Cutting Deep into Horror | Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) The Birth of Modern Terror - Weekly Spooky: Scary Holiday Stories | Terrifying Tales to Creep Your Night

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Thanks for forgiving me a ride. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Yeah, well, you know, I didn't give.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Much of a choice. That's that's a really nice knife
I have. I have it. It's a spatula.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yes, yes, those are also.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
My brother would be. We used to work up there.
My brother. He makes it real good. He he preheats
the oven to three hundred and fifty degrees and then
in a large mixing bowl cream butter and sugar for
four to five minutes until light and fluffy, scraped the
sides of the bowl, and add the eggs and vanilla

(00:48):
cream for one to two more minutes. Then he stirs
in the flower and the cream of tartar and baking
soda and salt. That just just until it combines in
a small bowl, stirred to o with sugar and cinnamon.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Is this a recipe for like for like sugar dilk cookies?

Speaker 1 (01:12):
My family makes sticker doodles.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh no, I'm so sorry. Those are so drastically different.
I'm so sorry. I should have known. With the cream
of tartary.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
They're really good.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
You like them? Yeah, I like them.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
They're good.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
This podcast is about why horror scares us, What deep
dark secrets, Scary Cinema shines a light on The discussions
are frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health.
There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now,

(01:54):
sharpen your machetes and straight razors, because this is Cutting
Deep into Horror.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Hello, my spookies, and welcome back to Cutting Deep into Horror,
the show where I do character voices with a sore
throat that are really unwise.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I thought you were gonna die. I really did.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
I mean, I was having fun with it at the
at the time. I was. I was channeling like me
in high school. I used to do my hitchhiker and
chop top impressions like constantly in high school. It's really good.
You know I would do that.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
You were so popular, Oh well yeah in the corn
bugs constantly.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Oh well that. No, people would not let me, like
the CD player would be open to everyone but me
at like get togethers and in cars and stuff because
of my taste. But I'm of course here with my
Cutting Deep into Horror co host Rachel Adolphe, and we're
we're sitting here on Black Friday. Well that's when it airs.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Right right, and time We're time travelers, folks.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
We figured, except we can only travel forward in time
and only in the speed that time moves.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Don't think about it too hard. We're time travelers.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
I never said I was thinking. But to be extra
jovial for the holiday of Thanksgiving, we are watching a
film all about a family dinner. I mean it culminates
in a family dinner. And that is The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre from nineteen seventy four, directed by Toby Hooper and

(03:42):
written by Toby Hooper and Kim Henkel. And this is
bar none, without a doubt, one of my all time
favorite horror movies. And I've said that a lot on
the show. We've covered several movies that were very formative
to me, you know, Evil Dead and Candy Man and
Knight Burren elm Street, I mean Evil did nightmarn elm Street.

(04:03):
That was just me talking about being a kid, basically,
And this is not going to be much different in
that way. But I'm glad. I'm glad you enjoyed the
sticker doodle recipe. That was great.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
You had me too, because as you said, cream cream,
the the butter and sugar, and I was like, wait
a second, I know what this is.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
You just had to interrupt though. Huh. Also, I picked cookies,
which you know is probably one of your one of
your key powers. Yeah, is cookie cookie making? Or maybe
I'm wrong, it makes some pretty good cookies. So, but
not only is Texas Chainsaw Massacre a great post Thanksgiving
immediately post Thanksgiving show topic, but it also has a

(04:55):
family tie to me because of all the filllms that
I've watched and loved as a young man, only two
of the big favorites were brought to me by family
members or not. Night a Living Dead Knight bhen ELM.
Street was brought to me by my sister, and Texas
Chainsaw Massacre was introduced to me by the man who's

(05:20):
hosting Thanksgiving on this very day while this show is airing,
My family's doing Thanksgiving on Black Friday. So Jeff my cousin,
Jeff Jeff Turner of Night of the Living Tapes fame.
He wrote the official the book that is the official

(05:43):
guide to Night a Living Dead on Home Video, which
I highly recommend you check out on Amazon or wherever
you buy your books if you love reading about movie
distribution and Night a Living Dead and stuff like that.
But Anyway, he showed me Texas Chainsaw Massacre when I
was like eleven.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Oh, perfect age.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
Well, you know we were We're the two boys in
the family who had like no diagnosed ADHD until we
were like in our thirties. She fast forwarded through like
all but like a few of the disturbing parts. That's
That's the thing I remember the most is that he
just like star fastwards like yeah, let's get through this,
Let's get through this, and then it would just be
like Leatherface doing fucked up Shit'd be like there we go,

(06:24):
and I'd be like, ah, So, anyway, before we fully
dive into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I just I
love this movie so much. I do want to mention
that this episode of cutting Deep into Horror is brought
to you by again our good friends at Cozy Earth.

(06:45):
So if you haven't had a chance yet to head
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You should check it out because they're made out of bamboo,
they're extremely soft, and Weekly Spooky listeners can get forty
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(07:07):
Spooky at checkout, and every purchase you make at cozyearth
dot com with our promo code supports the podcast directly,
so we really do appreciate it. Several Spookys have already
went out and done that, and we do appreciate it.
Something wrong, you're you're acting weird. No, you're making a face.
No it that's not that's not acceptable, But that's cozyearth

(07:30):
dot com promo code Spooky. And a huge thank you
to the spookies have already went there and got themselves
something comfy for the winter months coming up, and a
big thank you to Cozy Earth for supporting the program.
So before we before we dive into the plot and
the legend of Texas Chancel Massacre, because there is so

(07:52):
much to this film in so many ways. How was
so I mentioned how I saw it for the first time?
How did you see Texas Chainsaw Masacer for the first time?
And more importantly, was there like a legend to Texas
Chainsaw Massacre before you finally saw it? Like had you
heard rumblings of it? Had you seen like references to
it in pop culture? Because Texas Chainsaw Massacre I mean

(08:15):
it's it's like with a name like Smucker, it's got
to be good, you know, it's it's it's not the
you know, I can't think of another phrase. I mean
that is that is the title? The title? So which,
by the way, do you know what Texas Chainsaw Massacre's
original title was when they were shooting? No, what its

(08:35):
original title was? Head Cheese?

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Huh huh?

Speaker 1 (08:39):
So how did you like? How? When? Why? What? Well?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
I mean, obviously I did hear like I I growing
up heard the name leather Face, like you hear the
name you know, Freddy or Jason from you know, just
like kids that I would meet were you know, friends,
you know, different just you know, different people and watching TV,
you know, you'd hear references to it. I was probably

(09:08):
in my late teens when finally someone like explained the
premise of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre to me.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Do you remember how they described it? Uh?

Speaker 2 (09:20):
See, it was my oldest sister's husband, and he's he's
a nice enough guy, but he's not, like never was
like truly into horror, I think. So he's like, yeah,
you know, it's pretty good, Like it's one of the
horror movies that if you're gonna see horror, you should
probably see that one. But he wasn't like hugely into

(09:44):
it or not much of a sales dam.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, So it always seemed like something like, yeah, I
definitely wanted to check it out, but it was never
something that I went and sought out until you showed
it to me.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Ah well, was so well? There are a few questions
follow up question to that, were you ever like when
you were a kid and you are younger and you
would hear about these things? Were you scared of them?
Or were you just curious or like what?

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I was equal parts curious about some things and then
other things. I was just totally dismissive and the main
horror icons I generally was a little more on the
dismissive side. It wasn't something that really interested me until
I got older and my you know, late teens.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
So you thought they were lame or or what does
that mean?

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah? I thought they were lame. I was more into
the fantasy shit.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
So, because how can a person into the things that
are lame think that something else is going to be lame?
That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
I didn't say it was logical. I just said, that's
that's what I was like as a child.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
I had impact logic as a child.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
I'm certain you did.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
And we'll talk a little bit more about your first
viewing of Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well as head Cheese
right after this. When I was a kid, Texas Chainsaw

(11:25):
Massacre was on par with like you were saying, like
the Icon movies Night when Elm Street, Friday the thirteenth,
Halloween child's play, stuff like that, but it was kind
of considered different. It was considered down and dirty. It
was considered like a like grosser and more heinous, like

(11:47):
you would expect to see Friday the Thirteenth Part three
on cable, but never Texas Chainsaw Massacre that was only
on pay television. And I remember two films I was
most nervous and excited to see were Evil Dead, which
I was positive would be too scary, like would scare

(12:08):
the hell out of me, which did, but I was
like afraid to watch it, and then Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
which I was kind of afraid to watch as well
because I thought it was going to be just like
the grossest movie ever made, which it isn't. That's the
funny thing. I mean, it's got a lot to be
afraid of and a lot to be disturbed by. But
they almost it was almost PG rated. Yeah, it just

(12:31):
barely got pushed to an R. This was for those
listening who are like, what this was before PG thirteen
That didn't exist until the mid eighties. So literally it
was like, is it gonna be PG or is it
gonna be R? And that was that was it. So
Texas Chainsaw was really close to being PG. And it
has very little blood in it, and honestly, until I

(12:53):
saw it on Blu ray, I never knew there was
any blood splattering in it at all. And on the
four K you can really see, but it's still really subtle. Yeah,
it's not a gory movie or a gruesome movie. And
there's a whole thing where people say they believe that,
like they see the meat hook, like sticking to the
girl when she gets put on the meat hook. No, no,

(13:13):
like there are people who are like I swear when
I was a kid, I watched I must have watched
like a different version and it's like, no, it was
just good filmmaking. Yeah, so you imagine the heinousness. You
never get to see it. Although the real horror was
that her harness holding around the meat hook was made
out of nylon stockings so it could fit under her costume.
So it did not feel great it was holding her

(13:33):
up anyway. So what were your thoughts when you first
ever sat down and watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
It's when I think it was one of the it
was probably one of the horror movies that you showed
me when it really started to click for me what
good horror is. Because I believe that we watched I
want to say, we watched Halloween first, and then it

(14:04):
was and then it was Friday the thirteenth, and then
it was Nightmare on Elm Street.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Have you seen all the Friday movies? I'm not sure
if I've ever shown you all of them.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah. I feel like we because we've even seen, like, uh,
what's the one where Jason goes to New.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
York Jason takes Manhattan? That's part eight.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, we've seen that one, and we've seen.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Have you seen Jason Goes to Hell?

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Have you seen Jason X.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
That's the one in space right, yep? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Have you seen Freddy versus Jason?

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Okay, I guess you have seen them. I just want
to make sure God.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
So yeah, we we got through all of those, and
so I was really starting to understand like the pop
culture side of horror as you know, just entertainment. But
then seeing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is when I was like, oh,
this is what horror is as art if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
So you think you think of Texas Chainsaw as artsy?

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Yeah, a little yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
I mean that's that wasn't a challenge. I mean it
just that's in the eye of the beholder. Especially it
does have some artsy elements to it. It was made
by college students, you know. But also you never saw
Texas Chainsaw Massacre the way most people saw it for
the first time, if it wasn't in the theater, which
was on like a horrible looking VHS where the entire

(15:32):
chase scene at the end before at night is like
almost impossible to see.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah, that's fair.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
The film looks, I mean, it still is pretty scary
and even in its heavily remastered stages, but it is
very very I don't know a lot of people would
say that it would say that it was scary because
it felt like watching a newsreel. Because back then the
news was on sixteen millimeter film and documentaries were on

(16:01):
sixteen millimeter film, and this was a very you know,
very grainy sixteen millimeter horror movie. Yeah, so so this
was I'm fascinated by this. So this was the first
time you felt like horror as art was presented to you. Yeah, well,
I yeah, I'm kind of taken aback by that. I mean,
I get it. I'm not saying you're wrong by any stretch.

(16:23):
I'm just like, huh, okay, I would not have expected
that to be what your takeaway was. But did you
find it scary? Oh?

