Pete's Movie Review

[TULLOCHNZ]

Now we will turn to Horror and what better to kick it off than the classic:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-1974

Directed by Tobe Hooper this film has been regarded by many as the start of modern horror , but I must say after seeing the film a lot over the years I am still wondering what all the fuss was about-to me it drags and always has.

The beginning of the film has always amazed me , where you see the camera flashing and eventually you see that dug up skeleton sitting there-rather spooky that , but the rest of it seems to go at a very slow pace , sure it has it's moments when the guy in the wheelchair gets attacked by Leatherface and the girl gets hung up on the hook but I have always expected more from this film and to me it has never delivered.

The film was brought back to the theatre's here in 84' and me and my friends were expecting a real bloodbath when we went along to see it-man were we dissapointed , one of them said "Pete we did you drag us along to see this shit"-and to this day I don't know why I went , it must have been something to do with the legend behind the movie itself : ie banned in a lot of countries , and the so called true story behind it all.

The story is loosely based on Ed Gein , a man who used to dig up corpses and make like suits out of the skins and also about a serial killer called Elmer Henley according to Hooper.

The film is regarded as a cult movie now and has been the inspiration for a number of horror films over the years but I must say I enjoyed the remake by Michael Bay a hell of a lot better-if you watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Beginning and then Bay's remake back to back I reckon they tell the story a hell of a lot better than the original , they are seamless and all the characters match up even though The Beginning was made after Bays remake-I love those films.

To me the ending of the original is plain stupid and it seemed to me Hooper was on some kind of acid trip when he filmed it , here we have Leatherface swinging around and revving up the chainsaw after the girl has escaped for about 3 minutes before the credits roll , and by that time I was begging for the credits to roll.

Some on here might not like this but I am going to score The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a 5/10 and I might have scored it even less but there are some great shots in the film itself and I give credit where credit is due.

[iank]

Me and my brother saw the 3rd one first, which we watched and thought was an extraordinarily intense and frightening horror thriller.

We rented the original and turned it off halfway through. We thought it was boring.

[TULLOCHNZ]

Originally Posted by iank

Me and my brother saw the 3rd one first, which we watched and thought was an extraordinarily intense and frightening horror thriller.

We rented the original and turned it off halfway through. We thought it was boring.

Thank god you agree with me iank , it is boring but I expect a bit of flak over this review as I reckon there are some fans of this film on this site.

[re93animator]

Originally Posted by TULLOCHNZ

Thank god you agree with me iank , it is boring but I expect a bit of flak over this review as I reckon there are some fans of this film on this site.

I'm somewhat of a fan, but I won't give you any flak, especially considering that the first time I saw it, it didn't interest me much either.

But, the gritty realism of it all is what grabs my attention every time I watch it now. That and, even while the plot stretches plausibility at times, the film never overplays its scares.

And I wouldn't stress the true story aspect too much, since Ed Gein was, apart from sewing skin together, absolutely nothing like Leatherface.

[TULLOCHNZ]

Originally Posted by re93animator

I'm somewhat of a fan, but I won't give you any flak, especially considering that the first time I saw it, it didn't interest me much either.

But, the gritty realism of it all is what grabs my attention every time I watch it now. That and, even while the plot stretches plausibility at times, the film never overplays its scares.

And I wouldn't stress the true story aspect too much, since Ed Gein was, apart from sewing skin together, absolutely nothing like Leatherface.

Phew I survived a second reply , believe me re93 when I wrote this I was not trying to incite a backlash as I have in the past-this was a honest to god review on what I felt about this film.The other two in this series are say so to me but as I said I like the Bay remake better even though he got caned for trying to redo a classic.

In the past I have been pretty generous with my ratings on films and reviews , with this one I did not describe the story at all as I now would like more to go into the making of these old films and the history behind them-I think you Sam and CD are better at descibing the storylines than me with your reviews so I think this change of tact will be lot more easy going and enjoyable for me.

[TULLOCHNZ]

Halloween-1978

The classic movie that started the age of the Slasher film. I watched it a few months back and it did seem very dated to me but the camera work and atmosphere behind the movie are first rate-it is one of a kind film that has been copied a lot over the last 30 years but the funny thing is most hardcore Horror fans will always come back to this one , just something about it I guess.

