The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) ripped into my life on Thanksgiving 1984 and I have, gratefully, never fully recovered. It was spawned from the belly of a country that was sick and sad during my earliest formative years. As a nation, we were burdened with post-Watergate paranoia, the exhaustion of the waning days of the Vietnam War and the insecurity of the energy crisis. Cobbled together from all that bad news came this truly American nightmare that was equal parts disillusionment and dismemberment. It defines true horror for me and has yet to be surpassed, in my estimation. I doubt it will ever yield the claim it has staked on my imagination. The saw is family.
What you’ll find in this episode: family dinners, crematorium reminiscences, how much I hate Franklin, asking pigs for gasoline and Ericca’s repulsive protein shakes.
– Cole
Links and Recommendations:
Check out The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on IMDB.
Ericca’s further viewing pick of Helter Skelter.
Cole’s further viewing pick of Deranged.
The original house is now a restaurant. There is only one BBQ dish on the menu.
Learn more about Ed Gein, including a list of household items he fashioned out of body parts.
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Great podcast, guys! Good choice to discuss for the season. Though I’m exactly like Cole in regard to nothing scaring me anymore in cinema (though I try and try to find anything that comes close), what Ericca said about why the movie gets under her skin (see what I did there?), does resonate with me.
When I was a kid growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, one of the things my dad liked to do with the family after going out to dinner on the very rare occasions we could afford Golden Corral or Long John Silver’s, was to go on drives in the woods. I’d sit in the front seat and navigate, and any creepy-ass dirt road I pointed to, he’d drive us down. Thinking back on it, it was some legitimately spooky terrain, with gnarled trees that made grabby-hands at the car and just complete utter blackness. I was always fantasizing that some monster in the woods would sudden appear in the headlights (I went through a Bigfoot phase when I was a kid), and oft-times of course we’d end up in some hillbilly’s back yard and their porch lights would come on and my dad would turn us around and we’d bolt out of there. Part of the thrill of that for me was that feeling that ‘anything could happen’. I was both scared, and titillated at the same time.
‘Exorcist’ stills is my win for most frightening film ever made, though it doesn’t scare me anymore since I’ve analyzed it half to death and then some. I don’t even think it has supernatural overtones any longer; nor religious ones. You guys should do a podcast on it sometime, and invite me as a guest star and let me dazzle you with my Exorcist acumen. XD
Anyway, great job! Can’t wait to see Ericca’s pick for Cole-o-ween!
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Who will survive and what will be left of them?!
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