In our discussion, we deeply analyze the classic horror film "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" exploring its historical impact, societal reflections, and character dynamics. We dissect its themes, including family, societal norms, and survival through violence, revealing the movie's narrative complexity. Reflecting on the cast's challenges during production, we consider ethical concerns in filmmaking. Additionally, we uncover the film's authenticity and enduring legacy, celebrating its influence on horror history and its reflection of societal fears. Our conversation concludes with a nod to future explorations in horror cinema, highlighting its profound societal mirror.
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Evan:
[0:00] I was looking at something that said, this is just purely from the Wikipedia, but it said something that they were hoping to get a PG rating. And I know back in the 70s and 80s, PG wasn't the same thing. But it's sort of interesting that I think of some movies from that time period that aren't that gory, that are just PG movies. And it's hard to believe, in retrospect, that they made it that way.
Oslowe:
[0:23] One of the things that I don't think gets brought up enough when discussing the sort of rebel, you know, takeover of Hollywood, the the the youth, you know, young Hollywood was the dismantling of the studio system as it had existed. Like it, it was still there and it's still there now, but it's, you know, it, but it was a big change from the days where Louis B. Mayer would have the, or I think it was David Selznick who had the glass top on his desk that showed what people under contract were doing what every week. So he could look and say, well, you know, we've got, you know, this guy isn't working right now, so let's put him in to fix this script up. And, you know, that era changed because having the actors under contract like that was thrown out the window. You know, the sort of salaried actors just sort of hanging around waiting to shoot something, you know, cease to be. And in some ways, I think it probably made making movies a little bit harder. But it was supposed to cut the stranglehold that a handful of guys had. And then, of course, you know, most importantly, and why.
Oslowe:
[1:41] The United States government went after them so that the studios couldn't also own the movie theaters that they were screening things in and only show their own their own stuff. But, yeah, I mean, I don't think that a movie like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre would exist were it not for the changing of the studio system, were it not for the atrophying of the Hays Code, were it not for just the world events that were going on in the early 1970s.
Evan:
[2:16] The changing of Hollywood and then also just, I mean, this movie doesn't exist in any other moment. I don't feel like that's, this is a question I'll ask later, but you can think about this. One of the reasons why I think that the sequels may not be as good or the remakes is with some remakes and franchises like Scream or Halloween, you can just kind of have a masked killer like in those movies be in any kind of moment in time. I don't feel like Scream is like a moment of the 90s or Halloween isn't necessarily a moment of the 70s, but this movie is a moment of the mid-1970s and it's trapped in that period where I don't think you can separate anything that happens in this movie from the politics and the geopolitics and everything social everything so yeah.
Oslowe:
[3:07] Yeah no i i agree i agree with that assessment very very firmly but i'm gonna add to it in that i feel like a lot of 70s films are so bound to the the changes in society And maybe we have the benefit of hindsight, you know, of shit that was damn near 50 years ago. I mean, it was more than 50 years ago for the beginning of the 70s. And I was born halfway through the 70s. And... You know, whether it's something like The Last House on the Left or, for that matter, Dirty Harry, these movies wouldn't have existed were it not for the changes that were going on in the world. And I think that Texas Chainsaw is one of the more easy to spot, like, if you're looking for that. You know, but even the last movie we talked about, even the Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake, like, that is so very... Late 70s and you know the the dissolution of the uh sort of hippie idea the dissolution of the dreams of the hippies and the sort of rise of reagan's america all.
Evan:
[4:24] Right this week on left of the projector we are bringing you a spooky horror film from 1974 called the texas chainsaw Massacre. And with me to discuss is a very big fan of this movie, as he will tell you. He's been on the episode on the menu and the remake or sequel, however you want to call it. Go back and listen to the episode on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's Oslo. Thank you for joining again.
Oslowe:
[4:55] Thank you for having me again, Evan. It's always a pleasure to be here.
Evan:
[4:59] Maybe before we had even talked about, before I maybe even had this podcast, I think I knew that you're a fan of this movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, again, from 1974. I didn't mention it's directed by Toby Hooper. It has a sequel also directed by Hooper, and then there's a number of, remakes and sequels and other pieces that we won't really discuss very much, I think, in this episode. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is trapped in the moment that it was made in 1974.
Evan:
[5:33] And so the United States coming off the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, a country of people who no longer trust maybe the foundation of the United States. They went from Vietnam to Watergate in the early 1970s, 1974 for Watergate. Cracks are starting to sort of form in maybe people's perception of America. Wealth disparity is starting to erode. It will erode further under Reagan, but started this time. We're having an energy and oil crisis in the 1970s, which is heavily implied in parts of this film, as we'll talk about. We see the South is often referred to who has rednecks and being derided by the elites of urban cities. And so comes this horror film, which I think really translates into the horrors of the time, just like any good horror movie, but almost more than your average horror film. So to separate the movie from the moment is pretty difficult, if downright impossible.
Evan:
[6:34] So I don't know what you thought, thinking of how it's impossible to really separate this movie from the moment in time, maybe more than most horror movies that I can think of. I mean, I've watched... Fair amount. You probably have watched maybe more that I'm not aware of. But as far as all of those movies, you love this movie for a reason. Maybe it's both of these things. Maybe you want to share what about this movie is so compelling and then also why it's so compelling that it came out in 1974 at a moment of sort of the downfall of the American, I don't know, spirit, democracy.
Oslowe:
[7:11] The American you could just say the American dream because it was it was an illusion and it was an illusion that was that worked for a lot of people for quite a while. And there are arguably still people that adhere to it, though, I think in a lot of cases, I think there's sort of some like jaw clenching. No, no, everything's fine here.
Oslowe:
[7:36] Energy. But that's that's a different topic. I first saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was probably between 13 and 15 years old. And the reason I watched it was so that I could watch the sequel, which I had heard was really, really awesome. Awesome. But and like for a tween boy, you know, in the 80s, like, yeah, I wanted to see this funny movie with like crazy stuff. And my mother said something about the original film and scene in the theater. And I could tell that she was visibly shaken. You know, when my mother would talk about the movie and talk about the meat hook scene, I could sort of see this wave of revulsion and fascination like hit her. And in a weird way, my mother actually led me to a lot of the movies that have become my like favorite, favorite films, which is weird because we have incredibly different tastes in movies. But but she was like, you should really watch the first one. It's it's it's a very good movie. I just oh, I don't think I could watch it again. You know, that sort of energy. And well, you got to admit, like for a kid, that was a very titillating like sort of, well, hold on. This thing is so bad. she can't watch it again like it's so scary i need to see this and with the title of course don't.
Evan:
[9:02] You can't yeah if you say you can't see something you want to see it.
Oslowe:
[9:05] And of course with that title that title you you just assume buckets of gore and just something really vile and visceral and you know you end up getting something that is relatively bloodless certainly by modern standards But yet, it is, I think, a big part of what I love about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original film, goes to the analogy that I use all the time about horror, which is, for me, the best thing about horror is like being on a roller coaster when you're going up the first incline. When the chain has grabbed on and is dragging the cars up, and you hear that clacking sound, and it is the building of anticipation, the building of excitement and fear, you know the cars are going to go over the top and start flying down free of that chain. The chain is going to release and the cars are going to be on the track, hell bent for leather, you know, or weather, whatever comes first. That, to me, is the feeling of a great horror film. And Texas Chainsaw Massacre opens with an unforgettable shot.
Evan:
[10:19] Yeah. And then. Let's say the least.
Oslowe:
[10:21] It continues to just mount dread. Read the first time my oldest boy tried watching it with me he bowed out before the credits were over he said uh dad i i know you love this movie but this is really freaking me out like this is just really intense and he's not wrong you've got the the newscast you've got that bizarre music that wayne bell and toby hooper like didn't toby's spare room with his weird instrument collection You know, like they didn't want to play any traditional instruments on the soundtrack or on the score. So they just had a whole bunch of like children's percussion instruments and, you know, some other stuff like that. That's where you get that incredible, weird, discordant, aural background to the movie. And the movie just keeps nothing feels safe at any point in the movie. Even when Franklin's just trying to take a whiz, you still have the truck flying by, you know, throwing gravel on them. And, you know, Kirk has to duck and poor Franklin goes down the hill. Like, there's never a safe moment, it feels like for these kids. And it's almost like the frog in the water coming to a slow boil. They never really realize the danger they're in until it's too late.
