105: Un Certain Regard of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown. Once again, I am Brian and with me this week I have a very special guest, a co-host if you will, ladies and.

Gentlemen, Mr. Joe Bob Briggs. Thanks. Not only have you kind of You know, inspired me with the movie reviews over the years. I was watching all the way back with the old movie channel show.

Wow. Yeah. There weren't that many people who watched the movie channel show because not that many people had the movie channel. I was one of the lucky ones. Somewhere, I actually had it hanging up for a while.

I still had my Joe Bob for President bumper sticker. Oh, wow. That had the movie channel logo on it. You're embarrassing me now. When is that going to kick in, by the way?

I don't know. I always said, you know, if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve. If you give me $ 100, I'll do anything. Just like most politicians.

Aside from that, we sort of worked together, or at least in conjunction years ago. I was on the Joe Bob's Board of Drive-In Experts. Yes, the Board of Drive-In Experts. Now, those of you who are familiar with the zagat restaurant guide which however you say it zagat zagat but you know they invented this way of reviewing restaurants where people so pretty gourmands you know experts and not just run-of-the-mill people but you know people who sort of go to a lot of restaurants they go to the restaurant and they send in their reviews but because most people are not any good at writing they just take little phrases they take different phrases from each person, and they do a composite review and give the restaurant a composite score.

So I applied the same idea to movies. When I had my We Are the Weird fanzine newsletter, and we had different genre boards of reviewers. I can't remember which one you were on, Brian. I don't know why you wouldn't. I was on the Sci-Fi Fantasy, unfortunately.

Okay, the Sci-Fi. That was one of our most popular boards, so there was intense competition to get on there. But that's the harsh one, because you can do a cheap horror movie, and it might look okay, but it's hard to do a cheap Sci-Fi movie. Well, you know, Roger Corman did a lot of cheap Sci-Fi. Roger Corman loves Sci-Fi, and he did things like The Beast Within.

That's a very cheap. sci-fi movie, yet I think it's a very entertaining movie. In fact, in the heyday of... I'm going to assume that your audience is really up on their B-movies, so I'm not going to explain all this stuff, but Roger Corman is the king of the B-movies, and he had. A. You could only charitably call it a studio in Venice, California.

It was actually a lumberyard that he converted into a studio, and he actually built an interior of a of a spaceship which doubled as a genetic DNA mutant lab. Whatever they needed that week, basically. And he shot movie after movie. It was a science fiction base, and I thought he did a pretty good job. But then once special effects get to a certain level, then the audience wants more and more and more and more.

But there was this whole type of movie in the 80s the genetic DNA mutant and, um, slime glopola. I called it slime glopola. You know, it's like you get the virus. It was, it was, it was, you know, sometimes you can't tell what causes a horror trend. Okay.

AIDS caused this horror trend. You do know what caused this horror trend. There was all this paranoia about what things getting into your body and killing you. And so there was this whole series of movies about mutant viruses that would, um, that would grow very fast in your body and then explode your head or whatever. You know, different rules for different viruses.

But those were great. And they were usually set in outer space or they came from outer space or whatever. The virus came from outer space or whatever. But there was always a sci-fi element. So you can do low-budget sci-fi.

It's just, you know, you better really know your stuff if you do. I think I saw some of those exploding head ones on our. I was thinking earlier today, that's the part that's really funny when I think about it now. And it's sad that it hasn't been that long ago, but if you explain what the system was to kids today, they'd. Think you were just making it up.

It involved videotapes and the postal service. Right, yeah, we had to actually, in order to send the movies to our board of drive-in experts, we had to actually mail the videotape from person to person to person until all, you know, there were about eight people on each board. until they'd all seen the same movie and turned in their evaluation of it, and then we would do the sort of composite review. And I thought it was a pretty good... It was actually pretty accurate. Yeah, it's...

People tended to trust the conclusions of those committees, and I liked the system. Of course, it was a nightmare to administer because, you know, somebody... somebody's getting a divorce, and suddenly they have 30 tapes in their house, and the next person says, hey, why am I not getting tapes anymore? I remember a few of those. Sometimes it was one a week, sometimes six would show up on the porch. Right, so today you could do it much easier.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I was like, in this day and age of every movie being digital, having the Internet being able to send things in a minute, it's amazing how just a short time ago, what a... Dinosaur of a system we were working under. Well, not only that, you know, I write books about old movies, and I know people who wrote books about movies prior to the VHS. Yeah.

Prior to the video cassette recorder. Well, you had to actually... find the movie in a theater. I mean, sometimes guys would wait years for a movie to show up. They would do searches at the Library of Congress and try to find universities that had saved a print of some movie. I mean, you just really couldn't find these movies.

It's really bizarre sometimes to talk to young people who write on the web about their love of B-movies, they have an encyclopedic knowledge of some general area of B-movies, but it's relatively recently that you could just access all those. I used to be the world's expert on B-movies. But there's so many guys who never leave their apartment. Yeah. I don't know if that should be your goal.

