Anniversary Chainsaws, Illuminati Landlords, Scarier Tales

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the horror genre’s most treasured films, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, which someone told me is 2024. Tearing up the screens upon its release of October 11, 1974, TCM was made for $80,000 – 140,000 and went on to rev up $30 million at the box office and countless millions more since. And to celebrate this milestone, Dark Sky Selects™ is giving us more reasons to spend our money on a film that Los Angeles Times reviewed as being “despicable”. We’re getting a commemorative poster ($35), two different caps ($30 each) and two different shirts ($30 each). And here’s the catch — only 200 posters are being printed. So click this now before the saw is sawed. Ahem.

A few fun facts about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre…

• Director and co-writer Tobe Hooper came up with the plot while Christmas shopping. “There were these big Christmas crowds. I was frustrated, and I found myself near a display rack of chain saws, and I thought, ‘I know a way I could get through this crowd really quickly.’”

• The idea for TCM’s iconic Leatherface came from a doctor Hooper knew. “He told me this story about how, when he was a pre-med student, the class was studying cadavers. And he went into the morgue and skinned a cadaver and made a mask for Halloween.”

• The original title for the movie was Head Cheese, named for the scene in which the hitchhiker details the process of how that particular pork product is made.

• During the filming, the heat and stench got so punishing at one point that the actors would run to the windows of the house where the dinner scene was shot to throw up and breathe fresh air between takes.

• The titular chainsaw used in the movie was real.

So while we re-watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the 50th time and see why it still holds up as one of the greatest movies ever made (in your face, Gone With The Wind), here are a few out now/upcoming horror/sci-fi movies/documentaries that may or may not have you running for a window to throw up…

ASCENSION / Out now (VOD)

“Jacob Kaiser and his wife Laura finally have the chance to escape the city for a while to Jacob’s recently inherited lake cabin. But as strange things start happening at the cabin, ‘escape’ would soon have an insidiously different meaning.”

Strange things or not, if I inherited a lake cabin, you couldn’t evict me with a crowbar.

PRISON PLANET: BEHIND THE MATRIX OF ILLUSION / July 30, 2024 (VOD)

“Ever since humans first began to dream, there have been stories of mysterious other dimensional beings that exert an unseen influence over our lives. These mysterious entities are often referred to as The Illuminati and the concept of their control over our world has been circulating in various forms since the Middle Ages. They are believed to have the ability to both affect our thoughts and manipulate our reality, including manipulating world governments, the instigation of wars, the development of AI, as well as controlling the ever-reaching power of the media.”

Meh. Someone’s gotta do it.

SCARY TALES: DARK WALKER / October, 2024 (VOD)

“A group of strangers awaken in a house and a living nightmare as they must take on zombies, the Muffin Man, aliens, Bigfoot and a strange deadly being known as The Dark Walker.”

This one is said to be the goriest, action-filled, shocking and most fun experience ever brought to the screen. They could’ve left off “ever brought to the screen” and titled the movie Scary Tales: Tug Tavern.

TASTES OF HORROR / Release pending 2024 (VOD)

“Tastes of Horror is a compilation of six short films directed by five of the most acclaimed directors of the genre in South Korea.”

The math doesn’t add up — six films, five directors. Either one director gets to do two, or all five team up on the extra one. I can tell I’m gonna lose sleep over this.