of those. So clearly, mister Hooper was was Onto something good here, and, his legacy, is is going to live on for a very long time.

Todd: Well, you can see the inspiration of things that came before it, such as Psycho. I think especially about the grandparents and stuff in the, you know, in the attic and whatnot. And also, you can see what it influenced as its place in time as being one of those I think one of the first of these silent, Unstoppable, hulky, masked killers. You know? Mhmm. Jason, obviously, you know, very much drawn from this as well. And even, apparently, Ridley Scott said that, it was an inspiration when he was working on Alien, of all things. I’m not quite sure where that where that falls, but, he that’s what he said anyway.

Craig: And and look at Rob Zombie. I mean, House of a 1000 Corpses is virtually a remake of this movie.

Todd: But honestly, if it had come out today, it’d just be another one of these movies. Right?

Craig: Probably. Mhmm. Yeah.

Todd: It it’s not that good. You know, you you have to look at it through the lens of history, obviously.

Craig: Right. Right.

Todd: But, it’s it’s kind of a shame, really. I I thought we would see a lot more out of Tobe Hooper, And he did a few things like Life Force. He did Eat and Alive, which I remember seeing, which I I thought was really schlocky at the time. It’d be interesting to go back and look at, About a a guy who runs a hotel and has alligators, like, under the is either in the basement or under the porch out front or something like that and feeds people to it. Life Force was pretty critically panned, but he said there was there was all kinds of studio interference that made that turn out the way he He didn’t want it. Then there’s Poltergeist, which, you know, he’d been given the credit for all this time. But it sorta turns out that Steven Spielberg actually Did the directing on that. Right.

Todd: So when you kinda look at his production afterwards, I don’t think any of it really has reached up. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong. What am I missing here? He he went into did a lot more TV and kinda small movies after that, I think.

Craig: And he did a lot of things, like, with Anthologies like Masters of Horror and things like that, and and and good stuff. And you know, some of the the movies you mentioned like Life force. Yeah. It didn’t do particularly well, but it has a big following. Invaders from Mars, I think he did, was a remake that he was actually really proud of and a lot of people really liked, I like that one. He was yeah. He was attempting to make a a horror movie for kids, or at least that was kid friendly. I don’t remember it.

Craig: I’d like to watch it. We should do it sometime, but nothing nothing really lived up to to this really. And it’s strange because you hear his name all the time, and other filmmakers Give him credit all the time and and cite him as an inspiration. He was clearly respected, in in the horror filmmaking community, and that has to be for a reason. He may not have had the same oeuvre of work as some of the other filmmakers that we talked about, but he clearly made an impact, and you have to give respect to somebody who is is gonna go down in in horror Sri, as a groundbreaker and as an inspiration, you you hope that you can leave that kind of legacy, and I think that he did.

Todd: That’s true. And I have to say, even though I said, you know, if this would come out today, it it wouldn’t be anything because there’s just so much like it now, obviously, because it kind of came from this. I have to say when I when I rewatched it this time, yeah, I was pretty brutalized by it. It it really it still had an emotional impact on me. You know, there’s there’s a lot you could say about The comfortability of it, the violence toward women aspect of it, that’s just it’s it’s really pretty raw and in your face. And even today, that aspect of it really does hold up. Agreed. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode.

Todd: If you enjoy it, please share it with a friend. You can Find us on Itunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also find us on Facebook where you can like us, our page there, and leave some comments about what you thought of this film as well as any films you’d like us to watch in the future. Until that time, I’m Todd, and

Craig: I’m Craig

Todd: with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.