Midweek Mention... The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Reegs: We are reviewing,

Sidey: Well, yeah. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 1974.

Yes

Dan: because there's a new one out isn't.

Reegs: Yeah.

that?

No, not yet. No. I'm building up to it. I dunno, like there was quite a lot of negative online reaction, so.

Dan: Oh, right.

Okay.

Reegs: But yeah, this is the 1974 original. We talked about it the last couple of weeks.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: On the pod it's fit, it fitted into the dinner scenes and hitchhiker memorably, I think for both. Now, now that you guys, cuz you, you hadn't seen this

Dan: That's right. I can see the relationship between those top fives

Reegs: Yeah then, and my wife was strongly expressing a preference to watch it. She was like, Well, why is it so good? What's important about, you know, so. We sat down and watched it and then I forced you guys to watch it as well. And you did watch it, Dan and Peter.

Did you? Yeah. Fair

play Well done.

Sidey: Cause you were really like,

Dan: at work

Sidey: you were gonna dodge tonight.

Pete: Yeah. This is right in the kind of slot of stuff that I absolutely do not wanna watch. Not because, and I've said this before and I've, I've, I've watched some horror films and I've been really like pleasantly surprised by them.

This was

Dan: Right. Don't sound like very good horror movies if you've been pleasantly surprised.

Pete: Well, I just mean in terms of how good the films are. You know, like the

Dan: film, Not The Shocks

Pete: It was a really good film and, and there are some like stuff that would be in the horror genre, like Alien and, and this, know, stuff that

Sidey: midsummer you need to get onto, you need to get onto midsummer.

Reegs: Well, but regardless, you have watched, I th I would say this is the most influential horror film of all time. That's my bold claim. So you have now watched the OG of Slasher movies, The one, so, Okay. Yeah, there you go.

Sidey: I first saw it at the cinema when they did like the first sort rerelease type thing that what they'd done

when I was growing up. It. I dunno if it was band or withdrawn or whatever. I just had a black mark against it as being like a video nasty or however you wanna describe it.

So it was infamous, but I had never seen it. And then there was big fanfare about, well, we're gonna put it back out there, It's gonna be on the cinema. So I went to see it.

Reegs: Well certainly the marketing was still effective cuz when I was young and first became aware of this movie, I was still in that like, Oh, is this a true story? Is this

Dan: Well, it opens up. The, the narrator

Sidey: Wars.

Dan: tells you Yeah.

Sidey: the scroll. Yeah.

Dan: scrolls up. and it tells you the story of some young people and how their summer was never gonna

Sidey: be suboptimal. Yeah,

Dan: yeah.

Yeah.

Extremely

Sidey: Mm

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And then it opens with a

Sidey: dead armadillo.

Pete: Oh

Dan: well just

Reegs: Well, actually just before that, yeah,

Dan: you're in a cemetery and you'll see like a corpse on top of another

Sidey: Oh yeah, there's a few. Yeah. Like

Dan: a, a pi.

Reegs: you get the creepy like photos and just the exposure of the fingers and the dog, I think, and an eye.

Dan: So it's kind of like there's been a police investigation. They found all these gruesome bodies and there's been ro grave diggers that have come into the area. And they're not kind of sure what's going on, but people were heading up to the graveyard to see if their loved ones were some of the ones that had been affected Exhumed Exhumed.

Thank you,

Reegs: the

news report is great because it goes on for quite a while at the beginning of the thing, and as it introduces that, that sets up the rest of the plot in motion. It's also giving this.

Kind of detailing an unusual number of sort of disasters and weirdness going on. And there's an explosion at an oral refinery, a cholera epidemic has broke out in San Francisco.

There's violence prompted by a local suicide, like setting this backdrop of weirdness. Yeah. And we've then, you know, Up comes the title, the Texas Chainsaw Massa, and it's over sort of blurry red and black images of the solar flares and the moon, you know. So it's setting this tone, this background of weirdness and horribleness

Dan: and, and then it does open up onto a, a road with a dead armadillo and a a green kind of camper Van pulls up at the side

Reegs: very Scooby do

Dan: very Scooby.

Do. Door slides open and we meet Franklin, who rolls out in his wheelchair to go and do a piss.

Sidey: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. He needs a piss quite bad.

Dan: He needs to quit piss pretty bad, so they wheel him over into a really precarious era where the next

Pete: Yeah, the top of a bank,

Dan: the next truck that's gonna go by is gonna spit out some rocks or, or sound waves or

Sidey: ill-advised for sure.

Sure.

Dan: To have pushed him over.

And Paul Franklin ends up taking a tumble down the bank wheelchair, follows him, put a piss over his head and he's.

Reegs: well from the get go, Franklin is

Dan: had a bad old day.

Reegs: Yeah, he's having a bad day, but he's also kind of a sort of undignified burden on the rest of the group. And, you know, that is coming through.

You can see he needs a pissy, he has a piss and a can and all this stuff. It's like,

Dan: His sister, I think

Reegs: Sally

Dan: is, is the reason he's there. And as you say, is kind of like they brought him along because they've been dumped with him. All these others seem to be paired up. Don't know whether a girl

Reegs: Kirk and Pam, and

Sidey: Yeah, they were definitely gonna do it.

Yeah.

Reegs: And so then, anyway, they, they do end up going to the graveyard.

Dan: Yeah. And it doesn't look like their father is the one that's been affected. He has a house that they were meaning to go and see as well. And on the way there, they pick up a hitchhiker.

Reegs: Well, they go past a slaughter house on the way.