Evan:
[11:43] In one of my notes as I was going through it, I wrote down that it might be the greatest cold open before the title card of a movie that I can think of. Just because, as you're saying, it brings you to a place of complete and utter dread, confusion.
Evan:
[11:59] And I love the use of, in horror movies, it seems like it's always the crucial way of using it, is the radio or the news broadcast. I think of it a lot in Night of the Living Dead as maybe one of the best uses of it in this too. And it does bring you to that slow, what's going on? There's upheaval in society. There's problems. And every single part of the newscast is something violent.
Oslowe:
[12:27] Yes.
Evan:
[12:28] Everything about it is violent.
Oslowe:
[12:30] Yep. It's a building collapsed.
Evan:
[12:32] There's an oil fire. Yes. And it's almost a metaphor for society.
Oslowe:
[12:39] Yep. Absolutely. And it's and what I love about it, too, is that other than the grave robbery, none of it has anything to do with the movie.
Evan:
[12:48] No.
Oslowe:
[12:49] Usually in a movie, if you have a newscast, if you hear the radio, what's what's going to be talked about is exactly what the characters need to hear or need to not hear. But in this case, it's just this mounting feeling of oppressive dread. Yes.
Evan:
[13:05] Yeah.
Oslowe:
[13:34] Cousin back in new jersey named crazy ralph uh who hangs around camp crystal lake and i mean like it's it's sort of you know i doubt he was the first harbinger in a horror film i'm sure there was something in the 60s and something in the 50s where you know elisha cook jr is like oh you shouldn't go down that road but like god damn like that guy drunk off beer at whatever time in the morning it is Like just it's so unsettling and that never it never stops that that though I could argue that Hooper and co-writer, co-director Kim Hankel really peppered the movie with a lot of humor. It's a very funny movie.
Evan:
[14:22] There is a lot of humor.
Oslowe:
[14:23] But that humor is perhaps not for all.
Evan:
[14:28] It's a little dark.
Oslowe:
[14:30] Just a bit.
Evan:
[14:34] Yeah, I noted the drunk person. And then you just kind of, everyone, every scene in the movie, the only time, well, no, really every scene in the movie, there's always, it seems like things are going okay. Okay like they first i mean we'll get to like some of the plot but when they first arrived to the house that they're that they're had been looking for they're like old grandfather's old house you think everything is kind of okay they're just like looking for the swimming hole everything is fine but then they have like the zoom in of all of like the daddy long legs on the wall there's always like a shot or something that or like the little bone hanging from the from the window so So like everything always has a little detail that you're like, what is going on? When is the like the shoe going to drop here?
Oslowe:
[15:20] It's it's that undercurrent of menace of violence. And I think that is part of what makes it so uniquely Texan. My mom's people are from Texas. They're actually from West Texas, like the Lubbock, Odessa area. So talk about scorpions and centipedes and spiders and snakes as Kirk tries to scare Pam when they're running to the waterhole that isn't there. Tanks. Those were called tanks. The sort of man-made watering holes so that cricks could fill them. And my granddaddy would stock tanks. Well, I just dumped some catfish and some trout in there. And we can go out and throw in a line. But don't go swimming, because there's water moccasins and there's snapping turtles. But, Grandpa, why would you put water moccasins and snapping turtles in the tank? They just find it, son.
Oslowe:
[16:18] Like, they're, I mean, Texas, like, you know, Texas is the butt of many, many jokes, and it probably deserves a lot of them. But, like, that is a state, that is a land that is so steeped in violence that it makes some of the other parts of this blood-stained country look positively peaceful. Peaceful like texas has always been a battlefront state and it's just i feel that the i mean yes the filmmakers were from texas so obviously they were going to make a texas movie and and you know they were all from around the austin area for the most part like these were not hillbillies these of austin and pretty quickly you're in empty country and the people that are there um kind of have their own rules you.
Evan:
[17:17] Know they always say everything's bigger in texas and you know the the things about it but i guess just very briefly for anyone who maybe hasn't seen this in a while the you you already mentioned the sort of the opening just very disturbing kind of shots of of bones and body parts. And we, the movie starts out with the van of the five friends. You know, it's a couple of them, our brother, our sibling, we have Franklin, you mentioned his sister, Sally, and then Pam and Jerry and Kirk. And, you know, Jerry being the one who's driving, he's got like the, you know, the curly hair and Kirk's dating Pam. And then, and Sally is dating Jerry. And so you could have had this, you know, this group, uh.
Evan:
[18:03] What I think is also part of this movie, and I'm curious how you think about it, because I don't know maybe what to make of it in the period of time, but Franklin is disabled. He's in a wheelchair within this van they're driving in. And it's clear the rest of the group does not like him or they treat him very poorly. They're annoyed. They have to deal with, you know, they have to, like you mentioned the scene where he has to take a piss and they put a couple of like wood planks so he can, you know, slide out of the van and he's going to take a piss and into a jar. And because he's unable to stand. And it just feels like throughout the movie, it's like a butt of jokes that he is causing them problems. And at the end, you feel like he might have been able... He was the only one that really saw any danger. He was worried.
Oslowe:
[18:53] Well, I disagree with that because Pam warns them from the get-go.
Evan:
[18:57] Okay.
Oslowe:
[18:58] Pam says, don't pull over for that guy. He looks weird. Pam is the one who says, don't go into the house, dumbass. They don't want your guitar they don't want to sell us gas that's true okay let's go no pam should have been listened to but franklin is a huge part of why i love the movie and because franklin in if if this movie had not been made in 19 released in 1974 made in 1973 if this movie had come 15 years later 20 years later 30 years later definitely franklin would have been the protagonist franklin would have been the final boy it would have been now you can cheer for the kid in the wheelchair who got away from the bad man but here's what i think is really important about franklin one he is there as sort of a source of annoyance but to me at least that annoyance feels very lived in and earned i don't feel like the others dislike franklin necessarily but that he is the butt of jokes because there's always someone in a group who is the one who's kind of easy to pick on. And it's very rare to have a group, and especially if you have siblings.
Oslowe:
[20:10] And, you know, Sally is ridiculously beautiful. Marilyn Burns was, you know, a gorgeous young woman. And, you know, she has the beatific smile. And then there's Franklin, who's, you know, know a little bit hyper fixated on things i mean my god when he info dumps about the the stockyards like i've i've never felt more kinship to a character in a movie than when franklin's sitting there going well you'd like head cheese if you didn't know what was in it and there's this room and this just it's just numeric and i'm like yep yep i've done that i've I've absolutely done that. I think any, uh, neurodiverse person can like genuinely relate to Franklin. And I'm not saying that that was intentional, though. There have always been theories that Toby, uh, was on some spectrum. Uh, but.
Oslowe:
[21:03] And that's that's inside, you know, baseball for me from knowing some people that had worked with him. But the general consensus was sort of like, yeah, Toby's Toby's he's he's not real good at people, but he's real good at what he's real good at. And so Franklin, to me, I don't feel like he's he's pathetic or annoying. Like, I think Paul Partain gives such an incredible performance because Franklin's frustration to me feels incredibly earned when he's in the first floor of grandpa's old place. And he's just, come and have a good time, Franklin.
Oslowe:
[21:44] And he throws a thousand raspberries. Dude, yeah, the poor guy, he's worried that his grandparents' grave has been dug up. They go out to the middle of nowhere. Here's this house where I guess they have
Oslowe:
[21:58] some fond memories of, and it's ruined. And like i don't know franklin feels very real to me and sally and the others frustration with him feels very real i think jerry bullies franklin a little but kirk yeah honestly like when kirk goes running down the hill to make sure franklin's okay you know like it's true like i i think that that franklin is treated as a part of the group and as a kid i didn't get that you know i franklin annoyed me because he's the whiny character but i have a theory and we talked about this with um body snatchers oh rob that veronica cartwright's character you know is often made the sort of butt of oh she's the one who screams she's the one who panics or like an alien veronica cartwright you know hudson and aliens like they're often there's a character for the audience to kind of go oh i I wish they'd shut up. That's because that's the audience.
Oslowe:
[22:56] Most people, if you put them in a situation, they're not going to be the stoic hero. They're going to be going, maybe, maybe, maybe we should just, maybe we should go. Maybe we should get the flashlight. Maybe we should, Sally, Sally, take me with you, Sally. Sally, no way. I'll go with you. You know, I mean, it's, it's human. And I think that's part of what I love about Texas Chainsaw is that they're all so very human, even the family. Slaughter family we.
