![]() ![]() The desecrated corpses in the first shot, straddling a gravestone like Halloween decorations, look too ripe. Some of the camera moves may be questionably acrobatic, like an infamous dolly through the head of a suicide victim to a tree across the road, but the septic sheen hasn't lost its edge - this is the "Massacre" that looks most like a massacre, and Leatherface has never been scarier. Once again, Pearl's style, honed over decades of music video work, set a lasting standard for the visual language of horror. Blood, rust, and mildew all stain the same in the rechristened Hewitt house. Original "Chain Saw" cinematographer Daniel Pearl is responsible for the movie's flash in more ways than one, convincing collaborator Marcus Nispel to direct and vowing to shoot it like an entirely different movie: "There's no point in making the exact same film with the exact same look." Pearl's second "Massacre" is almost monochrome, with amber waves of east Texas molding over after sundown. Finally, after the butchered "III," a "Massacre" makes good on its gore. By trading the 16-millimeter uncanny for vividly gristled unpleasantness, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" stitches together a new identity. It's too slick to play the same game - reframing the original as a movie based on these events is a savvy way to keep the legacy both handy and at arm's length. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," the power tool made compound, deals in a different kind of dread. Squint too hard, and you may go cross-eyed when the businessman in charge of the operation unbuttons his Oxford to reveal three nipples on his stomach. On a universal scale, that means that the literal Illuminati subsidize the farm for an ongoing experiment in trauma-induced transcendence. "All of the characters in the film," said the writer-director in a rare interview on the subject, "served as the various forces of authority and culture." On a personal scale, that means an exhibitionist real estate agent recommends implants to a pubescent Renee Zellweger. But the Sawyer family is now the Slaughter family, and Leatherface has regressed in both name and bloodlust to "Leather." Discrepancies should be taken as a warning - by Henkel's own defense, this is an Idea movie with a capital I. "The Next Generation" ropes the first three "Massacres" into the same continuity. Of the resulting films, co-writer Kim Henkel's is far and away the most slippery. Three of the prime movers on the original "Massacre" got a chance to revisit their work. Universal didn't get its hit, but at least Hooper got away with this. The best one laughs, closing out the movie with the blackest punchline of all. Others claw with broken limbs at props long lost. But don't let the studio budget fool you - there's no mistaking the controlled hysteria of a hundred antique robots coming to life. Cinematographer Andrew Laszlo, fresh from "The Warriors," shoots it all in lavish anamorphic widescreen, flaring even the farthest bulbs into pink supernovas. Hooper had always wanted to do a "carnival movie" and his excitement glows on the screen like so much candy-colored fluorescence. So, when the meddling kids inevitably meddle and see something heinous, their terror carries a tinge of responsibility - that's what they get for gawking after the geek show. The carnival's gyrating attractions and fool's gold sparkle may be Vegas to the latest crop of teenagers, but to the barkers, it's home. All the carnies want is a moment of your time and the change from your soft pretzel. In "The Funhouse," the misfit family is on the defensive. ![]() The sum of all these false starts and failed do-overs is the most uniquely uneven series in the genre. Most of the continuations feel like remakes, with only the actual remake receiving a stylistically consistent follow-up, which happens to be the first of two prequels. On account, the Texas Chainsaw franchise makes up for being shorter than any of its contemporaries by being weirder. ![]() Sequels compounded that misunderstanding by baptizing marquee maniac Leatherface in the slurry of his victims, alternately exaggerating and reducing him, rendering him the same as any other slasher icon. The film's immediate and lasting reputation as a grisly endurance test is only half deserved. Director Tobe Hooper consulted the Motion Picture Association of America constantly, even before heading to the editing room, in hopes of landing a PG rating. He failed, but the result is an optical illusion that lets the viewer see more than they're ever actually shown. And yet, the original film is not especially gruesome. ![]()
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