There's like a horrible stench, don't they? And then that's, that's when they pick up the hitchhiker. I mentioned him in last week's

Dan: Yeah And he, he's a

Pete: normal. Yeah.

Dan: real piece of work actually, I thought Pete, I mean, but we comment this

Sidey: Well he

Dan: normal in your house. Little bit,

Sidey: It starts off not quite so crazy, but it does rapidly descend into like mania and

Reegs: Well, he's, he's kind of, he's all twitching and he's got speech impediment and he's got, I think he got a large birth

Sidey: mind.

He had birthmark on his face. Yeah, his,

Reegs: his face.

Dan: Which, which all painted him out to be a little.

Sidey: It's in,

Reegs: And he's instantly talking about meat as well,

Dan: more of his behavior. And once he starts bringing out the photographs he's taken of animals, he's killed with a sledgehammer at the AOI

Alarm Be alarm bells may have been ringing. Yeah, but if they weren't then

Reegs: But Franklin tries to reach out though,

Dan: he? does

Reegs: he talks about head cheese.

Dan: That's right.

And they're talking different cheese as we all learn. But they're head cheese,

Sidey: the, well similar product, but

Dan: is. Maybe he, he, he digs then a He takes Franklin's pocket knife off him and digs quite a sizeable slice for his

Pete: Into his own hand.

Dan: into his own hand.

Reegs: Yeah. That's after the photo because Yeah.

Sidey: But they still don't immediately kick him out. No. Which I'm pretty sure all of us in this room would've like, You can get out the fucking van.

Reegs: Well, they're kind of hippy, kind of, and it's like, Oh, you know, this fellow love for their man.

They pick him up and then they're kind of stunned, sort of

Dan: They are

Reegs: And Franklin's trying to reach out a little bit.

Dan: and then he's kind of asking for a lift all the way home and says, You could have dinner or we could have a look at, And they go, No, no, we're in a hurry. And they, they basically kick him out at that

Sidey: Well, he shows them his knife. He's got a knife in his boot. He

starts

Dan: slicing his

Sidey: knife and it's a it's a cutthroat razor. And he uses it to do

Dan: Yeah, he cuts

Sidey: he slices Franklin's arm. it's fucking right. Bananas.

Reegs: Well cuz he gets enraged because he takes a photo and then tries to charge him $2 for it and they don't want it.

So he sets fire to it in the middle of the

Dan: Yeah, a little bit of

Reegs: they chuck him out and he's like pounding his bloody hand on the side of the bus as they go off and he's like sticking his tongue out at them

Dan: and, and thankfully that's the last they'll ever see of him.

Yeah. And they, they drive off then.

Sidey: Well, they need gas

Dan: and, and find that they've run outta petrol. And the petrol station Doesn't have any petrol reliever. They're outta gas. So they're asking about this house, aren't they? They're asking, Oh, where is this? And they going, and then this really freaky guy there at the gas station just starts putting in major like unsettle blocks to, Oh, you don't wanna go to that house.

What were those girls don't wanna go to that house with those

Reegs: people don't like strangers.

Dan: Yeah,

Pete: yeah.

Reegs: He tells 'em that they've got some great barbecue and that they should stick around for some of that. And he's worried about them, and he should be because the camera is layering at the girls as well.

It was like pretty gynecological that shot of them buying a Coke.

Pete: That certainly, at least when it was at Pam,

Sidey: Pam's got some short shorts on.

Pete: like scantily clad. Yeah, she got tiny shorts and like, like a top with like, no back to it pretty much. So yeah, there's,

Sidey: Are you saying she's asking for it, Pete, is

Pete: No, I'm saying there's a lot of flesh on display and I was getting a bit of blood in it.

Reegs: So they buy some barbecue sandwiches from the old man. What the fuck? And depart for the family home. Which they arrive at short while later, Accompanied by an ominous brooding score.

Dan: Yeah. And they leave Franklin downstairs as they all run upstairs. Paul Franklin can't get upstairs in his wheelchair with no one helping him.

So he has a bit of a meltdown. And. Shouts at everybody that, Oh, you want the give and I'm the give the gear and everybody wants to give.

Reegs: He blows his tongue out.

Dan: he

Reegs: like the hitch iker,

Dan: several raspberries at them in quite an aggressive manner.

Pete: Not, not the most violent thing you see in this film, though.

Dan: it's not actually, cuz it does ramp up after that.

And he points the way where there might be a swimming hole and they see Another house, the top of another house. This could be the house that's got

Reegs: Well, they, It's important because they go off to have sex clearly. And so,

Dan: was it. I saw this for a swim. I dunno. Right.

Reegs: Yeah. Well, Dan, it's

Pete: reading those signs, don't you?

Sidey: pick up a vibe for sure.

Dan: But I'm a great swimmer.

I

Reegs: No, it's just all that connection between sex and death. That was, you know, obviously lots of horror films. Took on that as well. So Yeah, yeah. Anyway. They hear a generator, don't they? And they're like, Oh, great, we can get some gas.

Let's just go and visit the friendly neighbors. And it, they, the camera pans round. And what we probably should say is that there's a kind of raw authenticity to, to the movie that sometimes feels very documentary like, but other times it is staggeringly very beautiful actually. The

Pete: Well what I, what, what I sort of notice at this stage, because obviously I'm watching this for the first.

Knowing that at some point this is all gonna go fucking horribly south and

Sidey: The title gives you clue. Yeah,

Pete: And I'm gonna wanna hide and cry and so I fucking on edge. But what I did find is like, it's, it's an, it's obviously, it's an oldish pretty old film. It's not, obviously, evidently it's not a particularly high budget film.

