The Force was so strong in Simonson.
Do you often sing or whistle, just for fun?
I'll ride or die for Mad Max 2 until the day I fall victim to the white-line nightmare, but this just became the only movie in the world I have to see right now.
I can not tell you how happy it makes me that they keep the Australian accents.
Back in my old life, back before 'keeping my young children alive' became my one and only priority, film festivals were a big fucking deal in my life. I would look forward to them every year, and there was always one movie that was instantly an obvious must-see.
And I remember once in the 90s, telling my mates that the one film that had all the buzz this year was this thing called In The Company Of Men and we all had to go check it out. And while it was a pretty good film, I still feel bad about that forced recommendation, because man, those guys in that film are such complete cunts.
It's well made, of course. Neil LaBute is an extremely talented writer, and the actors are absolutely terrific - it was the first time I ever saw Aaron Eckhart use that massive jaw for sinister effect, and I still wonder how the wonderful Stacy Edwards didn't become a superstar.
But the main characters are such utter shitheads, playing bullshit juvenile power games that can really harm people, and nobody had a good time watching that. Nobody in my group of friends anyway. They all agreed that it was worth seeing, but it was a fucking downer of a way to spend a Friday night, and I also couldn't quite shake the feeling that my insistence that we all had to see it was the same sort of entitled toxic masculinity the movie was ripping into.
There's been so many films about these kinds of cunts since then, and it's never stopped being depressing how many dickhead alpha bros see them as a guidebook, not a warning. But this sort of movie is still essential, because the world does, unfortunately, need constant reminders about why these people are so shitty. But they're not the sort of thing you should ever force anybody to watch.
Of course I was a Vertigo kid, I never had a fucking chance. I was 18 when it launched, hitting the exact right age for the imprint. But as an objective and rabid consumer of modern American comic books, I still think the market is missing something vital with its absence.
Vertigo shut up shop a few years ago, and the kind of things it delivered can still be found at companies like Image, but only a few of those series get the long-running promotion and support that Vertigo titles did.
With the might of DC behind them, even the most idiosyncratic visions of the world could get 75 issues, and a lot of them didn't hit with huge audiences, but they hit enough. They were, crucially, stories that could only really be told in a long-running medium like the monthly comic, and weren't nakedly desperate attempts to get a movie deal (and the real money.)
DC will always say it's serving the same audience with its endless Black Label titles, but that's a line that really isn't concerned with delivering any kind of sophisticated suspense, full of very pretty books about hard it is to be Batman, or how some random hero need to be woken up to save the a post-apocalyptic world; and it just ain't the same.
There are still some very nice comics with a Black Label logo on them - the devotion to producing album-sized comics should be absolutely lauded, because it really gives the often terrific art room to breathe. But there really isn't anything like the regular thrills of a Sandman, or a Preacher, of even a Shade the Changing Man. Just desperate searches for new IP, based on the same old shit.
I do like giving Empire magazine a lot of shit, mainly because of the unwarranted entitlement I've built up after buying it every month since 1993, and it's personally cutting when it's a bit disappointing. But it also means I have to give it proper respect when it delivers the goods, and the past few months have been fucking great.
I was 100% behind the actors and writers in their recent strike against the Hollywood system, because the Hollywood system is completely fucked, and the people who actually create the good stuff deserve far more the rewards. But you can already feel the brakes going hard on the flow of movie and TV product, and we haven't already felt the full effects of that yet.
And yet, without the massive influx of cinematic content, Empire has filled its pages with quality - highlighting a lot of films that are pretty fucking far from blockbusters, along with some some fascinating slices of movie history. Retrospectives on some deadset classics, and full articles on some of the weird shit behind the scenes of history, like the dude who did the electronics for Universal horrors, or Jimmy the fucking Raven.
Excellent stuff, even if the Marvel love still grates a bit. Might keep getting it for another 30 years.