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah, absolutely, That's that's part of why I was so
you know, blown away. And while I was like, okay,
I'm going to categorize this from entertainment to art is
because the communication, you know, art art would be something
that is a conversation between the artist and the viewer,

(16:55):
and entertainment is just a story, right, and so a
good horror entertainment is just a story about being afraid
or a fear. But art that is horror related is
a conversation with the creator about fear. And I feel
that's what Toby Hooper did a really great job, is

(17:17):
the whole time. It's not just a story about what happens.
It's also a mirror where you kind of have to
look at yourself. Because a great example is those people who,
you know, the first time they saw it, they saw
it on a grainy VHS and you can hardly see
a thing, so their mind filled in a lot of

(17:39):
the gory details that weren't fully there was. It was
a mirror held up to their subconscious and they were
seeing all the gory details that they wanted to be there.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Well, I mean that's a little a little unfair because
it's I mean, they're poising you, oh, absolutely violence. I
mean there, It's not like, I mean they didn't. You
didn't imagine that this woman's being put on a meat
hook that happens in the movie. You're just imagining that
you see a lot more of it. Yeah, yeah, you know,
you're just imagining it's less subtle than it is. And

(18:12):
I think a lot of that has to do with
the fact that, you know, the the film is the
title is about as subtle as a punch in the face. So,
which is one of my favorite things about it is,
I mean Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It rolls off the tongue.
It's forever, and that's always been one of my favorite
things about it. But it is interesting that you felt

(18:33):
like that was your first look at art house horror
to some extent, I really got to show you Henry
Portrait of a serial Killer because that's super artsy. Well,
I mean, like by today's standards, it's not, though, because
artsy horror is in. Yeah, yeah, you know, even on
television now, artsy horror is in. I loved all three
seasons of Hannibal, but the third season of Hannibal is

(18:56):
like it got to a point where there were a
couple episodes where I had no idea what happened until
the end. It was like a fever dream. They knew
they were getting canceled, so they just like they were
like you know those weird you know, those weird three
minute sequences that like you're always like wowed by in
the second season, Yeah, well this episode is just all that.
Oh yeah, it'll all make sense when you see the

(19:19):
deer head at the end. What but we'll begin to
run down Texas Chainsaw massacre even further right after this
quick meal breach. So the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and this

(19:47):
is again, this is one of my favorite horror films.
So it's directed by Tobe Hooper. I mentioned that before
Toby Hooper went on to become in many ways horror
movie royalty, although many would say that he was kind
of cursed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was his first
feature film, which that's you know, that's a hell of
a debut because I think is the film he made

(20:09):
before that was a short film. Maybe it wasn't. There's
no run time listed because there's a film he did
in nineteen sixty nine called Eggshells, which actually I think
it is a feature, but I've never seen it anywhere. Huh,
So that's yeah, that's weird. It's got to be available.
But anyway, it's not a horror film. It's an experimental

(20:30):
movie because, you know, a group of young hippies, having
recently moved into an old house in the woods, slowly
become aware of an otherworldly presence residing in the basement. Ooh,
I've never I've never seen it anywhere, so it might
be a short for all I know. But he went
on to make several movies that I think are really great.
Some people disagree, but Invaders from Mars nineteen eighty six

(20:55):
is another really great, really scary movie. He directed Poltergeist,
although some people try to claim that in reality, Steven
Spielberg directed Poltergeist. I think that's a lot of sensation.
There have been a lot of people who have said, oh,
I know for a fact that Spielberg was directing, and
there are a lot of people who even worked on
the movie were like, no, no, no, Toby was our boss.

(21:15):
Spielberg was just a producer. So I err on the
side of Toby Hooper directed Poldergeist. But it's also such
a different film that I think some people just don't
want to accept just because it had all the flourishes
of Spielberg, I mean, had his clout and money behind it.
So yeah, you know it's going to be a th that.
Of course, he directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre too, which, by

(21:36):
the way, Toby Hooper claimed openly that the original Texas
Chainsaw Massacre was supposed to be a dark comedy and
that no one got it.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
You've mentioned that, You've mentioned that, and specifically you mentioned
that before we went to go see the Texas Chainsaw
Masaker when it screened in theaters.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Was it last year Yeah, it was last year on Halloween.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
And that was the first time seeing it on the
big screen where I was like, Okay, I can kind
of get it, but I feel like having it that
big in front of me is kind of what I
needed to see it in that kind of in that context.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Sure, no, I would, I would agree with that. The
first time I saw Texas Chainsaw in the theater was
a horror rama and it was shown off of a
sixteen millimeter print. Ooh, and that was really really cool. Yeah, so,
I mean it's definitely a I mean, all things are
bigger experiences in the theater, you know, figuratively literally, but

(22:43):
Texas Chainsaw too. The reason it's so wacky is he
claimed he didn't want people to not realize he was
being funny. And you know, part of me believes Toby
that he thought it was a comedy because he was
a really weird guy. Yeah, just an odd ball, very
very usual person, known for drinking spicy tomato juices and

(23:06):
Doctor Pepper's and smoking cigars instead of having lunch like
that was that was what he's famous for. It was like, oh,
Toby's already had his lunch. He had a Doctor Pepper
and a cigar, so he was very very you know,
he was famous for being odd. He also directed the
Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot in nineteen seventy six, just
two years after Texas Chancel Massacre, which is wild because

(23:28):
that movie, well mini series, But the way I saw
it was as a really long movie, because that's what
was released on home video on Blu Ray. That's a
really scary, weird movie, like a phenomenally done, understated horror film.
But it was a TV mini series, so you know,
it's kind of looked down upon at the time, but

(23:50):
I love it. A lot of people say it's a
little bit boring. I think it's just a product of
its time, being nineteen seventy six, But yeah, I love
his adapt to of Salem's Lot Funhouse. I like that
movie pretty well. Life Force is one of the most
bonker science fiction movies ever made of all time.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Wait, have we seen life Force? That rings a bell?

Speaker 1 (24:12):
The woman never has clothes on? Yeah, yeah, it's Life Force. Okay,
that's pretty much it. But I mean there are several
other films he directed, including he made a monster movie
in two thousand called Crocodile, which I actually think is
extremely underrated thought.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
I think I've watched that one with you and Dave.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
You might have, you might have. But anyway, so unfortunately
we lost him not super long ago. We lost him
in Gosh twenty seventeen. But you know, he was a
I don't know. I think he was one of the
one of the most interesting voices in horror. And yeah,

(24:49):
I don't know. A lot of people kind of malign him,
and it always pissed me off.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Why why would they malign him.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Because to a lot of people, he never did anything,
you know, that compete or compare to Texas Chainsaw. I
think that's one of the reasons people kind of denied
that he directed Poldergeist was they were just kind of like,
how could he do that when he stumbled ass backwards
into genius with Texas Chainsaw. Yeah, and it's like, well,
he's not Jess Franco, which only like one person who's

(25:16):
listening to this will get that joke. But but so
there have been a lot of claims like that, and
and then and also you've got to remember that when
Texas Chainsaw Masacer two came out, originally it was mostly panned.
That's true, it was not well liked initially. Yeah, so
a lot of people really lost their faith in Toby
Hooper at that point. Okay, but time has been very

(25:38):
kind to Texas Chainsaw Maasacer too, which is a wacky
wild ride. So I knew that this would happen. I
would get really like all over the place with Texas
Chainsaw because I have so many thoughts and opinions about
Texas Chainsaw. But I do want to mention where you
can watch it. I know we mentioned it. I think
last week. Oh good, that's just that's the remake. That's

(25:58):
not what I'm looking for. I think it's on to B.
I apologize. I thought it was ready to come up
nineteen seventy four. Oh, it's on Netflix right now. That's
the wind. That's where it is. Oh nice, Yeah, Texas
Chainsaws on Netflix, It's on two B, It's on Pluto,
It's on the Roku channel, It's on Plex. It says here,
it's on Peacock. That might be the remake because it

(26:19):
gets confused sometimes. But so there's no excuse if you
haven't ever seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre not to jump in,
give it a watch, have dinner with the family, and
then come back and join us. So the film opens
and that I guess this is so. What I want
to know is the first time you watched this movie,

(26:42):
what were your thoughts when the opening began to set
a scene For those who've never seen the film, or
hopefully you have but you just have it in a while,
it's dark, there's no light at all, The screen is black.
And then we hear sounds. They sound like feet walking
on dirt, a shovel hitting soil, groaning and grunting. And

(27:07):
then this sound that out of context is terrifying, this
which is revealed to be the flash bulb of a camera,
and we're seeing these sudden instances of what looks like rotting,
a rotting carcass, a hand here, a face there, things

(27:29):
like that. What was your first thought the first time
you watched the movie?

Speaker 2 (27:34):
I was I guess my thought was just kind of acknowledging, like, Okay,
while this is definitely setting the tone right off the
bat of we're not going to be dealing with so much,
you know, out and out, we're dealing more with the

(27:55):
sense of like moral decay than anything else, is what
I started thinking. Because as go going a little further
into this, the opening sequence of the movie, as we
are seeing like all of these rotting body parts.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Then oh and we're seeing them for split seconds. Yeah,
they're they're flashing up and then fading away very very quickly.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
But then that's when we start hearing the voice kind
of going over the the news about all these grave
robbings that have been going on and these instances of
graves being disturbed, and like rural Texas is kind of
in a stranglehold of panic almost because everyone's afraid of

(28:50):
their loved ones graves being disturbed. And the whole time
he's explaining that, uh, you know, either we're you know,
at first, we're just seeing these flash of decaying body parts,
and then we see a body that is actively decaying
that's kind of been set up almost like an effigy

(29:13):
in a cemetery. Just it's there.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah, it's been put on top of a of a
of a large headstone, and it's probably more than one body.
It's it's definitely morbid doodling with human remains, which is
very reminiscent of ed Gean, who was one of the
inspirations for several elements of the film. And we'll talk

(29:39):
about that a little bit more as we go on.
But yeah, so we reveal that we see this heinous image,
and then also that that we're hearing the radio news,
and then it shifts over to talking about how there's
no gas in Texas, how some oil fields we're having trouble,

(30:00):
and now shipments are late and people aren't able to
get their gasoline, which also plays into the story and
was also a real problem in the nineteen seventies. And
who knows what kind of trouble can happen when you
have to stop somewhere and can't get away. Well, we'll
find out after this. So now the credits roll and

(30:32):
we're seeing footage of the sun. This weird. I don't
know if there's a specific term for it that I
don't know, but it's images of the sun, these incredible
telescope or not telescope, but satellite images of the Sun.
So we're seeing this giant ball of burning gas and
this very avant garde sounds, not music sounds. And I

(30:59):
remember the first time I watched the film, I was
so scared the moment the movie started. It took me
years to really fully and I was very young for
me to really fully realize that the opening is literally
just the sound of him digging up graves and taking photos.
Because I was just so overwhelmed by how scary the
sounds were. It didn't even pardon the pun, click that

(31:23):
it was a camera taking the pictures, even though that's
exactly what it sounds like. It was just so it
was so shifted and changed. But also I can't believe
I almost went over this. There's also a narration at
the beginning, Oh yeah, which if I could find the narration,

(31:43):
I'll read it. But it's basically explaining how Sally Hardesty
and her family, or her or her brother and her
friends all went to Texas to check out their family home.
Here it is. The film at which you are about
to see is an account of the tragedy which befel

(32:04):
a group of five youths, in particular Sally Haughtesty and
her invalid brother, Franklin. It is the more tragic that
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,

(32:28):
an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events
of the debt of that day were to be seen
or were to lead to the discovery of one of
the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history,
the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hell of an opener, it really is,

(32:48):
It really is done by the by famous, the famous
comedian actor John Laraquette. That was one of his early
the earliest things he'd done, famous for night Court and
Time of movies and TV shows. So all of that
sets the stage that you're going to be freaked out.
But as the film now begins, and we see a

(33:12):
dead armadillo on the side of the road, and this
van's you know, heading towards cemetery, and we see these
young very still in the sixties, kind of hippie kids
talking about astrology and talking about, you know, how they're
going to find out if their grandfather's grave has been desecrated,
and then they want to go see his old house

(33:33):
where they used to spend time when they were kids.
The thing that I noticed immediately is the movie just
feels hot, And I wonder if they chose the opening
with the sun after editing the film and seeing just
how hot it looked, because they were filming during one
of the hottest summers ever in Texas, and Texas is
a very hot state, so it was constantly you know,

(33:56):
sweat and stink and food rotting because it had been
left out, and it just just hellish. So I do
feel like the movies like Thick with that every shot,
you feel like you're kind of there in this obscenely hot, muggy,
oppressive Texas summer. And that's not even the horror part yet.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
It not only does it feel hot, it feels like
it feels hot and sticky, and it feels like it
should all just smell kind of bad.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Like, there are very few films where where I feel like, oh,
this this film like would smell have a particular smell
to it, But no, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one
of them where I feel like, now it it would
just smell bad.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, definitely, so, and.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
The atmosphere, like I feel like in horror, especially once
you got into like the eighties nineties, as horror has
been established as a genre, some things like get kind
of campy or you know, get kind of cheesy. But
this was at such the forefront of horror that things

(35:25):
hadn't gotten stale yet as far as visual aesthetics, so
it feels like they were really exploring the grounds of
how gross and skeezy can we make everything feel on screen?

