Blog Directory CineVerse: October 2024

Why Chain still reigns

Monday, October 28, 2024


Released 50 years ago this month, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper and co-written by Hooper and Kim Henkel, remains a fright film masterwork that dozens of movies have attempted to imitate but can never duplicate. The setup is brilliantly simple: We follow Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), and friends Pam (Teri McMinn), Jerry (Allen Danziger), and Kirk (William Vail) as they travel to rural Texas to visit the Hardesty family homestead. There, they encounter a family of cannibalistic killers, including the infamous chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen). As the friends explore the area, they become prey to Leatherface and his deranged family, leading to a series of chilling and brutal encounters that have made the film one of the most influential in horror history.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of this film, conducted last week, click here. To hear the October episode of the Cineversary podcast celebrating The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's 50th anniversary, click here


Why is Chain Saw worthy of serious celebration 50 years later? For starters, this film accomplishes so much with so little. Despite minuscule production values, a paltry $140,000 budget, a cast of unknowns, eyeball-rolling dialogue and subpar acting from most of the performers, a relatively inexperienced director, and extremely low expectations, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre instantly became one of the most terrifying movies in history, raking in over $30 million at the box office (adjusted for inflation, that would be more than $199 million today), and, over the years, increasingly garnered positive critical attention from many reviewers. (Currently, tit earns an 83% Rotten Tomatoes fresh score and an average critical rating of 7.6 out of 10; Metacritic, meanwhile, gives it a 91 out of 100 Metascore.)

But drilling down further reveals three key factors responsible for its success and timeless effectiveness: approach, circumstance, and reputation. Regarding the former, consider this evaluation from critic Richard Scheib: “Like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre redefined horror by stripping it of all classical motive. The assaults in the film come without rhyme or reason. Leatherface is not a monster of science or a demonic conjuration, he is even bereft of the cursory psychological explanations that the killers had in psycho-thrillers of the last decade such as Psycho or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and their numerous imitators.

Then, give thought to the circumstances during production. Hampered by a barebones budget and limited resources, director Tobe Hooper was forced to shoot for long stretches in a condensed time frame over 32 days in extreme heat and humidity, with on-set temperatures reaching 110°F. Consequently, the actors look extra stressed—obviously out of exhaustion and discomfort—and the atmosphere and vibe seem all the more strained.

Next, give credence to the film’s early and enduring reputation: Chain Saw was banned in numerous countries, including the UK, where you couldn’t see the film until 1999. This work became a word-of-mouth sensation across the world—the fear-inducing title alone aided that momentum—and was long talked about as one of the most disturbing and frightening horror films of all time.

This month, Variety published a 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time feature and slotted Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the very top. In its writeup, the Variety critics wrote: “There’s a reason “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” has cast such a shadow over the last half-century of horror films. As much as “Psycho” or “The Exorcist,” it created a mythology of horror, one that feels even more resonant today than it did 50 years ago. The film channeled the descent of the American spirit that we can now feel all around us. In the end, what “Chain Saw” revels in with such disturbing majesty, and what makes it more indelible and haunting than any other horror film, is its image of madness as the driving energy of the world: Leatherface, swinging his chainsaw around in front of the rising sun, his crazed dance of death not just a ritual but a warning — that the center will not hold.

The plaudits, of course, hardly end there. Time Out recently named the film as the third-best horror movie ever made, Entertainment Weekly voted it the second scariest movie of all time in 2022, it came in at #19 on Empire Magazine’s 2024 list of the 50 best horror movies and #199 on Empire’s 2008 ranking of the 500 greatest movies of all time, it currently sits at #94 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 200 best horror movies of all time and #5 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the scariest horror movies, and this film even places at #118 among 250 on the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films. Additionally, a 2022 YouGov survey of Americans found that Chain Saw was the sixth most loved horror movie by people who have seen it.

To fully appreciate how groundbreaking Chain Saw was in 1974, consider that it wasn’t a classically constructed horror picture. For its time, it lacked many of the normal tropes, stereotypes, and expectations of earlier terror fare and thrillers. There is no brooding music to warn us of what’s to come. Sex and nudity are absent. The victims aren’t deserving of punishment due to promiscuity, drug use, or criminal acts. There are no heroes or noble sacrifices—only a single survivor— and the monsters aren’t vanquished or killed by the conclusion. There is also no comic relief or “winking at the audience.” And the violence often occurs in bright daylight.

Furthermore, this horror is remorseless and lacks any kind of message about morality or redemption. The violence is sudden, random, and without warning. Surprisingly, there is very little blood or gore. Except for the opening shots, the camera doesn’t linger on dead bodies or severed body parts. Most of the killing happens quickly and occurs within the first half of the movie.

Rather than Alfred Hitchcock's delicate, suspenseful manipulation, Hooper follows the lead of fellow independents George A. Romero and Wes Craven and feeds the audience through a mangle of unrelenting horror and violence. Once his film starts, it doesn't let up until the fade-out: other horror films are as frightening, but few are so utterly exhausting,” wrote critic Kim Newman.

Also, this work has a raw, documentary-like ragged quality to it, as demonstrated by the shaky camera, gritty film stock, use of actual decomposing animal remains and bones, and voiceover opening that claims the events are based on truth.

Influential predecessors include hixploitation, backwoods brutality, and primal folk horror films like Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), and The Last House on the Left (1972), along with movies wherein the violence and attacks are unprovoked, sudden, indiscriminate, and random, as in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), The Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Duel (1971).