Evan:
[23:26] Will certainly get to um the the meat of this movie if it were no pun intended but but yeah so this well.
Oslowe:
[23:35] It was a good pun.
Evan:
[23:36] It's it's quite actually amazing how quickly the movie you like so again we now have them leaving the graveyard they're in the van they're looking for this house and they see a hitchhiker and we definitely should talk about the hitchhiker scene and because it is it's wild so they and this is another reason why you could never you couldn't make this in 1992 no one would pick up a hitchhiker in 1992 no one will be hitchhiking in 1992 or very few people but in 1974 it's commonplace like oh we should pick him up and like you said pam's like no no we shouldn't do it but then they pick him up she and he looks He looks weird. And also right before this, there is a lot of insinuation being that it's Texas and people think of Texas, think of the meat industry. And I think that Franklin had been talking about how, they had used to kill cattle you know back in the in the day because they passed the slaughterhouse with the sledgehammer and then later they use like uh what is it like um what's the word for it the like it cannot have cattle prod but like uh it's a pneumatic.
Oslowe:
[24:40] It's a pneumatic stunner the the.
Evan:
[24:42] Stunner right just to their brain right and so that's kind of like a backdrop and i think we all should talk about how like the meat and the you know things play into this but they bring in the a hitchhiker. And immediately things are just weird. He talks about how his family had worked at the meat factory, the meat plant, but they don't work there anymore. And I think that's also a perfect glimpse into the time.
Oslowe:
[25:05] It's so important.
Evan:
[25:06] So important.
Oslowe:
[25:07] Yeah. My family's always been in meat.
Evan:
[25:10] So they worked in an industry for probably decades, the 30s, 40s, I mean, I don't know, decades. And now they're not working there. So what is he.
Oslowe:
[25:18] Maybe be.
Evan:
[25:19] Doing maybe we don't know what he was doing was he looking for a job was he trying to get his parents job was he looking you don't really have any insight into his character at this moment but we know from the time period that things were not good people were losing their jobs things were collapsing and we immediately see okay this guy is in trouble probably.
Oslowe:
[25:39] Well his clothes are really ragged he has a very visible birthmark on his face he also has some like open sores on his face you know his hair is greasy his nails are filthy i mean he is a weird burnout road guy and edwin o'neill's performance is is genuinely great like he's really unnerving and but like you point out when they're driving through the slaughter country we get those shots of the dehydrated cow with like ropes of foam coming out of its mouth and they're all just standing there of course famously the movie was shot in one of the worst heat waves in like texas history um which is another one of those things it that added to the the the atmosphere of the film so much the the constant glaze of sweat on everybody doesn't feel like jessica beal and eric balfour being all model pretty in the uh 2003 remake where they're glistening with like you know spray on sweat these actors look miserable and those animals look miserable and i mean toby hooper became a vegetarian for quite a long time after making this Like making this film, he always said, this is a movie about meat.
Oslowe:
[27:03] Like that's what the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is about. It is about meat. It is about industrialization. The jobs were leaving the countryside where they had been for generations.
Oslowe:
[27:17] And so what's left? And so when we first meet the hitchhiker in that amazing shot.
Oslowe:
[27:24] Long shot of the van slowly rolling as he runs alongside it and god daniel pearl cinematography is just unmatched it's it's so incredible and yeah i mean he's so off-putting he's so weird he doesn't quite answer questions but then he and franklin genuinely seem to bond a little bit they.
Evan:
[27:47] Do they seem to like have like a friendship but then he freaks him out but.
Oslowe:
[27:50] Then he scares the crap out of him because he wants to hug his knife and look blade huggers are people that are uncomfortable to be around it's it's a well-known uh to put up that knife man that's nice it's a nice knife put the knife up man i love kirk i love the way kirk tries to like defuse that situation like so earnestly um but yeah it's it's a very weird scene and But it also gives us, like, lays out the movie. He talks about people are losing their jobs. The new way is bad. The old way was better. Here's some photos of some that I killed. You know, my family's always been in meat. A whole family of Draculas. You know, we get this sense of that financial ruin.
Evan:
[28:40] It even insinuates in some way that the new technology that uses, like you said, the old way was better. Or it's funny because you often think about or capitalists would say, oh, well, new technology means that we can do our jobs easier and things are better and, you know, blah, blah, blah. But really, that just translates in the negative for the worker. It doesn't make their lives easier every time.
Oslowe:
[29:04] Always lay people off every time.
Evan:
[29:07] And so you have, like, we don't need to go through every piece of the hitchhiker moment, but he cuts his hand, he, you know, with Franklin's knife, and he then, you know, takes, he has, what I found like the most, almost very impressive part of that scene is when he then pulls out his camera, and he's taking the picture of Franklin, you know, on, you know, he just takes the picture of him and gives it to him, and then he wants money from him for it. And then he throws it inside of his little tinfoil and he puts a little like gunpowder on it and lights it on fire. And this is the point where Kirk is like, oh, shit, we we we fucked up. We should not have picked this dude up. Yeah, it's just I don't I mean, I don't know how fast the car was moving when they're when they're filming this. I'm assuming not particularly fast, you know, but it is an impressively filmed scene from my novice eyes.
Oslowe:
[29:59] Yeah, no, no, no. But you're absolutely right. Right. And with the weird ritual of his tinfoil and the gunpowder and the photo, there isn't a reason for it. It isn't explained like, this is where he uses his magic dark powers. No, no, no. And that's part of what makes the movie so unnerving, is there keep being these moments that aren't explained, they aren't hand-waved for the audience, our hands aren't being held. And I think that's part of why it's so effective. It's so unnerving is because why? Why does he do some of what he does? Well, he's just crazy. Well, that's okay. You can think that. But like, it's a movie. So there's choices. We are used to watching movies that tell a story. And most people, whether they're aware of it or not, we're conditioned to watch movies a certain way because movies have choices. Formulas. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fucks with those formulas, and it breaks expectations frequently, and ended up creating some that would influence the next 60 years of horror film.
Evan:
[31:14] Yeah the it does disrupt your maybe that's what maybe that's what i think i alluded to before where in every scene there's something that happens that you don't expect or a shot of something you don't expect and then they just basically toss him out of the moving they slow the car down they throw him out and his hands all bloody and he wipes his hand on the side which we then later maybe maybe not think as some kind of like
Evan:
[31:37] oh franklin then thinks it's like their car has been tagged? Did he do this on purpose? There's also things you don't ever find out. There's no resolution to almost any of the things in the movie. Nothing is explained, which makes it so great. They've kicked out the hitchhiker. They realize they need gas. I mentioned before that this is during a gas crisis. Gas is very expensive. It's hard to come by. They go to a gas station and they say, we haven't gotten our gas yet. Most people thinking nowadays have never heard those words uttered in their entire life but my mom tells me like in the early 70s you have to wait in line for gas.
Oslowe:
[32:13] Yep you.
Evan:
[32:13] Literally wait in line at a gas station.
Oslowe:
[32:16] I worked on a uh documentary film uh way back in the 90s uh i helped out in the edit room a little bit uh that was about that was about a lot of things but one i was going through the footage from the 70s oil crisis maybe this was one of of the things that tied this movie to me so so strongly but there was footage of armed guards at gas pumps in houston like men with shotguns standing around well we're just here to make sure everybody has the right numbers on their license uh because you know we're doing alternating.
Oslowe:
[32:51] Evens nods um just some people you know they just don't like to follow the rules and you're sort of going, what the fuck? This was almost my lifetime. And yeah, that is how bad the oil crisis was. That is how bad it was. And so I've seen at least one or heard a podcast where someone was like, I just didn't get it, man. They can't get gas to the gas station. What's up with that? And it's like, well, Do your research, kid. Like, it's really easy to do. But, you know, people want that stuff fed to them. And that ties into what you're saying, too, which is that this movie just you are supposed to know that a weird burnt out guy wearing a green fatigue shirt might possibly be a fucked in the head Vietnam veteran because that was part of the world. And you're supposed to just know that the gas station might not have gas and that i mean it's it's just yeah it is a photograph of its era.