What it did, you know, with the, I remember exactly that bit with like the camera moves, you sort of, you look into, look

Reegs: house is framed through the through the swing,

Pete: then they, they've got this bit, which is like weird. It's, they've got some like cars that seem to be like contained in like a sort of a chicken wire garage and, but like the can kind like the camera sort of like sweeps around it and it sets.

Like the mood very well in, in, in the way that you kind of like, you see the surroundings and there are quirky things rather than like overtly scary or, or like sinister things going

Reegs: on. Well, sometimes it's just tin cans in a

Pete: But you imagine that there are probably like, it's sort of areas of. You know, the US and other countries for that matter, like remote areas where, Yeah, where there are gonna be these like houses where there's just like fucking shit all over the, like all over the, over the land.

There'll be like cars and a generator and all kinds of stuff going on. But it, it definitely, for me, all of that, I dunno if like that was, I'm projecting my own kind of fears onto it or whether it does kind of like. Set. It's setting the scene quite sort of nicely in,

Reegs: Yeah. Well, because things,

Pete: is interesting, the stuff going on it, like I I, I was looking at, at almost everything in every scene to see if there are

Sidey: any, When's it gonna happen?

When's it

Pete: Because you know what, what I tend to do now with like, especially like jump, scare, like

Dan: yeah, what the fuck is

Pete: like, if you see someone's like face and then there's like a big area to the kind of like the right or left of them, something's gonna come horribly. Spear through someone's face, like within minutes.

Sidey: Well, I dunno,

Pete: like that. It was, it kind of just sets a scene of like little bit, kind of like, you know, obviously it's gone to

Dan: you, you say that Pete, but it does kind of ramp up soon afterwards because who's your man that goes into the house first? Kurt?

Reegs: No, it's the other one. Is it Jesse? Jerry.

He, he's the one, he finds a, Is it Kirk? Is it Kirk and Pam? Yes.

Pete: her to do.

Reegs: he finds the tooth on the on the floor outside, just before he goes

Dan: freaks out and sits on the, the chair outside but porch. But

He's determined to, to come back with some kind of result. He doesn't want to be there with no gas. And he, he, you know, he thinks maybe this, this is a nice old family.

And he trips over what appears to be a small ramp. And a door opens much like an aoi. And we meet leather face for the first time. Yeah. Who slams a.

Sidey: a big dude.

Dan: He's a big dude and he slams a big old hammer right on the

Pete: top. Yeah. But this,

Dan: it gets him twitching, doesn't it? He does the little twitch.

Pete: Yeah. I

didn't know if he was break dancing or

Dan: No. He

Pete: Some kind of like, you know, reaction to getting hit on the head with a hammer.

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: But you've kind of like that bit it.

Reegs: Yeah, you've, you've skipped over two amazing bits there. The bit where he pokes his head in and all he can hear is squeal. And you're like, What the fuck is that?

Squealing? And then straight ahead, cuz it's this big old dilapidated house and there's like a big red

Sidey: Oh, what a lovely ha, lovely room of murder you

Reegs: Yeah. Murder room. And it's just terrifying.

Pete: got like skull, like sort of animal skulls and sort of what looks like pagan type stuff or like hanging on it.

Dan: this, This is just in the hallway, right? This is just, it comes

Sidey: Well that's in the wall. Behind the metal door,

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Okay.

Sidey: But you don't see the metal door until he goes in.

Dan: Because

of course Pam goes looking for, for

Sidey: she uncovers all the good

Pete: It's not Jerry, it's Kirk, but let's, let's not, can, can we come back to the, to the, the, like the, the first leather face, because this is the first bit.

of,

like real, kind of like I say, horror.

It's not that gruesome or gory. But yeah, first bit of like proper violence in the film and he just sort of like appears and goes, Ugh. Yeah. And I laughed, like genuinely like, and I'm not, I'm, you know, I wasn't like mocking the film going, Oh, this is pathetic or whatever. But that was my initial reaction because it was quite, I was expecting something far more kind of

Sidey: probably,

one,

Pete: chainsaw, but two, something far more kind of like, you know, violent and disgusting and terrifying. And it was like a big, like, you know, chunky bloke with wearing an apron with a mask on who just like fucking really tall, like you say, who just like appeared from nowhere and then looked at him, kind of made a grunty set of noise, then just fucking smashed him on the head with what looked like a lump hammer.

Yeah. And

Sidey: and just slams the door

Reegs: Yeah. No, but it's interesting because what you're saying is that Leatherface is, there's a weird social hierarchy in the house that will get to that leatherface is kind of at the bottom of Yeah. And that there is some comic stuff that comes in like later when he is got fucking makeup on and stuff.

It's just like, There is a comic

Pete: but bearing in mind, I've never, I've seen obviously leatherface images and maybe like the odd clip in passing or whatever, but bearing in mind I thought, like, so he's the main, like, you know, antagonist of, of the, of the

Sidey: entire, I thought it was only him before I'd seen the film.

That's all I knew of the film was Leatherface. So I just thought

Pete: so I was expecting this kind of like, You know, like, kind of like a, a, a mike, like Myers Halloween type thing. You know, like just fucking, like appearing, but looking like immediately, like sinister and shit. Scary. I'm not saying he looked fucking like, you know, summing off c bbbs or anything, but it was almost like sort of like, Comical and a little bit like ham fisted and like he didn't know what to do, so he is just whacked this guy on their head

Reegs: well, because from leather faces perspective, this is his house and suddenly some strangers in it and is he gonna attack him? And he's got a childlike mentality, which we'll see.

