I’ve never thought about going to a Horror Convention if I'm honest. But I have a best friend from the Long Beach area and she has talked about Midsummer Scream nonstop and she asked our friend group if we wanted to go this year. To her surprise, myself and my other best friend said fuck yes. So there we were planning a trip to Long Beach, after purchasing VIP passes to the event.

This post is going to be part story telling of the event along with first timer tips for the event. My first tip,

Sunday evening, after some googling, we discovered they allegedly sell 50,000 tickets to this event. That is a mix of VIP, general admission and single days passes for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. To be honest, I can’t fathom trying to enjoy the event with a general admission pass. I’m in my mid 30s, so I'm no longer built to be queuing in line for 3-4 hours, in scorching California heat, to get into a building that does not have nearly a strong enough A/C system for the number of people jammed into the building to then fight my way through crowds and/or get in a new line to get into a panel I want to see.

We arrived midday Thursday. This gave us time to get to the Airbnb, get settled, walk to the beach and then head on to the 4th Horseman - a horror themed bar - for some pizza and a horror burlesque show! The performers were incredible. Everything from Tiffany from Bride of Chucky, Candyman, Billy from Saw and Adelaide from US (complete in red jumpsuit with scissors). The pizza was diverse and delicious (we ended up eating there back to back nights). With pizza options like Captain Spudling - because it had tater tots, duh - come on, you’ve got to check it out if you’re ever in Long Beach.

Friday we decided to drive in to LA and visit Black Craft Coffee and Slasher World. The coffee was delicious, very witchy and I bought some fun t-shirts talking about caffeinated coven and telling people to talk to me about horror movies and witches.

Slasher world was an interesting concept. There’s a front lobby featuring photo ops with Ghostface in the kitchen, Leatherface at the dinner table, Michael Myers and Freddy Kreuger in front of a front door. There is a back area you can pay to go into. I thought it was going to be an area to purchase physical media.

It was not.

It was simply paying admission to look at a collection of VHS tapes set up like a video rental store. Which is essentially how my basement is set up so I wasn’t super impressed, but it might be cool to someone who doesn’t own 1000 DVDs.

We then hit the highway back to Long Beach because Friday evening the event starts at 6pm. We chose to do all of our shopping on Friday, there’s a vendor hall set up with hundreds of booths. My friends are big online shoppers, so they had some specific vendors they wanted to find. I roamed aimlessly and to be honest was very let down with the number of vendors with AI generated posters and t-shirts. So I did not find much, Creep-O-Rama had a booth that had a gorgeous Jennifer’s Body shirt you know I had to get! Aside from that I grabbed some black cat stickers from a cute spot called Black Cat Club and we called it a night.

Saturday morning rolls around and today is the big day for our panels! Early admission for VIP is at 10, GA is at 11 and our panel starts at 12. We were moving slow after the night before, so after some coffee and breakfast, we rolled in probably around 10:45 and there were lines galore.

because the lines can get confusing, and we nearly ended up in the wrong place.

This December will be the 30th anniversary of Scream so we attended a MASSIVE scream panel. This ballroom had to of held well over 1000 people and this was the moment that rocked my world!

The panel was Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Jamie Kennedy, Roger Jackson (the voice actor for ghostface), Lee Waddell (stunt performer for ghostface) and Joseph Whipp (Sheriff Burke). The panel began with a promotional video for Midsummer Scream that made me emotional….

At 36 I’ve abandoned a career and life in athletics and have finally owned a hobby I take great enjoyment in. My love for horror, particularly slashers, and movies in general. So to sit in a room of thousands of people, spooky people, my people, all there to enjoy spooky things and listen to Matthew Lillard work the room and run this panel brought tears to my eyes.

Spooky community is so important.

There’s so many of us that love this genre and I will say I’m so thankful for the spooky ghouls I've found here on Substack. It’s a special little community that I love yapping about horror movies with!

Ok, sorry, tangent over.

The Scream panel was incredible. Lots of great conversation and jokes. Most importantly MATTHEW LILLARD PUT HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER. And I got to ask a question!

I stated I think the Scream steelbooks are the best designed set we have in horror, and I believe in the importance of physical media and I asked them what their feelings were on physical media in the age of streaming.

I don’t honestly remember clearly what the response was because I was trying to not shake and stutter like a leaf in the wind with Matthew Lillard that close to me.

I think he said to buy dvds and Jamie Kennedy made some wise remark about how he downloads and streams all his movies. For most of the panel Jamie seemed to stay close to his character Randy, making wise remarks, and even some very questionable statements that were inappropriate…..

All in all. The panel was incredible and so special for me and will forever be a core memory.

Next we went to Blerdy Massacre’s panel “Won’t she do it? Femmes slay the Industry” featuring the hosts of Blerdy Massacre’s podcast, Zainab Sillah - Culture & Impact Manager at Monkeypaw, Monica Moore-Suriyage - Director of La Ciguapa Siempre, Black in Red Out and Give me an A and and Akela Cooper - Writer of Malignant and Megan.

It was a great panel. It was wonderful listening to the women speak about their work, horror in general, and what we need more of in the genre.