John Carpenter had only made Assault On Precinct 13 before taking on Halloween with Debra Hall backed by Moustapha Akkad who fronted the $320,000 to make it with Irwin Yablans producing.

Given a month to make it they finished it in a record three weeks and to this day the film has grossed over 60 million which in todays figures is about 203 million-not bad considering how much it cost to make.

Carpenter got $10,000 for directing , writing and composing the score but also got 10% rights for the films profits so he has done very well out of Halloween and probably will until the day he dies.

To me Nick Castle has always been the best Shape(the name that appears on the credits for the killer if you are not a Halloween fan)that played Michael Myers in these films.I still marvel how he seems to walk-run down that staircase in the movie and just the way he stood there in most of his shots-rather chilling.He was paid $25 a day for this role-laughable now but that was the deal back then.

Jamie Lee Curtis was a unknown before this film even though she was the daughter of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis.In a way she is a bit embarassed by the film and in some ways the movie did hurt her career.She became known as the "Scream Queen" and did make two bad movies after this-Terror Train and Prom Night as well as Halloween 2 and of course H20 and Resurrection in the Horror genre.

Donald Pleasence was cast as Dr Sam Loomis -a part he reprised in several of these films and which was a very much loved character right up to the day he died which was just after The Curse Of Michael Myers was released.

Halloween even though it was released in 78' spawned tons of imitators in the 80's including the Friday The 13th series and the Nightmare On Elm Street series not to mention a ton of trashy VHS horrors which I have mentioned in another thread and which I was unfortunate to see.

I would rate this classic a 10/10

[TULLOCHNZ]

Friday The 13th-1980

After the huge success of Halloween(1978) it was not that long before Sean S Cunnigham jumped on the bandwagon with this slasher flik and created another iconic film figure-Jason Voorhees.

For the first time a major studio (Paramount) got behind this project buying the rights to distribute for $1.5 million and then spent another $1 million on advertising-the film in the U.S. pulled in $39 million and then another $20 million internationally-in todays dollars this film has made over $120 million and was the most successful out of the 10 films in the series.

The film introduced us to a very young Kevin Bacon and to this day I think his killing in the movie with the arrow is one of the best-this scene has been cut and edited in quite a few editions now , some show the complete sequence and others show a very quick cut-just depending on the censors you have in your country I guess , and in NZ they were terrible at cutting out whole scenes in the mid 80's so I brought in the complete movies from Amazon in the States but I had to wait a long time to get them.

Then of course we had that mad music by Harry Manfredini , with tons of violins that seem to be out of control and the famous Ki Ki Ki Ma Ma Ma whenever Jason is around.For years people thought it was Cha Cha Cha and Manfredini has always laughed at this , he has said the Ki Ki Ki stands for Kill and the Ma Ma Ma stands for Mommy-when you see Betsy Palmer going loco she is standing there saying "Kill her , Mommy!" so this is a offshoot of this which is used very effectively throughout the movie.

To this day I still love the film even though the acting is bad , but to be honest anyone watching these 80's horrors are not that interested in the performances they are there to see how many ways there is to kill a teenager as that is what these films were targeted at as their core audiences at the time.

I thought Betsy Palmer was great as the psycho and love some of her lines like "Come now dear it will be easier for you than it was for Jason" , I also thought she looked crazy with those teeth and that haircut-really scary that.

For many years it was a trick question about who the killer was in the original , most people automatically say Jason but no Mrs Voorhees is the correct answer-this question was used by the killer in the movie Scream , remember people Jason did not appear until Part 2.

Another character I like is Ralph who is the local town nutcase-I love some of his lines as well like "Your doomed your all doomed" and "It's got a death curse" when describing Camp Crystal Lake to anyone bothered to listen to him in the movie-he survives until Part 2 until he gets garroted by Jason with a chain.

I thought the remake was very well done , but I must say Part 4-The Final Chapter is my favourite out of the series-that was supposed to be the end of it and I thought Tom Savini did some great work in that one effects wise.

But I guess evil never dies while it is making money at the box office so we got some pretty ordinary movies from part 5 on before they meshed Freddy Krugar into the series on Jason Goes To Hell and then of course Freddy vs Jason.The series went into space with Jason X before finally coming back to earth with the relaunch of the series in 2009.

Where they are going to take this now I have no idea , it seems to me everything has been done in these movies but who knows-we will all wait for the next instalment.

Rated 8/10