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Well, very few horror films in that time period had
been made in that kind of rough look, even though
there were films being made on sixteen millibiter all the time.
There's just something about it that is that is different,
and a lot of that credit needs to go to
Daniel Pearl, the cinematographer who that was his first feature film,

(35:59):
and he of everyone who worked on Texas Chainsaw Mascer,
he has had the largest career bar none. Like no,
there's no competition there. I mean, he has dped so
many movies. I like, I'm I'm not even finding the
full list, but I mean he did the oddly enough

(36:20):
one of the most fascinating. He did the remake of
Texas Chance on Mascar in two thousand and three, which
is a major, you know, studio movie. He did Pathfinder, Captivity,
Aliens Versus Predator, ra Queem, the Friday Thirteenth remake, The
Apparition No One Lives, which were in twenty twelve, The
Boy in twenty sixteen, and this is a horrible list
because he's done way more movies than this list, and

(36:41):
most of the movies he does aren't horror movies. I
don't know why Wikipedia decided to give me to give
me such a list, but he And also, I mean,
he'd shot tons of music videos, tons of commercials. He's
really just a workhorse who's made so many interesting films.
He has three hundred and thirteen cinematography credits on IMDb,

(37:03):
and see what I mean like that, though that selection
was so stupid. Like the most recent things he did
were like the Mariah Carey TV special Merry Christmas to
All and Nicki Minaj Super Freaky Girl. You know, he
did do The Intruder in twenty nineteen, which is actually
pretty cool movie and Mom and Dad, Wow, that's a
really good movie too. So, I mean, he's been working

(37:24):
like crazy for a very very long time.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
God damn.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
And I do think he's one of the reasons that
the movie looks so good. I don't think it's, you know,
an accident that there was so much attention in detail,
and there are a lot of nerdy reasons for the
movie to look the way it does. They shot on
high grain sixteen millimeter film so that there would be
enough detail to blow it up to thirty five millimeters
to distribute it in theaters, and because of that high grain,

(37:47):
we got a very different look. And because of the
high grain, the film required an immense amount more light
to expose, which caused hotter lights and more time in heat.
So it all kind of fed into itself. But yeah,
there's no doubt that you really feel like you're kind
of in this very unpleasant part of Texas, and now

(38:11):
we're gonna meet our main characters and find out exactly
what the hell they're even doing out here other than
seeing horrors of the macabre that they would never imagine.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Right after this, so they arrive at the cemetery and
it is a buzz with activity. There's people everywhere kind

(38:42):
of checking out different grades and they.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
It almost looks like a what do they call it tailgate? Yeah, yeah,
people do all over. Some people are having beers and
stuff like that, and yeah, just it's another one of
those things that's just kind of surreal in the.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Movie, one of many things.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
But it's so much less bizarre than the other things
that are surreal in the movie, is what I mean.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, it kind of like sets the standard for you
almost like this is what normal is now.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yikes.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yikes. Indeed, so they go and talk to somebody. It
seems like maybe a sheriff or something.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well, they arrive and they just talk to a guy
sitting in his truck near there, and he's like the
first example of like a good old Texas boy. Because
it's not said out and out, but it's likely these
kids are from Austin, Texas, which is important to mention.
In nineteen seventy four, Austin was not a city. It

(39:44):
was a big town. Okay, it had a college. That
was its thing is it had a college, but it
was not It did not become like a freak. It
did not become Austin until like two thousand. It was
a very small blake. The cities in Texas were Houston,
in Dallas, Oh okay. So that's worth mentioning too, is

(40:06):
like Austin was. It was where the young people were
and stuff, but it wasn't what it is now now
it's you know, it's a real city, but back then
it was pretty pretty small. And but these kids are
definitely from there, and now they're up in the Panhandle
in the country and I just love that this good
old boy. He's just like they're trying to figure out
who to talk to or whatever, and he goes, you're

(40:26):
you're uh, you're uh, your granddaddy's buried in there. And
she's like, yes, sir. He's like right over there. To
see that guy over there with a hat, that's the shriff.
You go tell him your dad, your granddad buried in there.
He'll let you in, you know. Like it's just like
he's like and he's so happy to be helping. Like,
but while that's happening, there's a moment that I think
about every time I watch the movie. I'm like, oh man,

(40:48):
what is with this moment? Because there's one guy who's
like sitting in an old tire on the ground.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
I was going to bring that part.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Up, Yeah, please do because it messes with my brain.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Yeah. So, so there's two things that I love about this.
One is how bizarre it is so bizarre and so unsettling.
And the other thing is it really starts to set
the say stage for Franklin because everybody else is kind
of going off with the sheriff to go and double

(41:19):
check the grandpa's grave. But they leave Franklin behind at
the van, and there's that guy just sitting in a tire,
like an overturned tire on the grass, drinking a beer,
like getting shit faced, and he just starts blabbering on
and I don't even know like what he was talking about,

(41:42):
but he's, you know, basically saying like it's never going
to be the same again. And it's just kind of
like nonsense, but it's really.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Well he starts saying, people think, I don't know, but
I see things. That's why I see so many things.
But he's like re drunk. He's saying it really like,
that's why it bothers me. But she's just like flopping
his arms. He was like, I see things. Ah, Like
it's just so weird, and it makes you wonder, like

(42:13):
does he know that there's something nefarious going on in
this little town or is he just a drunk Yeah,
and you really don't know there's I mean, for all
we know, if you want to cut deep, for all
we know, this guy could have seen his grandmother's body
defiled and now he's just drunk his shit with his

(42:33):
like acquaintance's friends whatever in the town. And that's what
we caught we just caught him being, you know, off
his ass, drunk and angry. Or it could be that
he knows something more is going on. Who knows, m M.
But I will say I've always thought that there's no
way the people in this little town know about what's

(42:54):
going on in that little farmhouse because they would just
go out there and kill them. Oh yeah, they just
they just would, they would just they would get a
posse together.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Well, or think of it like this, because in those
small little communities, how often will people just kind of
turn a blind eye because it's it doesn't directly affect them.
So we kind of get the idea and obviously, like
this is jumping way ahead, but we kind of get

(43:25):
the idea that generally the family preys upon travelers of course,
so they're not really messing with people in and around
the town. So it could be that everybody around the
town is like, oh yeah, that family is really weird.
They really keep to themselves. As long as you leave

(43:47):
them alone, they'll leave you alone. Like we don't ask
any questions.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
No, I meant that they I meant that they know
that they're like twisted and behind, Like yeah, the cemetery
being defaced is what I meant. Oh no, no, they
probably know a little bit about them. I mean, I
mean they even referenced that the hitchhiker even references in
a little bit that he worked at the slaughterhouse. The
whole family at one point worked at that slaughterhouse. But
then they basically automation basically got rid of them. Yeah,

(44:15):
which is one of the other one of the interesting
subtexts of this movie is some people believe that Toby
Hooper was telling a story about what happens when you
abandon the blue collar, like what happens when you abandon
workers and they have nothing else, Like they just figure
out another way, you know, or what have you. Okay,

(44:36):
So I don't know how much I buy into that,
but I mean there are a ton of like really
odd theories. Because one thing worth mentioning about Texas Chainsaw
massacre is there is no out and out depictions of cannibalism.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
I would say that there is cannibalism in the movie
because Toby Hooper made a sequel where cannibalism was front
and center, So I think that was the point. But yeah,
there's all this conversation about meat, there's all this conversation
about head cheese, all this conversation about eating thing, you know, whatever.
But we don't out and out see the family commit
acts of cannibalism. We just don't. It could be implied,

(45:15):
but we never we never witness it. It's never said
as much. There are hints that later on that the
barbecue joint in the gas station is serving human flesh,
and that may be as well, but there's no evidence
the family's eating the human flesh. That's kind of my point.
It's not out and outset. I think it is implied.
I think it definitely is, but I'm just that's just

(45:36):
one thing that I think is really interesting.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
No, I absolutely agree.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
So yeah, we've got this just this just crazy sequence.
And now they're back in the van, and now they're
talking about want to go see granddad's house, which is
out this way and they used to come there in
their summers and all this, and this is something that
always kind of connected with me because your family's all

(46:02):
like around here, I mean like relatively like within an
hour or two max.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
See, growing up, my grandparents were in Connecticut, and my
father was in New Hampshire and I was in Dayton, Ohio.
So long car rides to very different places but not
very often was a normal thing. So I always kind
of identified with the whole, like, yeah, we want to

(46:28):
go to the place we used to see every summer
because I used see my grandparents every summer. Stuff like that.
I don't know, it was just a little side note.
It used to make me think of growing up. But
thank goodness, this is the only part of the film
that makes me think of what it was like growing
up for me, because things are about to get a
lot darker after they see a gentleman hoof in it

(46:50):
on the side of the road that could use a ride,
and he's just he just so happens to be outside
the old slaughterhouse. And we'll talk about that after this.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
So they're all driving by and they pass like a
cattle yard, and Franklin starts talking about their family history,
him and Sally, their family all used to work in
the slaughterhouse, and he explains kind of the process of
slaughtering the cows, and then how now they don't use

(47:37):
they don't use hammers anymore. They use like that special
like piston gun thing and the air gun. And as
they're driving by, they you know, they pass the cattle
yard and then they see somebody walking along the road
and it's a great shot, just an extreme I want

(47:58):
to say distance shot, but I know that's wrong, wide shot.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
It's a shot. Yeah. The van is like the size
of a toy.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yeah, and it just you know, stops and pulls off
to the side of the road and this really sketchy
looking hitchhiker gets in and this guy. Again the movie
feels like it stinks, and this guy is one of
the things that just stinks. And he looks so skeezy,
and he's like wiry, and he's you know, got like

(48:29):
overalls and uh some old camera he's carrying. And he
starts talking to them about, you know, this the slaughterhouse,
and they ask if he works there, and he said no,
he didn't work there. He used to work there though,
and you know, his brother used to work there. His
whole family used to work there. And then then he

(48:51):
starts talking, you know, just again just kind of you know,
rambling on, and he notices that Franklin has a knife
and he says, it's a really good knife, you know,
can he see it? And he takes the knife and
then he starts talking about head cheese. Yeah, he's the
famous head cheese talk.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
And they take the the They take the head and
they boil it except for the tongue. They use all
the flesh. They don't throw nothing away. They use the eyes,
the jowls, the ligaments, the snows and everything, and they
boil it all down into a big jelly of fat.
It's really good. You like it? Yeah, I used to
recite that all the time when I was in school.

(49:32):
But he gives this speech and it's worth mentioning that.
Like he also said like he was when they say, like,
what were you doing at the slaughters? He's, I gotta
take a pictures and he shows them pictures of like
animals being slaughtered that he's pop you know, pop quick
pictures of and he is literally hitchhiking away from that
cemetery where all that stuff happened. He's literally on his

(49:55):
way away from there, which is also worth mentioning, you know,
because there was photographs being to So they're already kind
of disturbed because you know, Franklin has this and we've
Franklin is in a wheelchair, and he's substantially older than
everybody else. He's probably in his thirties maybe late late twenties,
early thirties, and everybody else is like twenty twenty two

(50:17):
somewhere in the neighborhood, and Franklin's definitely the odd man out.
Everybody seems to like him fine enough, but he's he's
definitely more country and they're much more hip. So Franklin
is very like, you know, yeah, like you know, my
granddad used to work at the slaughterhouse, you know, way
back when, and blah blah blah, and yeah, I like

(50:38):
head cheese. It's good. You know. He's like very salt
of the earth compared to everybody else's kind of like.
In fact, he has one great line because Toby Hooper
has said that this film, if there's one thing this
film is about, it's about meat. And there's a great
line where they're all and he's like, whatever, you'd like
it if you didn't know what it was. That's meat. No,

(51:01):
I mean, yeah, that's baloney. That's hot dogs. You know,
that's what it is. Although I've always you know, I've
always had a big problem with the idea of people
saying like, uh, like this hot dog is just like
ears and noses and blah blah blah. Uh that that
chicken nugget is made from, like they scrape the bone,

(51:22):
and I'm like, you know, when the Native Americans use
every part of the buffalo, they're beautiful and spiritual. But
when we don't want to throw away any part of
that dead chicken, now you're just cheap and destroying the world.
I mean, you could still be both, but but that
is always drive me crazy, a little double standard, like
uh oh, every part of the buffalo, how wise, ew,