* Spoilers for the ending of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
My regular one person book club is still a thing, and the novels I grab at random at the start of each month are still pretty fucking rewarding.
I got the usual temporal kicks from This Is How You Win The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, only to discover two days after I finished it that everybody else in the world had already read it; I really enjoyed the use of character perspectives in Rumaan Alam's Leave The World Behind; and thought the delicate structure and very Australian humour of Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson was outstanding.
In my relentless bid to find things outside my usual comfort zone, I've also found myself following weird trends, and have been reading multiple books about women going through emotional dilemmas that have strange elements of supernatural shapeshifting. I got Bunny by Mona Awad because it looked like a Heathers-type thing, and then became something else entirely and tapped into some very modern themes of alienation and creating artifical personalities and people, while also having a couple of cracking twists.
But my favourite random novel of the past six months is easily Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch, which I thought was tremendous.
It's an outrageously funny book - the part with the squirrel chase is the funniest thing I've read in a long time - and it might be about a woman who is turning into a dog, or might just be going howlingly mad, and it really doesn't matter, because she's growing weird hairs and digging up rotting rabbits in the back garden either way.
But the thing I appreciated most is that the main character's journey into doggydom feels like it is going to end with an admonishment, or some kind of punishment or humiliation for the main character, and it just doesn't do that at all. I've become so used to books making moral stands, no matter how oblique, and to get one that says that this all this weird shit is fine, and it all works out for the best, is actually refreshing.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for a happy ending.
I used to ache for the Treasury comics, those gorgeously huge comic books that the big comic companies put out in the 1970s. I only ever saw them in ads, because these special editions never, ever made it to my corner of the globe. All we got was those gorgeous promos.
The ones promising big crossovers between Spider-Man and Superman were the ones I craved the most, and I've still never see an affordable copy out in the wild. I did get to read the Batman/Hulk one, but only in a smaller, black and white version that a local reprint company churned out (José Luis García-López's art was still absolutely dynamic in this weakened form, and his Bats will always be the definitive version in my mind.)
Over the years, I've managed to pick up issues here and there, some Legion of Super-Heroes, and some Avengers and Dr Strange things. My pal Nik recently gave me the Fortress of Solitude one, with Superman's hideout never looking better, and I got the Captain America Bicentennial Battles one in Sydney for 10 bucks, and sometimes I think that's the only Treasury I ever really need.
Only sometimes, though. I would still do anything for one of those team-ups, or the Superman/Muhammad Ali spectacular, or Kirby's 2001, without paying upwards of a hundred bucks for the thing. And even at those prices, it's so fucking tempting.
Because man, that ache ate away for so long, for so many years, that it's still hard to fill now. I've always envied my American brothers and sisters who could just grab it off the shelf, or just order this shit with five bucks and a SASE if it never appeared at their 7-11. Local reprints were as good as it got, and none of them were ever as gigantic as these treasured things.
I still feel an echo of those childhood cravings when I see there is another one of those chunky Artist Editions, with some of the greatest comic art ever produced showcased in beautiful oversized editions. I can even order them myself myself these days, and have been severely tempted by some of the Bolland or O'Neill or McMahon books that have come out.
But the tyranny of distance always holds me back, because even if I could justify the $200+ in local money the actual book costs, I can't do that half again in postage it wil lcost to ship it to the arse end of the world.
Maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better, but maybe that's a good thing. When you can't always get what you want, you can learn to love the absence, and that enthusiasm for something you will probably never own. Without the thing itself, the thrill can still be found.
While most Star Wars comics don't usually do a lot for me, there have still been some phenomenal comic book artists working on the saga every now and then, from the eternal Al Williamson to the always wonderful Cam Kennedy.