So you know that it's exactly all there.

Pete: Yeah. It, it was an interest. If, if anything, it kind of I think, not put me. Ease a little bit, but made me kind of like less on the, like fucking terrified about everything that was gonna be happening after that because at least I kind of knew that

I'm not explaining it very well.

But what I mean is there's almost like something like a little bit kind of like sweet and simple about him. Albeit he smashed the guy and killed

Sidey: think like hammer you, you know, you take this genre. You know, years down the line and you are, you know, they, they dive more into the, like, gore side of it and the torture element of it. Whereas this is just a quick kill. It's just bang, he's gone. You know? So it's, it's almost surprising to go back and see that Yeah.

How it's diff it's just different. Right. And it's a more realistic way of,

Dan: it's the first, it's the first kill of this film. And it's over within

Pete: apart from the armadillo.

Dan: there's, yeah, there's, which you don't see. There's, there's nothing may have died of natural causes. We don't know. um

You don't,

you know, it's over like that.

There's no build up to it or,

Pete: I was really glad of. Yeah,

Dan: thing.

Reegs: the convulsions are pretty

Dan: You do get a few convulsions and then it kind of drags him through, closes the

Sidey: just slams that door.

Reegs: Utterly terrifying and horrible though.

Dan: Then she runs in the house and it's just a house of horrors. And she can't wait to, to get outta there.

Reegs: Well, she's distracted by a chicken at first in a cage, which somehow seemed really creepy in the front room. And then when she falls to the floor, she notices it's covered in feathers and human bones.

And there's a bench that seems to be made partially out of human bones, and there's arms and hands

Dan: she's really cleverly made actually

Reegs: shells. That was the thing that I was like, That's too much now. Turtle shells

Sidey: they kill turtles.

I gather that it was loosely inspired by the. Real life Ed gain. Ed gain, however you wanna

Reegs: Tremendous Ed Gaines. Yeah.

Sidey: And when they went into his house, he had that chair. He had made a chair, you know, at human bones and he had lampshades that were made out human skin and stuff. So that, I think they really clearly showed the bench, like front and center in that it was the whole.

So I think it was just trying. Tell you that there was real life shit that happened,

Reegs: and it is macur and horrible, but it's also this incredible bit of production design, the interior of the house. You know, like you said, considering it, it, it clearly looks and feels like it was made for absolutely nothing. It feels like there's a lot going on in the frame to tell you more and more stuff about the horrors that are, are awaiting.

Anyway, so she, yeah, she comes out, she pukes everywhere, doesn't she? And the soundtrack is grinding and she runs out the room and then leatherhead. Leather face comes and she almost gets away, doesn't she? She's out through the door and he grabs her back and then just suspends her by the back of the head on a meat hook in the killing room where Kirk is then on the floor and is not on the floor.

Sidey: He's on a table. Yeah. Top

Reegs: and leather face gets the chainsaw out and begins the process of dismemberment which you don't see.

Dan: No just

Sidey: see her reaction.

Pete: Yeah, Yeah

Reegs: you don't see the, It's, it's not gratuitous. The the stuff here. You don't see the hook going into brain

like they

Pete: don't, Was it definitely in her head?

I thought it was in her back. Like

Sidey: thought she was in her back, but I don't think it really matters. I,

Pete: Well, I like, because she's clearly like still alive and can like see everything. I mean, a, a meet hook through the head is

Dan: I, I thought it just kind of went through like the back

Pete: Yeah, like hang, like you would a carcass, like you'd hang up a carcass on a meat

Dan: hook that made sense to me in

Pete: but well, yeah, splitting hairs here,

Reegs: yeah, it seems, But the chain saw, you know, when you see him carving the body up, you're not seeing arms flying off. You see the chainsaw kind of waved. In fact, it's comical. Comical. It looks like he's like standing kind of next to him because he was

Dan: Well, he, he's and the rest of the gang then as night draws in,

Pete: Sorry. Sorry. You don't see. Blood at this stage, either. No. And, and I was, I even thought like he, like, he's wearing this like, sort of like horrible colored shirt and a bit of an apron on it, but even like after that, so you don't see

Sidey: him.

Well, that, that tells us, Pete, that the cuts were made postmortem.

Because

the blood wasn't obviously pumping around to spray.

Pete: Oh, yeah. True. But the, I mean,

Dan: Ah,

sure

Pete: hammer

Reegs: CSI Sidy.

Sidey: There

would've been a bit of splashback from the chainsaw, but, but

Pete: like a minute before,

Sidey: Well, the meat was fresh, but

Reegs: anyway, this is gonna go on forever at this rate, isn't it? Yeah. Back at the granddaddy's house, they start to become concerned about the whereabouts of Pam and Kirk, don't they?

And so Jerry sets out to the creek on his own to try and find them whilst never a good Sally. Sally and Franklin have a chat. You didn't want me to come, did you? She reassures him. He did blah, blah, blah. Jerry gets lured to the house by the generator. This is one of those great shots where he's like walking and the sun is setting and it's really orange and he's just in silhouette.

He go, It did look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, didn't it? And he sees a blanket that Pam and Kirk had left on the porch. So he knows that the house is suspicious, and then he hears a sort of low moan.

Like the sound of a dog or something. And when he walks into the killing room, the hook is empty, isn't it?

