Heya! Thanks to everyone who voted. With a total of 28 votes (with the opportunity for each person to vote twice) that means that at least 14 people voted on this poll. Finally, here are the results....
Seventh Place: Critters
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With just a single vote, the movie series featuring the cuddly ravenous monsters from outer space take the lowest place in this poll.
Sixth Place: Leprechaun
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The horror comedy series starring Warwick David of "Willow" (and various other stuff) fame scraped a total of three votes.
Fourth Place (Equal): Halloween + Phantasm
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Halloween was a major populariser for the slasher genre with the initial movie in the series being recognised as one of John Carpenter's bigger hits. (A far bigger hit than "The Thing" which was originally panned upon its cinema release.) Phantasm is a bizarre mixture of zombies, aliens and a mysterious undertaker. Both these series slotted equally into fourth place with four votes each.
Second Place (Equal): The Omen + Child's Play
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With just one more vote each, at five votes, these two movie series came equally into second place: The "Omen" series about the anti-christ being born on Earth to begin Armageddon. The "Child's Play" series about a doll inhabited by the soul of a viscious murderer.
But despite how close the running was, in the end first place featured a clear winner:
First Place: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
With just over a fifth of the total votes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was clearly the most popular choice. A glance at the imdb page for the director of the first two movies makes clear that this is a director of some great horror classics, yet I've not seen ANY of them. The ghost movie "Poltergeist", the vampire movie "Salem's Lot", the video nasty "Eaten Alive", and in terms of sci-fi there are two major titles with both the infamously daft "Lifeforce" (with Patrick Stewart) and a remake of the 50s alien invasion movie "Invaders From Mars". Also a number of Tobe Hooper's films star the legendary Robert Englund from the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series. As such, I'm going to make an effort to go through Tobe Hooper's films as well as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series.
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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
If you look on Youtube for a documentary on "Masters of Horror" you'll see that the one about Tobe Hooper features John Landis (of "American Werewolf in London" fame) referring to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as "very funny". I tried to watch it that way, being very much a horror comedy fan, and certainly there is an over-the-top element running throughout the whole thing. However, this definitely isn't a horror comedy. The comment tells us more about John Landis' own twisted sense of humour than it does about the original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" film. (The film very definitely spells "chain saw" as two words in the opening credits.)
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I was pretty surprised by how much of the film I seemed to have seen already. The story is fairly simple and pretty major parts of the story have become iconic moments. As such, I'd seen fairly major points in the simple plot in clips along with hearing about some other rather major moments when people recounted horror movie elements that had a big impact on them.
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As a bunch of college-age people sit in a van, featuring two couples and a relative in a wheelchair, we can see how this would have inspired the Friday the 13th films. In fact, the whiney geeky figure in the third Friday movie seems like he might possibly be somewhat basing his performance on that of the wheelchair-bound figure in this horror classic. However, as with pretty much all the actors, the wheelchair-bound character is performed very well and feels very believable. When he's feeling sorry for himself we can completely relate to him, partially because of a great performance and partially because of the way his part is written and portrayed. I wonder whether the decision to use a wheelchair-bound character in Friday the 13th Part II was also with this film in mind.
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Having female characters who wear ridiculously little clothing so the camera can leer at them is another element featured here. I understand that this is a staple of low budget exploitation flicks in general. Still, the leering could easily have been worse. We don't get as much leering as in "Friday the 13th Part II" and certainly not the horrific levels of gratuitous misogyny found in "Friday the 13th The Final Chapter".
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When things get really crazy, there's quite a bit of screaming in this film. In the "Friday the 13th" films there were occasions where screaming would get annoying or even boring and I was absolutely prepared for that to happen here. However, even though screaming sometimes occurs far more than seems entirely sensible, it always makes sense and the level of terror seems appropriate. A scene where a character is tied to a chair had a similar feel to the movie "The Loved Ones" (which I feel I really ought to try to finish some time), but Texas Chainsaw Massacre always works by building up the horror rather than simply making things explicit. A close-up on a victim's eyeball is one way that the director shows particular flair in showing the build-up of terror rather than going straight into the gore.
