Monday Minute
No. 187 | October 25, 2010

Crooked Numbers

They’ve been making horror movies since the early days of cinema.  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu are silent classics.  Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy rank among the popular hits of the 1930s.  Otherworldly creatures hit the screen during the ’50s, in movies such as The Thing and The Blob.

The horror genre covers many kinds of films and villains—mad geniuses, monsters, zombies, vampires, the supernatural—but in the 1970s a new kind of horror movie was born.  The danger we had to fear was no longer out there, but more likely right next door.  The villains may have been our neighbors or the new kids in school.  Maybe we knew them, or maybe not, but the deranged behavior they exhibited onscreen was unlike anything anyone had seen before. The production code was no longer in effect to constrain what was permitted, and new tools allowed depiction of gore in a more realistic manner, even on a low budget.  With Vietnam, Watergate, and the sexual revolution all tearing at society, the culture had a lot to process.  Filmmakers found new ways to scare the bejesus out of audiences.

The early slasher films owed a debt to Alfred Hitchcock, whose Psycho in 1960 must have been an inspiration for many of them.  Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, also from 1960, broke similar ground; the film about a London serial killer had thrust moviegoers into a new world of sensation, and helped create an appetite for what was to come.

Slasher films didn’t win raves or awards, but they did win—and continue to win—a loyal audience.  The appeal of the films is not like that of most movies.  We don’t go just to find out what happens or to see who’s in it.  We go for the visceral experience.  We go to feed our nightmares.  We go to test ourselves—to see if we can survive.

The horror films featured this week are among the most successful at getting under the skin of the people who watch them.  These are not just films with sequels, but bona fide franchises, with series of numbers appended to their titles so we can keep them straight.  (Crooked numbers, in the sports world, refers to numbers greater than one, especially the numbers generated when a team is running up the score.)  Each of the franchises has at least six films to date, and a couple of them number in double digits.

Our theme this week
Horror film franchises from the 1970s to today

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

The franchise films
1.  The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Tobe Hooper, director
2.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Tobe Hooper, director
3.  Leatherface:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990), Jeff Burr, director
4.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Next Generation (1994), Kim Henkel, director
5.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Marcus Nispel, director
6.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Beginning (2006), Jonathan Liebesman, director

The villain
Leatherface, portrayed by Gunnar Hansen (1), Bill Johnson (2), R.A. Mihailoff (3), Robert Jacks (4), Andrew Bryniarski (5, 6)

Overview
Leatherface and his inbred family of cannibals run a gas station somewhere on the backroads of Texas.  Pity the poor travelers who stop to refuel and find the deranged, chainsaw-loving clan who make a practice of abducting and murdering their customers.  (And if a chainsaw isn’t handy, a meat hook will do.)  Leatherface gets his name from the variety of masks that he wears, made from the skin of his victims.  Shocking?  Well, yes it is.  Good to know this is a fictional story, yet the “inspiration” for Leatherface was a real-life figure named Ed Gein, a Wisconsin murderer who had a certain taste for the skin and bones of his victims.  Gein was also the model for a couple of other famous movie villains, Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter.

Tobe Hooper, as director, co-writer, and producer of the first in the series, deserves much of the credit (or blame) for the franchise, as well as other slasher films to come.  (Wes Craven, with The Last House on the Left, in 1972, was another key instigator.)  The original in the Chain Saw series was a very low-budget affair, made for $140,000, but a big moneymaker at the box office, taking in more than $30 million.  The sequels had bigger budgets and varying returns.  The 2003 movie, a remake of the original but with a somewhat different storyline, was the top grosser of the franchise, earning more than $100 million worldwide.

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Tobe Hooper, director
Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper, writers
Daniel Pearl, cinematographer
Trailer

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Quote of note
“The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five 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.  For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare.  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.”
—Narrator (John Larroquette), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

…58…59…60.

1. Logan says:

   December 10, 2010 at 3:40 pm

   Saw the mvoie when I was 7. Not scared for life so hah! Good movie from what I remember. Also, I’m only 13 so I saw it on TV