I can't keep up. I can't keep up. I'd just let it go. I can't watch that many. It's not worth being that guy.

Right. I'm trying not to be that guy. But I have to say, it is as much trouble as it was getting the tapes back and forth. I think it was a good system in the end. And I will freely admit.

I think it was what planted the seed on the show that I have now. I think it was probably the first time it gave me that idea of a group of people sitting around talking about a movie. I mean, even though we were all across the country and it took a couple months to compile it all, but it was still getting all these different people's impression. And I think it took years before it came about and a new version of technology came about that we could actually make use of that. But I think up until that point, I think there were no message boards.

There was no way to just randomly talk to other people across. The country about movies. So I think it was the first time I had that concept come into my head. Well, and you know, I'm sure your listeners are familiar with Horror Hound magazine. And Horror Hound magazine has been very successful with the concept of taking a random old movie that everyone knows and then just being so detailed, writing the ultimate encyclopedic article about every detail of that movie and um that's actually something that you couldn't have done um years ago but it's similar to what you're talking about it's like let's not only watch this movie again let's totally pick it apart until there's nothing left of it i.

Like that it's usually what i try to do to the point that people are like okay now you've gone too far just stop Oh, but yeah, I think, I just thought that was an interesting idea, and when one of the first times, you know, you only had maybe Siskel and Ebert back at that point, but, you know, that was two guys, but I just liked the idea of getting a group of people together and discussing a movie at great length, ad nauseum at times, but. But, yeah, with that, I guess. We'll take a break here, and we'll be back with this week's Sofa Theater Feature. Sofa Theater Feature Texas J's are my secret. They take my baby away from me.

But you'll never get that tonight. You'll never get that tonight. Texas J's are my secret. They take my baby away from me. But you'll never get that tonight.

You'll never get that tonight. Drive away your worries and cares at this drive-in theater, where you will see the finest motion pictures of all time soon to be released. Drama, comedy, adventure, excitement, something for everyone. Here's a brief glimpse of some of the truly fine pictures we've scheduled in the near future. Warning.

This preview cannot show all of the terrifying and grotesque transformation sequences from the last 30 minutes of. The Beast Within. The filmmakers strongly suggest that those who may be shocked by this unique, horrifying movie use caution when seeing the film. There's something inside of Michael. I've never seen anything like it before.

Something that's been waiting, watching, and growing. Michael? Something evil. I know you're in here. And whatever it is...

It is ready to be released. I came back for them. All of them. And now no one, no one is safe. You have been warned.

You are dared to remain calm during the horrifying final 30 minutes of The Beast Within. Even you may not survive. You have been warned. Falling program is a proud member of the palaver family of podcasts check out all the shows over at palaver.com that's p-a-l-a-v-e-r.com. Uh anna maria see have you seen the movie um texas chainsaw massacre no it is good oh i gotta tell you i love this film It had passion and a plucky spirit.

And the characters had integrity. Like when Leatherface went on that strict diet of human flesh, he had to cut out chicken and fish completely. Dave, I agree with you. I'll go a step further. Sure, Leatherface, he wore a mask made out of human skin and he hung people on meat hooks.

But hey, we've all got quirks. I've got them. You've got them, Dave. That's what makes this character so, so compelling. Thumbs up from me.

Same here. To sum it up, I'm Chainsaw. I'm Dave. We'll see you at the movies. This is Dean Cameron, also known as Chainsaw, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown.

It's time for Sofa Theater. Hey, you know where the old Franklin place is? The old Franklin place? Yeah, it's an old two-story rock house, and it's sitting up on a hill. I think you have to turn on that road back there, but I'm not real sure.

Yeah, maybe I've seen something like that up that way. Well, now, look, you boys don't want to go mess around an old house. Those things is dangerous. You're liable to get hurt. We'll be careful.

You don't want to go fooling around other folks' property. Some folks don't like it, and they don't mind us showing you. Oh, my father owns it. That's your daddy's place, huh? Yeah.

Look, I got some good barbecue here. Why don't you fellas stick around here a while? The transport will be by in a little while. Beware of the night's hallucination power. Penetrate this inner mind.

We'll nail the face inside and slash you up here. Eat your heart wide from this chainsaw. Take this chainsaw massacre. Burn it through your sleepy death. Welcome back to Movie Meltdown Sofa Theater.

Once again, this week's Sofa Theater feature is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The year is 1974. Director Toby Hooper and. Spoiler alert, I guess? I mean, at this point, if you haven't seen, especially if you're listening to our show and you haven't seen the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it's kind of your own fault.

So, you've been warned. So, I was going to start off with, I guess, what was the, because I'm sure you have a very different take on it than most people, certainly myself. How was it you were first exposed to this movie? I was actually exposed to Texas Chainsaw Massacre not at the drive-in, oddly enough, but at a midnight show. They had a lot of midnight shows of Texas Chainsaw Massacre from, well, almost from the time it was released.

