Nostalgia Kick                                                            T e x a s   C h a i n s a w   M a s s a c r e              

I have been on a nostalgia kick of late, renting old movies and seeing if they have the same impact as they did when I was a kid. I do it mostly because I have flashes of movies that shocked the shit out of me as a child. I remember my friend’s mom taking us to the creepiest theater in Chicago, to watch a slasher movie, which I think was My Bloody Valentine. This theater was very grungy, dark and occasionally rats, the size of possums, would run across the stage or gets caught in paper bags and then race back and forth across the rows. The paper bags came from all the people who brought beer to drink while watching the movie or right before they went to sleep.

I remember being terrified of the trailers and the movie. The whole time the film played, my eyes were frozen to the screen. I would leap from my seat, spill popcorn and scream in fear like a girl. I remember when the movie ended, I was a nervrous wreck and then more previews came on and I screamed we had to leave. My mother was no better, we’d often times go to drive in theaters to watch BLAXPLOITATION films and horror movies. And then there are strange memories, again from the age of the drive-in when I remember watching Star Wars, from the back of our car and having Star Wars action figures as well.

So a few months ago I began to rent old movies, some of them were complete dudes. The Poseidon Adventure was a Jonnie pick, which he remembered being a great flick, it did not suck, if only because it is so hokey and fun to watch, but it did not have the hit we wanted. I went next, knowing The Amityville Horror would be shocking! Instead we got a James Brolin and Margot Kidder in one of the worse sex scenes on film, surrounded by a mediocre horror movie.* As a matter of fact the only scene that is good in The Amityville Horror is the scene with the priest praying, anything more, would kinda give away the only good scene. Otherwise this Exorcist like theological horror movie, sucked dick.

I know a lot of you will write in and say that the ambush/sex scene from the William Baldwin, Cindy Crawford action vehicle Fair Game was the worse sex scene in history. It is a close second but I think if you go to your Video Store and rent The Amityville Horror, you’ll see I am right. I’ll even pay for the first three people who do in fact go out and rent The Amityville Horror. If you rent The Amityville Horror it will win your hearts over as the worse sex scene in cinema.

My cinematic nostagia hit paydirt when I finally rented a copy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Renting TCM was a huge ordeal. I tried to rent it for six months from five different movie rental stores and never could, cause it was out. I finally searched for it at a scary Blockbuster in the ghetto. I rushed home to watch it, hanging out with a few friends. The consistent theme was one of utter shock and amazement at how deranged and scary the movie still is.

While we all had different experiences watching the movie, we agreed on some issues.

1. The acting is horrible. Our faithful teenagers are a lousy bunch of actors, but you realize it must be intentional.
2. The arc and timing of the movie is excellent, there are no anticlimactic climaxes, where the seemingly indestructible villain comes back again and again.
3. The Blair Witch Project borrows significant material and color from TCM. I was quit surprised to see this.

Trying to explain that watching this movie some twenty odd years later and still finding it just as horrifying as when I was a child is hard and rare. TCM is not a good movie, but it is a good movie to watch.

Here are two excellent links from the house of horrors web site

A excellent detail but spoiler free review.

The second link is bio on Ed Gein who inspired Norman Bates, LeatherFace and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the lambs.