(51:43):
you're gonna cook that part of the pig. But yeah,
so there's there's all this conversation about meat, and all
this conversation about you know, where he lives. He lives
just a ways down the road. They're all getting very
uncomfortable with him. And he I mean, he's he's scary.
He has a big birthmark, his hair is so stringy
and gross, his clothes are tattered and stained, and.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
He's got he's got just a really weird affectation.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, like what I was doing
at the beginning. He and the actor who played him,
which was a I can't believe I'm blanking on his name,
ed Neil Edwin Neil Edwin Neil said that the inspiration
for how the Hitchhiker talked came from a close family

(52:31):
member or a distant family member brother who had schizophrenia
so badly that he lived in a home for people
who were you know, disturbed. So he went and visited
him and just listened to him talk and then did
an impression of that. Because Ed Neil, from what I understand,
was mostly a comedian prior to being in Texas Chainsl Massacre,

(52:55):
and he's he went on to have a surprisingly decent career.
I mean, he did a few little movies here and there,
but he did a ton of voice work, tons of
like anime re dubs and video games. He was also
in JFK in nineteen ninety one, which is a very
big movie, lots and lots of stuff, and a super

(53:16):
nice guy. I met him at a bunch of conventions.
Is really really funny. He has a great sense of
humor about being the hitch Hiker. But yeah, so, I mean,
he's he really is scaring the hell out of these kids,
and he's kind of like the ultimate example of like
everything that they don't understand and kind of think they're
better then, which is rural life and eating meat and

(53:37):
you know, you know, because there's this whole mentality of like,
you know, if I don't have to see see it
being done, then I'm better than it. And that's a
real problem that people in you know, well developed societies
have is it's like I never have to see where
the toilet flushes to, so I'm good. Yeah, I never
have to see where the cold cuts come from. They
come from a box, you know. And that's something I

(54:00):
struggle with a lot because sometimes when I really think
about it, I don't think I should eat meat anymore.
I haven't gotten there yet, but I've thought about it,
and I've went really long periods without eating meat because yeah,
sometimes I'll think of it and be like, you know,
the reality is really ugly. Yeah, it really is. But
I think denying it and still participating in it is

(54:21):
pretty lame. But I also get why people that want
to see that, because it's heinous. But yeah, the Hitchhiker
is a fascinatingly eccentric character, and if you think about it,
he's not in that much of the film. Yeah, he
has this incredible scene that we're talking about right now,
and then he pops back up for like two more scenes,

(54:42):
three more scenes.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
That's about it.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Yeah, but he's terrifying and he just has this way
about him because when they pick him up. Do you
remember why they picked him up, No, I don't. They
literally said, like, he'll die in this heat. Oh yeah, yeah.
They were just trying to be nice because they felt
bad for him because they're sitting in this van melting. Yeah,
and this poor guy's walking in the blazing sun in
the middle of the day. That's literally their.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Thought is like, yeah, he's not gonna make it.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah, he's gonna exphyxiate in this heat or something, just affixiate.
She said something like that, like he's gonna die in
his heat, but like playfully and literally when they're pulling
up to see him, like Franklin calls him Dracula. Yeah
he's I mean, not to his face, but he says like,
oh great, we're gonna pick up Dracula. But unfortunately he's
about to become a little bit more than just a

(55:33):
playful eccentric And we'll talk about that right after this.
So the hitchhiker has Franklin's knife that he was, you know, admiring,

(55:54):
and he just cuts his own palm. He just digs
it right in there and does it, and he laughs
about it while he's doing it, which of course terrifies
everybody in the van obviously, and it's moving too, so
the driver's like, what's going on back there? They're mortified.
Then he hands the knife back to Franklin, and Franklin's

(56:16):
eyes are just you know, massive as he's looking at it.
It's like, got this guy's blood on it, this guy
just cut himself. And then it just keeps evolving.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Yeah, but wait, there's more.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Yeah, because now as they're all like mortified, he takes
a polaroid of them and he tells them like, you know,
it's a good picture. It's a really good picture. You'll
give me three dollars. And they're just like we don't
want that, no, And the picture is awful. It's like
blurry and shit. But that also fascinates me because if

(56:49):
we think about that concept of like the blue collar
being left behind, workers being out of work, he's literally
doing like a hustle that was very common to do
to travel made famous in Terminator when that little boy
takes Sarah Connor's photo and you know, wants five dollars
or his father obeat him, is what he says, and

(57:11):
Her response is good hustle kid. You know that was
a real thing. There was a really long period of time,
especially the closer you got to the border, where people
would like take your picture while you're traveling, with the
idea of being you know that since you're on a trip,
you want to keep saying you know, and also like
you're doing a nice thing like this is a person
who like doesn't have much, you know, while they have
is a polaroid. But when they turned down his photo,

(57:35):
he just pulls out this old piece of aluminum foil,
lays it out, puts the photo on it. He looks mad,
but not like rageful, just kind of disappointed. Yeah, he
pulls out a little thingy and pours this like black
dust on it, and then he lights it on fire
and it turns out's black powder, so it burns up
the thing. Everybody screams. Then he folds up the the
tinfoil and puts it back in his bag. Everybody's now

(57:58):
screaming and saying like you need to get out of here,
or like we're we're you know, we're done with this.
And he pulls out a straight razor and says like
I have this knife and they're all, it's the tension
in this scene is so good. But then eventually he
just grabs Franklin and just cuts the shit out of
his arm. They hope, they stop the van, they throw
him out, and it is so as they're driving away,

(58:22):
he's just chasing after him, kicking, and he rubs his
bleeding hand on the side of it while he's sticking
his tongue out at them.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Yeah, it's really nuts. And I got to ask, what
the first time you watched the movie, do you remember
how you what you thought when that sequence was over.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
I was absolutely mortified because and and well, and you
know how much chainsaws terrifying me.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
I've learned this last Halloween when we went to a
few haunts. Yes, yes, you really are afraid of chainsaws.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
But they're loud, they're loud, and they're smelly. Yeah, and
you know that's I mean, that's it. They're loud and
they're smelly. I mean obviously dangerous too. There's that. Yeah,
So like there is there is a level of terror
to getting pursued by a flesh wearing maniac with a chainsaw,

(59:18):
is there? Yes, h yeah, one might assume, but that
is so disconnected from reality, but picking up a hitch hiker,
especially in this time period, like it's very common, very
very common back then. I don't think anyone picks up hitchhikers.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Well, it's illegal to hitchhike, now, yeah, I'm almost certain
it's illegal in the whole country.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
I'm pretty certain. Or yeah, I'm pretty certain. Yeah. I
picked up a hitchhiker once.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Really, how'd that go good?

Speaker 2 (59:55):
He had a dog?

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Oh yeah, that's how they get you. If they got
a dog, you're gonna pick them up.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I basically just took him across town.
But anyway, so all that being said, this the hitchhiker
that is seemingly just like a local weirdo, and then
it this situation devolves until it's this is a very
terrifying and dangerous, dangerous individual. Yes, is real. And that

(01:00:26):
was what made it so terrifying for me upon the
first viewing and pretty much every single viewing after. This
is one of the more chilling scenes for me, is
because this can and did regularly happen, this kind of thing.
So yeah, that's why I think it's this scene is
so scary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
So I had to check hitch hiking is not illegal
across the United States, but there are some states that
have that banned it entirely.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Okay, that's what it is, which is.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Utah, Wyoming, in Pennsylvania. But
in nearly every state it is illegal to hitchhike on
the interstate or freeways. Okay, so hitchhiking itself is not illegal,
just hitch hiking where you hitchhike is illegal. That's America.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Yeah. It seems like anytime I hear somebody say like, well,
actually that's not illegal, it's just anything that allows you
to do that is illegal, I'm like, yeah, fair enough,
fair enough. But so so the hitchhiker is gone, and
now they're all a bit shook. Yeah, they head to
a gas station to fuel up and figure out exactly
where Franklin's granddaddy is. Yeah, and we haven't done a

(01:01:38):
full breakdown, but I mean the characters are kind of
I mean, we've got Sally and Franklin, and then the
other characters are a little bit less known, but they
all have stuff to do. We've got Kirk and Pam,
who are the couple, and then Jerry, who's driving and
who might be dating Sally. It's never really explained, but

(01:02:03):
it seems that it's his van, I'm pretty sure. Yeah,
and he's driving most of the time. And of course,
you know, Kirk and Pam become the two famous first
deaths to leatherface here in just a little bit. But
they stop at the gas station and they don't have
any gas, and that was something that's something that always
blows my mind when you hear about like the gasoline
shortages and all the crazy stuff that happened in the seventies. Yeah,

(01:02:27):
and like waiting in lines for gasoline when it's not
rush hour. I mean, I'm used to waiting in line
for gas at like Sam's Club because it's cheap that day.
So they're like trying to figureut what they're gonna do
because they don't have a ton of gas. They're trying
to figure out like should we just go to the
house or what should we do? And they meet this
odd looking guy who we don't get his name, not

(01:02:50):
in this film. Now in the sequel, his name is Drayton.
But I'm trying to keep, as I do with all
of our movies that are parts of franch as, I
try to keep themself contained for the purposes of what
we're talking about, so he only ends up being called
the cook. And he's played by Jim Sideow, and he's
played by Jim Sideow friggin' masterfully, and he's, you know,

(01:03:14):
he seems like kind of an average guy. He's got
a little bit of an odd look to him, but
you know, and he's friendly enough. He's telling him like,
ye ain't got no gas. They're saying, I'm supposed to
get some today or tomorrow, but I don't know, like
they've been saying that for a little while now, but yeah,
we're just out of gas. And they're kind of like, oh, okay,
And then they ask him like, do you know about

(01:03:35):
the house out out of the hardest I think it
was the hardest de place, is what they say. And
he's just kind of like, you know, oh, you know,
you don't want to go mess around no old house.
You're liable to get hurt. Plus, you know, people out
here don't take kindly to people trespassing on their property.
And Franklin says, oh, my dad owns that, and he
has this look at it as it's your daddy's place, huh,
like like like that's a real problem to him. He

(01:03:58):
says that this is something that I mentioned to you,
an interesting take I had that I had never thought
of until this last time we watched it. He then
tells them like, why don't you guys just hang here
for a spell. I got some fresh barbecue and maybe
the gas will come in an hour or two, Like,
we don't know it's supposed to. I think Drayton is

(01:04:19):
trying to keep them from getting killed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Yeah, we were discussing that last night, well, you know,
when we watched it. Yeah, and I really think you're right.
I really think you're onto something because he seems almost
disappointed when they have an inn to get to the house. Yeah,
and it's not because it doesn't seem for any nefarious reason.

(01:04:45):
He just seems disappointed that he doesn't have like an
easy way to deter them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
Well, and there's another element of this which makes it
even harder to believe, and we'll talk about that right
after this. So, when the hitchhiker got out of the van,

(01:05:11):
he drew a kind of symbol on the side of
the van. Some people have claimed it's like a ruin.
Some people have claimed it was like initials. He was
trying to write and that it was like a brand
for cattle, and I think that that makes sense. But
when they get to the gas station, Drayton sees that,
and even then he's talking to them about all this stuff,

(01:05:33):
you know, about the house and how they shouldn't go
there because you know, you don't want to mess around
some old house you get hurt or you know, get
shot from old house. Yeah, I love that line, This
pretty girl that I want to go with some old house,
you know. So, but as this is all happening, he
really seems to be trying to keep them from going

(01:05:55):
there because he knows that that's the closest house to
his family's home, which who knows how they obtained it
or if it's legitimately theirs or whatever, but it's definitely
the nearest house, and he doesn't want them to be
out there. And it makes me think that it's because
he's worried that the hitchhiker and leather Face will get them,

(01:06:15):
and he doesn't necessarily want them to be killed by them.
It's weird, and it may not be entirely necessarily moral.
It could be that he doesn't want them to, you know,
get caught because there's so many of them. Like a
lot of people will come looking if six kids are
all gone at once. Yeah, you know, it could be

(01:06:37):
something like that, because they could have all kinds of
rules about like only people who travel alone, only people
you know, without a car, or with a car from
you know, state really far away. You know, they can
have all kinds of rules because who knows. I mean,
they've definitely been doing this a while. But he really
does seem like he does not want them to go
do that because because and the more I think about it,
it's that part where he goes, that's your daddy's place, huh,

(01:06:58):
Like he knows, like he's like feed it because he's
like I can't let them not go then, because like
they they it's theirs, it's their home, it's their house.
And he's just like, ah, well shit, yeah yeah. And
later on when he's talking at the dinner table and stuff,
I mean, he says, and don't get me wrong, he's
a psychopath. They're all psychopaths, family psychopaths. He even says

(01:07:19):
that he has this whole point about like I just
don't find any joy in killing. It's just a thing
that's gotta be done. It doesn't need to be It
doesn't need to be mean, it doesn't need to be cruel,
he says that stuff. He also like torments and tortures
Sally later on too, so I do. But I do
think there's like a part of him. It is just like,
you know, all these kids need to just get back

(01:07:39):
on the road and get away from here. I kind
of think that's what he was going for, because he
really is pushing that. Yeah, yeah, and uh. But also
worth mentioning the odd looking redhead guy who keeps washing
the van and they tell him that's good, and he
just keeps starting again washing the van. That is the
most outwardly funny part of the whole film. Like, like,

(01:08:02):
I think the first time I really noticed how funny
that was was last year in the theater, and now
every time I watched the movie, I laugh out loud.
The third time he starts washing the van and Dan's well,
Drake and see I'm already the cook is just like
that's enough. He keeps coming back into it. He seems
like he's not quite right now, which by the way,
makes perfect sense. There are people It was played by

(01:08:24):
Robert Corton, who has no other acking credits, but he's
credited as window washer. A lot of people have said, like,
was he another member of that family or you know
where they have bigger whatever. I think that the reason
he worked with the cook was because he was slow,
so he wouldn't be able to pick up on what's
going on. Oh yeah, because the best place for him

(01:08:46):
to catch those teams, to catch travelers and stuff would
be at that gas station, which, by the way, aptly
named Last Chance Gas, which is ex I'm almost certain
it is named Last Chance Gas. Oh, now I'm wondering.
I'm like, I hope I'm not thinking of a different
Texas chance on movie that has that name. But I've

(01:09:06):
actually seen last chance gas stations. Oh really, My travels
all over the country because it is usually you know,
there's no gas station for thirty or forty miles, so
they'll name the station last Chance Gas. Yeah, because they're
trying to remind you, like, hey, how about you, how
about you?