It became a midnight movie after its first run. It became a midnight movie almost immediately and ran as a midnight movie. All through the 80s and 90s. You know, it benefited from the fact that it was banned on cable. Yeah.

There was a very short, even premium cable, even Showtime, HBO, those networks. Back when they only had 10 movies anyway. Right. Well, you know, you could show almost anything on, for example, Cinemax or the movie channel, but you could not show the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was considered beyond the pale, and people don't realize it now because of the remakes, but originally it was the...

For 25 years, it was the example that politicians used when they wanted to talk about the decline of America. And especially the decline of American youth. They would say, movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And that would mean, you know, just the most scum, the scummiest, only the scummiest people in the world would watch that. And it had that reputation.

It really hurt the cast. Because, you know, normally if you have a big hit like that, like Blair Witch Project or something, you get a lot of work from that. Yeah. Not the Texas Chainsaw Massacre cast. There was really no benefits from being in that movie.

They were actually, some of them took it off their resume. Yeah. Terry McMinn didn't like... Terry McMinn plays Pam. In the movie.

She's the one on the meat hook. Yeah. And she's Bill, the girl on the meat hook. And she was always embarrassed to have been a part of it and was trying to be a serious actress. And even Marilyn Burns, the female star of the movie, she did have one major role after that.

She played... one of the Manson girls in the Charles Manson TV movie, the main one, I forget her name. Squeaky? Did she play Squeaky? I can't remember. That's the only one I remember because she's Squeaky Fromm.

Yeah, well, but other than that, you know, Marilyn didn't really, wasn't really able to capitalize on one of the great, I think most people agree, one of the greatest, Final girl roles, greatest scream queen roles, whatever you want to call it. Certainly one of the most influential, yeah. And it really didn't lead anywhere as it led somewhere for later girls like Jamie Lee Curtis. So it was always interesting to me that it could be so hated. And it's partly because of the title.

Just the title. But what makes the title.... Scary to people is not the word chainsaw and not the word massacre it's the word texas you know if it was the missouri chainsaw massacre would not be the same probably now maybe the mississippi chainsaw massacre would be that bad you. Know mississippi could possibly or arkansas possibly but you know something about the word texas especially in the early 70s yeah made people think The most horrible things could have happened there and never been known. I mean, to this day, there are people who say to me, I grew up in a town.

Where that happened and and it's all different towns it's all over urban legend and some. Of them are tech in texas and some of them are not some of them are not even in texas and in fact i know the screenwriter and the director and um It was not based on anything in Texas at all. It was based on the Ed Gein story, which happened in Wisconsin. Far away from Texas. And it has a little bit of influence from a serial killer named Elmer Wayne Henley, who was in the news shortly before the making of the movie.

They sort of incorporated some of the character of the cook into... That was Elmer Wayne Henley, the proud serial killer. So it's an interesting movie because it was just so despised. I don't know of any other R-rated movie ever that was despised as much as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Well, it's interesting.

He was even trying to go for a PG. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I just found that out. And then I started looking, and I'm like, there's so little gore on screen. It's all tone.

It's all creative cutting. I mean, there's... It's Hitchcockian in its fast cutting. It doesn't show as much as people think it shows. Toby Hooper, who made it, who was, Toby Hooper was the original film student at the University of Texas at Austin.

The only. The year he graduated, I think was, I can't remember, 62, 63, something like that. He was the only. Film student in the United States. This was before there were film schools there.

And he had tried many ways to become a filmmaker. He made documentaries for PBS. He made a famous documentary about Peter, Paul, and Mary. He followed Peter, Paul, and Mary all over the country. And they thought he was a narc because he was the guy with the.

Camera, you know. And. He had made a psychedelic film called Eggshells that was kind of a hippie psychedelic film that was a complete flop that people would only watch it when they were doped up. And then he turned to horror sort of as a last gasp. I want to do something commercial.

I want to stay in this business. And he just did. An excellent job. And people thought that the movie was so violent, but it was. You know, people don't understand that in that era of the 70s, the 70s were one of the most creative eras in film history.

And when you would go to the drive-in or the grindhouse or wherever you went, first of all, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of movies. And so. You would go see films just based on the title. You didn't know who made it. You didn't know where it came from.

And you would watch some of these horror films, and you would think, maybe a maniac actually made this. Yeah. You know, it's kind of grainy. And Chainsaw Massacre is like that. It's kind of grainy.

He didn't pretty it up. It has a documentary feel. The voiceover at the beginning makes you think, maybe it is a documentary. And so. even though I don't think, I'm amazed that anyone could watch it past about the 30 minute mark and still think it's a documentary. It's obviously actors.

But there were people who thought it was a documentary. People were easily duped at that point. Well, people were a little bit more. Naive. Well, they weren't as knowledgeable about how films are made as part of it.