But there's a part of me that always thinks the Walt Simonson and Tom Palmer art team on the Marvel comic in the early 80s is the best of all Star Wars comics. There's only a dozen or so issues, but each one kicks off with a blinder of a splash page, featuring some spacecraft blasting through the void, or some character wrestling with a huge dilemma, and even after all the Star Wars saturation of recent years, I'm always happy to highlight some of my favourites from that galaxy far, far away....
I watched Twister the other night, and while I saw it a million times back in the day, I hadn't watched it in years now. And it holds up pretty well - the first shot in the present day is some excruciatingly bad CGI of a satellite in space, but the actual tornado effects still look pretty good. Plus, it's got a blinder of a cast - it might be the first thing I ever saw Philip Seymour Hoffman in, and Paxton should have been given more Cary Grant roles.
And I can buy the way our heroes survive the final storm, even if there is really no chance they could actually survive it in real life, no matter how deep those pipes go. But what I really want to know is how they go through that and remain fully clothed by the end - people caught in actual storms are always having their clothes torn from their bodies from their nature, but their mid-90s khakis are barely ripped.
I know it's because a big, fun family blockbuster of the 90s, but the film really would have been improve if it ended with Paxton and Helen Hunt in the nude, surrounded by the debris of the storm
I just got to know where they get their trouser belts.....
There's been a lot written about Twin Peaks The Return in the past half decade, because there is a lot to write about - what all that Judy stuff means; what does evil Cooper really want; and where the hell is Audrey anyway?
But one thing that is often overlooked is that all through the series, Lynch is devoted to delivering a solid hour of entertainment, because there is always a kick ass musical segment, played out in full.
The use of music throughout the show is some of Lynch's best - the Otis Redding song playing as Ed and Norma is an all-time great needle drop - but the performances at the Roadhouse are consistently amazing, with trusted performances by undisputed greats like the Nine Inch Nails and Sharon Van Etten, and loads of great synth pop from the Chromatics and Au Revoir Simone.
Even James, still doing his pissy little love song after all these years, brings something to the table.
The world could always use more dramas that peel open the heart of the human condition and holler into the vast existential they find below, but that doesn't mean you can't also have a good time on the dance floor.
The absolute best television show in the entire history of humanity turns 60 today, and I honestly can't wait to see what Russell T Davies comes up with next, but I'm here for the ride.
I once came up with three reasons why Doctor Who is the greatest fiction in the history of everything. But that was too easy, and didn’t cover all the little things that I love about the show – the weird jokes and tiny inflections – and also didn’t deal with the big, epic moments of life, and death, and cups of tea.
Somehow, I only just found out that the Otago Highlanders Super Rugby team down in Dunedin put out a cassette tape of their 'Highlanders Song', and blatantly used a Simon Bisley picture of Slaine to sell it. This was back in the 90s and I was living down there at the time, and I still somehow missed it.
Fucking hell, Slaine isn't even fucking Scottish.
Anyway, here's their song, and it's absolutely awful. Slaine would have their heads for it, and wouldn't think them too many:
I've been devouring books about real life encounters of the unexplained since before I could read. I would get freaked out by the pictures of ghosts in the back seat of the car, and the remains left behind after spontaneous human combustions; and was intimately familiar with stories of people bouncing up against something metaphysical and weird.
So I've heard the stories of the great UFO encounters many times before, including the case of Betty and Barney Hill, but the recent Blue Book comics by Michael Avon Oeming and James Tynion IV still managed to find a new way to tell the story of what happened to those people on the dark roads of New Hampshire in 1961.
I only got the book out from the library for the Oeming, and didn't realise it was a non-fiction thing. It looked like another 'hey, here's an idea for a movie!' collections that flood the comic book scene, but its re-telling of an actual event was way more interesting than that.
Comics are the best medium for this kind of story - see the humongous artistic success of The Big Books Of... series that DC put out in the 90s - and their weird mesh of fact, fiction and mad ravings is ideal for the form.
All the details of the Hills' case have been told and retold over and over again, but the focus on that across a complete collection gives the mystery more room to breathe.