It is an anthology of short films made by women that got together after Roe v Wade was overturned and decided to get together and make art in an attempt to process what just happened. The pieces are powerful, the project was fully crowdfunded and resources were shared along the way to pull it all off. If you aren’t already a listener you need to check out the Blerdy Massacre podcast! I had never heard of them before the panel but really enjoyed the hosts Zero Gravity and Sharai The Slayer. I immediately started listening to the pod on the plane ride home and I'm hooked.

After this fabulous panel we headed back to the VERY LARGE ballroom to attend Return of the Living Drag The Musical. Where a fabulous cast of drag queens performed pieces from popular horror musicals like phantom of the opera, nightmare before Christmas, Repo the genetic opera, among many more. Again, another packed room of gay, ghoulish babes like me there to geek out over fabulous, frightening drag queens.

This is what dreams are made of!

This is the shit that reminds us we aren’t alone, you aren’t alone, you aren’t the only one that loves this stuff.

After a riveting day of panels, we headed for dinner and a little rest before a horror burlesque show at another local, underground bar!

The show was absolutely hilarious and incredible. I will say if you look into attending a show at Harvelle’s, consider yourself warned, with it being underground in California, there is zero air flow, and I'm convinced potentially no AC at all - by the end of the show I was DRIPPING sweat, and I was in shorts and a t-shirt. So girls, be careful out there.

Now we’re to Sunday.

Where did the time go?

We felt like we’d done enough that we’d been there for a week but alas we’d jammed it into only a day and 3 hours, which was insane to think about.

But with Sunday ahead of us we still needed to check out the Haunted attractions! Yes this convention center was large enough to have hundreds of vendors, dozens of rooms for panels and a dozen haunted attractions. Most were fine - there was one or two that was fun and really good, had I skipped the haunted attractions, I don’t think I would’ve missed out on anything. However, it’s always fun going through a haunted house with friends, inevitably you’ll be cackling because someone in the group got got. Ya know?

After, we browsed the vendors a bit to see if there was anything else we wanted to pickup. We grabbed an early lunch.

That’s the price of having fun I guess.

After lunch we attended a screening of short films. There were several blocks of short film screenings which I love. Short films are how all of our favorite film makers start so we wanted to show some support. They were categorized by topics like Stalkers and Slashers, Splattertown, Creatures of the Night, Die Laughing and many more. I dream of the day of completing a high quality short film and successfully submitting it to an event like Midsummer Scream or a festival. One day….

We rounded out the day with going to a Decayed Brigade performance the girlies in my group wanted to attend, they’re a Slider Team in Long Beach CA. I guess the girls be thirsting over these boys on TikTok. I was open to it, that was part of what was so awesome about going to this event with best friends I love, that we all respected the things others wanted to do. Would I have chosen this? No but my besties really wanted to see these boys so we went. And you know what, every time I embraced my friends’ interests, I got something great out of it.

This performance ALSO got me emotional. There I stood watching this punk, goth performance of sliders AND THEY WERE USING QUOTES FROM JENNIFER’S BODY.

My love.

My magnum opus.

There I was amongst friends and ghouls watching this incredible feat of athleticism, set up in this boys vs girls battle set to the back drop of Jennifer’s Body, my favorite movie of all time.

I’m home.

I’m comfortable in my skin.

I’m sober.

I’m happy.

I’m full of joy.

I’m going to remember this all.

Forever.

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I hope you enjoyed this piece and maybe got some tips from it for Midsummer Scream. They’re moving the convention to Anaheim next year so my Long Beach tips might not be super applicable but maybe you’re taking a trip there and could check some of the local places out we went to.

I felt motivated to write this piece and hopefully get you to feel a little bit of how I was feeling at this event. Everywhere I looked it felt like people were glued to their phone, either looking at Midsummer Scream videos or recording content - tripods in hand - probably hoping to create their own content. More power to those creators I guess, I went through my TikTok creator era, but I just don’t think I'm built for needing to record most of my lived experience, instead of just living and enjoying life. It just got me thinking about how video and photo based content is based on this false sense of experience (experiencing these things through viewing them online) whereas maybe on this Substack I'd be able to share more of how the event made me feel.

What started as a way to preserve the future of humanity -

Turned into the best existence these women had known.

They weren’t going to give that up.

2025

White men have been working for centuries now to ruin this world. They’ve spent their time creating structures of slavery and institutions that oppress anyone that does not look like them. They’ve created technology that has us addicted to screens, big screens, medium screens, tiny screens that fit in our hand - our pocket. We’re addicted to apps that live on the screens that have rewired our brains and the way we live life. You can’t forget the personal assistants attached to the apps. Those assistants are built into our TVs too.

“Hey Siri, what’s the weather like today?”

“Hey Alexa, add toilet paper to my cart”

The experience of life - meeting and talking to strangers.

Long, loving conversations.

Traveling.

Wilderness.

Fresh Air.

No - we must text. Abbreviate. Post. Wait for the likes. Wait for the comments. Live for the parasocial relationships to tell us we’re hot, we’re funny, we’re talented.

Then there are the billionaires, some trillionaires, that are profiting on this structure of slavery. A slave to the dopamine.

Shopping at your fingertips at a cheap price thanks to the objectification of workers on the other end of the system. But that doesn’t matter - because we all need it now. Right now.

Then there are the apps that have turned dating and courtship into a breeding ground for rape and kidnapping of women. Apps that are responsible for transportation that results in more assaults than any other service offered. Oh you have a complaint? Your account is deactivated.