But it was interesting to me for that reason. And then my whole point about The grisliest title ever made, or the most notorious title ever, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that was not the title that the film was. Made under. The title they were filming it under was Head Cheese. The suggestion to change the title was made by the head of the texas film commission and uh he later became a participant uh in the uh he he had a share of the film at some point which seems a little unethical but anyway he did and um uh and actually he he later went on to screenwriting fame as as the uh as the uh writer of um top gun but but uh uh it was um It was financed by Texas politicians.

Wow. Ironic. They used it for the next 25 years. Yeah, and it was distributed by the mafia. Nice.

A company called. Bryanston Pictures that was totally mafia-owned. And that's why nobody ultimately got paid for about 10 or 15 years. They get paid today, but they probably lost millions and millions and millions of dollars because the mafia... You.

Would think if anybody had power to get it on cable, it would be to have the mafia behind you. When the remake came out, when the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake came out, suddenly it was okay to show it. And so the original started turning up on cable. But that's a very recent thing. And on the title, I still think it's funny, just going back and watching it this week, that there's one chainsaw killer.

It might as well have been the hammer massacre, because. There is one chainsaw through the stomach, right? And you don't really see that. The wheelchair kill. Right, and you don't really see it.

The other two are just bludgeonings, and hit by a truck, and, you know, he terrorizes her with the chainsaw. I mean, it is the most iconic, but it is funny that the massacre part of it is mostly. Done with a hammer, really. A hammer and a meat hook. But, yeah, I thought that was interesting.

Um. I was going to ask you, it's funny now how much this scenario that's come into filmmaking, if you want to call that, because they. Get worse and worse as time goes on, but the. Scary family in the woods, was this the first that you can think of? I'm assuming you have way more knowledge on that.

This was not the first scary family in the woods, but this was the first sort of confirmation of the hippie idea of. Nobody over 30 is to be trusted. So you have all these young people in a van, you know, and they're going into, you know, for much of American history, the country, the countryside, was the good place, the innocent place. The city was evil. Yeah, the safe place.

Yeah, now for the first time, these are city kids in a van. They're going into the country, and the farther they go into the country. The more they see these people that they can't understand what these people are doing out there. And the very first thing that happens to them is the hitchhiker. They pick up the hitchhiker.

I think we just picked up Dracula. Where are you headed, man? South. You work at that place? Oh, no.

How did you get stuck way out here? I was at the slaughterhouse. I got an uncle that works at a slaughterhouse. Hey, my brother worked there. My grandfather, too.

My family's always. Been in me. The whole family attracted us. And the hitchhiker doesn't do anything to them. In fact, he does something to himself.

He cuts his own hand. But he's just so creepy that they're totally freaked out. They're going through this area of the slaughterhouses in some undefined part of Texas, and suddenly they're out of touch with any form of civilization. So it was the first movie like that where, you know, you might watch it today, and if you don't know film history, you might think it's a cliche, but it was the first movie where young against older people city people against country people. And it's where the whole tide turned, where the country, and especially the South, the country in the South, became the most hostile place in the world.

And that exists until today. The only ethnic group you really can't get in trouble for making fun of is the rural Southern guy. Pretty much, yeah. And, you know, it was. Actually, you can't say...

They did it first because. In 1973, Ned Beatty was raped in the woods in Deliverance. I was just thinking that when you were talking. Deliverance really put that scary Blackwoods fear in you. And so I think they were probably influenced by that.

But the family was a different thing. That's North Georgia. And I can't remember the name of the actor who rapes Ned Beatty. I always thought he should have gotten... He's a great actor.

He's from Pasadena Playhouse. Everyone knows him. I always thought he should have got credit more than Ned Beatty. He made that scene more than Ned Beatty. Anyway, he was a Chattanooga boy.

I saw him. Interviewed one time where he said, I knew them North Alabama boys. I knew exactly what they were like. Drawing on a little too close to home. His reference is there.

Yeah. So, um, but, but, uh, yeah, that was the beginning of, of, um, you know, deliverance type plots and subplots, um, in which, um, you know, you, you had had, um, uh, you know, I tell you what's ridiculous is, is Holly, when Hollywood started trying to do it, when, when mainstream Hollywood started trying to, so you have ridiculous movies like A Time to Kill and, 1999, where there's the Klan. The modern Klan. We're going to get the Klan together again. They can't even do it right.

That's one of the most ridiculous movies ever made. Mississippi should have boycotted every future Hollywood movie. John Grisham wouldn't write a silly plot. I don't know what. You're talking about.

Actually, the Grisham novel was okay. They totally distorted the The thing to make a time to kill. I'm all for southern gothic plots, but that one was absurd. One of the greatest city people go into the woods and don't come out movies is I Spit on Your Grave. It's the same kind of rednecks, but they're Connecticut rednecks.

Well, that makes it okay. They're Northwest Connecticut rednecks. Which I had never seen before until. That movie. Now, they don't say exactly where they're going, but it was filmed in Connecticut, and she's obviously driving out of New York City as she goes into the country.