With Oeming's typically atmospheric art, there is a real sense of dread and weirdness. But there is also more of a connection to the people who went through these strange experiences, of a kind not found in all the textbooks that ruthlessly examine their testimonies and evidence.
Something happened to those people on that long drive home, even if it was all taking place inside their heads, and Blue Book makes than more than victims of supernatural happenstance, but real people in a very strange situation.
People always make give me weird looks when I tell them about going to the cinema while traveling overseas, because they just see it as a waste of precious holiday. It takes hours and hours to fly to anywhere else in the world from here, and there is so much to see in this wide and wonderful world, why the hell would you go to a cinema that looks just like the one down the street?
But sometimes you just need a break from the travel when you're gallivanting around the world. A place to get out of the elements, and just sit down and relax for a while, and the cinema is a good place to switch off, and maybe even see something great.
Unfortunately, my lovely wife and I have a terrible habit of seeing the absolute worst films in the most far flung of locations. Yes, we've been to a cinema in Iceland, but it was to see that Alexander Skaarsgard Tarzan film, which everybody has rightly forgotten the existence of. We've been in one of the grand old cinemas of Leicester Square to see the worst film in the Bourne series, and then saw the second worst in the series on the edges of Houston.
On our first ever major trip, while staying at a hostel somewhere in East London, we saw Die Hard 4.0, the biggest turkey in that excellent series. Our first cultural experience on our first trip to Edinburgh - after the obligatory fried breakfast - involved seeing the third Pirates of the Caribbean at a central city multiplex at 9am, because we'd spend the evening on the overnight bus from London, and couldn't get into our accommodation yet.
The only film we ever saw in Scandinavia was The Snowman. And not even in Oslo. We should have followed all the clues. We also saw Mother! in Hong Kong on a Sunday morning, in an absolutely packed cinema, and that was a diabolical way to kill the hours before our flight out.
Blade Runner 2049 was another London experience at the Odeon on Shaftsbury, and that was fine, but it wasn't the best Blade Runner by a long shot. It felt a little right to be seeing one of the new Star Treks in Winnipeg, on an overnight stopover on the way to Churchill, and it felt very right to watch True Grit somewhere in a small city in the great American desert.
Sometimes we get it right - the excellent Joe Strummer:The Future is Unwritten in Bath, and the also excellent Zodiac in York, but I ruined that a little by seeing the Total Recall remake when we returned to the North.
On the best trip, nearly a decade ago now, we saw John Wick and Inherent Vice in the Pacific Northwest of the US, and they're not just films, they goddamn cherished memories.
I wouldn't have remembered where I saw most of these films - I would barely remember I even saw that Total Recall without the international flavour. It's always been an absolute thrill to see these movies, no matter how many funny looks I get.
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Red Skull by Vince Evans |
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The Hulk by Tony Salmons |
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Ghost Rider by Glenn Fabry |
I am such a mark for short, smart video essays about all the beauty of movies, and my favourite YouTube channel for that shit right now is definitely CinemaStix. Their videos have the very worst titles, but still find the most insightful things to say about the most familiar films.
And I don't just like the videos because they're about movies I adore like Shaun of the Dead, but because they can still show me new jokes I'd never noticed before (it's the dude who has women all over him). Shaun is nearly 20 years old - it was the first film I ever went to the movies with my future wife and I've probably seen it a hundred times, and it still has layers I never ever thought about.
So I came into the office really fucking early the other week, and the place was completely deserted at 5.30am. But it is a 24-hour radio station, so all the lights and TVs were on, and there could have been someone lurking in one of the studios down the corridor, for all I knew.
I'm used to shift work - I did a 9-5 shift a year or so ago and hated it so, so much - so this early in the morning is pretty normal, even if the brain goes to some weird places.
And this particular morning, for some goddamn reason, the radio was playing Tubular Bells and I became utterly convinced I'd wandered into a terrible 70s Italian giallo horror and a creepozoid murderer was creeping up behind me in slow motion.