This world was built by men and for men, I don’t know why they thought it was going to be any different once the world ended.

Once it all fell, everything was eradicated.

It was funny how they started to care about the violence when it meant the end of man kind.

2040

They were sleeping soundly in their tents in the forest. No real infrastructures had been built or setup yet, they were all just living off the land trying to figure out what to do next.

Zack listened to the faint breathing of his daughters Kelly and Laurie. Kelly, 13 years old, was growing so tall he was going to have to find her a new sleeping bag soon. Laurie, 6 years old, was still so tiny and sweet, most of the time he lost her inside the sleeping bag the way she curled up inside of it, treating it like a fort almost.

“Are you awake?” His wife Jackie whispered into his back.

“Yeah” She squeezed him tighter around the waist as she rolled over and stretched.

Zack heard the snapping of twigs and a muffled whisper outside the tent, “They’ve gotta be around here somewhere”. Flashlights could be seen flashing across the tent.

Zack and Jackie locked eyes in the darkness. Before he could even move the tent was ripped open and Jackie and Kelly were dragged out screaming.

“Zack, Zack” Jackie screamed as she was dragged through the forest by this masked man.

“MOM HELP” Kelly yelled as she grabbed at the man’s hand.

Zack scrambled out of the tent after them, he sees this man, he’s looming over them like a monster out of a fairytale. He had his wife and daughter by the hair, dragging them through the forest to god knows where.

He grabs Kelly by the foot and tries to pull her out of his grip and then everything goes black.

Zack wakes up to the taste of blood and mud in his mouth with a searing headache. He sits up on the forest floor trying to figure out where he is and what happened.

He hears a deafening scream to his left, it’s guttural, feral, something hellish has happened.

He scrambles to his feet and runs that way.

There they are.

Jackie and Kelly are stripped naked, bloody, battered and dead. Both are missing patches of hair from their head. Mud caked to their faces, hands and knees.

Zack is trying to catch up. Trying to understand what he’s looking at. When he hears -

“Daddy”

Zack gasps and turns to see Laurie standing their rubbing sleep from her eyes. He runs to her and scoops her up, burying her face into his chest. Zack runs towards the tent and picks up a back pack and he keeps running through the forest.

He runs and never stops.

He obviously stopped eventually. He stopped miles from the forest. Drenched in sweat. After Laurie wouldn’t stopping asking where Mommy and Kelly were. Asking where they were going. He sat her down. Tears streaming down his face now.

“Daddy what’s wrong” Laurie took her little hands and wiped his tears away.

He hugged her so tight he thought he was going to never let go.

“Daddy, I can’t breathe”

“Sorry sweetie I just love you so much.”

“Where are mommy and Kelly, none of you guys were there when I woke up.”

“Sweetie, do you remember me and mommy talking to you and Kelly about the bad men in the camp that were dangerous and doing bad things to women because they thought they had a right to?”

“Yeah.” She stood their blinking staring at her dad. “Did they come for mommy and Kelly?”

Tears welling up in Zack’s eyes. Laurie starts to connect the events of what happened.

Her voice breaking Laurie asks “They did bad stuff to mommy and Kelly didn’t they?”

Zack shakes his head yes.

She hugs her dad tight.

“Honey we have to keep moving. I have to find some place for us to be safe. For you to be safe.” She shakes her head.

He opens up the back pack and pulls on a pair of pants and starts to put on shoes. He hands Laurie a granola bar - “eat up kiddo, we’ve got a long way to go”.

He puts her shoes on her feet as she munches away on her granola bar.

With the forest far behind them, they headed across the barren farm lands. What was once thriving corn fields were now overrun with brush and weeds.

The sun started to set in the sky as Laurie said “Daddy I’m hungry and tired, are we going to sleep soon”

“Of course sweetie we just need to walk a bit further”.

Carrying her now, Laurie nuzzled into Zack’s neck.

Farm land always meant a farmhouse eventually, it was just a matter of finding it.

Just as Laurie started to snore lightly in his ear, he finds it.

A looming, structure in the distance. All he can make out is the massive white pillars in the front of the house. The rest lays in darkness.

He lays Laurie down on one of the chairs on the porch. She’s always been a heavy sleeper. He just needs to go inside and make sure there are no other occupants he knows of.

The towering front door lets out a deafening squeak in the dead of night.

“Well if someone’s in here they sure as shit know I’m here now” Zack whispers to himself as he feels his way down the wall of the entry way.

He can make out that he’s in a long, narrow entry way that looks like it opens up into a massive lobby area with stair cases leading upstairs. As he makes it into the lobby, he feels the cold touch of shotgun on his temple.

“If you as much as blink, I’m blowing your head off.”

He closes his eyes.

“Please, I have my 6 year old daughter with me outside. I’m just trying to get her somewhere safe”

From his right he hears another voice, “For fucks sake, leave it to a man to leave a 6 year old girl outside alone during the apocalypse - go get her.”

He hears two sets of feet head down the hallway after his daughter.

“NO” he turns and everything goes black.

He comes to tied to a chair, spots in his vision, searing headache and gagged. He sees into the next room where his daughter is playing with toys on the ground with four other young girls.