Some critics and scholars credit The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as helping to pave the path forward for renowned horror franchises like Halloween, Evil Dead, and The Blair Witch. It certainly inspired later horror icons like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees with its depiction of a large, silent, faceless killer with no discernible personality, and it introduced the notion of power tools used as murderous devices.

Leatherface has proved to be a popular horror character, as evidenced by the fact that, to date, there have been nine films in which he’s featured, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986); Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990); Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (a 1994 quasi-reboot starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey); the 2003 remake sharing the original title; the prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006); Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), a direct sequel to the 1974 film that disregards other installments in the series; Leatherface (2017), a further prequel; and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), another direct sequel to the original. By comparison, Freddy Kreuger also has nine films, Jason has 12, and Michael Myers has 13.

Wes Craven paid homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with his 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, and Ridley Scott credited it as an influence on his 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien. French filmmaker Alexandre Aja also cited the film as a key early inspiration in his career. Horror director and musician Rob Zombie has also named it as a significant stimulus for his films House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005).

Other subsequent films that may owe a nod to Chain Saw include The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Death Weekend (1976), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), The Evictors (1979), Mother’s Day (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Southern Comfort (1981), Pieces (1982), Children of the Corn (1984), The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990), House of 1000 Corpses (2003), Wrong Turn (2003), Wolf Creek (2005), Hostel (2005), Hatchet (2006), The Flesh Keeper (2007), Slasher (2007), Backwoods (2008), and Ty West’s X (2022).

Hooper and company do an admirable job of creating unease right from the start. We begin with the “true story” screen crawl voiced by John Larroquette, creating false expectations that this will be a true crime recreation. We see the August 18, 1973 dateline to firmly anchor this narrative in a particular period, and then there’s a montage of shovel-digging noises and flashbulb-illuminated peeks at dead bodies before these unearthed corpses are revealed in full, dementedly draped around a tall tombstone as we hear a radio news report about graverobbing. Then there’s a jump cut to oversaturated imagery of sunspots and solar flares, and continued radio news reporting of an oil refinery fire, a suicide, and other disquieting mentions of violence and destruction. We observe armadillo roadkill in the foreground as a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine-like green van drives off in the background, soon to introduce us to our young adult protagonists.

Hooper effectively peppers the picture with portentous bad omen visuals and dialogue, as we listen to repeated horoscope warnings, see Franklin’s photo burned, witness the smeared blood on the van’s exterior, are shown a nest of undulating spiders, and catch glimpses of animal bones strewn about the decrepit cabin.

The filmmakers demonstrate unexpected cinematic savvy, despite the low budget and grindhouse aesthetics. Recall how Hooper sometimes employs a succession of quick cuts to ratchet up a scene, or the famous low-angle shot that tracks Pam from under the swing across the lawn to the front porch.

The director should be applauded, too, for not indulging in cheap titillation tactics. Again, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre contains no nudity or scenes of sexual assault (the latter would have made this film totally unpalatable to many), and the picture only uses mild profanity.

DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson wrote: “Although constructed to bring out audiences looking for transgressive, gut-wrenching horror, it demonstrates considerable restraint, generating almost an hour of creeping dread without resorting to a single cliché…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has good filmic architecture in the sense that form follows function. There are no extraneous scenes, filler or sidebar diversions; the camera hones in on the events without a let-up.”

Ponder, too, how Hooper creates surprising sympathy for Leatherface by inserting the shots of this character appearing severely distressed after dispatching with Kirk, Pam, and Jerry, as if he’s thinking, “Why have three strangers invaded my home, and are there any more coming?” We also see Leatherface bullied by his father (listed, simply, as “Old Man” in the credits).

The feat of “Chain Saw” is to make us empathize with its scariest figure without diminishing the disorienting, teeth-chattering horror. Few movies pull this off,” wrote Jason Zinoman of the New York Times.

One reading of the film is the death of the American dream. Per DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson: “With the closing of the frontier, the pioneers had no place to exercise their skills in conquering nature. Killing and eviscerating animals to survive had satisfied man's feral needs. Modern life deprives 'atavistic frontiersmen' of basic savagery… when corporate consolidation took away hundreds of thousands of jobs, Middle Americans had to take their dreams elsewhere. The days of a paycheck and a new car every five years were over, and some of the dispossessed turned to the Bible or to survivalist anti-government movements. Chain Saw shows one feral family that has regressed to practicing the pioneer skills it knows best: living off the land.”

Or, perhaps the film is a treatise on predetermined cosmic fate: Consider the solar flare footage shown at the opening, the close-ups of the full moon, the group discussing cautionary astrological predictions, and the ominous radio broadcasts, which relay nothing but bad news and disturbing events.

Hooper and collaborators certainly seem to underscore the consequences of living in violent, pessimistic, disillusioning times. Remember that this picture was made near the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The idealism of the 1960s was long dead. The public distrusted politicians, and the nation felt like a more violent, unkind place. Chain Saw examines the hidden savagery within man and the dangers of tapping into primal instincts—well-trodden subtexts in 1970s cinema.

Surprising to many, this film could actually have a vegetarian political agenda—a “meat is murder” message, if you will. After all, killing cows, pigs and other livestock for mass production of food is a cruel business that none of us want to learn the gruesome details about. While animals suffer and die in a commercialized industry of slaughter, we look the other way. Hooper was quoted as saying of this work: “It’s a film about meat.”