Evan:
[33:55] For people who may not know her no there was an oil energy crisis in 1973 the reason for the petroleum shortage was essentially that opec which most people have heard of basically said that they they was an embargo against them for countries who supported Israel during the Fourth Arab-Israeli War in 1973, which ironically, you think of something now and you could draw, I mean, not a parallel to the movie, of course, but just these kinds of events causing things to happen. And it just bled into the movie. And you almost don't have the movie without the oil crisis and the oil because they can't get their gas. They, the, the person who's working there, you know, the sells them some barbecue, which they chowed down on, which looked quite delicious. And they decided to leave and they're looking for this house, which essentially was Franklin and Sally's old house from when they were, you know, younger, presumably their grandparents. They don't, they say their grandparents had gone there and they had sold it. It's not a hundred percent explained unless I'm maybe forgetting something.
Oslowe:
[35:02] It was their grandparents' place, yeah. And they stayed there as kids before the grandparents died.
Evan:
[35:15] I guess you could call this like the middle third of the movie, if you even want to say the movie has thirds, which I don't maybe even say that it does, like act two, kind of like they're getting to the house where things are going to eventually go off the rails. And I have a question that I'm going to ask about just your theories on this, too. So we have they arrive now at this this house. They're kind of looking at it. But Franklin can't really go inside because his wheelchair, the rest of the the rest of the friends are kind of peeking around. And Franklin is now kind of very suspicious about the blood. Meanwhile, he also has a nice big chunk of meat in his mouth. For people who have seen this movie, it's it's you think about it was you don't know what kind of piece of meat that was. But here's my question. Soon after this, they eventually all start to stumble upon the Sawyer's house, which is right behind. how long had this situation been going on and do you think that their family knew the sawyers.
Oslowe:
[36:17] It's a good question i don't know i have my doubts i mean you know it's it's how long had the the family been preying on people there's quite a few cars underneath those camouflaged nets out in the barn so also i do it's interesting how we refer to the family as the sawyers because that seems It seems to be based on Texas Chainsaw Part 2. They're never the Sawyers.
Evan:
[36:42] Right. That's true.
Oslowe:
[36:43] It's the Cook, the Hitchhiker, Leatherface Grandpa. But also, the name on the mailbox is W.E. Slaughter, which, subtle. But, like, I mean, that was and still is a family name in a lot of Texas. There's a lot of names like Slaughter and Savage, and these are surnames. Um, so, you know, were the slaughters, the Sawyers, the Hewitts, whichever incarnation you want them to be, you know, were they neighbors with Sally and Franklin's family? It's distinctly possible. Maybe back when the, you know, when they were kids, maybe the factories were still pretty normal. Maybe grandpa Sawyer was out there killing 50 bees in five minutes.
Evan:
[37:32] That's my that's my understanding is my belief is that then their jobs were more secure. And so it wasn't necessarily to to lean to this different lifestyle to say that. Yeah.
Oslowe:
[37:46] Yeah. I mean, it's always an interesting question. You know, are they themselves cannibals? Are they serving human meat at the barbecue shack?
Oslowe:
[37:58] Everybody has their own theory and nothing is is explicit in the film. You know, we know that that Leatherface is treating the youths like they are meat because that is the theme of the movie. But is he actually preparing them as food or are they just pieces of his brother's weird art? Like, I don't know. And I don't think we're supposed to know. And yeah, absolutely. Grandpa is vampiric. There's no question about that. And, you know, what is vampirism but a form of cannibalism? But I've always wondered, are we supposed to think that Franklin is eating people when he's chowing down on that piece of sausage? I don't know.
Evan:
[38:43] Yeah, I always, again, maybe I shouldn't assume, but I always believed it to be the case because it seemed like the way you're meant to later when you get to the whole house and you see kind of the person, I guess the father who works at the gas station, it seems like this is their sustenance, that they are.
Evan:
[39:04] Killing to survive which i think is a good maybe a segue into part of this movie and we don't need to get so slowly one by one people start the some of the kids who go the youth i say kids i guess they're not really kids but you know 25 30 year old it's not exactly clear are making their way to the sawyers and one by one they're just they're dropping you mentioned the the hook scene you know the uh um uh pam gets hooked on the meat hook in the you know leather faces you know butcher room for lack of a better word but the thing that i guess i was thinking of is with the what was i just talking about oh the um like oh right so they're turning to this way of life they've lost their jobs they're in the meat industry they're now living in this new way and i i guess the question is is this is sort of you see the sawyer or we'll guess quote unquote sawyer family you see the the the the slaughter family as this these different stand-ins for different pieces of maybe society at that time and i know we kind of skipped over a little bit but once most of them have now been killed and really the only person that's left is sally and she's now been captured you know for i guess the second time i'm jumping a little bit.
Evan:
[40:26] Of a head but she first gets captured or she's in the house running around she jumps out the window and then she goes back and then she's recaptured again after a run into the gas station but kind of just getting towards the end because i think there's i mean you feel free to go back to some of the parts that i'm skipping but i guess my my thought is um as i try and put my thoughts together is this family is meant to kind of be a stand-in for kind of like what we would call quote-unquote the nuclear family you know and i think one of the the themes that i've read about you can look at it mentioned briefly like even on the wikipedia page there's articles written about it is how each of the people within this family sort of fit into stereotypical roles and sort of late stage capitalist patriarchy and how it seems like they're almost breaking that mold being one One, that there's no female character within the family unit. There is sort of like the patriarch, the grand patriarch, who's the vampiric grandfather who's God knows how old. They bring downstairs and then they have Leatherface and the hitchhiker and then the third person. And you just, I don't know. I guess I'm kind of mumbling my way through this, but I don't know what you think about how...
Evan:
[41:42] We're meant to perceive this family in, you know, this time period where society is very heavily leaning on the idea of we need to be part of a nuclear family. The father goes out to the meat factory and he works nine to five, you know, the mother is at home, she's cooking dinner, you know, the boy and the girl go off to school and they come home and then they'll go off to of college and such as you know so on and so forth it's very much this uh need to fit into mold but the family.
Oslowe:
[42:14] Is completely.
Evan:
[42:15] Breaking those molds.
Oslowe:
[42:17] Yes the the family dynamic of the slaughters the sawyers you know what have you is really interesting um and is very sort of yeah it is the dark mirror it is the to the idea of the nuclear family and with leather face you know who is presented as being developmentally disabled um as well as physically disfigured um sort of filling the the homemaker role um the the hitchhiker is the rebellious youth You know, going out and doing his zany art, man. And the cook is, well, you know, he's just the cook. But he is the sort of front-facing.
Oslowe:
[43:05] And, you know, you mentioned that he's a paternal figure. And I know I always assumed he was Leatherface and the Hitchhiker's dad. But I guess they always intended for him to be their older brother. Um so you know where are their parents where's grandma was there a mom you know are there other siblings who knows and i i do think that the lack of feminine uh outside of leatherface energy in that house is probably a very reductive way in which toby hooper and kim hankle were looking at. We'll see how these boys, they just fell all apart. There's no woman there to keep them sane. And let's not pretend that these were mighty, perfect men. They're human beings. They're flawed. And they were men of their era. But I do think it's an interesting choice that there's no...
Oslowe:
[44:06] Slaughter matriarch there's no sawyer you know there's no little sister and it wasn't like that wasn't part of the horror landscape scary women was already part of the horror landscape and i'm not even talking about norma bates who doesn't really count because that was just norman's projection but um jack hill's film uh spider baby uh which predates the texas chancel massacre Massacre has a pair of sisters who are the devious, dangerous ones. And, you know, there was the British film, I want to say it was 1971.
Oslowe:
[44:41] Mummy, Nanny, Sunny and Girly.
Oslowe:
[44:46] It was some variation of those titles and is a movie about a strange family that lives in a isolated house in the middle of london um and keeps bringing in new friends to play with them until everyone's tired of the new friend and the new friend has to go be in the yard with the others and it's a really wonderful movie and is in many ways like the the british counterpart to texas chainsaw but so having a sort of fearsome woman was already part of the landscape um even in last house on the left one of the members of the gang is a gal and that was just a christ even in the sadist the film starring getting way off topic but like having a sort of cringing supplicating female presence amidst a group of killers or immoral people was part of the landscape and so by removing that and only having the masculine energy and leather faces energy which shifts i think is a really really interesting choice and obviously by casting gunner hansen all six foot four of him putting him in four inch heels you know big boy and like having that be the person who who brings the feminine energy again was a choice it was a choice of sort of saying look at how wrong this family is and And, you know, to our modern, your, my.