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The Texas Chain Saw Masscre is not an easy film to watch, but it is made remarkably bearable for a squeamish viewer like myself by starting out fairly slowly, giving us a reasonable number of relateable characters surrounded by people who seem pretty genuine, making a decent build up to the horror rather than just bombarding the audience with it from the beginning, and by making things appropriately over-the-top that the audience can put some distance between themselves and the events on screen. I love it when horror uses over-the-top crazy concepts and perhaps John Landis isn't so off the mark if he means that you can laugh afterwards. However, this is a proper horror film and the atmosphere while you are watching is genuinely terrifying in a way that gets under your skin. Even as you recognise the sheer ridiculousness of a few elements, you are liable to be empathising with the protagonists too much to laugh.
Perhaps it's because of the age of the film, but there's something that seems almost arty about the film. There's not exactly a terribly complex plot, but the ideas are set up well, there's some great shots and the film is surprisingly imaginative. I don't know what all the imagery means, if it means anything at all, but I know that every part of this film was extremely effective. Looking at the year this was made, not only was this a very entertaining, engaging and imaginative film, as well as a very successful experiment in encouraging revulsion from the audience, but it was way ahead of its time in the way it approached the genre.
A+
The rest of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series is as follows.
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Apparently the second movie is funnier than the first, so as a horror comedy fan I'm interested to see what Tobe Hooper does with that. I'm a little apprehensive about the third film in the series, but am very interested in checking out this appropriately ridiculous early film from Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellwegger. I've seen a little bit from the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and wasn't too impressed, but I feel I should give it a second chance for completions sake.
Full breakdown of the results:
1 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 21.43%
2= Child's Play 17.86%
2= The Omen 17.86%
4= Halloween 14.29%
4= Phantasm 14.29%
6 Leprechaun 10.71%
7 Critters 3.57%
Seventh Place: Critters
With just a single vote, the movie series featuring the cuddly ravenous monsters from outer space take the lowest place in this poll.
Sixth Place: Leprechaun
The horror comedy series starring Warwick David of "Willow" (and various other stuff) fame scraped a total of three votes.
Fourth Place (Equal): Halloween + Phantasm
Halloween was a major populariser for the slasher genre with the initial movie in the series being recognised as one of John Carpenter's bigger hits. (A far bigger hit than "The Thing" which was originally panned upon its cinema release.) Phantasm is a bizarre mixture of zombies, aliens and a mysterious undertaker. Both these series slotted equally into fourth place with four votes each.
Second Place (Equal): The Omen + Child's Play
With just one more vote each, at five votes, these two movie series came equally into second place: The "Omen" series about the anti-christ being born on Earth to begin Armageddon. The "Child's Play" series about a doll inhabited by the soul of a viscious murderer.
But despite how close the running was, in the end first place featured a clear winner:
First Place: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
With just over a fifth of the total votes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was clearly the most popular choice. A glance at the imdb page for the director of the first two movies makes clear that this is a director of some great horror classics, yet I've not seen ANY of them. The ghost movie "Poltergeist", the vampire movie "Salem's Lot", the video nasty "Eaten Alive", and in terms of sci-fi there are two major titles with both the infamously daft "Lifeforce" (with Patrick Stewart) and a remake of the 50s alien invasion movie "Invaders From Mars". Also a number of Tobe Hooper's films star the legendary Robert Englund from the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series. As such, I'm going to make an effort to go through Tobe Hooper's films as well as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
If you look on Youtube for a documentary on "Masters of Horror" you'll see that the one about Tobe Hooper features John Landis (of "American Werewolf in London" fame) referring to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as "very funny". I tried to watch it that way, being very much a horror comedy fan, and certainly there is an over-the-top element running throughout the whole thing. However, this definitely isn't a horror comedy. The comment tells us more about John Landis' own twisted sense of humour than it does about the original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" film. (The film very definitely spells "chain saw" as two words in the opening credits.)
