RUTHERFORD ON FILM: ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning’: Distasteful Butchering Draws Ashen, Sell-Out Audiences
By Tony RutherfordHuntington News Network Writer
Huntington, WV (HNN) -- An audience member looked at a companion and with a slight drawl remarked, “And I thought you were mean. Nobody’s that mean.”
Pummeling the screen with body parts, blood floods, and the not so fine art of butchering meat, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” delivers exactly what the slasher genre has become -- Twisted barbarians treating fellow humans with such distasteful torture that the audience miserably fails to respond with screams or shrieks. Upon leaving, they have an ashen look on their faces as they file out of the auditorium.
Teen slasher flicks rose to popularity as directors tested how much gore they could lump on and still maintain a “restricted” rating. “Friday the 13th” (Jason’s introduction) and “Halloween” (Michael Myers intro) set off the formula of teens in an “And Then There Were None” setting facing a demonic human who enjoys killing. “Halloween” itself did visually spill much blood, but audiences shivered in their seats as Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter’s nervous (character’s) point-of-view cinematography wrested more and more nightmares from glimpses and traces of homicide.
“Friday the 13th” kept the guesswork going in terms of which pretty gal survives and the film maintained a suspenseful tone so even as the visual horrors went upwards the actual moment of penetration brought gasps, howls, and women burying their heads in their companion’s shoulder.
As the “Texas Chainsaw” slaughter unfolds, the mythical old, wooden farm house in the middle of Hell places two sight-seeing couples on a road to what may be their doom.
Comparatively speaking, the newest slasher flicks now unspooling have more elaborate and splattering images, yet dodge the sexual undercurrent that usually foretold their bedroom sin would put them next on the chopping block. Ironically, the conservative movement has Hollywood clamping down on showing partially bare bodies, yet the torture and disemboweling ensues with greater, more graphic displays.
“The Beginning” has a couple of oddities that likely will be forgotten during the nearly nonstop meat grinding.
First, the psychotic family has a son who has been bullied in school, so they have him convinced that he’s getting “revenge” on his tormentors by slaying innocents. While avenging misplaced torment crosses everyone’s minds, does it not appear that the newspapers daily reflect the body counts of some seemingly normal member of society going on an inexplicable rampage killing children and adults whom they do not know?
Second, the director (Jonathan Liebesman) has his own send up to “Gone With the Wind,” as Sheriff Hoyt tells his wife, “You’ll never be hungry again.” And, these family members sip tea, read the newspaper in a rocking chair, and give thanks to God for their meal, justifying their cruelty through pay backs for burning a draft card or wearing short shorts. Thus, religious extremism does not apply only to Middle Eastern countries!
About the only “redeeming” actions have a brother atoning for his lie and a girl succumbing to her instinct to save her friends, even though she has no weapons.
I like my horror movies gross too, if you dish out some thrills and chills along the way. The “Living Dead” flicks whether in spoof or simulated realism dished up zombie kills, yet retained sensibilities towards characters and the creatures conduct fit the plot.
The same might be said for the injection of sexual imagery; if it fits with the story, then the scene is justified. Oddly, though, movie censorship under the Hays office targeted the bare human body more than wretched killing as long as the criminal met a fate which punished his violent acts. Meantime, European filmmakers took an opposite approach of allowing “love making” but eschewing explicitly painful criminal acts.
Flash forward to the 21st Century: Europe has less horrific killings but America still has strong etchings of Puritanical sexual morals and liberal depictions of men and women killing each other like beasts in the jungle.
“Texas Chainsaw” has every excess possible as it unveils an every person for himself or herself mentality where cannibalistic preparations take sadism across all barriers, except an actual person in the soup bowl or microwave. Or, do today’s teens demand such brutalism that they’d pay to be anguished or mutilated to a degree in order to proclaim that they survived water torture, the rack, or the atrocities of a POW camp gone array?
At the risk of offending someone, the nice old lady who cooks well and serves a hugely obese woman chocolates while a gagged and cuffed pretty one squirms under the table becomes nearly comical due to the pretense of the diners to the terrorized blonde underneath. Fittingly, the obese lady serves as a shield when a slight chase ensues, but after serving her brief purpose the very heavyset lady neither sings, burps or strolls next door. She’s just forgotten, like the relative who has his legs amputated only to have the instigator tell his wife to make sure they are properly bandaged.
Want your horror served hairy side up, carved jaggedly and exploring new depths of inhumanity? “Chainsaw: The Beginning” qualifies (kudos to the special effects puppeteers). Just be careful to ask about the ingredients of the burger on which you much in front of the screen.
Personally, I’d prefer less of the catsup and more nail biting foiled escapes. I might even qualify as a temporary vegetarian until chainsaw cooking fades from memory. Word has it that this one had to be “trimmed” to get an ‘R’ rating, so choose accordingly. I hate muted PG cut-away screamers, too; still, I want a fearful flick where the good guys (and gals) have a chance of surviving, not the equivalent of a hunter versus rabbit snuff exercise.