Oslowe:
[46:16] At least, you know, modern, very progressive eyes.
Oslowe:
[46:19] Like it's a little, it's a little uncomfortable to sort of be, you know, look at this weirdo, big guy who kind of dresses like a girl, but also is wearing a suit and a tie, you know, for the whole movie. And it's, it's, yeah.
Evan:
[46:34] The lines are very blurred.
Oslowe:
[46:36] It again, yes, it is very blurry. Like who does what? And again, you think that the cook has some kind of authority. When he first interacts with the hitchhiker and he starts whooping him with the broom handle and, you know, I told you not to go to that guy. Damn graveyard, you nab-haired idiot. They didn't catch me. And the supplicating, the cringing. And then he starts bellowing about, look what your brother did to the door. Don't he have any pride in his home? Which is such a wonderful line. But so it feels like, uh-oh, dad's home and dad's pissed, right? And then the cook takes it out on Leatherface. And Leatherface, who is massive, is like, ooh, ooh. But as soon as they sit down at the dinner table, it becomes clear that the cook really doesn't control these other guys because the hitchhiker just, you know, you don't even have the guts for this. You're just a cook. Me and Leatherface do all the work. You're just the cook. So he is sort of feminizing the cook. He is telling him, like, your place is in the kitchen. You don't do the man's job that me and Leatherface do. You are the cook. hook. So it ties into that, you know, that sort of the gender fluidity of the family.
Evan:
[47:52] Well, the other thing I was thinking about, there's a lot of also things written and, you know.
Evan:
[47:59] Around Leatherface and the, you know, queer identity, as you mentioned, when they sit down for that dinner scene, not only is he wearing, like you said, the suit under his apron, but then he has the makeup on the leather face uh mask and i i think about i i wrote some kind of notes is you know normally in any you know within our capitalist system for it to function you have to have some kind of underclass someone who's going there's always an underclass to me and typically it's under you know racial lines but i think as society was progressing into the 70s after again the you know civil rights and things the people i think that queer people then became one of the two objects of being demeaned, because they don't fit into that normal nuclear system of man, woman, child. And so having it be – I don't necessarily think that these are choices that Hooper was making to make any kind of statement related to this, But I think it's impossible to look at it and say, these are things – like, you almost – like you said, he's – Leatherface was cowering to the cook, you know, yelling at him in the same way that, you know, the father would yell at the wife because she, you know, made the mashed potatoes too lumpy or something stupid. And so it's very much like they're demeaning him for being –, you know maybe queer coded but in some.
Oslowe:
[49:24] Ways it's.
Evan:
[49:25] Just the person who in the in the nuclear family would get you know.
Oslowe:
[49:29] Well are you saying that there's a parallel between leatherface and franklin because each of them are the whipping boy of their family unit certainly i would definitely say they're both clearly disabled i don't think this is an accident whether hankle and hooper were consciously aware of this that parallel is really important i think because yeah like there's always a whipping boy there's always the person who sort of gets the the shit trickled down on them you know the black sheep whatever you want to call it and the way leatherface is treated means that he is sometimes that person franklin is always that person and i mean honestly with with one of the the things that the slaughters that the family has going for him is that they all take turns being ridiculed you know none of them has the upper hand for long the only person who is constantly treated with reverence is grandpa who is incapable of doing anything other than his little happy baby dance when he's sucking on sally's finger the happy baby dance is, such a beautiful weird it's every time i see that.
Evan:
[50:37] Scene it makes me like do a cringe even.
Oslowe:
[50:40] Though i know it's coming yep oh yeah no i mean the movie is full of cringes even though i know it's coming every time leatherface fills that door frame in front of kirk i feel this thrill like shoot up my spine yeah and and it's almost you know i i'm always like one step ahead because i'm like oh now's the swing and now's the part where he's gonna drum his heels on that little ramp and And like Tobey Hooper said in one of the documentaries I watched, it was no accident that we had that, little warehouse door and it was no accident that we had the little ramp like the way the animals are led into the shoot like i mean again toby hooper always said this is a movie about meat like for him it was about the way that the meat is treated and so what he did is he just juxtaposed the youths with cattle and yeah these are sadists these people who are doing this why are they doing this and and one of sally's first lines is people shouldn't kill animals for food like that well.
Evan:
[51:49] You said you saying you know that why did you i'm not saying you're calling them sadists but you know you might someone might see this and say oh they're sadists they're doing you look at their house it's filled with bones everything seems to be like meticulously,
Evan:
[52:02] crafted in some weird way obviously.
Oslowe:
[52:04] Whether it's.
Evan:
[52:05] Leather faced or whether hitchhiker whoever Whoever built this, constructed this house. But really, I think that they're not doing this out of a sadist thing. I mean, maybe they have a desire to kill. But because they lost their jobs, they're literally forced to kill something to survive. And that's why I think you look at, you might say, we can either go to socialism or barbarism. And in this movie, they've gone to barbarism.
Oslowe:
[52:29] They've gone full barbarian. Yeah.
Evan:
[52:31] And so that's just the life that they've created. I mean, maybe the conditions for them was already, I mean, maybe they were already conditioned to go that way. You know, they had inklings of violent tendencies. I don't know. We don't know much about the insides of the character necessarily, but they were driven to this by society, but not in the, you know, oh, they watched too many scary movies or they played video games or these nonsense.
Oslowe:
[52:59] It was the rap music.
Evan:
[53:00] Yeah, the circumstances of society created and drove them to maybe cannibalism, maybe selling of human meat, but certainly a lot of murder.
Oslowe:
[53:12] Definitely some murders. It is interesting, yeah, because why do they do it is never fully explained. But if you look at it in the context of when it's taking place and where it's taking place, yes, they are driven to this. This is the family in extremis. Now, I do think that both Leatherface and the Hitchhiker show an artistry, and you could probably make an argument for the sort of queerness of art. We know that the Hitchhiker is the one who's done the weird graveyard art because of the cook yelling at him, I told you not to go messing around in them graveyards. So we know that the weird sculpture, which then became one of the shots from Chainsaw Man, that opening corpse on the pedestal. My youngest showed me this anime Chainsaw Man and pointed out how that's a shot from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I was like, oh my God, it is. And he's like, yeah, that's like your favorite movie. And I'm like, yeah, the cat is on the table with the phone right now. So if you suddenly see my lap, it's because Ray is curious as to what I'm doing right now. Do you want to be on camera, buddy? Do you want to be a little movie star? Yeah. Yeah.
Evan:
[54:28] I always assume later, maybe it's as watching it, having seen it many times, is at the very opening, kind of the cold open, you kind of hear what sounds kind of like a camera clicking. And I just assume that it was the hitchhiker because he has the camera.
Oslowe:
[54:43] The whine of the Kodiak. Yeah.
Evan:
[54:46] So, I mean, I don't know if it was, it wasn't explicit. And you were like, he has a little pouch with his, you know, the picture. I'm sure he has photographic evidence of his artistic, you know.
Oslowe:
[54:58] Well, and he shows some photographs that he carries in his posses.
Evan:
[55:02] Right, of the meat factory, right?
Oslowe:
[55:04] Of the meat factory. And he says, I was the killer. And you go, well, what meat is he showing them? We only get a vague glimpse of them. We don't really see. And of course, you know, when when Sally has that moment of respite in the barbecue shack, because you've just had five, six minutes of her running through the mesquite thickets with the sound of the chainsaw constant, you know, running into the house, jumping out the window, more chainsaw chasing.
Oslowe:
[55:31] Like just the the oral cacophony of the chainsaw sound is so overwhelming by that point of the movie that when she goes into the barbecue shop and it's suddenly quiet, quiet except for her sobs it's actually peaceful i mean she's sobbing still it's still everything is very wrong but it's like oh thank god at least there's not that that noise but when when the cook goes to get the car and she's suddenly staring at the smoker and at the cuts of meat that are hanging in the smoker i don't know as a kid how many times did i rewind that to try and figure out are those human parts and it's very clearly pig it's very clearly there's there's like a you know a loin and a haunch and a pig's head and sausages and you're like okay but at the same time does it matter because again it's how the kids the youths are treated like their meat does it matter if they're going to be eaten or if they're just going to be dismembered and turned into the hitchhiker's art i don't think it matters and because while i understand where you're coming from about you know they're driven by circumstances to this and there are constant lines that that support your hypothesis i mean in the scene we're talking about right now when the the chef the cook goes and gets the car and he starts to drive off with her then he stops so he has to go turn off the lights and lock up because the price of the electric bill can drive a man out of business These days.
