My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Dir: Tobe Hooper. Starring Marilyn Burns, Jim Siedow, Edwin Neal, Gunnar Hansen, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Allen Danziger, and Paul A. Partain. 1974

When I finally got the opportunity to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on a murky VHS tape, surrounded by a group of friends, I admit I didn’t know what to think. As a nine-year-old when it was first released, I knew TCM by reputation and by the images its sensational title creates. I also knew about about it from my mother’s student admin assistant who told me too many details (which I’m sure is a form of child abuse; trust me, she succeeded in scaring me.), and from TV ads that were absolutely terrifying to me. During this first viewing as a teenager, however, I was at a loss. I remember being completely disturbed by the hitchhiker, stunned by Kirk’s demise, put on edge by Pam’s impalement, and repulsed by the dinner scene in general, and by Grandpa trying to sledgehammer Sally in particular. After many subsequent viewings, what I’ve come to believe about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in all its ferocious horror beauty, is that it’s not a movie you watch, it’s a movie you process.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Session 9

Session 9
Dir: Brad Anderson. Starring David Caruso, Stephen Gevedon, Paul Guilfoyle, and Josh Lucas. 2001

Interesting that the most contemporary movie on this list uses one of horror’s oldest standards – the spooky building – as an essential part of its eerie charm. It’s what this building is, or was, however, that adds strength to its power to scare. The Danvers State Hospital is a dilapidated mental hospital that is distressed through with the ghosts of its patients; not in the wandering spirit sense, but in the way the worn out building and abandoned furnishings offer glimpses of the suffering that undoubtedly took place there. A crew has been hired to remove asbestos from the property, each of these men contributing to a single unhealthy personality that is reflected by the building that houses them/it. As work progresses, one of the men discovers patient session tapes in the basement, and begins to listen to the case of a woman with multiple personalities, one of them a murderer. As tensions grow among the members of the crew, the session tapes also increase in intensity until the last message is delivered, warbling like something unearthly on the reel-to-reel session tape. Too subtle for some, Session 9 gives me the creeps by touching on things I sense I’ve only partly begun to understand. It's a very lonely-feeling movie.

This Image is Disgusting and Shouldn’t Be Posted

As a movie fanatic, and particularly as a cult movie fanatic, I post on Facebook every time I watch something so that I can get feedback from other cult movie fans. These posts always include either the movie poster or the DVD cover art.

Last night I re-watched Robert Hartford-Davis’ 1968 sleaze fest Corruption. The new cover art from Grindhouse Releasing accurately reflects the movie. It’s a toned down version of the art included inside the Blu-Ray package. The cover version, pictured here, features a deranged Peter Cushing with a straight razor at the throat of a female victim with the leering image of his (in-film) wife looming in the background. In a plot device that could only exist in the wild world of exploitation (or the rarified world of international arthouse sensations; see Georges Franju’s Les yeux sans visage), Cushing is in search of pituitary glands to ensure the success of his wife’s facial reconstruction surgery. The film is silly, sleazy, and extremely entertaining for fans of sleaze cinema.

So, the day after viewing Corruption, I posted the following:

Last night’s viewing: Robert Hartford-Davis’ CORRUPTION via Grindhouse Releasing’s perfect new Blu.

After a few positive comments from cult movies fans (all male), a friend who was formerly a key staff member of the provincial Advisory Council on the Status of Women, and a friend whose opinion I respect, commented, stating, “This image is disgusting and shouldn’t be posted”.

Reading the comment, it felt like the bottom of my stomach had dropped out. I knew my friend was commenting from a feminist perspective, and I consider myself feminist too. I responded by saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, that I respected my friend’s opinion, I’d delete the post (I did), but that I thought she was seeing only one thing here. Then, of course, I began to ponder the matter.

Was I only seeing one thing here? The answer is an unqualified yes. The fact of what was in the lower half of the cover art didn’t cross my mind. I was focused on the post and not the image which I’d sort of accepted as just an, I don’t know… accouterment.

I love horror movies, but I abhor real violence. I don’t believe that imaginary violence causes real violence, but I do believe that how we discuss and joke about groups and individuals that have any kind of difference from ourselves creates an overall belief system about others that can have a real life, negative effect.