I was pretty surprised by how much of the film I seemed to have seen already. The story is fairly simple and pretty major parts of the story have become iconic moments. As such, I'd seen fairly major points in the simple plot in clips along with hearing about some other rather major moments when people recounted horror movie elements that had a big impact on them.
As a bunch of college-age people sit in a van, featuring two couples and a relative in a wheelchair, we can see how this would have inspired the Friday the 13th films. In fact, the whiney geeky figure in the third Friday movie seems like he might possibly be somewhat basing his performance on that of the wheelchair-bound figure in this horror classic. However, as with pretty much all the actors, the wheelchair-bound character is performed very well and feels very believable. When he's feeling sorry for himself we can completely relate to him, partially because of a great performance and partially because of the way his part is written and portrayed. I wonder whether the decision to use a wheelchair-bound character in Friday the 13th Part II was also with this film in mind.
Having female characters who wear ridiculously little clothing so the camera can leer at them is another element featured here. I understand that this is a staple of low budget exploitation flicks in general. Still, the leering could easily have been worse. We don't get as much leering as in "Friday the 13th Part II" and certainly not the horrific levels of gratuitous misogyny found in "Friday the 13th The Final Chapter".
When things get really crazy, there's quite a bit of screaming in this film. In the "Friday the 13th" films there were occasions where screaming would get annoying or even boring and I was absolutely prepared for that to happen here. However, even though screaming sometimes occurs far more than seems entirely sensible, it always makes sense and the level of terror seems appropriate. A scene where a character is tied to a chair had a similar feel to the movie "The Loved Ones" (which I feel I really ought to try to finish some time), but Texas Chainsaw Massacre always works by building up the horror rather than simply making things explicit. A close-up on a victim's eyeball is one way that the director shows particular flair in showing the build-up of terror rather than going straight into the gore.
The Texas Chain Saw Masscre is not an easy film to watch, but it is made remarkably bearable for a squeamish viewer like myself by starting out fairly slowly, giving us a reasonable number of relateable characters surrounded by people who seem pretty genuine, making a decent build up to the horror rather than just bombarding the audience with it from the beginning, and by making things appropriately over-the-top that the audience can put some distance between themselves and the events on screen. I love it when horror uses over-the-top crazy concepts and perhaps John Landis isn't so off the mark if he means that you can laugh afterwards. However, this is a proper horror film and the atmosphere while you are watching is genuinely terrifying in a way that gets under your skin. Even as you recognise the sheer ridiculousness of a few elements, you are liable to be empathising with the protagonists too much to laugh.
Perhaps it's because of the age of the film, but there's something that seems almost arty about the film. There's not exactly a terribly complex plot, but the ideas are set up well, there's some great shots and the film is surprisingly imaginative. I don't know what all the imagery means, if it means anything at all, but I know that every part of this film was extremely effective. Looking at the year this was made, not only was this a very entertaining, engaging and imaginative film, as well as a very successful experiment in encouraging revulsion from the audience, but it was way ahead of its time in the way it approached the genre.
A+
The rest of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series is as follows.
Apparently the second movie is funnier than the first, so as a horror comedy fan I'm interested to see what Tobe Hooper does with that. I'm a little apprehensive about the third film in the series, but am very interested in checking out this appropriately ridiculous early film from Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellwegger. I've seen a little bit from the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and wasn't too impressed, but I feel I should give it a second chance for completions sake.
Full breakdown of the results:
1 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 21.43%
2= Child's Play 17.86%
2= The Omen 17.86%
4= Halloween 14.29%
4= Phantasm 14.29%
6 Leprechaun 10.71%
7 Critters 3.57%