Oslowe:
[56:59] So, like, yeah, this is clearly a failing economic world.
Oslowe:
[57:05] They need they are aware of their circumstances and their circumstances are not great. So, like, I don't think you're wrong.
Oslowe:
[57:15] Also think that the madness the the macabre nature of the family feels like it is more than just a response to our jobs went to mexico and we're real bummed about watergate you know i mean yeah yeah certainly like he is wearing human faces he has three different masks for different moments And now, to go back to the disabled aspect, and Leatherface is clearly disabled, Franklin is disabled, the hitchhiker, you could argue, is disabled, whether it's PTSD from trauma.
Oslowe:
[57:55] Whether, I mean, his port wine birthmark is arguably a disability. It is something that sets him apart. And what I need to remember, or what I always try to remind people when I talk about this movie, is that until the early 1970s, a lot of America still had ugly laws. And so when you were talking about there always needs to be an underclass for capitalism to work, and that the queer women, people of color, you know, the marginalized are the underclass to varying degrees, the disabled. And when is that more evident than right fucking now during this ongoing multi-pronged pandemic that the disabled are an underclass and they are thrown to the side, they are forgotten.
Oslowe:
[58:39] They are treated as an inconvenience, as an annoyance, the way that Franklin is by his family unit in the movie. And so, you know, with ugly laws, your Rondo Hattons of the world weren't supposed to just walk down the street. Someone with a port wine, you know, a birthmark on their face would be something of a pariah in a small town in central or west or eastern Texas. And so a big, lumbering, gentle person, maybe not so gentle, who speaks by going, you know, like, that is not someone who can go into town and buy a can of spam. That is not someone who can go into town and get a bag of rolls.
Oslowe:
[59:25] You know, that is like Leatherface, you know.
Oslowe:
[59:28] And maybe it's the systemic nature of, you know, if Grandpa had a job, but Leatherface, we know he had a job at the slaughterhouse. Or we assume Leatherface did, because Hitchhiker never says Leatherface worked at the slaughterhouse. He says, my brother worked at the slaughterhouse. He says, my brother makes real good head cheese.
Evan:
[59:51] Could have been the cook, if we don't know.
Oslowe:
[59:53] But then he accuses the cook of, you're just the cook. so you know we.
Evan:
[59:56] Know that.
Oslowe:
[59:57] Grandpa worked at the slaughterhouse we know that his brother worked at the slaughterhouse and that maybe he did.
Evan:
[1:00:02] Yeah well the slaughterhouse seems like a place you could get away with being different if you were good at the job you know yeah and so and just for anyone who doesn't know the technical i think ironically the last ugly law sort of violation, you know under that term was actually the year this movie was released in 1974 was it really So, well, that last can rest for it. But yes, it's basically, for anyone who doesn't know, it's kind of deemed the ugly law, but basically anyone who was diseased or unsightly was basically not allowed to be in public, especially if you were a panhandler in San Francisco, I feel like is a big place that this was a no-no.
Oslowe:
[1:00:45] It was a way, as always, to criminalize people who can't exist so that they can't exist in our society and so that they will be an underclass, so that they can be imprisoned, so that they can be removed from society. And it's horrifying. And I can't help but wonder, you know, did Toby Hooper or Kim Henkel have someone in their lives or have seen something? Was there some, you know, event or moment? Gunnar Hansen talked about doing research for the role and going to a, um, school slash home for developmentally disabled adults um edwin o'neill talks about getting the mannerisms for the hitchhiker from his nephew who had some sort of disorder you know and and then i again it's that thing where it's like could this have been made at any other time and i think the answer is always no it's it's wow jerry really did look like he was going to the uh the disco party in that shirt sorry i've got the movie on on on the tv like muted while we're talking just because it's you know why not have it be five times in four days that i've i've had it on oh man well i just i love this movie i i always get something new from it every time every time well.
Evan:
[1:02:05] I'm curious i think we i don't remember this might have been before we sort of i guess kicked off the episode and maybe it's a i don't want to say it's a place to end but you know talking about maybe not so much the exact details of the movie but i think we were saying or i was saying before as you know you look a lot of um other franchises friday the 13th halloween they're able to kind of go on as decades go on i mean you could question the quality you know of some of these franchises later on i think.
Oslowe:
[1:02:33] And you should yeah.
Evan:
[1:02:35] Right so you know like there's certain certain Certain franchises that may have dropped more than others. But you say before offline, we're saying how you're not maybe a fan of some of the later Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. Do you think that they're overall worse, in quotation marks, than sort of the back end and remakes of other franchises? And if so, is it because this movie is so trapped in the moment that all of the things that have to have been in place in society that it just, you mentioned, uh, um, Beale, Jessica Beale being in the remake in the two thousands. She just doesn't strike me as, I don't know. It doesn't have that grit. That movie doesn't have the same feel. It doesn't feel creepy. It doesn't get under my skin.
Oslowe:
[1:03:24] In the fandom for the 2003 remake which was directed by Marcus Nispel have a lot of fans especially people who are a little bit younger than me but not always you know or a lot younger than me now you, What they seem to love about it and what I constantly hear is, oh, it's so gritty and it's so brutal. Okay, fine. So if you want brutality, I mean, you know, great. Then that's a good movie for you.
Oslowe:
[1:03:49] And, you know, R.A. Milnehoff or whoever played Leatherface in that is big and scary and is more reminiscent of, you know, late-stage Jason Voorhees to me than the original Leatherface.
Oslowe:
[1:04:03] Leatherface is defending his home. Home like leatherface is startled and scared and where are these kids coming from the best scene in the movie for me is after leatherface has whacked jerry on the head and he starts looking he literally looks under the table like where the fuck did this guy just come from i just killed two kids where did this guy come from and he goes and he looks out the curtain and he's fretting he's fretting like oh.
Oslowe:
[1:04:31] Oh because where are these people coming from and like he's he's scared multiple times in the movie when leather face chases sally into the house the first time and she's run upstairs finds grandpa and whatever the other corpse in the chair is you know runs back down the stairs right as leather face comes in and he screams when she comes down the stairs not i've got you now no he screams like oh my god like he is timid another one he is a big he's a a big baby yeah another one like poor leather face he's just trying to like you know put dinner on the table for his asshole brothers and there's kids everywhere and he has to keep killing them he has to keep cleaning up the mess annika asked me today when we finished watching it for the however many of time you know is he mad because she got away or is he like relieved because it's over you know like is he mad or is he doing his little dance like oh thank god that's over I don't know and I'm probably misrepresenting what she asked but like.
Oslowe:
[1:05:41] It's I mean, I will say this detached from all like political, you know, science and and progressive vision. The last five minutes of that movie are just flawless from the time she goes out that window, the second window to the last shot of Leatherface dancing in the rising sun. That is probably my favorite sequence of film ever made. When when when the hitchhiker gets hit by the truck and then we have this wonderful you know a savior this this this no lines black gentleman driving the and i will point out that the black mariah truck that is a cattle hauling truck that is for taking meat that is what all the little cages on the back of that truck are for so again this is a film about meat and you know his his his saving of Sally tossing the monkey wrench to hit leather face in the, in the face. I mean, which is such a slapstick like Mark's brother's moment.
Oslowe:
[1:06:48] He throws a wrench and it hits him in the face with a clonk, but then it goes from this Mark's brother's moment into this incredible stomach churning moment of leather faces, blade hitting his own thigh. That part's so, and even, even with the bad, like static, I can see your face like, just like, ah, ah, According to Gunnar Hansen, what they did is they wrapped his leg in a steel sheet and then attached a stake and a blood bag. They said, okay, someone's going to bring the blade down and just cut through it. He said, no, I'm going to do it. If someone's going to put a working chainsaw on my leg, it's going to be me.
Oslowe:
[1:07:27] They tried it with the teeth removed because, of course, whenever he's running around revving it, there's no teeth on it, just like at the theme parks. It wouldn't go through the pants. So they had to put the chain on. And so when he cuts in and there's the spurt and he lets out that yell, Gunner says he was yelling because he thought he cut himself because the chain hit the steel and then heated it because you know how fast a chainsaw goes.