Yeah. But you can hear this tapping and then he opens it and Pam just leaps outta the freezer and then screams, and then Leatherface comes in and mallets Jerry horribly to the back of their head. Yeah. So that's a three of them gone.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah.

Pete: Jerry's now gone as well. I mean, at this point, again, I'm thinking. You know, or who is, is she gonna survive? How, you know,

Sidey: a massacre. It's just

Pete: Well it is. I guess they all had to go in order for it to become a massacre, but

Reegs: do you see leather faces distressed after this though? He like makes all these weird noises and sits in a chair licking his teeth and stuff.

Pete: he's quite, yeah, he likes, sits down and he gets like to, to see at least some of his features behind the mask. I mean, what am I, what are we reading into that, that he doesn't really like killing that much, but felt like he had to do it?

I think he's it's not the first time that he's killed. No. But it probably, yeah, I mean, later on in the film you kind of like see a little bit more about the, the whole family dynamic and so on. So maybe he's like a bit angsty that he's like, made a mess or, or done something in, in an impromptu way as

Sidey: a Well, I think Yeah.

He, he gets disciplines quite a lot.

Pete: Yeah.

Yeah. True.

So yeah. Three, three down.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: And then, so we've got Franklin, who. Who stayed by the the camper van and he's with the Sally.

And, and so it's these two and at this stage, the three of 'em have gone. They're shouting out into the darkness and having a debate whether they should go and whether one of them should go. One of they end up. Both of them going and, and going through the, the under growth and the,

Sidey: you're just waiting for it to happen, aren't

Dan: and it's

Reegs: pushing the wheelchair, looks like hard work, didn't it?

Dan: it?

Yeah. Really hard work in the dark. Franklin's got the torch and you just see little bits of light whites of branches and, and the, the blackness and, and things like that. And Sure. His eggs or eggs, old lever faces there waiting for him. And this is, I think the only time we see the chainsaw take somebody down in the whole film from a live set, which he just goes, Woo.

Sidey: we just lurches out from the side of the person. Then you hear the roar of the chainsaw and it's poor. Franklins

Reegs: it into his chest.

Yeah, I think it's probably the most graphic

Sidey: kill, isn't

Dan: Yeah. Although he's. It's with his backwards. So you don't, you don't see the, the chainsaw going in or, or anything like that. Sally does though, and she doesn't stick around too long to, to scream about it.

Sidey: She's, well, she does a fair amount of screaming.

She,

Dan: no, she screams running

Reegs: pretty much for the rest of the movie.

Pete: Yeah, I was gonna say from this point to the end,

Dan: she

Pete: she just screams.

Reegs: Yeah. There's a brief moment where she's quiet at the gas station and it's pretty

Pete: I mean, it, it, it is, but you think you get, like, there's still like, you know, half the film to go here.

You think you get a bit tired of it. The, the old vocal chords.

Reegs: Yeah

Dan: it.

Pete: Get over, get a bit overworked

Dan: Pete. Well we yet to be halfway through, but three of them are dead or four of them

Pete: are four now. Yeah.

Dan: and she's the last one running through the woods. She gets to the gas station.

Thank goodness for that.

Reegs: well, well first of all, she does actually go into the house. It's quite important because I was watching with my misses and obviously her first time, your first time seeing this, I dunno whether you knew, but she certainly didn't. So when Sally runs into the house, she runs upstairs first and she walks in on grandpa and grandma and my wife didn't know that grandpa was still going.

Sidey: I didn't know

Pete: Neither did

Reegs: Oh, right, okay. I

Pete: just thought he was dead. She was clearly dead. And the poor dog as well

Reegs: Right.

Dan: I didn't know until later on that granddad was still

Reegs: Right.

Okay. Good. Well, that was

Sidey: I don't think he had much, much left, to be honest, but he was still, still there. But it was, yeah, it was a definite psycho, you know, the mum was sort of, kind of preserved a little bit,

Reegs: so yeah.

Anyway, that's when there's running and she jumps through the window and escapes again, and then she runs to the, the gas

Pete: him up at the,

Like

lingering at, at the window for quite a long time, like swinging the chain store saw still.

And, and yeah, with the right hump that she'd gotten away,

Dan: out of a, you know, a second story window to the floor. Just missed those steps. That would've been really bad if she'd have fallen sort of on those steps. But she falls on the nice soft landing of the lawn from two stories and still manage to run off a little bit.

Finds the legs again into the

Pete: Garage.

Dan: The garage and thankfully the, the old kind fella that runs the the gas stations there and calms are right down, promises to go and get the van

Sidey: but

Reegs: the, the phones are down, so you have to get in the

Dan: and leather faces is completely disappeared. I mean, he would literally on her tail as soon as he came into that,

Sidey: Well, she gets a glimpse of the barbecue, didn't she? Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. So at first

Sidey: of tell tale.

Pete: of sat in the back in the room at, at the garage. And I mean, obviously we know that there's something more to it than that, but she thinks, Oh, like at least I'm sort of safe and this guy's gonna look after me. And then she starts looking around and there's like a, like a whole kind of fucking setup going on.

And, and there's some, like, some nice sausages hanging there. Yeah. And there's the barbecue that, that he was referring to earlier. And I, I, I assume you're meant to think that this is like,

Sidey: Yeah.

Pete: Meat.

Reegs: Yeah, I assume so. Certainly. And then when he goes out, he says, Oh, I'm gonna go and get the the car, you know, the phones are down. We'll go and get the police together.