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
You know, don't want to get stranded?

Speaker 1 (01:09:28):
No, Well, and that's the thing that was like, I
I would imagine if he wanted those kids to get killed,
he would have immediately been telling them exactly where to go,
and he would have been all excited about it, you know. Yeah,
but no, he really seems to not want those kids
to go there. Yeah, but nope, And it is called

(01:09:49):
a last Chance gas Other things worth mentioning under that
sign it says we slaughter barbecue is on the sign.
But yeah, it was called last Chance gas station, which, yeah,
I just always loved that gas station. And I imagine
I can only imagine that they named it that because

(01:10:10):
somebody had been driving somewhere and so because that's especially
common out by the deserts. I would imagine, because you
really want to make sure you know that you know
if there aren't and there is another station for quite
a while, but uh, they don't really care. They get
a couple of Coca Colas and decide it's time to
get back on the road because they're not super far
from the house and they don't have any gas, so

(01:10:32):
I want to get there. Well, they're kind of accepting that,
like they may end up just camping at Grandpa's old
place and then the next day they'll just have to
figure out where to get some gas. Yeah, So they
get in the van and they head out to old
Granddaddy's place a little ways off, and it turns out.
It's really not far away at all, but the house
has definitely been sitting for a long time. As they

(01:10:54):
pull up, it's not in like total disrepair, but it
is in disrepair. It's like a little beat up. The
rooms are, you know, empty or filthy. There's the walls
peeling and exactly, and there's something so creepy about walking
around a decrepit house, even though they're kind of like
having fun with it, laughing and talking about like, oh,

(01:11:15):
this was this room, this was this room. But the
one thing that you notice immediately is Franklin's kind of
just left behind. Yeah, you know, and earlier in the movie,
very early in the movie, right before they pick up
the hitchhiker, he goes to take a piss and a
big semi truck drives by and knocks him down a hill. Yeah, Like,
Franklin is a character, you know, you really get to

(01:11:35):
feel for. And I've also heard people say, by the way,
that's one of the funnier moments of the movie. I
always feel awful.

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Oh I know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
It falls goes down the hill because he can't walk,
you know, he's literally just trying to pee in a
coffee can off to the side. Of the road. Yeah,
but Franklin is left behind it. They're all going upstairs
and stuff. Literally Franklin can't join us well, and.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
The I mean, he can't even get into the house
easily because again he's he's in his wheelchair. You know,
the paths are all overgrown and he can't get through
the doorway easily because like there's rubble in the door,
so he can't like get over it. And the whole
time he's like griping and complaining like it was your

(01:12:16):
idea to bring me here, Like why did you guys
invite me if you didn't want me to be here?

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Well, the irony of becoming a third wheel. Sorry, it's
just but really, I know I have sound effects, but
I shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
You should have had it queued up.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
You know what you're mean. Okay, that's what I meant
to do, But what I wasn't trying to be funny.
He really is kind.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Of right, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
And he's mad and he's going off because he's also
you know, freaking mortified and terrified about what happened with
him and the hitchhiker. Yeah, rightfully so. But then after
they're all having their fun, our little Texas chainsaw couple
who I just lost their names in my brain. Kirk
and Pam. Oh, Kirkirk and Pam. I'm pretty sure it's Kirk. Him.

(01:13:01):
They come to Franklin and say, didn't you say there
was a swimming hole, because we'd like to go swimming,
And unfortunately for them, Franklin lets go of his anger
and tells them where the swimming hole is. And yes,
we're over an hour into the show, but now things
are about to get slashery right after this. So they

(01:13:32):
head on down to the swimming hole out of ways
and find that it's completely bone dry. Shocker, it's one
of the biggest hottest summers ever. They're kind of bummed
about it. But then as they are wandering around a bit,
they hear a sound, the sound of a generator, which
makes sense because out that way, a lot of these

(01:13:53):
homes are very isolated, so they're not going to be
on the power grid. They're going to have to have
their own generators. So as they go further out, they
start to see this house that looks kind of strange. It's,
you know, it's a little beat up, but but there's
a generator running, which tells them people live there their home,
and that they have gasoline, at least some amount of gasoline.

(01:14:14):
And she's telling him like, let's not bother with that whatever,
and he's like, no, we're like we're stranded, Like we're
basically stranded. So he starts telling her, you know, this
whole plan, like, I'll just knock on the door and say,
is there any way we could borrow some gas. I'll
leave my guitar in my uh I think said It'll
leave his guitar and his ID with them or something
so that they'll know I'm coming back. And then when
I come back, I'll give him a couple bucks. And

(01:14:35):
she's just kind of like, how you're crazy. He's like, yeah,
I'm not crazy. I don't want to be stuck out here.
So they head up to this old farmhouse and as
they're going through the back, there are cars, tons and
tons of cars covered with netting. And they seem a

(01:14:55):
little perturbed, but not that much. And I could see why.
I mean, in the country sometimes people just have like
basically a little junk yard. But it makes us nervous
because there's not just that, it's the decoration. There's a
pocket watch with just a spike stab through it hanging
from a tree branch, and there's all kinds of bizarre things.
And I do want to point out when we were
watching it the other night, I said that I think

(01:15:17):
that some of the biggest elements of this movie other
than the cast, were the director of photography we mentioned before,
Daniel Pearl, and the production designer Robert A. Burns.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
Robert Burns went on to be a production designer in
a ton of famous movies. The Hills Have Eyes Reanimator,
and he starred in one of my favorite kind of
unknown unfortunately horror films, Confessions of a Serial Killer, which
I love that movie. I think it is one of

(01:15:50):
the best Henry Lee Lucas horror movie based horror movies.
And it's his only starring role in acting ever. And
I can tell an adorable story about that a minute.
But I mean, like, look at this resume. First film
as an art director, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Second, The Hills Have Eyes. Third,
Taurus Trap, which is another move that'll end up on

(01:16:12):
the show in no time. Tourist Trap freaks me out
so bad. Then he did she came to the valley,
he did, don't go near the park, which I need
to show you that sometime, Disco Godfather, which a black
exploitation movie, Microwave Massacre, which, by the way, the cannibal movie,
and the guy who's eating everybody is the guy who
voiced Frosty the Snowman. Then The Howling Oh wow. Yeah.

(01:16:36):
Then a Full Moon High which I've always had a
saspa for Blood Song, which is pretty good, Time Walker, Mausoleum,
Play Dead, Reanimator, Night Wish, and then he kind of
fell off from there and went on to do some
other things. But then as far as an actor, you know,
he was uncredited in a couple of movies, but then
he was the lead and Confessions of serial Killer. He
was in an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger as a

(01:16:57):
background performer. But I met ro Robert Burns. Oh. He
also directed a film called Mongrel, which is pretty good,
not a bad movie. Yeah, I liked it. But I
met him at Cinema Wasteland when I was a teenager,
and I was so excited because I loved I had
rented Confessions of a Serial Killer from my local Hollywood

(01:17:18):
video which was a movie gallery first, and they had
a lot of older titles, and he was there because
of the Texas Chainsaw thing. There were a ton of
people from Texas Chainsaw there. Gunner Hanson, who played Leatherface,
was there, Edwin Neil was there, a bunch of people.
So when I walked up to him, I told him, like,
I love Confessions of a Serial Killer. You know, I
think it's a really scary movie. I really loved it.

(01:17:39):
And he lit up. He told me all about the
audition process. He told me all about like how he
got the role and what the shoot was like. And
then he did something amazing. He opened up his briefcase.
He has a little briefcase with him, and he took
out a little stack of these folded papers and he
opened one up and it was a full one sheet

(01:18:03):
from the original home video release of Confessions of a
Serial Killer. And I want to say, I've never seen
one anywhere for sale. I've never seen one on eBay.
I've never seen one anywhere. And he told me he
found thirty of them in his basement. Oh man, Yeah,
So I bought one and he signed it, and he

(01:18:24):
signed it Enrique want to Ride. And it's hanging in
my bedroom right now. But the thing about that is
when I got home with it, I was like, oh man,
this is so cool, and I set it aside because
I needed to get a frame. That was Robert Burns's
first movie convention ever, because he just kind of lived
in the middle of nowhere in Texas and you know,
did his thing. Next year, I go to Wasteland and

(01:18:48):
he's there and he's not even a guest. He just
came again and he had a cam cord. He made
a little documentary about Cinema Wasteline, about his experience there
and stuff. It was so so cool and I got
to chat with him again. He was super, super nice,
super generous with the time. I really enjoyed talking with
about movies and fandom and all this stuff. Unfortunately, about

(01:19:10):
eight months later, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and
he took his own life. And I remember when that happened.
I was I was really you know, I was shocked
and I was very depressed. And when I moved about
a year later left Ohio, I told my mother, like,

(01:19:32):
please put this poster somewhere safe because one day I
do want to get it framed. You know, I'm broke, kid.
Frames are expensive, and she said, I will move back
to Ohio. I could never I never found it. I
was like, it must have been one of the freakin'
things that got lost in the shuffle whatever, you know, whatever.
When I was fixing up the house to start living
here on my own and getting roommates and stuff, I

(01:19:55):
was going through the entire house and in the tippy
top of one of the main closets, next to the
blueprints of the house itself, was my Confessions of a
Serial Killer poster. Oh wow, she really did put it
in the safest place. She put it where she kept
the blueprints of the house, Like, yeah, she kept all
the like detailed stuff you needed for the house. So

(01:20:16):
I was like, holy crap. So I literally I remember
I had. I was broke as shit, and I went
to Walmart and came up with nineteen dollars so I
could buy a frame and I hung it up. It
was the first poster I hung up when I took
the house over. So that's my Robert A. Burns story.
And I've heard a lot of incredible stories about him
from a lot of people. You know, just that he

(01:20:37):
was very supportive and kind and on Texas Chainsaw. He
it worked very, very hard to give the film an
interesting look and style, but he also was very adamant
about things like that the animals they used not be harmed,
you know, that everything be handled professionally, people not be hurt,

(01:20:58):
you know, not risks of being hurt. Just a solid dude,
So that's important too. I just want to say something
nice about him, because he really I really do think
that the production design in this movie makes it no.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
I have to agree.

Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
And we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet,
because we're we're about to enter the family home and
things just get messier from there and we'll talk about
that right after this. So they're trying to figure out

(01:21:43):
if anybody's home and I cannot believe. I can't remember
these people's names, and and oh my page disappeared.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
I'm in ker Kerr.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
Nobody's thinking up hurt. This is this is Rachel. Everybody,
What is with my browser? Yeah? Pam and Kirk, Pam
and Kirk, thank you. I don't know, Like I literally
just have a Wikipedia page open. It just vanished. I
don't know what's going on with this laptop.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
It might be but it might just be consarnt. But
he goes up and starts knocking on the door, and
she goes over and sits in this little chain swing
or what would that be called. That's a swing, it's
a bench swinging.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Bench swing, porch swing.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
So she's but it's not at the porch, it's it's
over the would bench swing. So he's knocking at the door.
She's sitting around just kind of looking around or whatever.
So he walks in and this is, you know, the
big scare, the first big scare, because as he's walking around,
we hear these animal sounds, you know, oh, very weird.

