The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974

IMDb
Five friends visiting their grandfather's house in the country are hunted and terrorized by a chain-saw wielding killer and his family of grave-robbing cannibals.


RogerEbert
Now here’s a grisly little item. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises -- a real Grand Guignol of a movie. It’s also without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. And yet in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective.

The movie’s based on factual material, according to the narration that opens it. For all I know, that’s true, although I can’t recall having heard of these particular crimes, and the distributor provides no documentation. Not that it matters. A true crime movie like Richard Brooks’ “In Cold Blood,” which studies the personalities and compulsions of two killers, dealt directly with documented material and was all the more effective for that. But “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” could have been made up from whole cloth without any apparent difference. No motivation, no background, no speculation on causes is evident anywhere in the film. It’s simply an exercise in terror.

It takes place in an isolated area of Texas, which five young people (one of them in a wheelchair) are driving through in their camper van. They pick up a weirdo hitchhiker who carries his charms and magic potions around his neck and who giggles insanely while he cuts himself on the hand and then slices at the paraplegic. They get rid of him, so they think.

But then they take a side trip to a haunted-looking old house, which some of them had been raised in. The two girls laugh as they clamber through the litter on the floor, but one of the guys notices some strange totems and charms which should give him warning. They don’t. He and his girlfriend set off for the old swimming hole, find it dried up, and then see a farmhouse nearby. The guy goes to ask about borrowing some gasoline and disappears inside.

His girl gets tired of waiting for him, knocks on the door, and disappears inside, too. A lot of people are going to be disappearing into this house, and its insides are a masterpiece of set decoration and the creation of mood. We see the innocent victims being clubbed on the hand, hung from meat hooks, and gone after with the chain saw.

We see rooms full of strange altars made from human bones, and rooms filled with chicken feathers and charms and weird relics. And gradually we realize that the house is inhabited by a demented family of retarded murderers and grave robbers. When they get fresh victims, they carve them up with great delight. What they do with the bodies is a little obscure, but, uh, they run a barbecue stand down by the road.

One way or another, all the kids get killed by the maniac waving the chain saw -- except one girl, who undergoes a night of panic and torture, who escapes not once but twice, who leaps through no fewer than two windows, and who screams endlessly. All of this material, as you can imagine, is scary and unpalatable. But the movie is good technically and with its special effects, and we have to give it grudging admiration on that level, despite all the waving of the chain saw.

There is, for example, an effective montage of quick cuts of the last girl’s screaming face and popping eyeballs. There are bizarrely effective performances by the demented family (one of them, of course, turns out to be the hitchhiker, and Grandfather looks like Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man”). What we’re left with, though, is an effective production in the service of an unnecessary movie.

Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they’re brought in at the right price. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can’t get more conventional projects off the ground. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” belongs in a select company (with “Night of the Living Dead” and “Last House on the Left”) of films that are really a lot better than the genre requires. Not, however, that you’d necessarily enjoy seeing it.

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And Solarmovie

The Redwood Massacre

IMDb
What begins as a exciting camping trip to the legendary Redwood murder site, takes a terrifying turn when the innocent campers discover the legend is about to become a nasty and bloody reality.


HorrorSociety

My short time here at Horror Society has saw me review numerous horror flicks from various sub-genres but my favorite is easily the slasher.  I love when I come across a new slasher that tries to tap into the 1980s slasher craze and give us a masked maniac with a bloodthirsty appetite that will only be curved with the blood of teens who are in the woods doing things they shouldn’t.  I am always on the lookout for a new slasher to check out and review but the last few days has not been a fruitful time for slashers.

However, I was able to find one slasher flick titled The Redwood Massacre.  This U.K. based slasher is from director David Ryan Keith who is the man behind the horror comedyAttack of the Herbals.  I came across the film one evening while playing around on Facebook.  I messaged the page and they were kind enough to send me a link to an online screener.  Thank you for that!

**Spoiler Alert**The film follows a group of twenty-somethings who head out into the woods for a little camping.  The group consists of a young man, his new girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend, their mutual friend, and a guy one of the young girls likes.  However, the spot they chose was once a spot where a Scottish man went crazy and butchered his family.  This tale has been told for years and has now turned into a campfire tale.

The young man’s new girlfriend tells everyone the story and then they head off to bed.  The next morning the guy’s girlfriend and friend awaken to find everyone missing.  They go looking for them and run into a man wearing a rag sack mask and wielding sharp objects.  The hunt is on as he stalks and kills everyone in his woods.**Spoiler Alert**

So many modern slashers try to re-create the vibe and style of slashers from yesteryear.  I fucking love it when it is done correctly.  However, it seems that we are in a current trend where filmmakers try to make slasher throwbacks.  This is cool and all but sometimes I want a more modern take on the slasher sub-genre and The Redwood Massacre takes us there.  This film did not follow a trend but attempts to set their own and succeeds!