Everything really got a bit paranoid, and in the end I had to check the whole goddamn office, including all those studios, always checking the corners of every room as soon as I cleared it.
Of course there was nothing, and I wouldn't expect there to be, but I still had to look. Because I wouldn't have been to do any fucking work if I was convinced some loon with a hare lip or something was creeping up behind me, steel garotte at the ready.
And then the early newsreader showed up, and the music changed to some godawful children's radio show and there was no murderer in the sound booth.
Although that's what they'd want me to think, right?
Rugby is over for the year, and even though it's the main sport I watch and enjoy, I wasn't too upset by the All Blacks losing in the final of the recent World Cup. Not as upset as Sam Cane is gonna be for the entire rest of his life, anyway.
Shit happens, and so does Wayne Barnes.
Losing at rugby doesn't break my heart, unless it's something really, really special. Cricket, on the other hand, breaks my heart all the fucking time.
Most of my friends are of intellectual stock, so I'm surrounded by people who genuinely hate cricket, including my gorgeous wife, who just thinks it's the dumbest thing in the entire world. But the ridiculousness of it is part of the whole deal, along with the patience to endure a match that can take five days and be settled in a split second. And it comes loaded with all the drama and some of the most massive personalities in modern sport - seriously, how is David fucking Warner still a goddamn thing?
And while Douglas Adams once thought of it as literally the most barbaric thing in the universe, I've always loved the game, especially the ODIs. They say the 50-over game is dying, and I truly hope not.
I love the
five-day Test - there were half a dozen matches in the past year which are legitimately some of the greatest Test matches ever played, coming to to
the last ball, the last wicket, after five days of finely poised action.
And the T20s are fun, but they're just slogs. Wickets don't matter in the shortest form, who cares, here comes the next blaster, but they are absolutely everything in the five days, while the one-day game has the best of both worlds.
And I have always adored the New Zealand cricket team, even - especially - when they get shit on. My first memory of it is the underarm bowl of 1981, which is pretty fucking formative, and probably the number one reason I never moved to Australia.
And since then, there have been moments of absolute glory - Grant Elliot's six to beat South Africa at the 2015 semi; Chris Pringle bowling an impossible maiden over to Bruce Reid to beat the Aussies; the day Nathan Astle said fuck it, and just went for it with one of the most egregious batting displays ever seen anywhere.
It's all balanced out by the tragedies and heartbreaks - the '92 team who suddenly looked unexpectedly unstoppable until they ran into Pakistan; and the way the last world cup ended was the biggest heartbreak of them all, denied by the absolute slimmest of margins and the insane idea that a batman can hit the ball while running between wickets.
At least England were fucking awful at the current World Cup, and we got through to the semis, and they didn't. And while we just got thrashed by India last night, that's okay, because India are unquestionably the greatest team in the world right now, and beating them at home was always a tall fucking order.
I did not want to see Killers of the Flower Moon at first, because the trailers made it all seem like DiCaprio was the white saviour swooping in to help the Indians with their problems. But then I heard his character was actually a total piece of shit, and that's the kind of Scorsese movie I can get behind.
(There were still too many scenes of him looking sad when he sees what high explosives he's been forcing people to use actually do to a human body. Just be a fuckin' weasel if you're going to be a weasel, don't try to humanise the fool.)
But it's the dual meaning of that last line that really hit home at the end of 3+ hours. It's a line that signifies that Mollie's life shouldn't be solely defined by the terrible tragedies that befell her family, but also that it was already being forgotten by a society embarrassed by such a naked grab for power. There's a lot going on in there in those few words, especially when you see who is uttering them.
With this and Oppenheimer (and apparently Barbie which I have to see soon so my wife can lob patriarchy jokes at me), it's been an absolute blinder of a year for last lines in big films. They are what you walk out of the film with, and the perfect line can make or break a movie. I won't ever forget this one.