Evan:
[1:07:55] Yeah.
Oslowe:
[1:07:55] So it heated the steel that was on his leg and he thought he just cut into himself. So that scream that's yeah, he had a, he had a minor burn, but that scream was a real scream of pain and fear wow and that is an important thing to bring up with this movie because good god people should not have to suffer like that to make a goddamn movie like the amount of suffering on that set is legendary and it's it's weird for me because, as i think you're aware i know a lot of people that i interact with on the social medias are aware. I am not a big fan of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. I don't particularly like it as a movie, and I have real issues with him as a filmmaker. I think that he exploited his position of power and hid behind this like, well, I'm a genius, and so I'm allowed to treat everyone like shit. And I despise directors like that. And now, by all accounts, Toby did not treat people like he He was a genius. But when Jim Saito, who played the cook, is talking about how, well, they gave me this broom handle to hit Marilyn with, and she was such a sweetheart, but it was a real broom handle.
Oslowe:
[1:09:10] Because if we used a rubber one, it looked fake. And I was so uncomfortable hitting her. And she just said, just hit me for real. It'll look better. And then Marilyn Chambers is being, or Burns, wrong Marilyn, is being interviewed and is asked about it. And she mentions, oh, yeah, I actually had a black eye, you know, from that. And we had to, I had to make sure I matched it. Some days I'd have to use makeup to cover the black eye because it was before the scene where he beats me. And I'm thinking, like, that's that's not how you're supposed to make a movie. That's not OK.
Oslowe:
[1:09:46] Dot Pearl, Dorothy Pearl, who did a lot of the makeup and also a lot of the like help with the set dressings. Everybody did everything on this movie. um dorothy shot formaldehyde into her own leg accidentally while trying to make one of the dead animals less fragrant because all of the dead animals they used in the house were mostly actual roadkill and in some cases animals that they'd gotten from a local veterinary hospital animals that had been euthanized yeah so like this was this was guerrilla filmmaking filmmaking. And so on the one hand, you can say, well, these were amateurs. This was guerrilla filmmaking. And just by saying it's guerrilla filmmaking, we know what that means. We know that that means that they're going to be using what they can. And they have to work fast and cheap and get it done as quickly as possible and with as little muss and fuss as possible.
Oslowe:
[1:10:45] Dear God, she shot formaldehyde into her own leg. You know, Marilyn's limping in the last scene because she really hurt her ankle when she hit the ground when they got the shot of her. She didn't get to go through the sugar glass. The stunt girl did. But like she was pissed about that. But like she did hurt her ankle. You know, Paul Partain talking about falling off the wheelchair. And, you know, so like everybody got injured on that on that shoot. And that's not okay so why don't i hold this movie or for that matter the evil dead to the same standards that i hold the shining and i i feel like on some level i'm i'm sort of giving them a pass because well these are basically young people who are making something out of passion versus a big studio movie being made by a genius see also kill bill and quentin tarantino nearly killing uma thurman like just like no this is not acceptable to me when when you hear about like stewart gordon you know asking jeffrey combs do you mind standing in this bloody water for the next two hours you know when they're making one of their first movies you sort of go well yeah But when you hear about, you know, Michael Bay doing something, you go, nah, nah, no.
Evan:
[1:12:05] There's a difference between like love and abuse in some way.
Oslowe:
[1:12:10] That's a fine line, isn't it?
Evan:
[1:12:12] Yeah. So when you were talking, I was also thinking of like the stories on like William Freakin and, you know, the exorcist, all the people who got seriously injured on that. I mean, it's the French connection. Yeah.
Oslowe:
[1:12:26] Someone should have been put in jail for the car chase in the French Connection. Is it a legitimately great car chase? Absolutely.
Evan:
[1:12:33] But they did not have cop cooperation.
Oslowe:
[1:12:35] They did not have any closures. Those stunt drivers were putting civilians at risk. And that is deeply fucked up and deeply uncool. And, you know, I think Alec Baldwin should see jail time, personally. You know, like, I feel very strongly that safety is so important on a movie set. And yet with these early films, these independent, grungy, guerrilla films, I'm always like, well, you know, I mean, Sam Raimi hitting Bruce Campbell with the stick to get a good look of pain on his face. I mean, they were friends. And, you know, I'm uncomfortable with my own wishy-washiness on that. I don't feel like I'm being morally consistent. I feel like I'm having some little ethical wiggle-waggle here, and I'd rather not. I can't help it like i still love this damn movie and i still love the evil dead you know if you ever want to talk about the evil dead and uh classism uh feminism in the evil dead you know let me know i'm your guy oh yeah coming.
Evan:
[1:13:47] I don't know in the future halloween is so far away well maybe for halloween.
Oslowe:
[1:13:53] Yes coming in 2025 in 2025 evan and oz talk about the evil dead now but to get back to to to the question you were you were sort of asking about the the remakes the the requels the reboots the sidequels and like i think it's fine that some people love the the 2003 the jessica biel one um i think it works but i also think that it is like an edgelord horror film it's sort of a look at how grungy this is yeah and i'm i'm i don't have the energy for that really most of the time like there's always exceptions but for the most part and here's the thing that for me is why the original can't be beat because platinum dooms made that jessica biel version that is a glossy cw movie you know like with beautiful people and i guarantee you they had nice trailers and i guarantee you no one got actually hurt making that unless.
Oslowe:
[1:14:55] It it was the normal bumps and bruises you get of making a movie where like yeah sometimes people do get a bruise doing an action sequence you know but like this this it's not the same it's not the same and that rawness is part of what makes the original film feel like you're watching a documentary it's really unsettling the violence in the texas chainsaw massacre and that documentary
Oslowe:
[1:15:21] commentary and that handheld camera feel. It's a huge part of it.
Evan:
[1:15:24] Yeah, you really can't separate those things. And, you know, I'm not, Not to disparage anyone who likes these other, you know, remakes. I mean, some of the later Friday the 13th are fun movies. I think we were talking about this recently. That's completely aside.
Oslowe:
[1:15:40] I love them all.
Evan:
[1:15:41] But this movie in itself, as we've both said countless times, exists in 1974 and only can exist in 1974. You can make a movie with these characters at some other time, but it's not telling the story of meat and people being treated as meat, women being treated as meat, which we didn't even write. You go into that, you could talk about the feminism. Oh my God, yes. You could talk about the fact that there's no outlet for sexual desires that's visible within this family because there's no women. In i mean that's you could we could have spent another hour easily talking about this movie and maybe we will uh well maybe not today but you know in the future certainly we could uh you know i don't know i haven't seen the sequel very many times i think only once um i.
Oslowe:
[1:16:27] Love i love texas chainsaw 2 and i have a lot to say about texas chainsaw 2 and sexual politics because.
Evan:
[1:16:36] Maybe we'll save that for that one yeah.
Oslowe:
[1:16:38] Like let's let's let's do that And we'll bring in someone else. And I think because, yeah, the sequel, because it has so much of the same creative team, I think it actually is like a very important movie to talk about. But, you know, that came out in, I think, 1986. So it wasn't just 10 years later. It was a little bit more than that. And so now you actually have the Reagan-era movie about that family versus the Nixon-era movie about that family. And I think that that's very important.
Evan:
[1:17:12] But I mean, I know we didn't, we did, you briefly talked about the ending. You know, it's one of those, like, somewhat satisfying, has a final girl, but for the most part, the family is completely... Unscathed and obviously because there is a sequel we you know i mean i guess we don't know this at the time but you leave the theater or you leave watching it for the very first time just thinking like what happens this.
Oslowe:
[1:17:36] Family exists.
Evan:
[1:17:37] In this like time capsule um but i don't know maybe maybe any of your last kind of impressions of of the ending and kind of how that goes.
Oslowe:
[1:17:46] That last shot or the the last shots the last we see of sally is of her coming completely apart you know is she sobbing is she laughing is she crying is she screaming yes yes she is um and marilyn's performance is.
Oslowe:
[1:18:05] Unbelievable and according to marilyn she thought she was done and then they called her and said we didn't get the shot we need you to come back tomorrow and so when she came back to do it again Again, she says that's why she's so hysterical is because she couldn't believe it wasn't over yet, which really helps the moment. It's an amazing, indelible moment. It is stamped into the minds of anyone who's ever seen it. But then Leatherface dancing in the sunrise with his saw. And I remember my older cousin telling me, oh, yeah, you know, that's that's a real story that really happened. And I'm like, no, it didn't.