Many also believe The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is also about the usurping of the traditional nuclear family. Makes sense when you ruminate on how Leatherface and his clan represent an affront to our image of a loving and functional clan. Newman posited: “The nameless degenerates (they become the Sawyers in the sequel) are a parody of the sitcom family, with the bread-winning, long-suffering garage proprietor as Pop, the bewigged, apron-wearing Leatherface as Mom, and the rebellious, birthmarked, long-haired hitchhiker as teenage son. The house is a similarly overdone, a degraded mirror of the ideal home.”

Recurrence and déjà vu persist as crucial motifs. “Circularity and repetition are important structural components throughout The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” according to Slant Magazine reviewer Budd Wilkins. “The fierce red sun that dominates the opening credits is visually matched late in the film by repeated close-ups of red-veined eyeballs. At the level of the plotline, Sally circles back to the Last Chance gas station where she beseeches the Old Man for help, only to have him turn out to be one of the cannibal clan. Later, she runs circles around their rural farmhouse. And the film isn’t afraid to reduce its repetitiveness to absurdity either, as when Sally twice jumps through a window in an effort to elude Leatherface.

This movie’s greatest gift is arguably the last act. That’s when Sally is chased throughout the woods and the house of horrors by a chainsaw-wielding maniac for what feels like hours, takes refuge in the arms of the gas station attendant who shockingly abducts her and returns Sally to the same dreadful domicile, is held captive, and ultimately evades her tormenters—an unapologetically harrowing series of episodes strung together that form a bravura sequence of sheer terror.

Hooper best demonstrates his skill for scares during the nightmarish 11-minute stretch near the conclusion when Sally is tied to the chair in the dining room and tormented mercilessly by the Sawyer family. Here is where the increasingly distressing shots, blended with an unnervingly shrill sound design and actress Marilyn Burns’ psychologically stabbing screams, create an insufferable sensory experience for the viewer that cements Chain Saw’s deserved reputation for pure, unrelenting horror. Using vertiginously canted angles, extreme close-ups of Sally’s face (particularly her bulging bloodshot eyeballs), POV shots of the three men torturously teasing her, as well as the repugnant mini-segment when she’s bent over a bucket as the cadaverous grandpa attempts to sledge her skull in, the director and his collaborators create a hellscape sequence for the ages. It proves—as does the earlier scene where Leatherface hangs Pam on a meat hook and dices up Kirk with his preferred power tool without showing any actual body penetration or viscera—that you can accomplish a lot more with suggestion a la careful camera placement and clever editing than graphic gore and geek show special effects.

Two other unbelievably startling scenes still rattle viewers with every rewatch. First, there’s the unforgettable earlier sequence where Leatherface suddenly materializes in the doorway and pummels Kirk with a sledgehammer, after which we see Kirk flail about in a death twitch on the floor before his assailant quickly bashes him again and slams the metal door shut. The suddenness of this appearance and the lethal brute force conveyed by actor Gunnar Hansen in this character still steal our breath away. And the second example is the quite effective jump scare of Leatherface suddenly emerging from the darkness and popping out of the bushes with the chainsaw, which he uses to quickly attack Franklin: imagery powerful enough to give us Richter-scale nightmares.

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A silver celebration of The Blair Witch Project

Friday, October 25, 2024

Released 25 years ago in the summer of 1999, The Blair Witch Project stands a quarter century later as a landmark American horror film. Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez and produced on a shoestring budget of around $60,000 (yet earning nearly $250 million globally), the movie unfolds as a documentary chronicling the journey of three student filmmakers—Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard (also the real names of the actors who play these roles)—who explore the Black Hills of Maryland to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch. As they become lost, strange sounds and mysterious phenomena intensify, leading to a terrifying conclusion.

Click here to listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of this film, conducted last week.


This is one of the first examples of the found footage subgenre in which would-be documentary material, supposedly later discovered, is presented, often shot by the actual actors and featuring a shaky handheld camera style. The presumption is that whoever discovered this footage edited it together and released it as a record of what happened to the people who were originally involved.

What’s astounding about The Blair Witch Project is how much it achieves with so few ingredients. There is no graphic violence, blood/gore (except for the contents of a small parcel), physical manifestation of a monster, witch, or entity, cheap shocks or jump scares, or special effects/CGI. Instead, this is a psychological horror movie in which the heavy lifting is done by what’s left to your imagination.

For that matter, there is no real plot or attention-grabbing action. The picture consists early of relatively unexceptional talking head interviews of townsfolk followed by strung-together shots of the principals walking and camping in the woods. The film is carried by three young unknown performers; two of them (Donahue and Williams) had never acted in a movie before. We aren’t given a score to musically punctuate the tone or atmosphere. The ending is abrupt, and there is no resolution: All we know is that these three young adults were never found again. We don’t learn if they were killed or who/what is responsible for their disappearance. The remnants they discover (the twig men, the eerie bundle, the rock piles) remain unexplained, and the legend of the Blair Witch is not demystified in any way.

The film's massive success can be attributed to its groundbreaking marketing campaign, which blurred the distinction between reality and fiction by presenting the footage as genuine and the actors as missing persons. The use of shaky handheld cameras and improvised dialogue added to its raw, unsettling tone, heightening the psychological tension. The Blair Witch Project proved that low-budget, independent films could achieve massive success, and it paved a profitable path forward for future found footage movies. Its emphasis on suspense and the unseen breathed new life into the horror genre in the late 1990s and created a significant cultural legacy.

Of course, this film also frustrated many watchers, many of whom resented the ambiguous ending and expressed serious dislike of Donahue’s character, whom they found to be grating and irksome. Plenty of people were told word-of-mouth that this was a terrifying motion picture yet felt cheated or duped by the end credits, often expressing that they didn’t find it nearly frightening enough. Others resented that The Blair Witch Project was, in their estimation, an art film disguised as mainstream entertainment.