When you've been following the lives and loves of a single character for 40 years - especially one created by an absolute comics maestro like Jaime Hernandez - sometimes you miss or are blind-sided by the big life-changing events. Because you just can't cover everything in a complex life like this, and sometimes those huge moments just suddenly happen in the last couple of pages of the new Love and Rockets.
The way Ray and Maggie tie the knot in the latest issue of the brilliant ongoing comic series by Los Bros Hernandez is so understated, and so fitting for people in their fifties who know they don't have time to fuck around anymore and need to efficiently deal with their issues.
They're not kids anymore. Time to get on with things. (Except for Hopey, who really looked settled down for a while, but is actually still playing the same old song, one involving yet another Maggie substitute/doppelganger, which must be the fifth or sixth time this has happened.)
And so those two pages at the end of the issue, featuring a courthouse marriage between two people who have loved each other their entire lives, even when they went years without admitting it. Just a couple of witnesses (but at least one of them is Hopey, Mags ain't that cruel), and the job is done.
Maggie has form with this, keeping some of her most significant milestones hidden deep inside. This isn't even her first marriage, with her last one happening entirely off page, and only confirmed when it was over. I still wonder how Tony is doing, although seeing everyone else at that reunion a couple of years ago was so fab.
There's no drama to it, because there usually isn't in real life. When I went through a wedding phase in my life - 20 in one year! - I used to fantasise about everything going a bit soap opera, but it never did. Not all of those marriages were that quiet, but there was no drama at the ceremony.
And you're left with the idea that after all these people have been through, they just fucking deserve some peace and quiet. Some rest, and sealing it with an easy declaration that doesn't burn down their world, but just gets on with things. That's love. Never mind the rockets.
I have to do some proper, serious driving in a couple of months, taking two different cars on the same 1000km+ road trip. It's going to be two hard days of traveling each time, including a three-hour ferry ride between the islands.
I will be on my own for several days, just me and the highway. And every time somebody expresses concern about how rough it might be, I want to tell them to seriously go to hell, because I can't fucking wait to hit that road.
My American brothers and sisters might mock my 1000-kay odyssey as extremely weak sauce, and I know where they are coming from - I drove two days solid heading east from San Fransisco and got about 1/8th of the way across the country. Even my trans-Tasman cuzzies can scoff at my distance, because they have roads so endless people are always getting gobbled up by the desert.
I've done some miles, all around the world, (and seriously think Americans are the best drivers in the world). But I love the groove of my native roads in Aotearoa - the State Highway One I need to drive early next year has lakes and deserts and foreshores and endless rolling hills.
And while I haven't done a solo road trip like this in quite a few years, I haven't forgotten that the most important thing is the sounds. I've got weeks before I have to go, but I'm already thinking about what I'm going to listen to on the drive. I don't usually have complete control of the stereo in the car, and can't listen to as much Faith No More as I would like, and Anika Moa's excellent kids songs are mighty ear-worms that really get stuck in there. But this is my time.
There will be all sorts of music to cruise to, nothing eats up the distance by getting lost in the tunes. I've been getting back into the full albums lately, rather than just playlists and other singles, and two or three of those and you're making some serious time.
It's always fun to tune into local radio station to see what is going on in the area you're shooting through, although I am also very wary of that after the time we got stuck in the American desert and only had - for some goddamn reason - OK Computer and Era Vulgaris on CD to listen to in the car.
There's also the obvious option of podcats and audio plays, and it's a chance to get through some Dr Who adventures that I bought from Big Finish a decade ago and haven't got around to yet.
I have also deliberately saved the last two Fall of Civilisations I haven't listened to - that's eight hours there, baby - but don't think I'll be able to hold off on the Band of Brothers podcast I just found the other day. I could catch up on the Black Sheep, a podcast by most excellent colleague William Ray - I only just realised I missed two whole seasons of that.