And when he comes back, he's

Sidey: room rope as well,

Reegs: and, and a sack

Sidey: Yeah. And

Pete: then there's a, there's quite an amusing like scuffle where wary like, like beats her with like

Sidey: it just proso with a broom a lot. Yeah.

Pete: But like, he

Dan: soft end of the bro,

Pete: some poor woman was like

Sidey: properly

She got, she got quite beaten up in this, I

Reegs: Yeah, that, I thought that bit was one of the most sadistic parts of the movie when he's got her in

Pete: Oh yeah. Like yeah, it made the chainsaw stuff look fucking child's play.

Reegs: Yeah. No, but when he's, when he is like,

Sidey: he's laughing and stuff

Reegs: her into the car and he's like, just jabbing her with the broomsticks he's driving. It's horrible.

Dan: And we, we come to, to realize that in fact he is the head of the family. And when he gets back to the house,

Reegs: I love the bit, Sorry. Just before he leaves, he turns the lights off cuz he says, Oh, the cost of electricity will we'll drive a man outta business.

He's amazing.

Dan: That's right. He just jumps back out the car and you think, Oh, something's gonna happen.

She's gonna wake up and, and drive the van. No, none of that. She's back to the house for a, a dinner of horrors. And this is that famous scene, which I had seen before this scene.

Reegs: Well, they pick up the hitchhiker along the way as well, and it becomes clear.

It's his younger

Dan: the the younger brother, and, and.

Pointed out a little bit earlier, we, we learned a little more about the hierarchy of the the family.

Pete: Yeah. Because immediately they bring her back to the house and before they even had dinner. Because there's the scene in, in like a, another room where the grandpa gets brought down and that's where you find out that he's alive.

She, they, they cut her finger.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, they give him some of thats,

Pete: and he has like a little suck on it. And I watched this with Cindy. She'd seen it before like a baby, but she didn't, She, like, she said she'd seen it before, but then she couldn't remember like the grandpa, but, and she was like, Oh my God, he's alive.

So he's just having like a suck on, on the finger, but like also notably at this stage, like leather face is wearing like a dress

Sidey: He's got his nice, his like housewife makeup on. Like makeup

Pete: on his fucking mask.

Reegs: Yeah. And it, and it is, but also, and you're sort of half laughing at it, but also she's tied to a chair that's got real human arms.

Light on it as well. And there's a sort of face stretched around the light.

Sidey: That

might have been

Dan: one of her friend's arms, maybe Kurtz or

Reegs: Oh,

Pete: Yeah. Cuz they look pretty new, those arms. Cause at first I thought, oh, she sat on someone, but you never showed that. I,

Reegs: I forgot. And the, the old guy, I forget his name, but he took, he says he, you know Well, they have a bit of an argument.

The mood goes a bit sour, you know, when you're at a dinner party. Yeah.

Pete: I hate that. Yeah.

And

Reegs: and somebody says something or upset something and he says, the hitchhiker is like, Oh, well we do all the killing. You are the, And the guy's like, Yeah, I've got no appetite for doing the, I can't take any pleasure in doing

Pete: Oh cuz he, he says to the, to like the hitchhiker says, Oh, you are just the

Reegs: yeah.

Pete: Like in, in like making him like less like important in the family

Reegs: Yeah yeah, yeah,

Dan: when he says cook, he, he's talking about human, human parts.

Pete: Human go, human barbecue.

Reegs: It's always bad when a dinner

Dan: part. Yeah. So he, he does kind of tell leather face off though.

And you, you start to understand that leather face when he's, he says, What the fuck

Sidey: gone Well, he changed all the door open, didn't he? Which is what he, he got, he got chastised for that.

Dan: got in trouble with that, but also for the fact, remember he goes, Well, who's there? Who is that one? He goes, And who's that one? Did you get 'em all? Did anyone escape?

And he go, No, no, no, he didn't. He goes, Wow, you still sort of did the door. But he was, he was concerned that somebody might have escaped and leather face was there. Oh, no, no. Nobody did. Nobody did.

Reegs: yeahing

Dan: But he was scared. Yeah. He,

Pete: like. It wouldn't be just like getting grounded

Dan: No, he, he, he was scared. And and they're all kind of,

bit.

strange actually.

It's a bit of a

Sidey: They were a bit strange down. Yeah, you're right.

Reegs: I mean,

Pete: haven't been anywhere, so where people have acted like that before. So yeah, I guess it would be on like out of the ordinary,

Reegs: unconventional what is also is unconventional is that they, they say that grandpa used to be the best in the slaughter house. And to demonstrate this, they're gonna get him to try and kill s.

Yeah. And they keep putting the hammer in his hand

Sidey: swear at one point it did bounce off her head for real. Which must have fucking hurt

Pete: a wound. Yeah.

Dan: I thought she was gonna pick the hammer up because it keeps on slipping.

Reegs: It does.

Dan: Although her hands are being held behind her back, I was thinking, Oh, well he's gonna let her hand go. She's gonna grab the hammer and start swinging it around a bit and get out. Well, it doesn't. Pan out like that. But there is a moment where she can escape and she does she, She bolts out. Is it another

Reegs: window?

Pete: Yeah.

Dan: Another Window.

Reegs: And they chase her up the road. She's running through the trees again. There's a lot of been that and she gets cut and thorns and

Sidey: for real

Dan: And they're

Pete: a thorn. That would've

Dan: They're running after we, we've done about an hour and 15

Pete: this

Reegs: this, this last two or three minutes.

Dan: last bit we've Yes.

To, to that scene in the house there. It's about an hour and

Sidey: It's a short film. It's 124 minutes.