But for the Blair Witch faithful, the picture still works quite effectively, with a verisimilitude that persists as palpable. They admire that the footage looks genuine and amateurish—consistently appearing too shaky, shoddy, and off-the-cuff to be counterfeit, choreographed, or contrived. That realism is a testament to the design of the directors, who relied on the actors to shoot the scenes themselves, without much direction; Myrick and Sánchez mostly remained distant from Donahue, Williams, and Leonard to allow the performances and dialogue to unfold naturally. That’s right: a group of novice filmmakers put blind faith in their three thespians to conjure up the bulk of what constitutes The Blair Witch Project, trusting in them to improvise their scenes and learn how to work the cameras without much guidance.

The actors weren’t faking it, either. They truly were sleeping in the woods for days, utterly exhausted, cold, and aggravated with each other, not privy to the script, and unaware of what the filmmakers were going to unleash upon them.

The film builds tension and fright via the simplest of techniques: eerie off-screen sounds, strange things happening out of the frame but nearby, brief but effective night scenes that are almost completely dark except for the camcorder light, and friction/infighting between the three characters, which puts each of them on edge.

Consider how the concept of being hunted and lost, especially in the woods, is a chilling premise for a horror film. Psycho caused countless viewers to be scared to take a shower. Jaws resulted in millions being afraid to go in the water. The Blair Witch Project made camping and wood-walking a terrifying notion for modern audiences.

The Dissolve essayist Mike D’Angelo summed it up effectively. “The Blair Witch Project is one of the goriest movies ever made," he wrote. "It’s 81 minutes of nerves being slowly shredded before your eyes. The real horror lies in watching Heather, Josh, and Mike gradually turn on each other as their circumstances grow bleaker, until there’s arguably no longer any need for a witch or other bogeyman to torment them. By night, the film is an unconventional horror flick... By day, on the other hand, it’s a harrowing collegiate gloss on Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, in which three dead souls discover that their eternal punishment consists of being locked in a room with each other. The woods here are just a big, empty room, and the screaming, bickering, and blame-tossing isn’t a grating distraction from the main story. It is the main story.”

“At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can’t see. The noise is the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark,” Roger Ebert penned in his 4-star review of the movie.

Similar works

  • Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
  • The Last Broadcast (1998)
  • The St. Francisville Experiment (2000)
  • REC (2007)
  • Cloverfield (2008)
  • The Paranormal Activity movies

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Price + Poe + Corman = colorfully frightful fun

Monday, October 21, 2024

Roger Corman, known by the late 1950s shlock filmmaker extraordinaire for his low-budget horror movies of that era, upped his game considerably with the turn of that decade. Between 1960 and 1964, he churned out his most consistently well-regarded pictures, better known as the Poe cycle: a series of eight horror films based on Edgar Allan Poe's works, distributed by American International Pictures and known for their gothic atmosphere, elaborate set designs, and frequent collaboration with actor Vincent Price. 

The series began with House of Usher (1960), establishing the style with Price as Roderick Usher, followed by The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), adding to Poe's original story. The Premature Burial (1962) starred Ray Milland, while Tales of Terror (1962) presented an anthology of three Poe tales featuring Price, Peter Lorre, and Basil Rathbone. The Raven (1963) took a comedic turn with Price, Lorre, Boris Karloff, and a young Jack Nicholson. The Haunted Palace (1963), though marketed as part of the Poe Cycle, was actually based on H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward with some Poe elements. The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is highly regarded, blending Poe's titular tale with Hop-Frog, while the final entry, The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), explores a man's obsession with his deceased wife and her potential return from the grave.

It’s not easy adapting Poe’s work for the big screen. The author’s macabre tales are often introspective, moody, atmospheric stories that relay the inner thoughts and emotions of a character and lack action, realistic characters, and dialogue. They’re also usually quite short, lacking enough back story, character development, and subplots to sustain an 80-minute-plus film. One advantage to adapting Poe, however, which also attracted Corman: they are in the public domain and free to tinker with.

Despite low budgets, these films are admired for their atmospheric horror and creative set designs. All explore the repression of sexuality, the disintegration of personality, and the entry of an innocent character into a realm of decay and corruption, from which the innocent prevails. Most include some eerie dream sequence.

What’s the best film in Corman’s Poe cycle? Many cite The Masque of the Red Death (1964), which follows Prince Prospero, a cruel nobleman who worships Satan, as he hosts a decadent masquerade ball in his castle to avoid the plague ravaging medieval Europe. The story unfolds as Prospero becomes fixated on Francesca, an innocent peasant girl, and brings her, along with her lover Gino and her father Ludovico, to the castle. As the ball progresses, mysterious figures appear, including a figure in a red cloak symbolizing the Red Death itself, leading to a darkly poetic conclusion about mortality and morality.
 

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Masque of the Red Death, conducted earlier in October, click here.


Masque of the Red Death is one of the first Hollywood films to explore satanism, preceded earlier by Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim. This film had the largest budget (an estimated $1 million) of all the Corman-Poe movies as well as the highest production values and most impressive sets. Much of the elaborate castle scenery was repurposed from the film version of Becket, which had been filmed earlier that year and earned a BAFTA for its set design, along with an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction. This movie also marked one of the earliest color films shot by cinematographer Nicolas Roeg. Masque of the Red Death is widely considered the best of the Corman-Poe films, earning a 91% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest mark among the eight films in this cycle.