I got a bit more time to find something else. In the end, I'll only be on the road for a couple of days, but I have to make them count.
It's a rough week, so normal service is being postponed for the next seven days, and you'll have to wait until next week for my astute and highly dubious takes on the latest Love and Rockets, the last words in Killers of the Flower Moon, and the unreserved beauty of the game of cricket.
Instead, it's old-timey movie week at the Tearoom of Despair. I've spent a lot of time lately on the Timeless Classic Movies channel on YouTube, and it's no hardship to share seven of my favourites over the next week. I've aonly scratched the service - there's tonnes of films there that I do want to see based on their title alone, and the fact they're rarely much more than an hour long certainly helps, but I'm such a basic bitch I've really only gone for the stone cold classics. Find your own faves.
Anyway, Nosferatu:
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Captain Britain by Matt Smith |
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Iron Man by Guy Davis |
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Punisher by Frank Teran |
I'd seen him in a few other films before, but after finally getting around to seeing From Here to Eternity and the part where he blows the horn for his dead friend, I can now understand why everybody in the 1970s - both men and women - had a massive crush on Montgomery Clift.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was always more terrifying as a concept than an actual movie. There's no denying that Tobe Hopper's film is a dead-set, stone cold masterpiece, but there is a part of my redneck soul that will always think Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is a better film.
The original Massacre was the epitome of the video nasty around my part of the world. Local video stores didn't even have it, but a tape circulated amongst the adults around town. When my dad got to finally see it, he expressly barred any of us kids from watching a single frame.
As someone who loved The Omen, I thought this was drastically unfair, although if I stopped raging for a second, I could see his point. Even the cover of that grotty video getting passed around looked terrifying. In the end, he said it was pretty average, but he wasn't exactly a huge cinephile.
So the first Chainsaw I actually saw was the third, as part of the regular Friday night video sessions with my mates. Too young for booze, too old for toys, we'd pool our money together enough to get a shitload of hot chips, vast amounts of carbonated beverage, and a $3 weekly hire from the video store.
So that's how I got introduced to the Sawyers and their murderous ways, with the Leatherface, The Saw was family, and I fucking loved it.
I've seen most of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films since (although I seriously lost track two or three reboots ago). And of course I love Part Two, and its gonzo refusal to take it down a notch, until the dueling chainsaws at the end seems like an appropriate escalation.
And when I did finally get to see the original, it was as good as I'd always dreamed - the sudden shutter, the chainsaw twirling in the sunset at the end.
But I still, in my heart, like part three more. You've got the mighty Ken Foree saying 'You're toast, fuck!', and wondering why these cannibal dickheads can't just order some fucking pizza; and a very young Viggo Mortensen oozing absolute charm as he nails a hand to the chair.
It was slick, where the original was grimy, and followed all the usual beats, when the original sawed out its own path through the high and dry Texas grass. But you never forget your first Chainsaw, no matter how many legends it spawned.
It's been 20 years now and people are still making this claim like it's fucking clever, so I have to point at the sign again. For God's sake, the fact that it's a damned Hobbit who actually gets the deed done is the motherfucking point of the whole thing.
Originally posted December 20, 2016
It's not hard to pick holes in your average big movie. The nature of mass collaboration and desperate commercial imperatives means every kind of blockbuster has some kind of plot or logic hole, and some films can be rife with them.
It can be a lot of fun to rip into a dumb movie, but there is a certain kind of nit-picking that is almost painful to listen to – one where the complainant's innate superiority to everyone else in the world is revealed, as they sniffily point out some logical flaw or scientific impossibility, while managing to completely miss the whole fucking point of the thing.
These kinds of complaints are repeated to the point of cliche, and almost become common truths, except these arguments are big, fragile balloons full of bullshit. There have been plenty of examples of this in the current age of blockbuster movie nonsense, but here are a few that always grate.