The woman from earlier stands in front of him with the shot gun held loosely in her hand. She’s a commanding presence. She’s covered in a lifetime of tattoos, a bun on the top of her head with an undercut.

“Good morning asshole. You’re lucky I didn’t blow your brains out back there. For the sake of your daughter, I’m going to give you an opportunity to explain yourself.”

He looks around the room as she pulls his gag down, women are everywhere in this house. There’s clearly a group in the kitchen cooking and prepping food as water runs and pots and pans clang about to the hypnotic sound of knifes on cutting boards. Four other women are in the room with them, armed with guns and machetes.

“Who are you guys?”

“I would pistol whip you for not following my instructions but judging by the two lumps on your head now, I’d say you’re one more pistol whip away from a traumatic brain injury. So I’m going to ask you one more time, what are you doing here?”

Zack looks up at this woman and tears well up in his eyes. Something breaks in her complexion and she knows. She softens.

“Did they get your wife?”

He squeezes his eyes shut as tears stream down his face. Nodding yes he adds “and my 13 year old daughter.” He nods towards the room of young girls where Laurie is now learning how to play patty cake to an old nurse rhyme. “She sleeps so curled up in her sleeping bag, they didn’t see her when they busted into our tent.”

“I just picked her up and ran. I didn’t know what else to do. I just need her to be safe. I need her to be ok. She can’t live in that community.”

One of the women seated next to the bookshelves gets up. She approaches the woman and leans in close. “Lisa we cannot take more people into this community. We’re already struggling as is, we can’t sustain more mouthes to feed, and you know we can’t take a man.”

Lisa looks at this woman who is substantially shorter than her. “Are you going to tell that young girl she has to go back to the forest?”

Lisa looks at Zack. “All we can offer is to take your daughter in for good. You have to go. We have a strict no male policy for our community due to the way you all act and the risk you pose to our health and well being. Your daughter, we can take, protect and raise like our own. But you may not ever see her again. We roam and move often to stay safe.”

He weighs this idea but knows deeps down this is his only choice for Laurie. There’s dozens of women here armed and fully capable. If those men were to show back up, what type of protection did he provide Kelly and Jackie? He’s not making that mistake again.

“Ok. Please let me leave her with you.”

2035

Zack stands in a board room, dressed in an expensive tailored Armani suit. Set around the table of the board room is a smorgasbord of old white men in suits. He is finishing up a presentation, he places the projector clicker on the table and buttons up his suit coat.

“Zack this was a great proposal. I don’t see any reason why we can’t approve your trillion dollar pay package. All in favor say aye.”

A unanimous showing of hands by the men at the table go up and chorus of aye fills the room.

“I super appreciate it” Zack says as he leaves the room followed by a swarm of assistants following him with laptops and tablets in hand ready for anything.

Zack and his entourage wind their way through the hallways, past cubicles and back to his corner office overlooking the city of San Francisco. The TVs on the wall are on and a news broadcast interrupts the stock market chatter -

“We are anticipating a catastrophic Solar Superstorm that scientists are warning would cause an internet apocalypse leading to trillions in dollars in loss for our economy and would restructure the world as we know it. We have U.N. Scientist and Solar Superstorm specialist Lisa Navarro here with us. Lisa what is going on with these Solar Superstorm warnings? We’ve heard this before and nothing came of it. Is this another false alarm?”

“John this is not a false alarm. Due to the continued progression of global warming our mapping and prediction software has never seen something like this before. We anticipate in the next six months experiencing a global event that will cause the eradication of the internet. People need to plan ahead and have food stores and medication to last for as long as possible - at a minimum we think it would be 2-5 years before we return to a society close to what we have now, if we were ever able to recover.”

John laughs.

“You can’t be serious.”

Lisa looks directly into the camera.

“To the American People. We anticipate the collapse of society as we know it. Your cellphones will not work properly. Businesses will have no infrastructure to take transactions for goods, services, food. Banks will not be able to give you your money withdrawals. Some cars will stop working. All public transportation will cease to exist. Traffic signals will stop working so travel by car will become dangerous. We will go back to a way of life many of us have only learned about in history books. It will be catastrophic and post apocalyptic like. Do your best to plan accordingly.”

She gets up, removes her mic and walks off stage.

Zack turns the tv off. “What a quack”.

2040

Zack and Lisa stand on the expansive porch of the house.

“You need to understand something. This community was built on the principle of never spare a man’s life. So me sending you off into the dark right now, these women are not going to be happy. The ONLY reason I am sparing you, is you are probably one of three people in this country that might be capable of helping us rebuild the grid. With this being said, don’t ever come back here. Don’t ever come after her. If I ever see you again, I will shoot you on site. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, you’ve made yourself clear.”

“I will give you 10 minutes and then you have to go”

“I can’t spend the night at least?”

“No.”

Lisa shoves his backpack into his chest and walks back inside the house. Gripping the backpack, Zack takes a deep breath and follows her.

One of the women has Laurie in the hallway.

“Daddy!” She comes running. Zack swoops her up in a hug and holds her on his hip. “This place is so cool. They’ve got all types of toys and I learned this new nursery rhyme, do you wanna hear it?”

“I do sweetie but I need to talk to you about something first.” He puts her down and he takes a knee in front of her so they’re eye to eye. “Laurie, I have to go back to the forest, and you’re going to stay here with these women. They’re going to be your new home. They’re going to keep you safe and as you grow up they’re going to teach you how to live in this world”.