This film is replete with themes, including man’s obsession with sex and death, as exemplified by Prospero’s affection for Juliana and Francesca, and his determination to keep the Red Death plague outside his castle walls. Man’s bestiality, hedonistic tendencies, and animal instincts are also explored: recall the mentions of dogs and hounds; the man in the ape suit; Prospero commanding subjects to behave like a pig, worm, or other creature; and the bird-killing falcon.

This film further ruminates on touching as an act of desecration, as exemplified by the white rose that is turned red; the menacing of the prone Juliana by weapons of torture; the bloody hands of the sick, terminal party guests clutching out for Prospero at the end during the dance of death sequence; the poisoned dagger sequence; the satanic cross branding; and the falcon’s attack on Juliana.

The ultimate takeaway is arguably not good vs. evil, however; it’s that death plays no favorites between the two—by the film’s conclusion, only six random survivors are left, and good and evil characters alike have perished.

Colors become an obvious motif. Consider the use of red: the white rose turned red, the two redheaded women, and the incarnation of the Red Death plague itself in the form of a mysterious figure clad in crimson whose victims bleed as a symptom of the disease. In the original tale by Poe, there were seven color-coded rooms in the abbey, arranged from east to west, which are thought to symbolize the journey of life. Each room reflects a stage: blue for birth, purple for youth, green for adolescence, orange for adulthood, white for old age, violet for approaching death, and black/scarlet for death itself. In this adaptation, however, there are only four colored rooms: yellow, purple, white, and black. What they stand for is open to interpretation, although the black chamber is associated with Satan and death.

Some have theorized that the colors of the cloaked figures signify different diseases, with red being anthrax, white for tuberculosis, yellow for yellow fever, orange for scurvy, blue for cholera, violet for influenza, and black for the bubonic plague.

Look more closely and you can spot some subtle Freudian symbolism, as demonstrated by the running of Francesca down an eerie corridor. In an interview, Corman said: “That is very symbolic and extremely important. To me, the corridor is, simply, a vagina. You must set up two things in the movement down the corridor; I think it is a child’s approach to sex, in which he knows there is something great and wonderful out there but that child has also been told by the parents, ‘That’s bad—don’t do that!’ So to recreate that feeling—because I think the sense of horror does have elements of sexuality within it—you go down the corridor, and the audience must be saying to the person—identifying with the person—‘Don’t take another step. Get out of there right now! Don’t open that door! At the same time, the audience must be saying, ‘Open the door. We must see what is behind that door!’ If you set that sequence up correctly, it never fails to generate an emotional response.”

Similar works

  • Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, which also features a dance of death and a mysterious robed figure that stalks and even plays chess with the characters
  • Witchfinder General, also starring Price, featuring an utterly evil, merciless torturer who has women burned at the stake for supposed witchcraft
  • Poe’s short story Hop-Frog, a revenge tale about a dwarf that Corman chose to weave into this tale to pad out the story
  • The story Torture of Hope by Auguste Villiers de I’Isle-Adam, from which a sub-plot in Masque is taken.

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Cineversary podcast celebrates 50th birthdays of Young Frankenstein & Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Gregory Mank and Kim Newman
In Cineversary podcast episode #75, host ⁠Erik Martin⁠ celebrates the golden birthdays of two classics for the Halloween season. First, he’s joined by author and classic horror historian ⁠Gregory Mank ⁠to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Mel Brooks’ ⁠Young Frankenstein⁠; and then he teams up with horror film scholar and author ⁠Kim Newman⁠ to honor the 50th anniversary of ⁠The Texas Chain Saw Massacre⁠, directed by Tobe Hooper. Erik and his guests provide plenty of discussion treats, with no tricks, examining why these two films are worthy of kudos five decades onward, how they’ve stood the test of time, and more.

To listen to this episode, click here or click the "play" button on the embedded streaming player below. Or, you can stream, download, or subscribe to Cineversary wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Learn more about the Cineversary podcast at www.cineversary.com and email show comments or suggestions to cineversarypodcast@gmail.com.

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Young Frankenstein doesn't feel old 50 years onward

Wednesday, October 9, 2024


Perhaps the greatest horror-comedy ever made, Young Frankenstein—released nearly 50 years ago in December 1974—stands as possibly Mel Brooks’ finest film and collaboration (the screenplay was co-written by Brooks and its lead actor, Gene Wilder). The movie is both a parody and a loving homage to the classic Frankenstein Universal horror films of the 1930s.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of this film, conducted last week, click here.


The story centers on Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder), the American grandson of the notorious Victor Frankenstein, who is determined to separate himself from his family's dark legacy by pronouncing his surname "Fronkensteen." However, after inheriting his ancestral estate in Transylvania, Frederick becomes intrigued by his grandfather’s experiments and sets out to bring a dead body back to life. Assisted by the mischievous hunchback Igor (Marty Feldman) and the charming Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick successfully reanimates a creature (Peter Boyle), whose frightening exterior contrasts with his gentle personality. The film follows Frederick as he tries to manage the chaos that ensues. The standout cast includes Cloris Leachman as the mysterious housekeeper Frau Blücher, Madeline Kahn as Frederick’s fiancée Elizabeth, and Kenneth Mars as the over-the-top Inspector Kemp.

Indeed, Young Frankenstein most benefits from excellent casting – this is debatably Wilder’s finest role and performance, and it’s hard to envision any of the other parts played by any other actors than the ones cast in this film.