(01:22:54):
And when he walks up to the kind of the
threshold behind the staircase, this giant behemoth in a mask,
leather Face standing there and just clocks him on the
head with a hammer in the way that they describe
killing cattle.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
M h.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
And when he clocks him on the head and he
falls to the ground, he's twitching and twitching and twitching,
and leather Face just hits him one more time and
then pulls him in and then slams this metal door
shut that doesn't fit with the house at all, which
I love. Like that metal door makes the place look
way more industrial than makes sense, and that's perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Yeah, yeah, So it makes it look like a like
a butcher shop.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
Or a slaughterhouse, which is odd.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
Yeah, it's strange. Yeah, strange.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
Must have been a kwinkie dink as my ancestors would
call it. But uh so, now we cut to Pam
outside I think it was Pam, yeah, and she's like
where is he? You know what that's going on? And
there were other little things. There's so many little touches.
He finds a human tooth on the porch and like

(01:24:05):
hands it to her as a joke, and she freaks out.
And the reason you know it's a human tooth is
it has a filling in it, which again great, great
attention to detail. By the way, this is a film
if you want to be an art director or a
production designer, this is a film to watch because the
attention to detail is so friggin high. Like little touches
like that can make sure people interpret what they're seeing properly,

(01:24:28):
because you could guess that it's like a pig's tooth
or something because they're kind of human e and maybe
it's broken a little or something. It just like looks
like a molar piece, you know, But no, there's a
freaking filling. Yeah, that means it's a human, no mistaken none.
So man. So we get one of the most iconic
shots in the film, which I pointed out to you

(01:24:50):
because you'd never really given it a lot of thought.
I mean, obviously you'd seen it and they're like, whoa.
But she gets up from the swing and the camera
is down low on Dolly track and it just follows her.
And I pointed out to you that the brilliance of
that shot is because the camera is paced with her.
She stays the same size, and the house just gets
bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger as the camera approaches,

(01:25:13):
which really tells you that she's in trouble, like this
house is going to engulf her. Yeah. Yeah, that shot.
By the way, the producers didn't want it because it
would take up too much time and they were behind schedule,
so Toby Hooper had like had to distract them while
they were setting up the track. There's all kinds of
there's all kinds of great stories like that. If you

(01:25:33):
love books, read Chainsaw Confidential, which is written by Gunnar Hanson,
who played leather Face. I'll talk about him more in
a minute. It's a great book about the making of Texas.
Chainsaw massacre, and not just like the stories on set,
but he recounts other people's stories that are the opposite
of what he remembers. I mean, because the movie is
so is so legendary. There are so many stories that

(01:25:56):
may not have actually happened. Because there was a documentary
that came out in the eighties called Texas Chainsaw Massacre
A Family Portrait. It was a documentary about Texas Chainsaw,
but it was only you know, ten years out from it. Oh,
and that is really interesting, but there's a lot of
bullshit in it. It's like a great time capsule. But

(01:26:18):
like people were telling stories about Like there's a rumor
that they actually cut Sally Burns's finger in the scene
with Grandpa because it was taking so long that somebody,
maybe Gunner Hanson, pulled the tape off of the knife
and just cut her for real, just to get the shot.
I don't know that that's true. It doesn't sound true,
but I've heard people say it. Okay, So there's all

(01:26:38):
kinds of legends and it doesn't help also that Texas
Chainsaw was made in seventy two and released in seventy four,
so it's a ways out from everything. It is wild
to think that, like Night a Living Dead was shot
two years three years earlier, they feel very apart well
because Night was shot in black and white, so it
feels like it's older than it is. But yeah, that's

(01:27:01):
your Texas chain something. But yeah, Texas Chainsaw or Chainsaw
Confidential by Gunner Hansen phenomenal book, really fascinating, all kinds
of interesting stuff about about the making of the film
and the people who made it happen. So she walks
up heads inside and immediately trips in the living room.
And I'd love your take on this living room because

(01:27:23):
we were talking about I mean, this is probably the
thickest production design space ever.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
Yeah. So you walk in and even in like the
entryway of the house, there's bones and taxidermy everywhere. And
I love bones and taxidermy, but even I would call
it excessive. Yeah, And like furniture that normally is not

(01:27:52):
made out of taxidermy or bones is made out of
taxidermy and bones. So there's like lamp that are made
out of like femurs and stuff, and not all the
bones seem like animal bones. And she kind of wanders
further into the house and comes to a room that's

(01:28:18):
kind of like a kitchen, but there's the big, huge
meat hook at one end, and the floor is not
is engulfed in feathers, and there's cages everywhere and chickens
all in the cages in.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
Like a bird cage. So the chickens like filling almost
the whole cage because they're not usually put in bird cages,
not generally.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
And is as she looks again, the ground is covered
in these bloody feathers, and she notices a big like
one of those stand up coolers, one of the big freezers,
deep freezer, deep freezers, and she's calling for Kirk and

(01:29:08):
she can't find him. Opens up the deep deep freezer
and she's found Kirk. And it's great because there's a
moment of recognition on her face. And then it just
goes to a shot of a windmill outside the house

(01:29:30):
and you hear Pam screaming and then the chainsaw revving,
and that's that's all you got.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
I mean, I mean, she watches him get sawed up
in front of her and it's it's it's hellish ugh
and uh, it's a weather vein. I think it's what
that was that was spinning probably, I mean it wasn't literally,
I mean obsolite literally, but it was a spinny windy thingy,
not to get to technical, but yeah, so now that's

(01:29:59):
you know, two down and three to go, and we'll
talk about the further fates of these young people. Right
after this, it's starting to get dark, and Jerry decides

(01:30:27):
he's going to go off and see what the hell
Kirk and Pam are up to, because you know, it's
getting dark and they haven't come back. And meanwhile, for
better or worse, Franklin and Sally are left to their
own devices, which, of course, you know, poor Sally, Poor
poor Sally, Poor Sally. Yeah, she tries her best with Franklin.

(01:30:51):
But Jerry heads over to the house and again the
place seems oddly empty. Jerry walks through the hellish, filthy
mess of a house because he I believe he hears
a sound if I remember correctly, But he ends up
opening a deep freezer and out and he finds Pam

(01:31:14):
frozen in it, and she jumps out suddenly. It's one
of the biggest jump scares of the whole movie. I
just remember how bad it scared the hell out of
me the first time I watched it. But yeah, just
like and the idea that she's like was alive in
there that after being meat hooked and everything. I mean,
just the phrase meat hooked is that's bad enough, not ideal.

(01:31:37):
And as he's jumping back from being terrified, leather Face
clocks him with the hammer, just like just like he
did to Kirk, just like they do to cattle, or
did to cattle. Because they talk about how now they
use an air gun, but that gun's no good. You know,
they died better, they did better that way, to quote
the Hitchhiker. So now it's just Sally and Franklin, and

(01:32:00):
now it is dark like pitch black, and Sally wants
to go look for everybody. Franklin doesn't want to be
left alone, and we're wondering what is going to happen.
You know, Franklin has a flashlight. Sally's fighting with him
over the flashlights.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
Very like siblings sibling rivalry.

Speaker 1 (01:32:18):
Yes, yeah, well, and you know Franklin's pulling the whole
like you guys didn't even want me to be here,
you don't even like me. She's like, Franklin, I just
stop it, you know, just stop it. So finally they
decide they're going to go together somehow to go find
Jerry and Kirk and Pam and they end up heading
into the woods and this sequence it works great, but

(01:32:41):
it but it makes very little sense, and they recreated
it in Texas Chainsaw too as well. Leatherface comes out
of nowhere and the saw just starts instantly, which can't
really happen. Yeah, let's get a little harder than that
to start a chance saw. But he jumps out and
he chainsaws Franklin. And I want to mention, by the way,
this is Franklin's flashlight like illuminates the leather Face was

(01:33:02):
just how you can really see him. This is where
all the blood in the movie is. Yeah, and it's
barely there. There's just a little bit of splatter on
leather faces. He's chainsawing Franklin and now Sally is just
running for her life through the woods, through the woods,
and my god, I like, from here on out the
movie is torturous. Yeah, and I think that that was

(01:33:27):
the idea. I mean, that's what they were going for.
So it's it's yeah, it's a yeah, from here on out,
it's just cruel. So she finds the house, the house
that leather Face lives in and she heads in trying
to find help. She ends up going upstairs and finds

(01:33:49):
a woman's rotting corpse and what looks like a dead
man as well. Later we find out that's Grandpa and
he's not dead, he's just very close to it.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
Just may as well be.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
Yeah, So what were you thinking when when the like,
what do you think of the corpses up there, and
the whole idea that they, like, I guess, deny death.

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
I find it fascinating because I know there's certain cultures
around the world where likes, it's commonplace to save the
bodies of your ancestors and you're supposed to like do
ceremonies with them and honestly kind of treat them and
revere them as if they are still to an extent alive.
And it always reminds me so much of that, where

(01:34:40):
it's this weird coping with death by denying the finality
of death, which is very interesting considering the family's relationship
with death. How they used to I mean, that used
to be like their bread and butter.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
It still is. Yeah, No, And they expand on it
in Texas Chainsaw too some because at one point in
that one Stretch takes a chainsaw from their dead grandmother
and like dust is flying off her. She rips the
chainsaw ot of her hands and chop Top is like,
you bitch, you killed her, like she'd clearly been dead

(01:35:19):
for like ten or twenty years. There you go. Yeah.
So after finding these two, Leatherface comes after again and
she ends up jumping through a second floor window and
running through the forest. And there's a lot of Marilyn
Burn's running and bloody. And one of the legendary things
about this movie is that they clay. The claim is

(01:35:41):
a lot of the blood on her and those scenes
was real because just the brush was cutting her to
pieces while she was running again and again and again
and again through the woods. And she happens upon Last
Chance Gas which I wanted to mention, by the way,
last you can still visit that gas station, really, but

(01:36:03):
it's not a gas station anymore. Would you believe me
if I told you that it is now a barbecue restaurant.

Speaker 2 (01:36:13):
I would in fact believe you.

Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
Yes. So it's in Bastrop, Texas. It was built in
nineteen sixty and after the film came out, it eventually
was it shut down. It closed and fell into disrepair
and was abandoned for years and years, but in the
mid twenty tens it was bought and restored by Roy
and Lisa Rose, who reopened it in twenty sixteen as
the gas Station slash We Slaughter BBQ, a barbecue joint

(01:36:39):
and horror memorabilia shop and mini resort. Oh today, you
can get a barbecue beef pork and it's not you know, merchandise,
chainsaw memorabilia, and you can stay overnight in the on
site cabins that are behind the station.

Speaker 2 (01:36:57):
Oh fun.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
So that's really really cool.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
We should go on a road trip there.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
I've always wanted to do that. We could also visit
the house. Ah yeah, which is also a restaurant, so
believe it or not. In the late nineteen nineties, instead
of demolishing the house, it was carefully cut into sections
and moved sixty miles to Kingsland, Texas. There it was

(01:37:22):
restored and in twenty twelve operated as the Grand Central Cafe,
a small restaurant, and in twenty twenty two This is
What I Love It changed hands and reopened as Hoopers,
dedicated to Toby Hooper, the director. That's awesome and it's
a southern bar and restaurant named after Toby Hooper, and

(01:37:44):
it leans into the chainsaw connection with themed menu items
and decor, but no bone furniture.

Speaker 2 (01:37:49):
So wait, wait, but did they serve Snappy Tom's?

Speaker 1 (01:37:53):
I sure hope they do. I could sure go for
a Snappy Tom right about now. But now that she's
arrived at Last Chance Gas, things are not getting any better.
But we'll talk about that more right after this. So

(01:38:18):
she arrives at the gas station and she's terrified. She's
talking to the cook as we come to know him,
and telling him, you know, somebody's trying to kill me,
and he's like, ooh, what what are you talking about?
And he like goes outside. He's like I don't see
anybody out there. And she's like, we need a phone.
You need a phone, and he's like, we don't have
a phone, nearest phones. We have to drive to Childress

(01:38:41):
and what Like, what's your thought on this? I want
to know, like, what are you thinking about this whole situation?