“What. No Daddy, you can’t leave me” She hugs him and starts to wail.

He hugs her tight. Two of the women grab her from behind and pull them apart. Laurie is screaming and thrashing trying to get to him.

“I love you sweetie, it’s gonna be ok”.

He gets up, backpack in hand and exits the house. He sets off into the darkness, back to the only community he knows, as the sounds of his baby girl wailing pierces the night.

To Be Continued…

YOU’LL FLOAT TOO 🎈

YOU’LL FLOAT TOO 🎈

YOU’LL FLOAT TOO 🎈

YOU’LL FLOAT TOO 🎈

Welcome to the sewers of Derry, Maine.

Where do I even begin? I suppose you might be wondering how we got down here.

Kyle has summoned all the ghouls and goblins of the Scarestack Society out of the corners and cracks of this earth and asked us to write about the King of Horror himself - Stephen King.

I am honored to be included in that list. Let me briefly touch on my history with Stephen King. I easily have watched much more than I’ve read. Only within the last few years did I start reading his books. I struggle a bit with his racial slurs and rhetoric about boobies but I’m doing my best to give his writing a shot and it seems to be worth it so far! I started with the Shining and Doctor Sleep, made my way to Misery and started this year reading IT! As for movies, I’ve watched most of the big hitters - Carrie, IT, The Shining, Doctor Sleep, Misery, Shawshank, The Mist, The Long Walk, The Running Man, Gerald’s Game, and Pet Sematary.

It has been great to see some coverage of the less popular king movies from my fellow Scarestackers, it makes me realize I’ve still got work to do! That’s King in a nutshell though, it’s a massive task to try to consume all of his work over the decades but boy is it a fun ride to be had.

I must admit, had this invitation from Kyle come a year ago, I absolutely would’ve chosen Doctor Sleep. Rose the Hat is one of my favorites and I LOVE the nuance of the adaptation, the line Flanagan had to tip toe to continue the movie King hated in the Shining while bringing it back around to be more true to the book. I think he nailed it - devastated no one chose it for this Spring of King!

So how did the sewers lead us away from the Overlook Hotel and back to Derry, Maine and IT? 2025 IT Welcome to Derry released on HBO Max. I think Bill Skarsgard’s depiction of Pennywise is one of the best roles we’ve seen in horror so I was obviously intrigued when this show dropped to streaming. I started watching it late but I WAS HOOKED. I thought it was one of the top 3 horror series I have ever watched, but I was seeing very mixed reviews online - much of the discourse being brought back to the comparison with the book. So I thought, I must read the book to start 2026!

And here we are, with my need to revisit the movies and dive into the world that sibling creative team Barbara and Andy Muschietti have created over two movies and now a three season TV Show. Writer/Director Andy and Producer Barbara entered the Hollywood scene with their debut Mama in 2013 and really since then, they’ve been focused on IT and Pennywise. What an incredibly special opportunity to spend 10+ years creating and building something with serious continuity and to pay homage to one of Andy’s horror heroes - Stephen King. In listening to the commentary you can tell how passionate he is for this story and how much love and care he’s poured into it.

I must warn you, this is not a typical Horror Lesbian piece. I will not be holding your hand, walking you through these films moment by moment with my running commentary. No. That’s not what IT is about. IT is about love, IT is about fear, IT is about allowing it all to consume you, to give you the opportunity to believe in IT or not. IT is an experience, only you can have. So my focus here is what Andy and Barbara Muschietti are creating. My recent obsession is complete, comprehensive bodies of media. In a world full of algorithms, ad breaks, viewers glued to their phone, I can’t get enough of sequential movies and shows that build on one another and allow you to get lost in a world.

Welcome to Derry, Maine —

IT Chapter One (2017)

Where does one even begin when trying to adapt a nearly 1200 page novel into a movie? Luckily the Muschietti’s were gifted Two Chapters to their movie with a collective five hour run time. If you somehow do not know the plot of IT - a young boy named Bill loses his younger brother to a killer clown in the sewers of their small town Derry, Maine. This clown works on a 27 year cycle where it wakes up to feed on the children of the town - fueled by their fears. Bill and his friends take on the clown as kids and then again as adults. So the novel is split up into two timelines, often bouncing between childhood and adulthood in chunks of time.

For the movie, Chapter One takes place in 1989 and is spent establishing our group of friends - The Losers Club - and what this killer clown looks like and is capable of. The tension in the book is built like a roller coaster, there is so much time spent in suspense, on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens and then a release of childhood nostalgia and character/world building helps you relax. This tempo change was achieved in the movie through witty one liners from the kids and the use of upbeat music scores. In listening to Andy and Barbara’s commentary, much of the music used was nostalgic to their childhood. Including the scene of Beverly having trash dumped on her head in the bathroom - this apparently happened to poor Andy in high school. This is also why the timeline was moved from the 50s in the book to the 80s for the movie, as this is true to Andy’s lived experience.

I don’t remember my first time viewing of this film but I know ever since that viewing that I have been captivated by Bill Skarsgard’s portrayal of Pennywise. I can’t fathom another actor ever topping his performance. The tempo and cadence of his speech is incredible, inviting yet simultaneously eerie. The physicality of the dancing and his smile, this beautiful balance of a cheery clown and pure nightmare fuel married perfectly.

