TexasChainsawMassacre Tagged Articles at Cinematical

By Alison Nastasi

With the announcement of Carrie making a return to the Broadway circuit after a short-lived disastrous first go-round, I'm left holding my head and wondering, "Why?" Horror musicals are like your socially awkward cousin. You know, the one who talks too much and quite possibly bears an uncanny resemblance to Franklin from Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Is it fair to hold the horror musical to the same standards as the dastardly horror film remakes that seem to be happening in droves? I don't think I can help it. Few horror musicals have been born from an original idea which leaves me with the same funny feeling. I'm well aware that remakes have been happening since the dawn of time but this kind of remake is worse. When you add the word 'musical' to anything it evokes a horrible visceral reaction within many people. Adding it to the word horror just seems like a bastardized and shrieking kind of wrong.

Isn't the comical genius of Young Frankenstein and Evil Dead perfect as is? Young Frankenstein was a parody. So, is a mugging Dr. Frankenstein belting out a song called Transylvania Mania anything other than pointless and silly? The film Cannibal! The Musical, another intentional parody by beloved low-budget Troma Entertainment, has more class by comparison. Even Cronenberg's The Fly has been made into an opera, but they don't have me fooled. Adding the smooth vowel-ridden word to the title doesn't soften the blow. In fact, it's almost more cruel. However, Repo! The Genetic Opera would probably disagree with me.

Read the rest at Horror Squad!

New Line insists on "reimagining," but from reading the reviews I take it nobody's buying.

Anyway. Friday the 13th set a horror remake opening weekend record, grossing $40.7 million over the three days and $45.2 including President's Day Monday. That beats Marcus Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake by more than $12 million. It's also roughly the second best President's Day weekend opening ever, behind only Ghost Rider and just about tied with 50 First Dates and Daredevil.

Confessions of a Shopaholic opened to a halfway decent $17.3 million, while The International more or less flopped with $10.7 million; the marketing for the latter really pushed the evil bank concept, complete with a shot of an ATM offering "murder" "corruption" and "extortion" as options instead of "withdrawal" "deposit" and "check balance." Maybe people thought it was a comedy.

It was another good weekend for holdovers, with Taken, Coraline and -- once again -- Paul Blart: Mall Cop all doing well. Taken's $81-million-and-counting is really remarkable. $120 million is assured at this point, with more possible. "Sleek, preposterous and breathlessly entertaining" appears to be a good formula. Meanwhile, maybe if I stop mentioning Paul Blart in these posts, it'll go away? Seems unlikely.

Leading up to the Oscars, Slumdog Millionare should be close to $100 million by the big night. The Reader also saw a late bump this weekend; a Kate Winslet win on Sunday can't hurt.

The full 4-day top 10 after the jump.

They started off with Leatherface, which makes sense if you think about it: Horror flicks don't get much more "classic" than TCM. So when Platinum Dunes announced a do-over on Friday the 13th, nobody was all that much surprised. Plus the Dunes boys keep talking about remaking The Birds, so I guess that means all bets are off. So don't act all surprised when you learn that the production company is looking at a spring start date for, yep, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Producer Andrew Form spilled a few early details at Shock, but here's the part that should keep horror fans (at least partially) sated for the time being: "It's not Freddy cracking jokes. We want to make a horrifying movie. The concept is so scary, don't fall asleep or you'll die. This guy gets you when you're most vulnerable, in your sleep. We love that." Sounds good to me, Andrew.

So not only will the new* Freddy start shooting relatively soon ... it also looks like Platinum Dunes have found themselves a screenwriter in veteran word-maker Wesley Strick, whom the genre fans will remember from Arachnophobia, Cape Fear, Wolf, and Doom.

*And yes, it definitely looks like a NEW Freddy will hit the scene, although the producers seem open to having Robert Englund stop by in some capacity.