Oslowe:
[1:18:45] Oh, no, it really happened. You know, they never caught him. And when I did a podcast, Stories to Dismember, which is three Texans who are the hosts, and I was their special guest. And one of them, Aaron's about my age, a little bit younger, said, oh, yeah, man, you know, growing up, like all my older brothers, my uncles, yeah, you don't want to go out into the country too far because, you know, they never caught Leatherface. He's still out there. And like, it's not based on a true story that that is that was Toby Hooper's giant middle fingers to the fact that he didn't trust the establishment. He didn't trust the media. The media is lying to us. They're telling us how we're winning this war in Vietnam. You know, the media is lying to us. And so he wanted to say the following is a true story, because that was important to him to sort of have this moment. And it's since been riffed on. I mean, even the Coen brothers have done their little...
Evan:
[1:19:44] Just going to say Fargo.
Oslowe:
[1:19:45] Yeah, Fargo. The following is based on a true story. But it isn't. But it is.
Evan:
[1:19:49] He apparently told the cast that, that it was based on a true story. And then midway through shooting, he's like, actually, that was a lie. And some of them were surprised, which is great.
Oslowe:
[1:20:00] It is wonderful. And it's just...
Oslowe:
[1:20:03] It's leather face sinks into our memories because there is no clean resolution yeah the hitchhiker gets run over by the truck and thank god because like his his chasing after sally with the straight razor just giving her little nicks and cuts is so unnerving but but leather face is still out there and that last memory is burned in our brains he's still out there and he's presumably happy.
Evan:
[1:20:29] In some way like he's gleeful it's.
Oslowe:
[1:20:32] Like a gleeful that's why you go you went you said earlier it feels gleeful.
Evan:
[1:20:35] To me like a.
Oslowe:
[1:20:36] Yeah unnerving glee it's it's really a wild wild image and again daniel pearl cinematography cannot be trifled with because the movie is so gorgeous they shot it on 16 millimeter on a film stock that they were a kodachrome film stock that they were able to get for cheap, but it required more light than all of the other 16 millimeter film that was available. And so that is part of the reason why so much of it is set in the daytime.
Oslowe:
[1:21:08] And again, so without having these budgetary needs, would the movie work as well as it does? Because as it is, it is usually included in folk horror. When we talk about American versions of folk horror, Texas Chainsaw always gets brought up because it's that daylight horror. It's that it's that rural reality, albeit heightened. And it's just I genuinely think that it is an elegy for its time.
Oslowe:
[1:21:37] And it's just such an incredible piece of filmmaking. Filmmaking and you know i you honestly you could you could get another guest someone who actually is from a rural place to like talk about the sort of town versus country politics of it the aspects of you know oh man everybody out there it's all hills have eyes trailer park trash and like you know that rob zombie aesthetic which like let's be honest rob zombie borrowed almost every aesthetic he's ever used from toby hooper i.
Evan:
[1:22:08] Was gonna say the house of a thousand corpses is basically like his homage to this movie, right?
Oslowe:
[1:22:13] Well, it's his homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the aesthetic of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II.
Evan:
[1:22:20] Okay.
Oslowe:
[1:22:21] It's got the Christmas lights and goofy props of TCM II. You know, Bill Moseley even, you know, with his even more unhinged performance is more comedic than what Edwin O'Neill does in the original film. But I think that's part of why Toby made Texas Chainsaw 2 the way he did, is because he was sad, apparently, that people didn't think the first movie was funny. All the reviews focused on the scary, and he was like, oh, dang, I thought there were some real good jokes in there.
Evan:
[1:22:56] Yeah. I mean, like you said at the very beginning, it's funny enough. I mean, I always like horror movies where there's enough subtle humor throughout that you're not just like, oh, now I'm kind of, it's too serious. curious um so.
Oslowe:
[1:23:14] Oh yeah because that that's just it's it's overwhelming you know it's it's like you can't just oh let's just pop on martyrs that'll be fun you know i mean you you need to have moments of levity i think to to give the audience a chance to breathe yeah.
Evan:
[1:23:30] Yeah so i know any any final thoughts you have on the i know we've talked about a lot of things again like i said we could you you could have.
Oslowe:
[1:23:38] More themes we didn't touch there.
Evan:
[1:23:40] Are things like you said you could talk about the rural and all these other pieces but any any last uh or even a fact about the movie anything anything
Evan:
[1:23:48] you got and then we can can call.
Oslowe:
[1:23:50] It i think it's a movie that anyone who loves horror needs to watch at least once and i don't believe in like if you call yourself a horror fan you need to watch such and such because no that's that's bullshit and that's gatekeeping but if you can handle like that 70s aesthetic and it's such a rewarding movie to watch um just for the visual beauty alone for the ominous dread but then also for these incredible performances these very like realistic performances of the youths countered by these bizarre you know uh i i kept thinking the most recent time i saw it about lq jones and struther martin as the bounty hunters in um the wild bunch look tc this one's got gold teeth he's got gold teeth in there well give me your knife i'll get it and you're just sort of going like like but they could have been part of this family and that would have fit you know think of some of those jack-o'-lantern or ernest Dean Stanton as the cook, Warren Oates as the hitchhiker, you know, Ernest Borgnine as Leatherface. Like, if this had been a big movie of that era, it still would have worked. It would have been totally different.
Oslowe:
[1:25:15] But those characters and those performances, I just think it's timeless for me, while being very much of its time.
Oslowe:
[1:25:23] And I always say that, for me, there's three movies that came out in a couple of years that I feel like are an unconnected but...
Oslowe:
[1:25:32] Spiritually on the same page and it's let's scare jessica to death from 1971 the texas chainsaw masker from 1974 and messiah of evil from 1973 and for me these three movies are the northeast texas and the west coast and they are sort of this is america's malaise this is this is the american nightmare and these three movies to me are just sort of a perfect triple feature of the dream was dead you know the manson shit had happened altamont had happened kennedy was assassinated you know watergate was ongoing like all of this stuff bubbled over and created this wonderful to wonderful i say that like as someone who was not alive you know maybe it's easier for us to look at this and sort of say, wow, yeah, they were really making a statement. But like, and maybe someday we'll be able to talk about how the Terrifier movies were perfect for the post-Trump years or something. I hope not, because I don't want to have to watch those again.
Evan:
[1:26:43] But...
Oslowe:
[1:26:45] Horror often is the mirror to what's going on in our society at the time that it is made. And I want more people to look at it that way, not just as entertainment, not just as titillation or gross out, but as what is this saying to us about the human condition, about the state of the world? Because I think that that's where film is my favorite art form.
Evan:
[1:27:10] I think that's perfectly said. And I agree. I think it's a movie that even if you're not a horror is your favorite genre, if you just like good filmmaking, and maybe aren't too squeamish, you're willing to, you know, muscle through a couple kind of disturbing things. Again, not a bloody movie, but a very disturbing movie. movie you should you should definitely watch this this and um yeah but oslo it's been wonderful to have you on to talk about i think it's your favorite movie is it your favorite movie am i absolutely well your favorite movie this.
Oslowe:
[1:27:44] Is it's in my top three it's this and and uh moonstruck uh are like my top two movies.
Evan:
[1:27:51] Always i hate i hate saying favorite because i'm like all right there's like a five i know i know it's it's a it's a quantify.
Oslowe:
[1:27:57] This for me favorite watch.
Evan:
[1:27:59] Yes Yes, I need exactly the percentage of whatever stars, you know. Five and a half stars.
Oslowe:
[1:28:07] No notes.
Evan:
[1:28:08] Yes, but yeah. But also, thank you again for coming on, and it's always been a pleasure to have you.
Oslowe:
[1:28:14] Thanks for having me, bud. Always fun to be here.
Evan:
[1:28:17] Absolutely. And you can, we'll definitely do, I think, in the future, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, because I don't think I've seen it in God knows how long, But we'll talk about that. And, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about other horror movies during the, you know, unfortunately, I've typecast you, Oslo, into the horror into the horror episode genre of Left of the Projector.
Oslowe:
[1:28:43] But I am happy to be your horror guy. I'm honored to be your horror guy.
Evan:
[1:28:47] Of course. And you can follow the show, you know, wherever you get your podcast left to the projector dot com. And we'll catch you next time.