They had nearly 175 people who read for Pennywise and Andy knew Bill was perfect for the role. His “childish” face, the larger eyes and the control and manipulation of his lips. Not to mention additional talents like allowing his eyes to drift outward. In a few scenes the clown has one eye that drifts outward, this was how Andy had sketched the clown and was explaining to Bill how they’d do the effect with CGI. He said no, I can do that.

COME ON. How incredible.

Give the man an Oscar already.

In viewing these films back to back, I must confess I think Chapter Two is a better film. I will keep this brief as I'm not in the business of bashing child actors, but I just didn’t care for the cast. I didn’t have an emotional connection to a single one of them whereas you’ll hear how tore up the cast of Welcome to Derry got me. That was another perk of the book, in 1200 pages you can lay some serious groundwork to develop an emotional bond to a character.

Overall, the structure of this movie is great, the opening scene is iconic, Pennywise is incredible and they wrap up the first half of the childhood experience, ending with the kids making a blood pact to return to Derry if Pennywise ever appears again and this allows us to dive into adulthood with The Losers club in Chapter Two.

IT Chapter Two (2019)

We’ve jumped 27 years, it’s 2016 and The Losers Club are adults, many are married with successful careers. Despite how much they’ve accomplished, how much progress they’ve made, IT is back and these kids made a blood pact to fight it again if it ever returned.

Mike Hanlon stayed in Derry and after the opening scene of the movie where a hate crime against a gay couple occurs and Pennywise appears to eat one of the men in the Barrens, Mike knows he must call The Losers and bring them back to Derry to defeat IT once and for all.

Stylistically we get more timeline jumps between the adults and flashbacks to childhood which feels more like how the book is written. The stacked cast of adult actors helps this movie be a favorite for me, not only talent but visually they matched the kids to adults very well.

Finn Wolfhard was apparently the one to toss out Bill Hader as a great option to play adult Richie. It was fun in the behind the scenes of IT Chapter One to see Barbara Muschietti voice that her hope for adult Beverly was Jessica Chastain. Obviously the incredible James McAvoy as our leading man Bill is a perfect leader for the adult gang of misfits.

IT Chapter Two also offers us cameos from both Director Andy Muschietti and the man himself, Stephen King.

In tragic news we almost got a Guillermo Del Toro cameo but unfortunately due to scheduling that plan fell through. Del Toro was an executive producer on Andy’s first film Mama and there are several easter eggs from Mama throughout these films….

Andy asked him to play the janitor in this scene.

Behind the scenes fun facts aside, I think these two movies do a good surface level portrayal of IT. Despite the 5 hour run time, I didn’t have the emotional connection to these characters the way I did in the book which I think is part of the downside to the movie adaptation. However, these movies birthed an icon in Bill Skarsgard playing Pennywise. Bill and Andy have developed a friendship and continued to push the bounds of this clown and what it can become. Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) and Doug Bradley (Pinhead) are the only other actors that come to mind who truly embodied and made the horror icon they played and I truly do believe Bill Skarsgard will be included in that horror royalty. Fingers crossed for a future star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

That is the true beauty of IT and Pennywise the clown. You can choose to take him at face value and he’s horrifying. The eating of children. The way he can morph into different monsters. Nightmare fuel.

Or

If you choose to read the novel, understand the story and what IT really stands for, the fear, how - to overcome fear - you must believe in something, how in Derry, Maine much of the evil is human made and it starts to beg the question, is IT a supernatural evil or simply the intrinsic evil of human kind?

IT Welcome to Derry: Chapter One (2025)

Andy and Barbara Muschietti always hoped for a prequel movie to their story. Someone, somewhere gifted them a three season TV show instead and I will forever be grateful for that.

IT Welcome to Derry Season 1 takes place in 1962. It pulls a similar move to IT Chapter One when we meet Georgie who quickly perishes. We meet a group of Losers that are quickly killed off.

Spanning eight episodes - this show was afforded the opportunity the book provided - a deep emotional connection to the kids in this group and their horrifying personal experiences. With each episode we learned more about each kid’s lived experience and their personal encounter with Pennywise. I’m also just gonna come out and say it now:

Sorry I’m getting ahead of myself. What’s the show about? How was it developed?

Andy and Barbara said they wanted to spend time diving into and expanding on the interlude stories we get in the book.

Andy was quoted in Variety saying:

“I went into the book and looked at the interludes,” Andy says. “I realized there was a hidden story there, and that Stephen King was leaving crumbs that could guide us somewhere. It’s a story told backwards.”

The interludes in the book are tales from Derry, Maine that shed more light on the long reigning terror in this town and the role of Pennywise for decades.

So Andy is taking us back in time and weaving it into the timeline of our “primary” Losers Club from his movies.

Taking place in 1962, the air of racism in Derry is thick. A large part of the story takes place around Leroy Hanlon, who is Mike Hanlon’s grandfather.

Young Dick Hallorann from the Shining is also front and center in the story. I think Andy did wonderfully with this concept, it could’ve easily crashed and burned and felt forced but he weaved him into the military timeline perfectly, with the U.S. Air Force using his gift to try and track down Pennywise.