Dan: we've only got sort

Reegs: 84 minutes. It was, it was an hour and 20 minutes when it,

Pete: it?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So it is only another Yeah. Few minutes to, to roll of the film and she's running out the house. We've got the hitchhike and lever face running after her.

Yeah. Who were, can't seem to run in a straight line over of him.

Sidey: They had to do that for the film because he was so much faster than her. Yeah. That to show them running, like making an effort, making it, He had to keep stopping and like waving the chains around stuff.

Otherwise it

Pete: but,

Reegs: but this is now

Pete: for the hitchhiker. Go cuz I was think.

Sidey: deranged lunatic.

Pete: there's no way that she's getting to the end of this

Reegs: But this idea of an enormous like lumbering guy chasing somebody slowly and never quite catching them, even though it looks like this has now been repeated over and over and over and over again.

But this was, it fully formed for the first time on, on the

Pete: Yeah. I can get it. Like, because I was actually thinking as he's running around with the chainsaw, You better be careful.

That's, that's chainsaws like on Wow. And it's like running with scissors and stuff like that. You need to be fucking careful. So he, that's forgivable. But the hitchhiker. Like just weaving around and like giggling away. And so, I mean, maybe he's just getting kicks out of the fact that

Sidey: he's deranged. I mean, he's all over the

Pete: but yeah, she manages to get out of the drive and onto

Sidey: the, some unsuspecting guy just driving along. It's like, what the

Dan: driver? He runs straight into the hitchhiker. Leather face is still, Oh yeah. After him.

Sidey: goes under the wheels.

Pete: I mean, he, he had time to get out of the way of that, but yeah, he properly went under the wheels.

Dan: And he just waited there saying no for ages. Could have just walked out the way, didn't got smashed rolled over him.

And then lever face appears just as the, the guy in the, the cab realizes. She's covered in blood and I didn't hit her. What the hell is going on? And instead of driving off, he just kind of gets out the other side of the cab,

Reegs: throws a

Pete: was like a Benny Hills sort of moment where they're like running around the truck.

Dan: Yeah. He froze a wrench and leather face, which knocks him on the

Sidey: If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

Pete: Yeah

Dan: he get, he gets up again.

Pete: Well, at this, at this point he does drop the chainsaw on his own leg and cuts his own leg. And I thought that that might

Dan: Well that wakes him up

Pete: Part of it, but No.

Dan: And and Sally just in the nick of time jumps in another truck that doesn't wanna start until the last second.

Then it does our hero

Sidey: But she is He's

Dan: still running off down the street in the other direction.

Sidey: She is laughing like hysterically, completely gone insane. I say face

Dan: just

Reegs: covered in blood

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: leather face is just swinging

Sidey: He's doing his chainsaw dance. The

Dan: tour dances the sunset on another splendid day end

Pete: Texas. Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: The end

Dan: wow.

Pete: it's got

a pretty abrupt ending really in, in the, I thought that there would be a conclusion of some description. Either she gets away and then you see the aftermath or something

Sidey: like that. There is a sequel, but I've never seen the

Reegs: sequel. There's loads of sequels. In fact, there are, Hang on, I've got 'em here because there were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 sequels.

Geez.

Sidey: Ever decreasing.

Reegs: Or tie-ins, a leatherface sort of hands. Imagine a leatherface origin

Pete: some, some are reboots. I I looked into it a little bit and like, some are reboots and some are, you know, same universe, but not, or same, same sort of theme, but not a follow on or

Reegs: anything

The only other one I, I've seen the second one and it was just an absolute Turkey, so,

Sidey: Why would you watch anymore? I guess?

Reegs: Yeah. Well, but I've done worse. Lowell,

You've

Pete: done worse than what they did in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or, Okay. Right. Yeah, that was it really.

Reegs: So what do you think?

Pete: Right, So I I can, So all the things you said at the beginning, I can absolutely see that.

I mean, what it, it, So what I will say is it the second half of it was unbearable, bare, like, near, like, just about unbearable. For me to watch for two reasons. One, because it was fucking, just like the stuff that I hate in, in, in horror films. Like, just like re relentless. There's no kind of like, you know,

Reegs: it's intense

Pete: it.

It doesn't fucking stop in every, like, every single moment. Something horrific could happen. And I like a little bit of respite from the fucking, like the, you know, like that. I, I just felt anxious and like horrible and I wanted the phone to fucking end there. And then the other reason it was unbearable is her screaming.

I could not fucking bear it, honestly. It's just 40, 40 minutes at least of screaming. I got fucking sick of it. Really, really fucking sick and tired of just listening to her scream. Yes, I know that she's being like chased and attacked and tormented and it's horrendous, but I couldn't fucking, Yeah, it just really like graded on me, which did that spoil my enjoyment of the film.

Yes. I definitely will never watch this again because I don't need to now because I've seen it. I didn't wanna watch it in the first. I think it's a brilliant film. Yeah. I do think it's a brilliant film. The screaming, I just couldn't fucking stand. But also it did, I, it was unbearable for the, for the right reasons in that it made me feel fucking.

Anxious and tormented. I went to bed.

Reegs: That's part of the roller

Pete: go to bed and my head hits the pillow and I'm out like a light, and I lay there for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it was, just thinking about it, thinking about, and it, it definitely like affected me. Yeah. Albeit, it's a, it's a quite pretty old film.