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
So I love the layers of discomfort of this scene
because there's a brief, very very very brief moment where
as an audience member, you kind of hope, like Okay,
she's found help, and you know, but then you're immediately

(01:39:17):
overcome with this feeling of discomfort by the normalcy of.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
This situation, like his reactions.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
Yeah, very like, yeah, just like, oh well that's all
that's I don't see anybody. Well that doesn't well, we're
going to have to get you in the truck and
we'll take you, you know, we'll take you, take care
of you well.

Speaker 1 (01:39:37):
And on top of that, we have like lingering moments
where she's looking at the barbecue, which yeah, questionable.

Speaker 2 (01:39:42):
Yeah, I was gonna say, like those those shots of
just like the sausages and the meat on the fire
and as she's looking at them and being very uncomfortable
just by the thought of it, which you know, she
just saw our brother get slaughtered, so I can I
can't quite you know, blame her, But yeah, you get

(01:40:04):
this feeling of being on edge because it's too normal
and and it's almost like you've gotten so acclimated to
all the wild, weird shit going on that now this
is the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
It's almost too quiet.

Speaker 2 (01:40:19):
Yeah, it's quiet, yeah, too quiet.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Yeah, I mean, because she's sitting in there and it's
just like you can just hear the radio on in
the background, just barely and yeah, and he comes back,
but now he's got a bag and uh uh yeah,
he's trying to put her in this bag, yeah, basically
put it over yeah, which which I can't imagine. He's
trying to hide where he the house is with the bag.

(01:40:44):
I think that's just torture. He starts beaten her with
a broom and beaten her with the broom and and
it's it's so long and drawn out and awful.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
And eventually he pushes her into the up truck and
drives around, and she's got the sack over her head
and he's got now a broken broomstick. And this is
one of the sequences that always stuck out to me
even when I was very young watching this is he
keeps telling her the same stuff he was telling her
at the gas station. You know, now you just relax here,
everything's gonna be all right, nobody's gonna hurt you. And
then he sticks her with he's like jabbing her as

(01:41:18):
hard as he can with the stick and like gritting
his teeth because he's getting joy from it. But he's
saying that it's gonna be okay, that it's fine, like,
nobody's gonna hurt you, nobody wants to hurt you. And
then he's just like getting her and getting her. And
that's the kind of thing that really messes me up
because it's just an absolute sadism. There's there's no there's

(01:41:38):
no pragmatism to why you would do that. It's just
to be cruel. Yeah, you know, it doesn't benefit anybody
to do that. She's not even there's not even a
chance of her escaping. There's not even a chance of anything. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:41:53):
So now as they drive down the dark road as
they're moving along, oh look, the hitchhigh as a familiar face,
and the cook has nothing but mean things to say.
He's livid. He's like, look at that idiot, that dumb shit.
You know. He calls him a bitch, hoog and a
dumb shit, all kinds of mean insults. He ends up

(01:42:15):
jumping into the back of the truck as they drive
the rest of the way to the house. So now
we know for a fact as the audience that the
hitchhiker is directly related to Leatherface and to the cook
who's at the barbecue restaurant. So at this point we
start to really lean into the insanity of the whole situation,
and in one of my favorite shots, he gets out

(01:42:39):
of there and the hitchhiker is like talking a munch
of smack because he all excited. He's carrying a piece
of roadkill. I don't know if you noticed that. He's
he's like all excited because he's got a piece of roadkill,
and the cook starts beating the hell out of him,
whacking him in the head with that piece of wood
and yelling at Hi about like I told you to
stay away from that cemetery. I told you not to
leave your brother alone in the and it's I mean

(01:43:02):
it's brutal too. I mean all you see is them
lit from behind by the truck lights as he's just
beating the hell out of him. I mean he's making
what he was doing to Sally look cute. Yeah, I
mean he's really messing this guy up. As if you
could be more messed up. One of my favorite lines
in Texas Chainsaw Too is when he accidentally gets hit
in the head with a chop top gets hit in
the head of the chainsaw and he like checks it.

(01:43:24):
He's like, uh, oh good, you didn't mess me up.
It's like such a wonderful thought of like, oh, right,
so you're not messed up, okay, But so now he
heads up to the house and I don't know, what
were you thinking or what do you think about that
whole sequence, because I apologize, I'm kind of zooming through

(01:43:44):
with a lot of thought and excitement about Texas chainsaws.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
I'm almost like it's one of your favorite movies or something.

Speaker 1 (01:43:50):
It could be.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):
Jeez, I'm always struck by the sheer chaos of the
whole sequence because there's not a moment to catch your breath,
and and you feel just as disoriented as Sally as

(01:44:15):
they drag her into the house and drag her into
the you know, like dining room and tire to a chair,
and you know, now leather Face is here, and I
you know, this is the first time she's seen leather
Face since she got pursued by him. And they're you know,
they're all like setting up a dinner table. Well, she's

(01:44:39):
there in hysterics, tied to the chair, and then they
bring down Grandpa. And again it made me think of
those those ceremonies that different cultures will have where you
bring out the the mummified corpse of an ancestor and
then have a meal with it. That was the first

(01:45:01):
time I saw it. I was like, oh, so they're
going to have a meal with the dead grandpa. And
then we realized that he's got one foot in the grave.
I gotta give it to him like he's working on it,
but he is not quite dead.

Speaker 1 (01:45:15):
Ancient old And I want to mention, by the way,
Gunner Hanster, Gunner Hanson his leather Face phenomenal casting choice.
Unfortunately lost Gunner a little while ago, but he was
super nice guy. I ran into him a million times
working movie conventions, and he was always funny and jovial,
and supposedly the main reason he got the job as Leatherface,

(01:45:36):
Toby Hooper told him was because when he walked into
the audition, he filled the door. He was just a
really tall, really broad guy. But Leatherface had a little
bit more to him then some people realize, because if
you look closely, and it's a lot easier now with
blu ray and four K and everything. Leatherface has three
masks he wears throughout the movie. I don't know if

(01:45:57):
you've noticed that.

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):
I've noticed there's different ones.

Speaker 1 (01:46:00):
He has a mask that people referred to as the
killing mask, which is the first mask you see. It's
very plain. Then the mask you see when he's at
this sequence is a lot of people call the old
lady mask. He's like getting things ready and doing whatever,
and when the dinner starts, he's in what they call

(01:46:22):
the pretty woman mask, like a mask with tons of makeup.
And there's a scene cutout. I'm I'm sure it's on
the blue rays because it was on my DVD when
I first bought it. There was a scene cutout of
Leatherface just putting tons of lipstick on the mask. There
were like a lot of little things like that that
were removed. But Gunnar Hansen said that when they were
making the movie, Hooper and Henkel told him that each

(01:46:43):
mask was a different personality and that there was nothing
underneath that he has to put on a face to
be anyone at all.

Speaker 2 (01:46:52):
Ooh, that's scary.

Speaker 1 (01:46:55):
Yeah, yeah, you like that. Also that Leatherface is the
woman of the house, which I think, yeah, I mean, well,
and that's the kind of thing that like they borrow
a bit from ed Geen, the idea of the idea
of of I'm sorry, I'm struggling with the thought he

(01:47:16):
wanted to become his mother when his mother died. Even
though he kind of hated her, he also loved her.
He wanted to be here, so he wanted to wear
her skin so he could convince himself he was her,
you know. And leather Faces here we got these three
men who are all brothers. They're the only family left.
And leather Face, because he's just so bent, just kind
of becomes the mom. But no one really sees him

(01:47:36):
that way because he's a giant killer. It's bizarre and fascinating.
But yeah, it sometimes when I think about leather Face,
I get really uncomfortable. I thank goodness, it'd be weird
if I just felt warm and cozy inside. But now
we're about to find out a lot more about Grandpa

(01:47:56):
right after this. So Grandpa needs to eat first. And
there's a line in Texas Chainsaw three, directed by you know,

(01:48:17):
Jeff Burr rest in Peace that always stuck with me,
which is the little girl says, if you don't stick them,
then they don't leak, and if they don't leak, then
he can't feed Grandpa. And in this one, they cut
Sally's finger. I think that's first. Is the finger cut, right,
I think so, Yeah, I don't think it's the hammering yet.

Speaker 2 (01:48:39):
No, it's a finger cut then, am.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):
So they first they cut her finger and Grandpa sucks
on her finger and is drinking the blood.

Speaker 2 (01:48:51):
But he's sucking on her finger like a little like
a baby suckling on a bottle.

Speaker 1 (01:48:57):
Yeah, he does. He's like doing the thing where he's
moving his hands and it's very like a like a
child latching, which is interesting because you know, there are
all those kinds of concepts where when people get very elderly,
they kind of become infant like. It is very disturbing,
very upsetting, And that's where the legendary rumor is that
somebody actually cut her finger because the blood effect wasn't

(01:49:18):
working properly and they were all dying in there. Because
every scene from here on out in this living in
this dining room was hell. There are so many stories
written about. The room was insanely hot. The food was
rotting on the plates once the dinner scene starts because
they couldn't move it for continuity, so they were injecting
it with something along the lines of romaldehyde to try

(01:49:40):
to keep it to hold together. Yeah, everybody's sweating like crazy.
They only had one leather Face outfit for that day,
so they couldn't wash it because then the blood marks
would mess up. Yeah, it was considered one of the
worst experiences ever. I again Chainsaw Confidential, Gunner Hansen talks
at length about what a miserable experience. It was really,

(01:50:02):
really rough. So he's drinking her blood and she finally
just passes out. Yeah, Sally comes back to two and
now she is tied to a chair, which I was
very amused by the fact that the arms on the
chair are arms, and her arms are tied to the

(01:50:24):
arms on the arms of the chair. And she starts screaming,
and everyone's sitting around the dinner table and they're all
like cleaned up. Leather Face is now wearing his pretty
woman mask, and as she screams in fear, the hitchhiker
is taunting her screams, and Leatherface is kind of getting

(01:50:44):
excited about it too. And this is the first moment
where we see the cook is kind of like not participating,
although we see him like kind of smirk and smile
a little bit here and there, and he gives his
a little speech about like I don't you know much
like kill and it has to be done, but you know,
I don't take no pleasure in it. And a lot
of people have suggested that that could be taken as

(01:51:06):
a kind of like kind of like a hypocrisy of
bosses or whatever that he has like this barbecue restaurant.
He makes all this benefit off of this heinous stuff,
but then he acts like he's above it. But he's
also like clearly a sadist. So it's decided that Grandpa
will kill her because he was the best once he

(01:51:28):
once killed I think it was he said, they said,
like he once killed like six cows and in four
minutes or something, and it would have been more if
the hook and Pole gang had been up in their time,
if they couldn't keep up. Yeah. So but grandpa's like
a total like he can't he can't like hold his
own arms up.

Speaker 2 (01:51:44):
Yeah, like they they have to hold his arms so
he can holdras hand.

Speaker 1 (01:51:49):
And the idea is that he will, you know, whack
her head and and what like this sequence is just
your terror to me. I mean, we have all these
shots of her eyes searching around the room, the redness
of her eyes. We see, like you know, the lamp
that's made of two different human faces. There's so much
to take in in this sequence, let alone the generalized insanity,

(01:52:13):
which if that's not a saying yet, that needs to
be a saying, a generalized insanity. What what are your
thoughts on? I mean, this sequence is so friggin' mortifying.
I feel like I say that a lot in this movie,
because this movie is a very mortified feel very mortified.

Speaker 2 (01:52:27):
No, it's sheer pandemonium and the sheer cruelty and sadism.
Because best case scenario is that it takes like five six,
eight good swings from Grandpa before she's finally out of

(01:52:51):
her misery, which is a fucking awful way to go,
and that's the best case scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:52:57):
Yeah, I mean he's like barely clipping her. I mean,
it's it's just making it worse. They're holding her back. Yeah,
it's it's really awful. I mean, like the hand just
keeps dropping, it's like hitting her on the shoulder and
she's screaming. I mean, it's like the polar opposite of
what they're saying, which is, oh, Grandpa, will you know
do it good, It'll be clean, because you know he's

(01:53:18):
such a great killer yeah, and it's it's just hell and.

Speaker 2 (01:53:22):
And you juxtapose that with the amount of glee that
the family feels. Oh yeah, because Grandpa's doing what Grandpa
does best, is ugh like like the hitchhiker is cheering
him on, and you know, uh, you know, the cook

(01:53:43):
and leather face or trying to help him like hold
the hammer and like guide his hand so that he
can whack her. Like you know, they're they're treating this
like if you were to take Grandpa out to go
fishing again.

