Reading Material

Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made the World’s Most Notorious Horror Movie

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chainsawconfidentialNearly 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gunnar Hansen, who forever will be known as Leatherface in the 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While his iconic character is terrifying and evil, Hansen himself is not. He’s a teddy bear, nice and gracious as can be.

Therefore, it’s not a surprise to me that his book on the making on that movie, Chain Saw Confidential, is like its author: well-spoken and informative, yet also politely quiet and respectfully subdued. Those hoping for a Fangoria-style exercise in gore will be disappointed.

I didn’t, so I wasn’t. After all, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre isn’t nearly as violent as its title or reputation suggests. It’s an intense film, no doubt, but so much of its brutality isn’t onscreen — it’s filled in by viewers’ minds. The movie is also not a cult film, because, as the book reminds us, it simply was far too successful to qualify.

Success was hardly on the minds of any of the cast members, all unknowns just happy to be making a Real Movie, even if they didn’t think anything would become of it. Financed in part by drug money, Tobe Hooper’s Massacre proved tougher to make than it is to watch, thanks to the unbearable summer heat of the Lone Star State and, during the now-famous dinner scene that took 26 hours to shoot, the smell of dead dogs and headcheese.

With remarkable clarity and detail for something that took place four decades ago, Hansen recounts the treacherous, unpredictable shoot, plus the squabbles over profits the creatives never saw when the film hit big. Given the flick’s monster grosses, they thought they would be rich; “Instead,” Hansen writes, “things just got weird.”

The book retreads a lot of the info from documentaries on the various DVD editions over the years, but gives readers much, much more. (Example: learning that Hooper and company wanted and thought they were going to get a PG rating.) Hansen leans on co-stars for quotes and recollections (but not, tellingly, Hooper), yet the story is told from his frontline perspective. It’s a tale uniquely his own. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Bad Ronald (1974)

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badronaldThe first thing I noticed when I first watched the cult made-for-TV thriller Bad Ronald was that its catchy and evocative title isn’t entirely apt. While the titular character does a bunch of stuff that accurately can be described as the opposite of good, he is also — as portrayed by Scott Jacoby (Return to Horror High) — far too sympathetic to dismiss as just another horror villain, which ultimately gives the movie a sense of pathos you don’t usually find in the genre.

A sensitive, imaginative young man with a fiercely loyal and protective mother, Ronald finds himself wanted by the police after he angrily lashes out at a taunting young neighbor girl and causes her accidental death. Terrified that he might be sent to prison, his mother (Planet of the Apes’ Kim Hunter in a typically great performance) hatches a plan that involves their turning their downstairs bathroom into a secret hiding place where Ronald can stow away until its safe for the two of them to leave town.

badronald1The plan goes awry when she dies during a necessary gall bladder operation and the house is sold to Dabney Coleman, Pippa Scott and their three cute blonde daughters. Already a bit loopy from his enforced isolation and the news of his mom’s death, Ronald becomes convinced that the youngest daughter is the princess of Atranta, the fantasy kingdom that has become his escape away from his terrible reality.

At just 70 minutes, Bad Ronald never has time to be boring and, in fact, probably could have benefited from an extra 10 minutes of character development to better justify the act of violence that sets the plot in motion. Beyond that, it is a surprisingly moving film with a highly effective premise and definitely one worth seeking out. —Allan Mott

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Documentary

Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony (2012)

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broniesDepending upon where you stand on the subject, the documentary Bronies can be viewed either as a celebration of the fandom or a portrait of it presented for your mockery.

A “brony,” for those of you with better things to do with your time, is a male fan of the current cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a show aimed at children, and primarily girls at that. The guys featured here don’t just like it — they live it, from collecting figurines and attending conventions to creating their own songs and immortalizing the characters on their car windows. (Perhaps “immortalizing” is too strong a word when the windows get busted by homophobes.)