And it's obviously this famous river in Connecticut. But I thought that was funny. We don't really have time to go to Georgia anymore. We'll just do it up here. Connecticut Red.

Well, I've got a theory at this point after seeing more and more people in the world. I think no matter where you go in the world, there's a redneck. Probably off in the woods of France somewhere, there's some redneck that's. Equally as scary as guys in Georgia. Yeah, well, it's true.

I mean, if you ask the guys who track Al-Qaeda, what do they always say about where. Where is Bin Laden hiding out? He's with those rednecks in northwest Pakistan, right? Somewhere in a cave with those rednecks. Yeah.

Oh, no, those rednecks will protect him forever. They don't care. Yes. But, yeah, there's rednecks everywhere. You've got to watch your back.

Oh, no. No, now, you're all right. You're okay. Okay. Oh, now, take it easy.

He might come. He might come. He might come. Take it easy. I don't know.

Call the police. Jerry. I don't know what happened to the others. There's nobody out there now. Go on, take it easy.

Go on, take it easy. What happened? It also had that same run into that, but it introduced, I was thinking, possibly that same plot point where... you run to somebody for help and they lure you in and they're like, okay, okay, we'll take care of it and then they're involved in it. It seems like in all these Southern movies, we just had somebody bring that up on the show, all these movies, especially when it's in the scary Southern, you know, these crazy backwoods people, there's always somebody you run to and they're like, oh yeah, we'll help you and then they turn out to be involved with the family or the town or whatever this group of people are. It's one I was thinking seemed like about one of the earliest.

It's always a maze. Yeah. That's just good plotting. Yeah. Um, The writer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a guy named Kim Hinkle, who also wrote one of the greatest independent films ever made, certainly ever made in the state of Texas, but really one of the greatest independent films back in the days when independent films were shot on film.

Can you do that? A film called Last Night at the Alamo in 1982, but He wrote the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's his script. He collaborated with Toby Hooper, but it's basically his script. And his plotting was based on Hansel and Gretel.

Yeah, it is. Hansel and Gretel are lured, and then all of the perils are sort of parallel to Hansel and Gretel. And he's asked, what. Murder did you base this on? And he tells him he based it on Hansel and Gretel and people don't believe him.

But he's being serious. He's not being facetious. He really did base the plot on Hansel and Gretel. Those are very basic stories. I think people have kind of been stealing from those stories for decades now.

Oh, man. I think, and you were saying as far. As the feel of it and having that weird almost documentary feel, I think what if not makes it feel that way, at least makes it feel strange, especially watching it now with these super plotted out, especially Hollywood movies, is the fact. There's no backstory. There's no explanation, really.

You're just thrown into this situation like the characters are, and you have no idea what you're getting yourself into or why these characters are the way they. Are, doing the things they're doing. That's true. It's interesting. But you feel like from the very first, you know, Toby Hooper was a hippie.

You know, he did a lot... Well, I won't say what he did a lot of. But he. And he had been trying to make counterculture movies. But he was thinking, I'm going to make counterculture movies like Truffaut and the French New Wave and things like...

And I'm going to make, you know, strange Fellini-esque type movies. And finally he says, you know, I'm losing my shirt on these. I can't do this. And he decides, I'm going to go horror because horror is a way for an independent filmmaker to make some money. And he makes this horror film.

But what it is really is a counterculture film. It's totally a hippie film. And you know from the first moment that you see those five people in the van that they are. Not your parents. They are a little bit freer.

They have a little bit freer lifestyle. Yeah. And so, and they're being, and what oppresses them? The old America. Yeah, the old ways.

That they don't understand. And so it's like the ultimate hippie movie all those real hippie movies that were made from 1968 to 1970, um, failed. And the ones that, the ones that succeeded are the ones that had a strong hippie subplot, namely Easy Rider. And, um, you know, there was a whole lot of biker movies that were sort of right wing, but the one that succeeded was the left. Wing one, Easy Rider.

And then, and then, uh, same thing with, uh, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Um, It definitely does that generational thing, especially with the old version of the family when you look at the dinner scene at the end. That's like the ultimate sort of. The ultimate perversion of Thanksgiving dinner is the dinner scene. It's also one of the funniest scenes ever shot.

It's like horrifying and funny simultaneously. Horrifying and funny. And I always say, you know, when you get to that scene, how can you any longer think that... That the movie is too intense. I never know how to say this word, but it's grand guignol.

You know, it's that grand guignol, like the bloody theaters of France. It has that feeling to it where it's such pure theater that that's what makes it enjoyable. But people are terrified by that scene, even though they keep putting the hammer back in Grandpa's hands because he keeps dropping it. They want him to kill the girl, you know? It's still just kind of disturbing until you get to the grandpa with the hammer, and then it's just flat-out funny, and you can't not laugh at that.