As a horror fan, I accept the Blu-Ray cover art as part of the language of horror, and in this case, I didn’t spend much time considering the gender of the players involved. Admittedly, I don’t mind ruffling a few feathers. Sometimes I enjoy it. In fact, I like to be offended myself sometimes. Why is that? Because it forces me to take a step back and say, “Why do I find that offensive?” It’s a chance to understand myself better, and I make it a practice to do this every time I feel offended. To me, it’s something worth analyzing, even if the answer seems obvious; it isn’t always.

But I don’t believe in promoting hate. In all honestly, whether this means I’m a prime candidate for that dubious thing known as sensitivity training, or whether I’m right, I don’t believe that’s what I was doing by posting that image.

Perhaps its simply a question of venue, and Facebook may not be the place to post these kind of things, but I want to be able to connect with fellow horror fans from around the world there. And so that’s what I’m doing here. I’m posting a link to this piece on Facebook, and I’m tagging a few people specifically – most of them women - because I want to hear what they have to say about this issue in general, but not the Corruption cover in particular. You up for it? Let’s have a levelheaded, respectful dialogue about it.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby
Dir: Roman Polanski. Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, and Sidney Blackmer. 1968

Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby was the first I read non-stop, staying up all night when I was a young teen to reach its end. Roman Polanski’s film adaptation is well documented as being incredibly faithful to its source, and happily for me, that translates into the film having the same power to fascinate as the book. A look at contemporary witchcraft and devil worship, the film is also a true feminist tale in that it clearly illustrates the way a woman can be used by men and even other women as a vessel, as well as demonstrating how society can perceive a pregnant woman as paranoid and unstable. A wholly engrossing experience, Rosemary’s Baby is the best kind of paranoid entertainment, the kind wherein everything that has come in earlier scenes gains new meaning as the plot reveals itself.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Psycho

Psycho
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles and John Gavin. 1960

Where to start with Psycho? I suppose it make sense to start by stating that Alfred Hitchcock is my favourite director. He was a man who understood both fear and moviemaking. For me, his use of a camera to tell a story or to explore a theme is unmatched. Add these convictions to the fact that Hitchcock was at the peak of his ability as a director when he made Psycho, and we get a horror film that I believe is flawlessly made, save for the clunky explanation scene at the end. Much like the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and its studio imposed opening and closing that softens the film's thrills, I like to think of Psycho without this scene. Luckily, the coda that follows it is immensely creepy. Over the years, however, Psycho’s ability to scare has lessened due to many factors including familiarity and conceptual appropriation, but we’re still left with an exquisitely made classic that explores desperation, paranoia, and a host of other truly dark subject matter like nothing that came before it.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: Martin

Martin
Dir: George A. Romero. Starring John Amplas, Lincoln Maazelm, Christine Forrest, and Tom Savini. 1976

I love Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, but with Martin, the filmmaker left the undead to concentrate on a single sad, solitary psychosexual, and delivered what is, for me, his finest flick. Martin is a post-teenage blood fiend who is sent to live with relatives in industrial Pittsburgh. It’s there that the battle between folkloric horror and mental illness is fought, aided by outstanding effects from Tom Savini, who also acts in the film. This contemporary take on an ages-old monster (the vampire) works as smoothly as Romero’s updating of the zombie, and serves to (sympathetically?) advance the modern concept of the human monster among us as Hitchcock did with Psycho.

My Favourite Horror Movies, Alphabetically: King Kong

King Kong
Dirs: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot. 1933

King Kong, the movie, is legendary. Beautifully conceived, cast, directed, photographed and animated, it stands as one of cinema’s great works of imagination. And that’s to say nothing of Kong the creature, a raging beast. He’s frightening in his single mindedness and disregard for anyone and everything around him. Twice separated from his object of what… lust? love? curiosity? – Kong stomps, chews, tears, and climbs his way through Skull Island and New York City, leaving a trail of destruction behind him that is cleverly addressed in the follow up, Song of Kong. Twice remade but never matched, King Kong has earned its title as the Eighth Wonder of the World.