Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Felix Vasquez

This is the follow up to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Not Part 2. Or “The Next Generation.” Or “Texas Chainsaw 3D.” No this is the official, official (seriously this time…?) follow up to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Really it’s a legacy sequel that pretty much takes from David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” movies and depicts Old Man Leatherface who is no longer an agent of chaos, but a cleverer, slicker, scarier slasher.

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Hooray for Captain Spaulding

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Felix Vasquez

“Goddamn, motherfucker got blood all over my best clown suit.“

The first time I was exposed to Sid Haig was in “House of 1,000 Corpses.”

I regret to admit that it’s really the first time I’d ever seen Haig, and it was quite the introduction to such an enormous cinematic presence that was in over a hundred films and television projects. Say what you want about Rob Zombie’s cinematic outputs, but one of his crowning achievements is the creation of Captain Spaulding. Thanks in no small part to Sid Haig’s immense performance, Captain Spaulding is one of the banner modern horror villains that pretty much grabs the spotlight every single time he’s on screen in “House” and “The Devil’s Rejects” and yet it’s still never enough.

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]

Posted on December 5, 2018 by Felix Vasquez

The “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” has been a movie series that’s experienced great highs and crushing lows. While surely it’s been a long running series with a lot of sequels, it’s also a series that’s been rebooted numerous times. “The Next Generation” is basically a remake of the original Tobe Hooper film set for a nineties crowd and it is god awful. It’s deliriously bad. You could almost consider it so bad it’s good, if you’re very forgiving, but in the end of the day it’s awful. It’s so awful even stars Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger have distanced themselves from it.

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986): Collector’s Edition [Blu-Ray]

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Felix Vasquez

Forget what Hollywood has tried to feed you, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2” is the actual sequel to Tobe Hooper’s masterpiece, and is widely embraced by horror fans as such. It’s the wacky and surreal embracing of the madness from the first film carried over from the nihilistic cynical seventies, in to the consumerist eighties, where the Sawyer family is now devoting their lives to mutilating yuppies, and going around the world selling their own brand of chili that’s made of people. Hooper’s sequel is a massive tonal departure from the more disturbing original, introducing actual nemeses for the Sawyers including Lefty, a vengeful cowboy hell bent on bringing down the Sawyers, and Stretch, a hapless DJ who becomes the unfortunate recipient of attacks by the Sawyer family when she hears them murdering two victims when one of them calls her randomly.

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Salem’s Lot (1979)

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

“Salem’s Lot” presents a very humanistic approach toward vampire folklore. Ben Mears, filled with desperation and literally nothing left to lose in the face of a fantastic situation, finds himself in a local morgue prepared to face down one of the unholy walking dead by taping together two tongue depressors and scotch tape, supplying a makeshift crucifix. This little device ultimately aids him in the battle with a horrific vampire who slowly rises from her sheet in all her terrifying glory. It about sums up the whole of “Salem’s Lot,” a film wrapped around despair and tension where a small town’s unrest and inner turmoil of infidelity and abuse is brought to the surface when faced with a hidden menace in the shadows, in the form of a vampire striking down town residents one by one.

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Lifeforce (Collector's Edition) [Blu-Ray/DVD Combo] (1985)

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Felix Vasquez

Occasionally silly, but still unique and very entertaining, director Tobe Hooper’s “Life Force” is a great contrast to his penultimate “Texas Chainsaw Massare” which relied on muted colors and grimey shades of brown and black to depict his world of vicious violence. “Life Force” is a vibrant and brilliantly filmed horror science fiction film filled with bold shades of bright blues and reds, with a premise that’s all too entertaining to ignore. Hooper doesn’t just create a vampire or alien film, but collides them to form a demented amalgam of a horror classic.

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