But it was funny that it's, you know, like generations of kids growing up on those 50s and 60s sitcoms of, like, the cleavers sitting around the table, and this is, like, the ultimate perversion. Right. And, you know, it's the relations among the members of the family. Are a little bit vague. You know, Jim Cedow, who plays the, he's just called the cook in the credits.

You assume he's the father. He becomes the dad in the scenario. You assume he's the father of the hitchhiker and of Leatherface, but he might be just a very older brother or an uncle or something. You don't really know. You figure that whatever the family arrangement is, it's really screwed up.

Yeah. Lord knows what he could be, really. Right. But, yeah, he definitely becomes the dad of the little unit there. You've got the teenagers, the hitchhiker.

Now, I thought that uh it was really it was also really strange when the movie came out it was attacked by feminists it was attacked by um it was it was attacked by a lot of intellectuals they called it the pornography of violence there was a lot of articles there were articles in like major journals and major publications saying this is the pornography of violence and But especially feminist critics. Went after it. Now, I never understood that because Marilyn Burns is the one person you identify with. The one good person in the film is Marilyn Burns. And the family is all male.

So if you were going to show the patriarchy being. If you wanted to demonize the patriarchy, what better movie could you have And, you know, they were implying that somehow there were audience members taking joy in the abuse of Marilyn Burns or whatever. I'm sure there were. But, yeah, you can definitely go the other way with the structure of the whole movie. Yeah.

But the Bryanston Pictures, which distributed it, were geniuses at marketing. And they. Gave a copy of it to the museum of modern art now anybody can give a movie to the museum of modern art they don't yeah choose what movies they have they'll they'll take any movie you know they they they collect 35 millimeter prints but they just gave it to the museum of modern art so they so they could put in their ads part of the permanent collection of the museum of modern art and then the museum of modern art patrons would call up and. Say is this true Is this true. That the Museum of Modern Art...

Well, yes, because we have any movie that anybody gives us because we're trying to collect every movie ever made. And they were like, well, we don't think you should have this movie. And they. Got more mileage out of that, and they showed it at the Cannes Film Festival. The Cannes Film Festival has...

People don't know this, but there's a... a secondary festival that's part of the official festival called Un Certain Regard. I think I said that right. A Certain Regard. And what it means is weird films. It means weird films.

And for two weeks they have this. Sub-festival of the main festival and it's at the same time as the main festival. Well, they'll take. That includes films from Cameroon about female circumcision and every kind of film you can imagine, but just the French like the weird things. And so they encourage weird films.

So Bryanston is smart enough to get this accepted. so that they can stay forever in their ads. Proudly presented at the Cannes Film Festival. They're still using that strategy on posters today. So everything about it was just a very interesting story. I didn't know, what were your thoughts on Toby as a director as time went on?

I mean, it definitely works. In this one, but I wasn't sure if he just kind of got, you know, Lucky piecing this one together or what your thoughts were on him as a director? Toby Hooper is a very inventive director and can be brilliant and can be confusing. Yeah. He almost alternates movies.

He'll have a great movie and then he'll have a very disappointing movie. The movie Mortuary in 2006 is just a big mess. Yeah. But it has scenes in it that I have actually excerpted and used when I make speeches that are just the funniest, most interesting. And the scene will be good, but the movie won't make a lick of sense.

And I thought Funhouse was sort of that way. But there are certain of his films like Life Force I really like. Yeah. Probably not a financial success, but. I do like it.

He's a very interesting director. I think he always wanted to be more than a horror director. He always wanted to make other types of films, and he got pigeonholed by Chainsaw, and he was never able to break out of that. That's probably his biggest regret as a director. Probably.

But he's a little agonizingly uneven. Frustrating. Yeah. Well, I was almost giving him more credit because I remember for years, like the first time I watched this, like immediately I saw this shot and I was like, that's amazing. And it's the under the swing, up to the house shot, that shot that zooms in on her as she's walking up to the house.

That follows Terry McMinn's butt, right? Yeah, which aside from the fact, and I'm not going to complain about that either, but it's just an amazing shot. Just starting out behind that swing, going underneath the swing, and the house just begins to loom into the frame and becomes. Even bigger and creepier, and you get a butt shot. But it's just an amazing shot.

And I was like, for years, I've been like, you know, that's up there, you know, of my favorite shots in cinema history. That's one of them. And I was giving him credit, and this week, re-watching it, that was Daniel Pearl's idea, the cinematographer. So I was almost giving Hooper credit for that shot. Well, I think you have to give Toby credit for almost anything that happened on the set of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even though there were many people contributing to it.

By the way, the line producer on that movie was Ron Bozeman. who later produced the other greatest cannibal classic in American history, Silence of the Lambs. Ron Boseman, same guy. So he worked on the two great cannibal movies. There is a title for it. He can never top that.

But I think that Toby is good about taking the good advice and rejecting the bad advice and And getting the picture he wants. And he's great in the editing room. And he was working under intense pressure. He didn't have enough money to finish the film. He knew he didn't have enough money.