Bronies1Funded by Kickstarter and featuring Pony voice stars John de Lancie and Tara Strong, Bronies is not without interest to the viewer curious about ways of life that are alien to them. The level of fandom on display is as bewildering to me as suspending oneself by hooks in the nipples or surgically altering your face to resemble a celebrity; while I support one’s freedom to pursue such adventures, I do not get what compels one to take it to such an extreme. Hobbies are good; obsessions are unhealthy.

The kids of Bronies are likely to outgrow the phase as fast as a previous generation did Pokémon, but the adults … I mean, what good can come out of calling yourself Starlight Ironhoof? Something about that strikes me as deeply sad — an emotion with which the film does not intend to leave you. —Rod Lott

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Comedy

Showgirls 2: Penny’s from Heaven (2011)

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showgirls2I get why Showgirls 2 exists. What I don’t get is why it has to run for an utterly unbearable two and a half hours. Full of sequins and glitter and fake tits, the movie is so intentionally camp, prepare to be asked to write your name in your underwear.

An unofficial sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s notorious 1995 flop, Showgirls 2: Penny’s from Heaven focuses on the minor Showgirls character of Penny Slot (get it?), played by Rena Riffel, who also serves as writer, director, producer and editor of this mess. Just because it is in on its own joke doesn’t mean its creative chaos can be overlooked.

showgirls21After a testy exchange will a fellow dancer/stripper (“You stole my customer!” “You stole my G-string!”), Penny flees Vegas for Hollywood to chase her dream of being the gooey center of the Star Dance television show. But first, she has to pour hot sauce on her bare chest, become an escort, learn ballet, have a lesbian relationship, consider taking part in a snuff film, and so on and so on.

I’m guessing that maybe the underfunded but overstuffed movie plays better for those who have turned the original Showgirls into a contemporary cult classic, since I don’t remember Riffel even being in Showgirls. (She wrangled three other actors into reprising their roles; I remember only one.) Nonetheless, when it comes to matching the original’s atrocious dialogue, Riffel strikes the right chord. Example: “I don’t know what’s worse: your dancing or your camel toe.” Another: “You know, there’s an art to a good wiener.”

See, Showgirls 2 doesn’t even try to be a glitzy melodrama as Verhoeven did and failed; instead, Riffel goes straight for the self-aware comedy. In Penny, Riffle has the ditzy-sex-bomb thing down pat, and for the movie’s first several minutes — 15, 20 at the most, maybe? — I laughed along with her as she brushed her teeth with cocaine or tried to think of how she old she is. But even the best joke gets old when you keep telling it, and that’s what Riffel does, ultimately dooming its prospects. Something like this should be 75 minutes, tops, especially for projects with porno production values. —Rod Lott

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Horror

I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013)

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ispit2To the surprise of no one, I Spit on Your Grave 2 tells essentially the same story as its 2010 predecessor (itself a remake of the notorious 1978 grindhouse classic): Pretty girl gets kidnapped, raped and left for dead; pretty girl doesn’t die; pretty girl gets revenge on her captors/rapists. And yet, returning director Steven R. Monroe improves upon it. Who knew this tale was worth franchising?

Just another struggling, aspiring model in the jungle that is New York City, Katie (newcomer Jemma Dallender) is lured to a shady photography studio with the promise of a free portfolio shoot, only to find that the three brothers running it want nudes. She politely declines. Later, one of them makes his way into her apartment, where Katie’s grueling ordeal of degradation begins.

Things get worse when she’s shoved in a box and wakes up handcuffed to a pole in a dingy basement in the siblings’ home. In Bulgaria. Eventually, but not soon enough, the tables turn and an unrated, gory vengeance is hers — the only reason viewers stick around for such exercises in brutality.

Although undeniably unpleasant, I Spit on Your Grave 2 emerges as a stronger film in all respects, with the exception of Dallender’s performance in the third act. Until then, she sells it; at that point, she veers on parody. Whereas the first film pasted elements of Saw atop Meir Zarchi’s original, this sequel borrows liberally from Hostel, culminating in an ending that’s nuts — pun definitely intended. —Rod Lott

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