Speaker 1 (01:53:57):
Yeah, you know, like, well, they live in a very
denial ridden world.

Speaker 2 (01:54:04):
M h.

Speaker 1 (01:54:04):
I mean, the house is filthy, but they don't see
that their grandmother's dead. They don't see that Grandpa can
is barely alive. You don't see that. I will say,
from the first time I watched the film, I always
assumed that it had to be something to do with
drinking blood that kept Grandpa alive oh so long. That
like that's why he's like possibly biblical level ancient. But

(01:54:26):
he's also still like falling apart, which is another thing.
No depiction, no open direct depiction of cannibalism, but there
is a depiction of blood drinking, and there are some
people who think that they were into some kind of
weird occult kind of thing, hence the blood drinking, and
they were whacking her head over a big bucket. Maybe
they were going to collect her blood.

Speaker 2 (01:54:47):
Yeah, yeah, I always assumed something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:54:50):
Yeah, so that one's a bit you know out there.

Speaker 2 (01:54:55):
But even in the slaughterhouse like or you know, on
the farm, you'd still like try to keeps some of
the blood from the animal that you slaughter. You could
make you know, like stuff out of it. Ah, like
blood pudding.

Speaker 1 (01:55:07):
All right, you're weird. You're making me uncomfortable. But as
they're trying and trying to kill her, and the insanity
is just reaching an all time high, and that is
the truth. The scene just goes insane. Yeah, yeah, we
go insane with Sally. We go on a ride with
her through her mind breaking She finally manages to run

(01:55:27):
off because Grandpa can't do shit, and she jumps through
another window and now she's running and now we realize
it's daytime. It must be the early morning, and she
is running literally for her life. But unfortunately the the
brother's chainsaw are right behind her. So what happens, Well,

(01:55:49):
you'll have to wait and find out after this, Sally
is running for her life. And this is probably the
most iconic sequence because of the visuals of like the

(01:56:10):
old house and the long the long driveway, dirt driveway,
and her heading toward the road. Now, of course Leatherface
is big and heavy and slow. The hitchhiker is right
on her. And this is another example like when I
was talking about Drayton, see I keep using the I mean,
that's fine, but you know the cook sticks stick in
her and how it doesn't really make any sense. The

(01:56:31):
hitchhiker is chasing after her with his with his straight
raiser out and he's just slicing at her back. He's
not grabbing her, he's not tackling her.

Speaker 2 (01:56:40):
Yeah, he's not actually trying to stop her. No, he's
just just tormenting.

Speaker 1 (01:56:44):
He's just slicing up her back. And when and as
it's happening, he just keeps going and going and going.
And that's actually why he dies, because as she gets
into the road, all he's doing is like holding onto
her shirt so he can slice up her back more.
And when she so away, he looks up and sees
Black Maria, the big, the big red semi truck which

(01:57:07):
I don't know how I never noticed it until last
time we watched it. But it's a it's a live
stock truck. Yeah. He gets smashed by a live stock.

Speaker 2 (01:57:16):
Truck, yeah, which is so poetic.

Speaker 1 (01:57:20):
And it's very jarring. It's it's it's still holds up
the effect of him just getting just modover mode over
by that friggin truck. Yeah. But as that's happening, leather Faces,
you know, right behind, chasing and chasing and chasing and
excuse me. Gunnar Hansen said that this sequence was really

(01:57:40):
rough because they were so exhausted, they were working super
late all the time and it was so hot. So
the truck driver gets out is trying to figureut what
the hell's going on. He sees leather Face, and I
love his reaction to He never says a word, he
never has a line, but he's this big, heavy set
black guy and he starts pulling her into the truck.
The second he season he's like, oh, hell, like get.

Speaker 2 (01:58:02):
In here, yeah, yeah, no questions.

Speaker 1 (01:58:04):
The other face comes toward him and starts like sawing
at his door. He gets out of the other side,
gets a big pipe ranch throws it at Leatherface, whacks
him in the head. He falls down. The chain sauce
cuts up his leg a little bit, which that effect
was done by putting a metal plate under his pants
with a steak on top of it aw and it
looks great, but nobody re really thought about the fact

(01:58:28):
that it might get really hot. So he was Finally
he didn't get cut, but he burned himself a little
bit shit because when the chainsaw hit the metal, it
just really really hot. So as the truck driver is
trying to figure out what he's going to do about
all this shit, you know, with this nightmare guy, a
black pickup truck or a black pip, a red pickup

(01:58:49):
truck pulls up. I believe it's red, and it might
not been. I don't know whatever color. Yeah, and she's
like saying, go go, So she jumps into the back
of the truck and he guns it as Leatherface is
like right there. And one of the things that's really
worth mentioning about the sequences, he like comes so close
to getting her when she's in there. Gunnar Hansen said

(01:59:11):
that he got so into character because it was like
the only way to deal with how miserable everything was.
While they were making the movie. He got so into
character that the big problem they had with the takes
was he kept catching her. Oh and she's supposed to
get away, so he doesn't catch her. Sally is being
driven away, she's covered in blood. She's screaming like a maniac,

(01:59:34):
laughing and screaming and laughing and screaming. His leather Face
is standing there. And then the most iconic moment, which
is Leatherface's chainsaw dance, where he's just like swinging the
saw around and spinning in like a rageful dance thing.
It's hard to describe, but it is fascinating. Yeah, and
he's doing it right as like the sun is rising

(01:59:55):
behind him and the chainsaws blaring, and then it just
cuts to black and the chainsaw sound stops and you
realize how loud everything was. Yeah, what a friggin' movie.
I mean, it's it's extra funny because I thought this
show might be a little on the short side, because
it's like eighty two minute movie and there isn't that much.

(02:00:17):
I mean, it's pretty simple, and instead this is like
a long episode because I can't stop thinking about all
these choices. What what do you think about the the
the ending? Like I want to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 (02:00:31):
Again. It's one of the things that solidifies this as
a you know, a piece of art to me because
you and you and I have you and I have
discussed it, and it's something that we bring up a lot,
especially on this show. But we are both of the
mindset that the final scene, but especially the final shot

(02:00:57):
of a of a good movie, is going to tell
you everything that you need to know about that movie.

Speaker 1 (02:01:04):
Yeah, because it tells you where the story ends, tells
you what the story was exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:01:09):
And this movie was about Sally's complete psychological break and
a boy in its chainsaw.

Speaker 1 (02:01:20):
And a boy and his chainsaw. Fair enough so.

Speaker 2 (02:01:26):
But but the reason the reason I like it is
because it's two it's two sides of the insanity coin.
It's Sally's you know, broke into insanity and Leatherface is
born into insanity. And we get that those two examples

(02:01:48):
as like the final thought of the film.

Speaker 1 (02:01:51):
Yeah, And it's worth mentioning that in the sequel canon
they say that Sally when she got to the hospital,
she'sed and raved about lampshades made of human skin and
chairs made of bones, and then she sank into catatonia.
That's what they say in Texas. Chainsaw too, is that's
what happened. Yeah, so I mean she was driven mad

(02:02:14):
by madness. Yeah, So any other thoughts you want to
throw about that before I give you some some odd
little trivia and stuff about chainsaw. Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:02:25):
The other thing that I like about the end because
you mentioned that the chainsaw just cuts out and suddenly
you realize how blaring the sound really is. I love
the sound design and the sound scape of this movie. Yeah,
because like, not only I mean, obviously there's the chainsaw,

(02:02:45):
that's what everyone talks about. But what I love is
the way that the sound of the generator, especially in
like the second act of the movie, the sound of
the generator becomes the sound of dread because once we
learn how dangerous that house is, we also learned that

(02:03:09):
once you can hear the generator, you're too close. And
so I love that that becomes a subtle and at
times not so subtle c because the generator gets really,
really loud. Yeah, So that's I like that a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:03:26):
There's a lot of that. The sound is very interesting too,
because it was very hard to do a sound mix
back then. You had to sit in a studio. I
mean you couldn't just do it on your computer, yeah,
or even on like a fancy computer. I mean you
had to go to a place and there were tape
decks and it was a lot and the sound design
is really strong in this film. So after the film

(02:03:47):
was completed, they could not get a single normal for
lack of a better term, distributor to touch the film.

Speaker 2 (02:03:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:03:54):
I wonder why no one seemed to want it. Well,
I think there was a combination of like, this is
so brutal, but all so, this is kind of amateurish,
Like there were a lot of you know, negative thoughts
on it. So they ended up going with a company
called Bryanston Distributing Company, who paid them I reported two
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in advance for the film.

(02:04:16):
Bryanston was not a legit company. They had made it
big because they were the distributors of the film Deep
Throat Okay, And it was owned by two men who
were allegedly members of the Colombo crime family. The Bryanston

(02:04:39):
Distributing Company was probably a money laundering operation. They were mobsters,
like legitimate mobsters. It went on to Texas, Chainsaw went
on to make twelve million dollars in the first year
in the US box office. It was a massive, massive hit.
It was just everybody had to go see it. Bryanston
reported it tiny fraction of its revenue and never sent

(02:05:03):
any profits to Hooper Hankle, the investors, or any of
the cast. Nearly all the cast had back ended profit
points because they were working for almost nothing. Eventually, they
sued Brianston for the unpaid profits and won in court,
and then Brianston just went, well, we're gone and we
don't have any assets. We're bankrupt.

Speaker 2 (02:05:23):
Oh shit.

Speaker 1 (02:05:24):
So Brianston was a mob front and Chainsaw's money went
into the same black hole as Deep Throats. So yeah,
it was That was one of the crazier parts about it.
But there was a small silver lining. So the court
ordered them to pay Brian's did to pay them five
hundred thousand dollars. They never got a penny of it.

(02:05:45):
In nineteen eighty three, New Line Cinema, who was just
starting to grow, because this is right after Freddy, right
before Freddy Krueger, they acquired the distribution rights to Texas
Chainsaw Massacre from Hankel and Hooper and they gave it
a pretty wide theatrical release for a second time about
ten years later, and did have like a legitimate profit

(02:06:08):
share and OK, so it did get another run. But boy, howdy,
that's one of my favorite stories about Texas Chainsaw is
how Yeah, they got screwed by the mob. So with
all that being said, we hope everybody listening to this
had a very good, fun Thanksgiving. We hope you enjoyed

(02:06:30):
a meal with your family, but not like what we
described just now. And and the holiday season is coming
right up, and we have two very interesting picks that
we're going to do back to back. And do you
want to tell everybody what we're talking about in a
couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (02:06:49):
Yeah, so we're going to be talking about wind chill?

Speaker 1 (02:06:52):
Well, are we gonna talk about weather phenomena? I thought
we talked about movies.

Speaker 2 (02:06:55):
Well wanted to branch out enough.

Speaker 1 (02:07:00):
Well, wind Chill from two thousand and seven. It's a
really fun horror movie about being trapped on the side
of the road in the dead of winter around Christmas time,
and it's probably the most haunted section of road to
friggin ever exist. It's very scary, very creepy, and it
looks like it's actually on Netflix right now, so if

(02:07:24):
you want to check it out before we talk. It's
also on two B and the Roku channel, So that's
your homework. Kids. At some point in early December, we'll
be doing wind Chill, and then after that we're going
to talk about the following episode is going to be
a dead End, which we'll talk about that more later.
But there are two films with very similar concepts but
totally different execution, totally different budgets, totally different everything else.

(02:07:49):
So I think it'll be really fun to compare those
because they're both creepy and scary for so many reasons.
So but yeah, all that's left to say, I guess
is this is really thank you guys for joining us. Sorry,
my voice decided it doesn't love me anymore again, but
thank you guys for joining us for cutting deep into horror.
If you enjoyed the program and want to send us

(02:08:11):
an email, suggest a movie, make a comment, you can
send that email to Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com.
We'd love to hear from you. Remember our we're sponsored
by cozyearth dot com. Use promo code Spooky at checkout
to support our show and get yourself something for forty
one percent off. And if you really love what we're
doing and just have to support us, you can head
to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join and sign up for

(02:08:33):
our Patreon. We do appreciate it very much for as
little as one dollar month. But all that to be said,
I am very tired and I have a very long
Christmas season because there are going to be so many
scary stories for you guys to enjoy. So get ready
for that, because tomorrow we'll have our first It'll be Saturday,
we'll have our first Christmas horror marathon. So until next time, guys,

(02:08:55):
stay spooky and eat dinner with your family. Look what
your brother did at the door as s

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Cutting Deep into Horror | Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) The Birth of Modern Terror

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cutting Deep into Horror | Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) The Birth of Modern Terror