He was telling everybody he did have enough money to finish the film. He didn't know how he was going to finish the film. So, you know, from day to day it was a mess. And shooting in the middle of summer. He was shooting in 110 degree weather in the summer in Texas with no air conditioning.

You know, in a. In a location that was less than ideal. Yeah, there were so many reasons. People thought every day that either a key cast member or a key crew member would quit and never come back. So the fact.

That they finished the movie is amazing. That's the yeah that's the thing i will give him credit for i mean i still i that shot is amazing if you go back and watch it because yeah so i will give daniel bro credit he does. Do a good job as cinematographer regardless. But um as far as looking at him he's as early in his career as it was and and his you know he was still kind of learning the ways of a movie this big budgeted and this many people so it I think it holds together really well, and I think just re-watching it this week, I think I took a little more of that. I think for a while there, and it probably helps that they cleaned it up a little, because I watched it on DVD this time.

Because I remember when I watched it back on VHS, there were scenes that were so dark you almost couldn't see what was going on. And I was almost blaming it on the. Original shoot, which, granted, they probably didn't have the best circumstances anyway. But it does, it comes off a little better now. Granted, you don't want it too pretty.

I don't know if we want the Blu-ray version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Right. But I think the DVD that came out a couple years ago, I think it hits kind of in the middle. It makes it a little easier to watch and cleaned it up enough that you can kind of see what's going on in some of these scenes. Well, you have to.

Remember, I'm sure a lot of your listeners are filmmakers and... They sort of know, they're young, and they sort of know intellectually that films were shot on 35mm with these huge cameras and these huge setups that you. Had to do. And they just don't have any idea of how little film you could shoot at a time, how massively complicated it was to move the camera or to set up any shot. And he was doing this... with no money and so he was having to do all the things that a fully financed Hollywood production does which you no longer have to do if you're an independent filmmaker today you can buy equipment so called prosumer equipment that allows you to take all kinds of shortcuts that weren't available to him so a lot of these things where you have less than perfect lighting Where you probably needed a longer shot, but he didn't have the film to put it together It's still an amazing accomplishment.

He did workarounds on all those problems. When you finished a shoot in those days, it was done. There was no going back. No. Whatever film was in the can, that's the film you had to work with.

You were never getting a single additional frame ever. And you're not going to fix it on your computer later. Today you would say, well, maybe we'll do another day because it doesn't cost that much. Yeah, you can shoot forever now, especially once you're digital. You can just shoot.

So yeah, footage doesn't really come into play like it used to. Oh, the only thing I noticed this time out, and it's funny, this was more of a cultural change, a shift since then, but they build up so much with the bones and the bones everywhere, and that was really, I'm assuming, really creeped people out at that point, and that was the defining way that you knew these guys were evil and they were sinister, and they were definitely up to no good because their entire house was coated in bones. Right. It's become so commonplace. I mean, I, and maybe it's just weirdos that I know, but I can name like three or four people that continually have collected and just have ongoing collections of bones.

And I was like, I really, a lot of them are like weird artists and they use it in there, but it's so funny how much that to me didn't bother me anymore. I was like, I don't know. I know several people that have most of what's in this room right now. Right. So it's funny just what a weird shift the culture, and that's probably more of a knock on our society than, than the people at the time, because it's funny how commonplace that has become in certain circles.

Well, yeah, one of the sets was called The Bone Room, and it wasn't so much that there were so many bones, but if you remember, they were... arranged in Ed Gein-type ways. Yeah, furniture. Yeah, furniture was created out of the bones. There was a birdcage of some sort. Yeah, the chicken hanging.

It sounded like it. Was laughing at her. Maybe that was part of the trippy part of it. Maybe you had to be on drugs to really experience that room. Right.

But yeah, that was a good portion. I was just going to see how. You know, I guess we'd wrap up on what you think the impact was on the. Film world as a whole or specifically horror. The strange thing about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even though I think it was the best horror film of the 70s and early 80s, It was the least influential.

Halloween was probably the most influential. Friday the 13th was probably the second most influential. Both of those films were derivative of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He was the original slasher. He was the original guy.

But because it was sold to the Mafia and because it was involved in litigation for years, the sequel never appeared until I think 1985, 1986, something like that. The first sequel. It was 12 years later, so you lost the momentum. Yeah, your hardcore audience had moved on. And, of course, it wasn't the age of sequels.

No. But it didn't have that much influence until the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. You know, you had the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which... I'm in, by the way, in some versions of it. That's true.

And the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, which was the worst sequel, shot in California. You know, it doesn't even look like Texas. And then there was one directed by Kim Hinkle called Return to Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Texas Chainsaw Massacre Next Generation. which had Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger in it. I actually like that. I do like it.

