the texas chainsaw massacre (1972)

[pattycakes_]

Hashtag very important

 

[mvuent]

(1972)

View attachment 22319

was wondering if anyone would catch that. it's a reference to this thread. the relation being, again, this sense of wrongness in the air you get everywhere in the movie - it takes place a year after this identified turning point. and maybe also w/ post industrial conditions negatively affecting decent hardworking real americans like the movie's antagonists. (the new method of killing livestock putting them out of a job.)

 

[Corpsey]

 

[version]

was wondering if anyone would catch that. it's a reference to this thread. the relation being, again, this sense of wrongness in the air you get everywhere in the movie - it takes place a year after this identified turning point. and maybe also w/ post industrial conditions negatively affecting decent hardworking real americans like the movie's antagonists. (the new method of killing livestock putting them out of a job.)

Thought it might have been a reference to this one.

Borges - Labyrinths (1641)

it's dissensus canon. dannyl and i are currently reading it. so, why not have a thread for close reading and general discussion. i really want to attentively read something for once.

www.dissensus.com

 

[version]

McConaughey's in one of the films too.

 

[version]

was wondering if anyone would catch that. it's a reference to this thread. the relation being, again, this sense of wrongness in the air you get everywhere in the movie - it takes place a year after this identified turning point. and maybe also w/ post industrial conditions negatively affecting decent hardworking real americans like the movie's antagonists. (the new method of killing livestock putting them out of a job.)

From the article on the previous page:

The genesis of the film lay in Hooper’s fascination with the crimes of Ed Gein, as well as the nihilistic political context that the 1970s found itself in. In the political corruption of Nixon’s Watergate scandal and the massacres and atrocities committed in the wake of the Vietnam War, Hooper came to the conclusion that “man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face…[this is why] I put a literal mask on the monster in my film.”​

 

[mvuent]

RAW MEAT AND HEAT: THE MAKING OF THE CHAIN SAW MASSACRE — MAGAZINE

More than 50 years after tearing its way into the psyche of America’s public, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains one of the most important films to come out from the horror genre.

gatamagazine.com

lol at hooper being convinced the film would be rated pg

 

[mvuent]

whining industrial sounds

which goes back to what we were talking about w/ the underworld connotations of industrial ambience, the sounds and scenery of power stations and boiler rooms. obviously a more rural context here but still relevant. after i watched the movie the sounds of screaming + chainsaw revving, near-constant throughout the third act, were imprinted in my mind.

at first glance, the farm is probably the most pleasant setting in the whole movie. it's the constant generator noise that tips you off that something more unsettling is going on. and even after the first kill, somehow it's only when he slams a huge, previously hidden metal door shut that the situation fully hits me, the sudden sense that the farm is a concealed factory. behind the cozy americana facade it's like the slaughterhouse they drove by.

 

[mvuent]

definitely some sort of continuity with this stuff - the post 60s psychedelic imagination turning toward machines, industry

 

[mvuent]

more fire imagery...

the region of texas they're in is called "newt" (newts being a type of salamander - so referencing fire beings, witchcraft?)

when they pick up the hitchhiker he takes a picture of them and then burns it - saw someone point out that if you believe in the old idea of photography as soul-stealing, this has pretty serious connotations

 

[IdleRich]

I always associate newts more with water though regardless of if they are a type of salamander, I think that's a bit tenuous

A newt is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae. The terrestrial juvenile phase is called an eft. Unlike other members of the family Salamandridae, newts are semiaquatic, alternating between aquatic and terrestrial habitats

 

[mvuent]

I always associate newts more with water though regardless of if they are a type of salamander, I think that's a bit tenuous

ok. i’m just throwing stuff out here.

 

[IdleRich]

Worth a try I guess.

 

[IdleRich]

wrong thread ignore

 

[IdleRich]

Wrong thread ignore.

 

[mvuent]

Abandoned mall at the start is fascinating... do they do raves in places like that I wonder.

abandoned mall?

 

[mvuent]

Worth a try I guess.

glad this thread's provoking these kinds of intense positive reactions.

 

[IdleRich]

abandoned mall?

Oh those two comments were in the wrong thread... doh, That was supposed to be a response to the video of the guy driving around Indianapolis.

 

[mvuent]

Oh those two comments were in the wrong thread... doh, That was supposed to be a response to the video of the guy driving around Indianapolis.

any thoughts on the movie? or anything else discussed in the thread so far?

 

[IdleRich]

Yes. I like it. But it's a long time since i have seen it. I don't think that anyone has mentioned the sheer amount of screaming, I mean all horror films have a lot of screaming but I think there are bits in TCM where the screaming is louder and goes on for way longer than usual. Certainly when I last watched it and emerged from my room my flat mate said "What the hell was going on in there?" - all I remember is screaming and dirt and heat and revving chainsaws. It's a grimy nasty little movie and is all the better for it.