The IT Welcome To Derry Losers Club

Cracks Knuckles

Let’s get into the lore of these kids.

Lilly Bainbridge

is our Bill Denborough of this iteration. She’s one of the survivors of the original group of Losers we meet in episode 1 and she’s trying to find her friend Matty Clements who has disappeared and she’s heard him in the pipes.

Her father was killed in a pickle jar factory incident. This drove her “insane” and she ended up at Juniper Hill Insane Asylum with none other than Ingrid Kersh as her beloved nurse. You know, Mrs. Kersh -

The woman that is inside Beverly Marsh’s childhood apartment when she tries to visit her old home in IT Chapter Two.

Well.

We find out Mrs. Kersh is actually Periwinkle, Bob Gray’s Daughter.

Will Hanlon

Father of Mike Hanlon. Mike Hanlon being a future Librarian it’s fun to see that personality type in Will as he’s portrayed as a bit of a nerd.

Marge Truman

Mother of Richie Tozier. Again a shared personality type as the way she uses humor to try and get in good with the patty cakes is very Richie esque.

Ronnie Grogan

In the novel she’s one of the kids found dead in the sewers.

For the sake of the show it’s really just a shared name and she’s used as a plot device, with her father being accused of killing kids in town and she becomes the romantic interest of Will Hanlon.

Rich Santos

Other than being my all time favorite character, he’s a plot device for the show. He’s got a similar personality type and roll in The Losers Club to Richie Tozier in my opinion.

Other cast members

Police Chief Clint Bowers is Grandfather to Henry Bowers, a main actor in burning the black spot, which fully makes sense for the Bowers family.

Theodore Uris

Uncle to Stanley Uris, he is part of the original Losers Club that lose their life by the end of episode 1.

Lastly, I must also touch on the debut of blood soaked Pennywise.

Andy and Bill wanted to offer a new visual in this timeline and I think they absolutely killed it (literally) and somehow made Pennywise even more iconic.

For the sake of trying to avoid this turning into my debut full length novel, I will say there are several topics in the plot of this season that are both intriguing and polarizing in the fan base. I loved it all. I think it’s a very interesting start to the origin story of our favorite clown but I urge you to experience it for yourself and then after you do, continue to dive a bit deeper. There are countless easter eggs and expansions to Derry’s universe that I personally can’t get enough of.

Like the final episode ending with a flash to October of 1988.

Mrs. Kersh is in Juniper Hill, she’s been there for 26 years. She walks down the hall towards a room filled with screaming and crying and we see Beverly Marsh and her father on the floor crying at the feet of Beverly’s mother who is hanging from the rafters.

What’s next?

Season 2 (Projected for 2027)

This will be another 27 year cycle earlier, taking place in 1935 and focusing on the Bradley Gang Massacre interlude from the book. Every cycle has shown us real world human horrors paralleled with the threat of Pennywise. In the movies it was horrific bullying of both children and an LGBTQ couple. Season 1 it was racism, colonialism and the war. I think season 2 will be the Great Depression.

The final season of the show will take place in 1908 and will (hopefully) be the origin of Pennywise.

This show had me in a chokehold, every week there was a level of horror and gore that had my jaw wide open. It led me to feeling like I needed to know more about this world. So I started 2026 reading the behemoth that is IT.

I have never read something so consuming, every time I cracked the book it was like stepping into Derry, Maine to be a part of The Losers Club. This group of rag tag kids riding the streets on their bikes, running from bullies, trying to be good kids for their parents, while also simultaneously fighting off a killer clown in the sewers of the city. The book takes so much time to establish each kid as their own person, fighting their own battles but always coming back to their friend group for comfort/help with any problem that comes up. The story in the book feels like a warm, bloody blanket in this aspect. Going back to a time where your friends were all that mattered. They were your world, you could take on anything with their help.

But then we grow up and we forget.

As adults, The Losers Club, can’t really remember what all this was about. Their experience with Pennywise, the promises they made, they can’t remember until they go back to Derry.

This ripped me wide open.

Thinking back to my childhood, I know for a fact I had a wonderful group of friends. I had boys and girls at school I spent time at sleepovers with and I had a soccer team I considered to be my sisters. Yet it’s all fuzzy. I know the sleepovers happened. I couldn’t tell you a single thing discussed, but I know at that age, it was life or death, that time meant everything to me. It was that nostalgia push from the book that really just dug into my heart. Towards the end of the book when we’re consumed in adult life and The Losers Club’s return to Derry and battle with Pennywise and things have fully fallen apart and they’re trying to pick up the pieces and move on -

I was sobbing reading this part of the book because to think, if I had the opportunity now as an adult, to simply hop on my bike like I did as a kid, and ride off to fix my adult problems…… times were just so much simpler despite how horrific things may have felt. I had no idea how much worse it was all going to get.

To sit and reflect on the horror of how much of our childhood we loved and lived and breathed with friends we now barely remember. Hours of tag, hide and seek, bikes with baseball cards in the wheels. It’s almost like it never existed. It a hazy idea of the past. Now all we’ve got are groceries we can’t afford, housing that’s too expensive, billionaires deciding our rights, AI that’s moving too fast - the list of horrors goes on and on.

That is the moral of this story.