Wilder’s ability to express a wide array of emotions with dramatic facial expressions, animated gestures, and exaggerated histrionics demonstrates his gift not only for comedy but credible acting. This feels like a role he was born to play. Chris Justice of Classic-Horror.com wrote of Wilder in this role: “There is something hilarious in seeing hypocrisy unfold, especially when it occurs unknowingly and there is no explanation for it. Even more hilarious is when the hypocrite has spent much time previously denouncing what becomes the hypocritical act. His self-conscious melodrama allows him to perfectly play the victim of others' sarcasm and satire, and he revels in being the target of so many comic arrows.”

Feldman, meanwhile, practically steals every scene he’s in and often garners the biggest laughs. Boyle has a challenging assignment here – he has to convey a lot of emotion and ideas nonverbally, remain consistently in character, and also personalize and customize his interpretation of Frankenstein’s monster without turning it into a caricature of itself.

Every actor seems perfectly assigned to their respective role and seems to lend so much more to their part than a substitute actor would. Consider how effortlessly Kahn inhabits Elizabeth the fiancée, bringing a sophisticated charm yet wacky diva energy to this character, or the exaggerated mannerisms and Teutonic speech inflections that Mars imbues within Inspector Kemp. This is one of the best ensemble casting ever for a comedy film. Throw in the fact that you have the luxury of casting in small roles Gene Hackman and Chloris Leachman, who each won acting Oscars two years earlier, and this film becomes a cup runneth over with thespian talent.

Additionally, this is that rare breed of comedy where there is more than one strongly funny female character—three, in fact, who collectively may garner more laughs than the male characters.

This picture also remains evergreen thanks in large part to timeless humor in the form of hilarious set pieces, endlessly quotable comedic lines, and priceless running gags. Examples of the latter include the continuous mispronunciation of Frank-en-STEEN and EYE-gore, the frenzied whinnying of the horses after hearing Frau Blucher’s name spoken, Inspector Kemp’s mechanical arm, Elizabeth’s ridiculous prissiness, and the shifting of Igor’s hump. Unforgettable one-off laughers include the dead hand in the coffin sequence, the sed-a-give charades scene, the freshly dead face of Igor resting on the bookshelf, the dart-throwing episode, the visit to the blind hermit, and, of course, the Puttin’ on the Ritz number.

In a retrospective documentary on the film found on the Blu-Ray, actor Robert Ben Garant comments on the versatility of the comedic characters, noting that roles often get swapped around between straight man and funny person in Young Frankenstein, so that no one personality is always one or the other. For example, Igor is often the film’s comic relief, with his exaggerated expressions, shifting hunchback, and carefree attitude, relying on physical humor and irreverent quips. However, he occasionally shifts to the straight-man role, such as in the "Abby Normal" brain scene, where he remains calm while Frederick becomes frantic, cleverly reversing their typical comedic dynamic. Additionally, The Monster frequently acts as the straight man, using his confusion and innocence to contrast with the comedic chaos around him. However, he becomes the focal point of humor in scenes like the iconic Puttin’ on the Ritz performance, where his exaggerated dancing and singing alongside Frederick transforms a simple homage into a comedic highlight.

This film matters more because there are moments of true poignancy and pathos. This is not a wall-to-wall comedy with a record ratio of jokes per minute like the Airplane movies, and that’s to the picture’s advantage: the filmmakers have to create sympathy for the monster to make him more than one-dimensional, and they’re not relying on pure parody and satire to entertain viewers here. Their goal is to tell an emotionally involving story that’s also filled with plenty of laughs. “Every good comedy needs an engine, and the engine behind Young Frankenstein is the father-son relationship of the monster and Dr. Frankenstein,” Brooks said in an interview, adding “That’s the true love story” in this movie.

Young Frankenstein is an all-ages comedy kids can enjoy--true enough--but it's layered with a special sauce that stimulates adult taste buds. It revels in post-sexual revolution bawdiness and sexual innuendos, which grown-ups appreciate and elevate the comedic potential.

Furthermore, it boasts a showstopper sequence that everyone remembers: the Puttin’ on the Ritz performance. Including this scene was a major risk, Brooks believed, because if it wasn’t prepared and handled carefully, it could have fallen flat on its face. Also, none of the Frankenstein films this was spoofing featured a song-and-dance number, pulling the film away from its source genre. Thankfully, the sequence is a delightful surprise that’s wildly funny and highly entertaining. Wilder had to strongly sway Brooks to film and include this bit, but Brooks now considers it the best scene in the film.

Unlike many of Brooks’ other pictures, this isn’t anchored firmly in the year or era it was made – it isn’t saddled with contemporary pop culture or scatological references, trendy jokes, or zeitgeist characters that by now would have grown dated. Because the old-time horror films it honors remain timeless and classic, Young Frankenstein itself remains timeless and classic.

Consider how this picture is also a sturdy and dependable comedy institution, as demonstrated by the widely held belief that it improves with rewatches. Brooks said in an interview: “When something becomes precious, the replaying of it has more joy and comic effect than the surprise of a new joke. The big jokes are old pals, and you want to see them again.”

Young Frankenstein places high on many “best of” comedy film lists. On the American Film Institute's list of the 100 funniest American movies, Young Frankenstein holds the No. 13 spot. It is also ranked No. 28 on Total Film magazine's readers' "List of the 50 Greatest Comedy Films of All Time" and No. 56 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies" list.