The acting in the film is great.  The entire cast is perfect and each character was perfectly cast.  All the characters are believable and some are able to draw in the crowd.  It is not often that the cast of a slasher can make you sympathize for them.

The story for this one is a more modern take on the slasher story.  Typically, we get a slasher story that follows someone that was wronged donning  mask and murdering those that wronged them only to be unmasked at the end.  We did not get that with this one.  Instead, we get a dark back story that takes unsuspecting youths down a bloody path with no hint if the story we are told around the campfire is true or not.  I really like that approach to the film.  It gives the slasher fan something a little outside the ordinary.

Finally, the film is home to several on screen deaths.  Most of these deaths are fucking bloody and brutal.  These kills really did catch me off guard with the brutality.  I was not expecting them at all.  The special effects for these kills are also great making them even more effective.  Overall, The Redwood Massacre is the slasher film of the year.  The film is brutal and relentless. Fans of bloody films and slashers should really check this one out because you will not want to miss it!

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and Pubfilmno1

Headless

IMDb

• In this "lost slasher film from 1978," a masked killer wages an unrelenting spree of murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia. But when his tortured past comes back to haunt him, he plunges to even greater depths of madness and depravity, consuming the lives of a young woman and those she holds dear.
• An intricate look at a slasher from the perspective of the killer. Ever wondered why the killer is the way he is? Headless tells all while simultaneously weaving just enough back story to make you feel sorry for the victims.

HorrorMovies
A few years back I witnessed a little indie film entitled Found, which was directed by Scott Schirmer and written by Todd Rigney. Since witnessing the film I’ve been praising it to the high heavens. It was a beautifully crafted yet eerie and somewhat sadistic film that I instantly fell in love with. It has stayed with me ever since and that proves just how well the team did in creating the film.

But, there was much more to Found, there was a film within the film entitledHeadless, and that got people talking just as much as the feature presentation. It was only a few minutes long but those minutes pulled me in and I was hooked, it was sick and twisted and I wanted more. As it turns out so did many other people as Headless began a Kickstarter campaign and soon thereafter the feature film version of Headless was created and thus the mayhem begins. I thought I knew what to expect upon watching the original short but, man, this one is off the charts, it’s brutal.

Headless is directed by Arthur Cullipher, he did the practical effects on Found, and he has managed to keep the vibe of the original Headless short but totally gave us so much more, it’s a freakin’ bloodbath and Cullipher expands on the Headless character so effortlessly and manages to keep the film so engaging that the run-time just simply flies by. It’s truly a testament to his directorial skills.

If you have seen Found then you know what to expect from Headless, if not, then, man, you’re in for a ride. The film takes place in 1978 and the team have managed to capture that time period so well, even the musical score takes you back to that time and really helps the film, especially during its more brooding moments. Anyway, the film follows a skull-faced killer that is hellbent on causing as much carnage and brutality as humanly possible. The killer hacks and slices his way through a vast array of women and in doing so he receives great pleasure as the victims expense.

Throughout the film we’re introduced to a little boy known as “Skullboy” although he isn’t referred to as such. The boy acts as the killers subconscious and leads him along the way in his frenzied massacre and it really works. The boy adds an essence of creepiness and keeps you fully intrigued throughout and as such we learn more about the killers backstory and how he became the way he is and let’s just say, it’s fucked up. By the time this guy reached his teenage years he had been through hell and back and then some, his journey to where he is today is brutal and as such, it has created him into the monster we see before us.

During his rampage, we lay witness to copious amounts of gore, oh, the gore is insane! It’s done so well considering the micro-budget, it’s brutal, sick, disturbing and downright depraved, and you know what? I absolutely loved every minute of it! From the limb dismemberment to the fountains of blood and, yeah, you need to see this to see what else happens, it’s off the freakin’ hook!

When going into this I so wanted it to be good but I had this nagging feeling that they wouldn’t be able to improve or expand on the previous short, but let me assure you, they have done this one proud, it’s a highly entertaining slasher flick which will leave some of you sick to your stomach and others salivating at the horror that is being depicted upon the screen, it’s a hell of a ride and I highly recommend that you hunt this one down and witness the absolute brutality which plays out.

Being a micro-budget feature you may assume that the acting may not be up “there” but it is, the entire cast do a stellar job throughout and Shane Beasley who plays the masked-face killer absolutely nailed the performance, nailed it. Let me say, that character is one sick fuck, he’s depraved, twisted and out of his mind, if you’re a gore-hound you will have an absolute field-day with this character.

This one has cult statues written all over it. I loved it, what can I say? Does that mean I’m as twisted as the killer or the minds that put this one together? Probably so, and you know what? I’ll be coming back for seconds and thirds. Now, where did I put that corpse?

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