It's older than me and Wow. You know, it's, it's for it to still in, you know, 44 years of age for it to still have like, I wouldn't say a completely profound fact. We'll see like how my sleep is for the next couple of weeks and maybe it will do so. I can see it is a brilliant film and I can see why it is the, you know, the first of its kind.

And then you can see so many things that you've seen in other films that are then like, probably like spawned here. I didn't enjoy it though. But I You're not meant to like enjoy it. You guys think of me and Dan and Harry as, as weird cuz we don't like seeing people get up with get cut up with

fucking chainsaw and

Reegs: you don't really see that

Pete: No, no, no. But

Reegs: more the idea.

Pete: what happens in horrors. Yeah. And yeah, that's why I don't like, it's fucking

disgusting

Reegs: it's weird. I'm just,

Pete: And I don't like it. Like that's normal. That is a normal thing to feel,

Reegs: I don't, normal is a spectrum. I don't

Pete: Yeah, but that's not normal to like, like stuff like that.

Surely

Reegs: the,

Sidey: Well, there's all this stuff going on about the DMA dramatization on Netflix and people's reaction to that. And

Pete: Yeah, I am. I get, I guess in some ways I'm, if I'd read about

Reegs: this, but this is a work of

Pete: I'd be like,

Reegs: like, this is a work of fiction. It, it's grizzly, but it is a work of fiction. So if you want to enjoy it like a roller coaster, which is how I enjoy it, that's what horror films are to me.

Yes. That 15 minutes at the end is absolutely unbearably tense. Um As the final girl finally sort of gets away. And that's part of it.

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: it and you're like, your heart is pounding. Hands are sweaty

Pete: Okay. But so, so I get, I guess a question back to you then is like, so you've seen this and fucking

Sidey: got that

Pete: tons and tons more like horror films than I.

Are you not? Cause I, I got like complete, so my Game of Thrones, for example, I almost became desensitized to the fucking disgusting stuff that happened in there. Yeah. Do you not get desensitized to, to

Reegs: I don't actually like, particularly the, there's torture porn and the gore stuff. I don't particularly like that stuff, that, that's a bit.

Too much for me where it is just like, Oh, let's show somebody's eye being pressed apart, just cuz for the gore value of it. I don't, this has just got good ideas, strong themes, brilliantly made, you know iconic, lasting appeal. You know, it's, this is different.

Pete: Dan, you were a virgin as well.

Dan: Yeah, as I say, I, I remembered. Scenes of this, and I think I've just kind of dipped in or walked in when somebody always been watching it. I turned it off our five minutes because it was just fucking boring, really

Pete: Five minutes is a,

Dan: So then I thought, no, let's, let's give it a proper go and watched it with the misses and we, we sat in and watched it.

And Really? It just, and like you, Pete, Bored and terrified at the same time. Really didn't want, you know, was trying to. Just don't like it. Just don't like these films. Never gonna enjoy them. Didn't laugh once all the way through it. The only bit that caught my attention right towards the end, I was thinking it's about an hour and 10 minutes in.

And that scene where I thought, Oh, this interesting. Like, you know, it's the famous bit where there's a meal around and, and the grandpa's kind of getting involved in. And it was a few things like that. But really it was just torture. I knew I wouldn't like, it, really didn't hate these movies. I think this is.

Dated as fuck, to be honest. And I do accept your point that it is, lots of original bits have come from it, and so it's, there's lots to be taken from this film, but I think they've taken it and they've done it better than they do in this film. It was a real slog for me to get through these 84 minutes, and I didn't enjoy any of it really.

Pete: All right.

Sidey: Okay.

Pete: said, sorry, You said your, your, your wife had an interesting take on it,

Dan: That she thought it was even worse than I did.

Pete: Oh okay

Dan: yeah. Yeah. She, she said, Who the fuck chooses these? What the fuck is this? I think she watched Midsummer once with me as well. That was the two films she's seen on the podcast

Sidey: I would say way more. Oh, way more way than this. No. Terrifying than

Dan: Oh, I'm terrifying. Yeah,

Sidey: That's, that film has stayed with me forever. This one. I really like it. I thought it was really good. It like, it just flies by. It's only like an hour and a bit, you know.

And it's, it's interesting. I like, you know, it costs 300 grand to make and they, they've done so much of it. And like the guy, the narrator at the start, he just got paid with the joint and stuff. That's quite

Dan: Well

Sidey: I dunno. I I think it's really good. It's not as much chainsawing as I thought it was gonna be but no second time I've seen it and I, I enjoyed it this time as much as I did the first time.

Rick is obviously a huge fan.

Dan: Okay. Well, you've got all, all the opinions of the rainbow.

Sidey: there has been a reboot e thing.

Reegs: of

Sidey: I believe that it's turd because that's what everyone said. Yeah. Around the time. And there's someone that we follow on Twitter that doesn't, I don't think, follow us back.

It goes by the Twitter handle of at Motel Siren. And she has written a, an essay about Sally.

because the lady on Twitter is a, is an assault survivor. And so she had written a piece about what Sally meant to her, seeing her on screen, surviving all this. It's quite interesting. It's all about other, other ladies in horror that survived.

So adds sort of personal touch to her and it is, it's worth having a look if you ever wanna read that sort of thing.

Pete: I hope she didn't have to go through what Sally went through.

Sidey: Well, not chain sources. I've put running away from people. You know, someone and like, it's fucking pretty grim here.

Dan: Scar as fuck. Then the light up, Pete, I just don't like putting myself in a position no. Where I'm not gonna feel good for two hours and, and then I'm

Sidey: a West Am fan.

Dan: Yeah, I've got enough of it already.