Yesterday, Eric D. Snider mentioned an interesting exercise by The New Republic's Christopher Orr. Annoyed at the recent glut of trailers that give away the entire film, he decided to write a review of 21 (which hits theaters today) based only on the trailer. Eric thought the "review" was actually pretty accurate, and I agree. I also agree that the trailer is egregiously inconsiderate of people who'd have liked to go into the movie unspoiled at least as to the third act. It's a shame.

But I'm sure you agree that it doesn't have to be that way. Trailers don't have to give away the game, and they don't have to be tacky and ham-fisted either. They're a marketing tool, of course, but trailers are also -- or can be -- an art form in their own right. Sometimes a trailer is such a skillful composition of images, sounds, words and music that it winds up having more of an effect on me than the movie I'm in the theater to see. (Often, too, the trailer turns out to be better than the movie it's advertising, which is always a disappointment.)

So while yesterday Eric asked you for examples of trailers that pissed you off because they revealed too much, I'd like to know which recent trailers you've loved. Not necessarily which ones you think advertised their movie in the optimal way, but which ones have been great in themselves -- scary, rousing, moving, beautiful. Take a look at some of my favorites and sound off after the jump.

Depending on your point of view, this is either very good or very bad news. Shock Til You Drop is reporting that the much-discussed Friday the 13th update will not be a remake of the classic 1980 flick. According to sources, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason) will not be re-writing the original story. Going one step further, Shock reports that the flick would not be an origin story of any kind. Instead, Shock reports that the film will take place, "somewhere between parts two and four". As any horror fan knows, the story of Jason Voorhees and his reign of terror at Camp Crystal Lake is one of the cornerstones of 80's horror, and the thought of a remake had plenty of fans all up in arms. Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Marcus Nispel hopped onboard a few weeks ago to direct.

Just last week Scott had reported that there were still some details to iron out with the script; mainly how they were going to work around the fact that Jason did not really appear in the films until Part 2. As we all know, it was good old Mommy dearest doing the dispatching in the first film. If Shock's sources can be trusted then this means Nispel won't have to worry about how to work in the big daddy of slashers and his trusty goalie mask and they can just start fresh. Stay tuned for any official word on whether or not we will be seeing a "stronger, faster, better" Jason headed our way. Friday the 13th is set for release February 13, 2009.

Seems like everyone wants to take a stab at filming a Stephen King adaptation lately. Although my guess is that the smart money is still on Frank Darabont's The Mist. But that doesn't mean that any other King project is doomed to end up on one of James' lists. Variety reports that Tobe Hooper has been hired to direct the big-screen version of From a Buick 8. This is King's second 'killer car' story, the first being Christine back in 1983. Buick centers on the recollections of the members of Troop D, a police barracks in western Pennsylvania. After *a young boy is is killed, his father becomes obsessed with the origins of a mysterious Buick 8 left in the town one night by a mysterious man in black (is there any other kind?).

But for those of you out there who can't get the ridiculous image of Keith Gordon being chased down the street by a 1958 Plymouth Fury out of your heads, there is no danger of this film going off the rails into camp territory. Hooper tells Variety, "From a Buick 8" will not be "your stock horror film by any means. There's a really cool, layered quality to the story." Hooper is best known for directing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in 1974, but this will be a far cry from the blood and gore of leather-face. Actor-writer Johnathon Schaech and Richard Chizmar were in charge of adapting Buick for the screen and the flick will be produced by Chesapeake Films along with long-time King collaborator Mick Garris.

Correction: It is the son who goes looking for his father's murderer, not the other way around.

When the guy who directed The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream decides he wants to share his five favorite horror films with the world, two things are certain: 1. Horror fans should probably sit up, take notice and jot the titles down (if they haven't seen 'em yet), and 2. The news will be carried in (of all places) The Wall Street Journal.