Elements that help elevate this film as not only a comedy masterwork but an authentic-looking and sounding work of retro cinema include the brave choice of shooting in black and white, which makes it a more credible tribute to classic horror films and helps it stand out during an era when black and white was very much out of fashion and rarely used in feature-length motion pictures. It’s estimated that only around 35 significant black and white films were made in Hollywood between 1967 to 1974, a period when theatrical releases averaged 150 to 200 per year. That meant that by 1974, merely 3% of feature films were monochrome. And many of these black-and-white movies were independent or smaller productions, as major studios overwhelmingly created color films.

Young Frankenstein achieves an authentic early horror film aesthetic, as well, by incorporating original laboratory equipment from the 1931 Frankenstein, designed and preserved by Kenneth Strickfaden, lending historical accuracy with its iconic electrical devices. The sets, including the castle and lab, are meticulously crafted to evoke the eerie, expressionistic atmosphere of 1930s horror, with high-contrast chiaroscuro lighting. This highlights sharp contrasts between light and shadow, reinforcing a gothic feel, particularly in scenes like the monster’s revival.

The camera work closely follows the techniques of that era, too, using static wide shots, close-ups, and angled compositions to amplify tension.

Additionally, the film employs iris transitions, where shots open and close in a circular pattern, further nodding to the filmmaking techniques of classic cinema.

The movie boasts a tremendous score by John Morris that is sweet, haunting, and foreboding, utilizing dramatic string instruments and violins to evoke longing, loneliness, and mystery. It’s a throwback soundtrack that sounds like it was written 30 or 40 years earlier.

The scenario, look, and characters were all drawn from the first four films in Universal’s Frankenstein cycle, including, chronologically, Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). Brooks and company invoke horror brushstrokes found beyond the Frankenstein franchise canvas, however. The Puttin on the Ritz sequence, and how the monster is introduced to and later antagonized by the crowd, recalls the similar Broadway unveiling scene in 1933’s King Kong.

Earlier horror comedies of note that came before Young Frankenstein that it would be compared to include The Cat and the Canary, The Ghost Breakers, Arsenic and Old Lace, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Scared Stiff, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Comedy of Terrors, The Munsters, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, and The Fearless Vampire Killers.

Horror comedies released after the success of Young Frankenstein include The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978), Love at First Bite (1979), Saturday the 14th (1981), Student Bodies (1981), Full Moon High (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), Once Bitten (1985), Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie (1985), Transylvania 6-5000 (1985), Haunted Honeymoon (1986), Frankenstein General Hospital (1988), Beetlejuice (1988), Elvira Mistress of the Dark (1988), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Frankenstein: The College Years (1991), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), also directed by Brooks.

Make no mistake: Horror comedies have always existed. Per Wikipedia, there were 10 horror comedies tallied in the 1920s, six in the 1930s, 13 in the 1940s, 8 in the 1950s, 16 in the 1960s, 22 in the 1970s, an astonishing 103 in the 1980s, 72 in the 1990s, 105 in the 2000s, and 155 between 2010 and 2020. It’s not a coincidence that the number of mirthful macabre movies spiked significantly in the wake of Young Frankenstein.

Consider, too, that there have been close to 100 films made over the past 114 years that are based on the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein. After Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, Frankenstein is the fictional character that has been featured in more films than any other.

One last bit of trivia: Igor’s “Walk this way” quote influenced Aerosmith to write their hit rock song with the same title.

Importantly, this movie isn’t trying to mean-spiritedly mock those old Frankenstein pictures; instead, it attempts to evoke the look and feel of those films while also poking gentle fun at some of the tropes, conventions, motifs, aesthetics, and characters of those 1930s movies. For proof of the love and respect that the filmmakers intended, consider the choice to shoot in black-and-white and include some of those original lab equipment props featured in the 1931 Frankenstein movie.

It’s worth noting that, in 1974 when young Frankenstein was originally released, the classic Universal horror movies like Frankenstein and its sequels had for many years prior enjoyed a resurgence on rerun television a la Shock Theater and Creature Feature-type TV repackagings. Also, classic movie monsters remained popular among baby boomers and their children, as evidenced by the popularity of horror magazines, comic books, monster models, and other merchandise. These interests did not suffer after Young Frankenstein was released – in fact, old-time monsters were back in vogue.

That being said, some viewers may find it difficult, after watching Young Frankenstein, to screen the original Frankenstein pictures with an open mind or a patient, tolerant attitude that respects the films in the context of their times.

Although this is a Mel Brooks-directed work, it’s a fairly equal collaboration between him and Wilder, who co-wrote the original screenplay and originated the idea. Some critics and scholars contend that this is Brooks’ most well-paced and restrained film – not quite as silly and zany as some of his other comedies – and that praise should be equally attributed to Wilder. Brooks himself regarded this as his best film as a writer-director.

Per Roger Ebert: “In his two best comedies, before this, The Producers and Blazing Saddles, Brooks revealed a rare comic anarchy. His movies weren’t just funny, they were aggressive and subversive, making us laugh even when we really should have been offended…Young Frankenstein is as funny as we expect a Mel Brooks comedy to be, but it’s more than that: It shows artistic growth and a more sure-handed control of the material by a director who once seemed willing to do literally anything for a laugh. It’s more confident and less breathless…Perhaps Young Frankenstein works the best of all Mel Brooks’s films because Brooks has a clear affection for the originals and has made a major effort to recapture the look and style of the old Frankenstein films.”

Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein cemented Brooks’ reputation as Hollywood’s signature satirist of film genres, in these two cases the western and the horror film. He would go on to spoof cinema made before talking pictures with Silent Movie (1976), Hitchcock films with High Anxiety (1977), historical epics with History of the World Part I (1981), science-fiction features with Spaceballs (1987), and Robin Hood movies with Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).