People love to hate that movie. People hate it, but I love it. I love Matthew McConaughey's performance especially. That one was buried by the Creative Artists Agency, which represented Matthew McConaughey at the time and didn't want Columbia to do it. It was like two or three years later before it saw the light.

They buried it because in the time between making it and and it coming out, Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey had both become big stars. And so now they didn't want their Chainsaw movie to be their next movie. I don't know why. It's better than most of the stuff they're in. I agree.

And their agents worked on that. Yeah, I believe you. But yeah, I think within the fan base, it's found a pretty good influential moment. But it is funny how much the system, the movie-making system, it didn't really seem to affect... Pretty much ever until, yeah, the last, you know, 10, 15 years or so.

Right. Well, I think that pretty much wraps it up. Good Lord. What are you watching? Do the dance for me, baby.

New film from the district. Safe use of power tools. What do you think of that, Anna Maria? God, it was really American. American, yes.

It's an American masterpiece. Talk about gutsy endings. The girl. The girl gets away and our hero Leatherface, he chainsaws his own legs. Two thumbs up.

Make that four for Gore. If leaving, please replace your inner car speaker before releasing brakes or starting motor. Do not back out. Drive to the aisle in front of you and exit. And now, for those remaining....

Don't be shy. We'd like to hear from you. So give us a call at 502-365-5565. Or you can email us at geeksatmoviemeltdown.com. And just stop by the website for our frequent updates.

That's moviemeltdown.com. On by, on by, on by, on by. I did want to go ahead and have you tell people where they can find your work and what all you've been up to lately. Well, I don't have any new books out at the time. My last book was called Profoundly Erotic, Sexy Movies That Changed History.

And the book before that was Profoundly Disturbing, Shocking Movies That Changed History. And I've been doing a lot of conventions and film festivals and um uh next year i'll be producing some uh some uh horror films um but um i'm just you know my original career was as a writer and then i segued into uh tv for a while uh but primarily i'm a i'm a writer so i get up every day and do the most boring job in the world which is you know looking at a blank screen. Any other book projects on the horizon. I don't i don't have any any uh. Any any book projects of the type we're talking about here my alter ego has a book you know i have an alter ego who has a journalism career you know and so he has a book but uh um.

But for right now, I don't have anything coming out. I've been asked to do a book about the 80s. Yeah. Because of 80s nostalgia, which I don't, it's like, I'm sort of too old. To appreciate the 80s because I experienced the 80s so vividly.

Yeah. And many of. The movie works that are revered by young people in the 80s, I think are crap. I mean, there was a lot of crap in the 80s, that now is held in sentimental esteem. And I'm not sure why.

You could get yourself in trouble potentially. But there's a big, you get a big boost in affection just by being. In the 80s. And mentioning things from the 80s. And I'm not sure why, but I was asked to do a book about 80s films.

And, you know, especially 80s direct-to-video films and especially the 80s direct-to-video films that created the legendary Scream Queens and that were done by people like Fred Olin Ray and Jim Wynorski and the various Roger Corman directors. And I may do that someday. That's more fitting, yeah. Half of that stuff ended up on your show at that point anyway. That's true.

Yeah. And, of course, you had a parallel movement in Italy with Lucio Fulci and those guys creating a lot of very good horror and genre films. And so if I write it, it'll be sort of a looking back. Commemorative. I think that's the way to go, the weird direct-to-video.

To me, it's sort of like one of those eras where you say, well, this will never happen again. I don't know. There's a lot of direct-to-DVD stuff out there now. It's equally as scary sometimes. And then did you want to tell people to go to your website?

Yeah, joebobbriggs.com anytime or Facebook, Joe Bob Briggs, yeah. Right. That sounds good. All right. Well, otherwise, I wanted to thank you for being on the show this week and definitely sitting in and filling us in on your take on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and your.

I guess the Texas perspective. Actually, once we got the new program here, it broke it down demographic-wise where, and we have a huge following in Texas for some reason. So I'm not sure what tipped them off, but, yeah, it's good to know that, you know, a good portion of our listeners are in Texas. Wow, okay. Well, that makes sense to me.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's like the draft house crowd or what it. Is, but, yeah. And all your listeners in Texas say, I'm from that town where Texas Chainsaw Massacre happened. Where the real one happened.

Every one of them says that. But otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.

The sound of the butcher's hole, the town, the innocent place. Walking to Texas, kids are. Massacred, no mother left, left. Time for your life. Go sleep.

Won't let you go. You know. The connected man. I've arranged for a dinner plan. I'll cheat.

It's on the menu. I'll be cannibalized. I'll be cannibalized. Welcome to Texas. Kids are a mess of good.

Home of the bad men. So tell the slobberer. I don't know where. Nobody knows the game. We'll have to burn to bed for themselves.

Welcome to Texas. Kids are a mess of good. If I have any more fun today, I don't think I'm going to be able to take it. This show is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by Brian Renfro, with opening music performed by The Empires. To help support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com for ways that you can contribute or advertise with us.