Yes, Wes Craven was asked to list his favorite fistful of fright flicks, and here's what one of the modern masters of macabre had to offer: the original Frankenstein (Craven's going out on a limb already -- although I do give the man credit for not going with the more popular choice of Bride of Frankenstein), Mervyn LeRoy's The Bad Seed (does that include the final scene, Wes?), The Exorcist (another potentially controversial pick), the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (darn good pick -- albeit another fairly obvious one) and Ridley Scott's Alien -- which, as anyone who reads Film Critic Hunk Magazine can tell you, is my very favorite film of all time, horror or otherwise. God I love that film....

And that's pretty much it! Tune in next month when John Carpenter tells us he loves Tod Browning's Dracula, Stephen King expresses some affection for Freaks, and Eli Roth breaks the news that the original Halloween "rocks!!"

German filmmaker Marcus Nispel became acquainted with the horror freaks when he directed the surprisingly solid Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake a few years back. Since then he's been working on his "Vikings vs. Native Americans" epic Pathfinder, which has had more release dates than Mike Tyson. But according to those wonderful monsters over at Fangoria, we now have the scoop on Mr. Nispel's next three projects.

1. An adaptation of American McGee's cult classic video game Alice for Universal, which we're told will star Sarah Michelle Gellar in the title role.

2. A subterranean monster movie called Sublevel -- which sounds completely up my alley.

3. Most intriguing of all would be the second collaboration between Nispel and Texas screenwriter Scott Kosar: a Charles Manson movie. Yes, there have been several (including the one everybody's seen: the very well-regarded 1976 TV movie Helter Skelter), but this director seems to have a firm approach to the story: "Almost all of those films are told from a legal point of view, or what you'd hear in a trial. So the thing you have to do is look at it from an emotional angle: Whose eyes are we seeing this through who is not a cop or a judge? Scott found a very interesting point of view from an insider. Personally, I've always been partial to an approach similar to Paul Schrader's Hardcore."

So now let the speculation begin: Whom would you cast as Charles Manson? I'm no casting director, but for some reason Billy Crudup just popped into my head. I'll stick with that pick.

January's still being pretty skimpy with the DVD treats. This week we get another slob comedy, another football movie, another action movie, another slasher flick and another video-shelf sequel to a movie that nobody really enjoyed all that much in the first place. So please, friends, rent before you buy.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning -- So here we have a prequel to a remake of a classic, and the law of diminishing returns is in full effect. What we were promised -- a dark and nasty tale of Leatherface's icky origins -- is relegated to a sketchy prologue, and the rest of the movie is sub-standard slasher fare in every sense of the term. Points to the team for doling out the gory stuff, but with characters like this (and a pace this glacial) there's very little reason to care who gets sliced and when. Still, the mega-rabid R. Lee Ermey is always good for a few goofy laughs. Extras on the unrated edition include a producer/director audio commentary, a 46-minute 'making of' documentary, four deleted scenes and three alternate endings.

So far the company known as Plantium Dunes, which is run by flashy director dude Michael Bay, has produced three movies: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Ah, and they have The Hitcher due in two weeks. That's three remakes and a prequel to a remake ... which I don't really count as an "original" concept.

But according to Bloody-Disgusting.com, Bay and producing partner Andrew Form have a nasty thriller on the way called The Horsemen. In this one, Dennis Quaid will play a detective gone sour after his wife's untimely demise, only to come across some terror of truly "biblical" proportions. (Hint: The (Four) Horsemen ... of the Apocalypse?) Quaid's the man, of course, and the story sounds pretty nifty, but The Horsemen was written by the guy who did Doom and directed by the guy who helmed the patently unwatchable Spun ... so this one's a total crap-shoot. But at least it's not a remake. Plus they got Zhang Ziyi to co-star, and that's always a smart thing to do.

Also on the Platinum docket are something "brutal" called Alone, that oft-discussed remake of The Birds and ... absolutely no chance of another Texas Chainsaw Massacre entry. Which is just fine by me.

[Previous report by Marky B. is accessible right here.]