On the cusp of its 50th birthday, one of Young Frankenstein’s greatest gifts is that it proved you could affectionately lampoon a beloved classic, like Frankenstein and its sequels, without skewering it mercilessly over the coals and diminishing those originals in any way. That requires love and respect for the source material and carefully balancing the jokes with proper reverence. A few films released after 1974 that adopted this approach include Shaun of the Dead and Zombie Land—parodies of zombie movies, particularly George Romero-directed films, that seem to hold those earlier zombie classics in high regard—as well as Galaxy Quest (a fairly gentle ribbing of Star Trek) and The Cabin in the Woods (a whipsmart deconstruction of horror clichés that honors the genre, blending humor with a respectful exploration of its themes). Examples of genre spoofs that often take an opposite, more irreverent approach—while still generating copious yuks—include Airplane!, The Naked Gun, Scary Movie, and Tropic Thunder.

Greatest gift #2 is the underrated brilliance of lead actor and co-writer Gene Wilder, who is as responsible for the creation and success of Young Frankenstein as his partner Mel Brooks. His Dr. Frederick Frankenstein quickly pivots from an unruffled intellectual to a peeved patrician to a hysterical idealist who allows his engulfing emotions to trump his innate pragmatism. Wilder never fails to wow as Mr. Wonka, but his embodiment of this manic mad scientist, and the pathos he masterfully wields to capture our attention and elicit a surprising emotional response in the viewer, makes this perhaps his finest and most memorable performance. This is screaming Gene at his very best.

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The downsides to trading up

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Released at the height of the Cold War in 1966, Seconds is a unique psychological thriller directed by John Frankenheimer that can still resonate with modern audiences in a world where innovative technologies can offer exciting—and frightening—new possibilities. Notable for its unsettling take on themes of identity, existential crisis, and the pressures of modern life, the film follows Arthur Hamilton, a dissatisfied middle-aged man, who is approached by an enigmatic group that offers him a chance to erase his old existence and begin anew by undergoing a complete physical transformation. After assuming the identity of the younger, more successful Tony Wilson, played by Rock Hudson, Hamilton initially enjoys his new life. However, he soon discovers that this fresh start comes with a heavy and frightening price.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Seconds, click here.


Seconds is overwhelmingly dark and pessimistic, even for the Cold War era, with an especially downbeat conclusion. There is no tacked-on happy ending here. This is a film that attempts to expose the myths and lies behind the pursuit of the American dream and the search for physical perfectionism—at a time when advertising and popular culture emphasized physical beauty, materialism, and sex appeal.

The visuals are creative, memorable, and unsettling, particularly the distorted shots achieved by master cinematographer James Wong Howe, who uses fish eye lenses, distorted and wide angles, giant close-ups of blank, soulless faces, POV shots, tracking shots following heads and feet, jump cuts and other techniques to achieve a disturbing visual tapestry.

Frankenheimer's direction builds on his earlier work with themes of conspiracy, dread, and control, evident in films like The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May. Though Seconds was not a commercial hit upon release, it has since garnered a devoted following and is now considered a significant piece of existential and dystopian cinema.

Why did audiences reject Seconds back in 1966? Perhaps because it cast Rock Hudson against type: Viewers were used to seeing him in romantic comedies, after all. Additionally, the film mixes several different genres into one: science fiction, horror, psychological thriller, noir, cautionary tale, and fantasy. Possibly this ambitious blending was ahead of its time and too off-putting to viewers in the mid-1960s. Consider, too, that the filmmakers chose to shoot in black and white vs. color, at a time when the former was decidedly less popular. The distorted, haunting monochrome imagery, bleak message, and dark tone may have been too overwhelming and depressing for contemporary moviegoers.

Seconds emphasizes distortion—as exemplified through the skewed visuals and warped shots—and disillusionment, suggesting that what we think will make us happy and fulfilled may be a lie. Is true happiness and self-fulfillment possible? Or do we always crave more?

Above all, this is a cautionary tale, a “be careful what you wish for” allegory. If you think your life is bad, it could always be worse. Seconds is also concerned with resurrection and rebirth (ironically, in this resurrection, the body is perfected but the soul remains dead), distrust of technology (technology should be in our control, but this film argues the opposite), and, most importantly, the fallacy of the American dream. Frankenheimer had said, in interviews, about this film: “When we talk about life, my philosophy is that you have to live your life the way it is. You can change it, but you can’t change who you are or what you’ve done before. And you have to live with that. I think that point was very well brought out in Seconds—that’s what the film is all about.”

Criterion Collection essayist David Sterritt pushes this message of existential angst even further, writing that “Seconds was (Frankenheimer’s) outcry ‘against ‘the Dream,’ the belief that all you need to do in life is to be financially successful. He saw the film as ‘a matter-of-fact yet horrifying portrait of big business that will do anything for anybody, provided you are willing to pay for it.’ It expressed his contempt for ‘all this nonsense in society that we must be forever young, this accent on youth in advertising and thinking.’”

Similar works

  • Frankenstein
  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  • Faust
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
  • Several episodes of The Twilight Zone, including The Trade-Ins
  • Hollow Triumph
  • Eyes Without a Face
  • The Stepford Wives
  • The Face of Another
  • Shock Corridor
  • Carnival of Souls
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Other films directed by John Frankenheimer

  • The Birdman of Alcatraz
  • The Manchurian Candidate
  • Seven Days in May
  • Black Sunday
  • Ronin

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