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Revisiting The Texas Chain Saw Massacre On The Big Screen

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This year, Tobe Hooper’s seminal The Texas Chain Saw Massacre celebrated its 40th anniversary with a brand new 4k transfer.  The restoration was mainly for blu-ray and DVD release, but the film has also been getting a limited release theatrical run.  Beginning this past summer, the 40th anniversary restoration print of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has been slowly but surely trickling its way through theaters, and it came to my neck of the woods for a single midnight showing last Saturday night.

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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of those movies that gained its huge cult following in the years after its release, so many of the film’s fans have never seen it on the big screen.  Until Saturday, I was included in that group.  So, in order to cross that one off the list, there I was, midnight on a Saturday night, sitting in a theater full of rowdy horror fans, waiting for the familiar buzz of the saw.

The film itself was shot on 16mm slow film stock, so The Texas Chain Saw Massacre looks like a low-fi indie movie.  That’s actually a big part of its charm; it has the feel of a grindhouse documentary, and that only makes it seem more real.  In retrospect, it’s not as effective as it should be, as the modern horror climate is saturated with found footage duds and faux-documentaries.  But, in the context of when it was made, it’s a knockout – the gritty look helped initial 1974 audiences believe that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was a “true story.”  Because of the limitations of the original film, there is only so much that the restoration can (or even should) improve.  The picture is cleaned up, and some of the darker scenes can be seen more clearly, but the movie is what it is.  It still looks great.

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The real noticeable difference between the original film and the new restoration is in the sound.  The new 7.1 mix brings out little details that were imperceptible on earlier versions of the film – the song that is playing on the radio in the van, the squeal of the pigs in the background of the slaughterhouse.  These little particulars are cool, but they are also there in the blu-ray.  The real fun of seeing this version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in a theater is the saw itself.  When Leatherface cranks up the hardware, the noise is earth-rattling.  By the time the film reaches its conclusion, and Leatherface is swinging the chainsaw around in the iconic final shot, the sound of the gasoline engine on the power tool is deafening, leading to an eruption of full-on applause from the audience.  It’s awesome.

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Classic horror movies are best enjoyed with an audience, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is no exception.  The audience in my particular showing was respectful, but it was a group that was already intimately familiar with the movie; no one was worrying about missing an important plot point because the person next to them was laughing or screaming.  Everyone was just having fun.  The theatrical revival of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre may be running the end of its course, but it is still happening; you’ll just have to keep an ear to the ground in your city to find out when it’s there.  If you want to see the movie, watch the blu-ray.  If you want to experience the film, go to a theater.

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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