Pennywise is so much more than a dancing clown. He is me getting in my car everyday, that I fuel with gas that’s $5 a gallon, to go to a job I hate for 9 hours a day instead of spending time with friends and family doing the hobbies and activities I love. He is the death of innocence and the birth of racism. He is all of the fears and nightmares we had as kids coming to fruition in the form of a passive aggressive spouse, a degrading boss, a paycheck that no longer gives us an opportunity to live. He’s all of it coming to life and no matter how far ahead you get, he works on a cycle of time, he’ll always surface again to drag you back down to the sewers.

Until next time Losers 🖤

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Make sure to checkout our full lineup of Spring of King

Spring Of King (Post Schedule)

5/1 It miniseries- Sahar Khan

5/2 Pet Semetary- JHong

5/3 Pet Semetary 2- Horror Hangouts

5/4 Cujo- Kyle Ryan

5/5 Creepshow- B-Movie Tea

5/6 The Outsider- Sean Mo

5/7 Gerald’s Game- H. H. Duke

5/8 The Mangler- Timothy Atkinson

5/9 Maximum Overdrive- Yanni Hamburger

5/10 Salem’s Lot 2024- Meat Head Media

5/11 Silver Bullet- George R. Galuschak

5/12 Creepshow 2- Thehumangaze

5/13 Carrie- Hellish Views - Harry Evans

5/14 Christine- Emma

5/15 Big Driver- Molly O’Blivion &

Stand By Me- Matt Cyr

5/16 The Shining- Jamie B.

5/17 The Long Walk- Decarceration

5/18 King Of Home Video- Jean-Pierre Diez

5/19 The Langoliers- Beverley’s Horror Corner

5/20 Sleepwalkers- Brandon Rae

5/21 The Running Man- Stephen Duffy

5/22 Misery- Skyla

5/23 The Night Flier- Bryan Wolford

5/24 The Shawshank Redemption- Genevieve Brock

5/25 Dreamcatcher- Kimberly B🌴👻🌴

5/26 The Mist- Cedric

5/27 The Dead Zone- Offscreenshaman

5/28 Cat’s Eye- Backyard Movie Critic & Graveyard Shift- Liam Palmer

5/29 Rose Red- Kristen (Blood,Blush ,& Guts) & Storm Of The Century- Adam Hunter

5/30 It Chapter 1 and 2 - That Horror Lesbian

5/31 Dolores Claiborne- Kimberly Ramsawak & The Lawnmower Man- Mike smith

Well. We’ve been at this for 9 movies now and sadly we’ve arrived at the inevitable part of the franchise, the straight to streaming chapter. This makes me bias against this movie from the jump, because I hate streaming at this point in my life, I hate that there is no physical media release of this movie and therefore I had to watch it interrupted by ads.

“Oh well you wouldn’t have that problem if you just paid for the premium option”

I would rather eat glass than pay Netflix $20 per month. I have opened with this rant to warn you, you are going to hear me bitch about the streaming aspect of this viewing experience throughout this review.

With all of that being said, I must also acknowledge, this movie is not made for my generation. This movie is made for the generation that has lived through school shootings, who have been raised on social media and self driving cars, that are looking for houses in rural areas because the cost of housing is impossible in big cities if you are not a billionaire. So with that in mind, I suppose it makes sense this movie went straight to streaming, if it went to theater or a physical media release, sadly the intended audience probably would’ve never found it/viewed it.

Ok ok enough of my soap box [for now] let’s get into this movie, that I ended up LOVING giggles maniacally

We start with a “DVD” playing of an old news report on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and we slowly zoom out from the TV to see Lila browsing a gas station - because we know we must always make an appearance at a gas station that will come back into play later on - and it’s clear that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has become a bit of a tourist attraction. T-shirts, keychains, even corkscrews with a chainsaw on top [hey Chekov’s corkscrew]. Lila buys some items and is on her way but not before asking the clerk whatever happened to Sally Hardesty. That’s how we find out she became a Texas Ranger!

Before the friends set off in their self driving car we encounter a handsome local - I must mention our creepy locals have progressed from scary rednecks to handsome young bachelors in this franchise…. Melody takes the time to insult the fact he has a gun on his hip, which jumps us to a shot of a scar on Lila’s chest, which we can assume is a bullet hole scar.

Down the road the Sheriff’s pull them over and we discover Melody and Dante are cooks and the locals aren’t thrilled they’re here to gentrify the town.

For the friend group we’ve established the business partners, Ruth and Dante are dating and Lila and Melody are sisters.

They finally arrive at the deserted town and of course the attractive local from the gas station is the contractor that’s helping with rebuilding this run down town.

They see a confederate flag flying from a building that they want to take down before the bus full of buyers arrive. This takes them inside the city orphanage building where we will meet Leatherface and Virginia, the elderly woman that ran the orphanage and was clearly a mother figure to Leatherface.

We see an orphanage photo from 1975, so we can assume this is not part of the Sawyer timeline. However, Sally Hardesty is coming into play in the movie to hunt this Leatherface down for revenge. So it would be the Sawyer timeline. So again - to my earlier points in prior articles the family tree and the timelines in this franchise are awfully muddy in my opinion.

Dante and Melody bully this old woman saying they own the home and she needs to get out. Dante gets the Sheriff’s and she has a medical episode - Leatherface (sans Leatherface) scoops her up and they head to the hospital with the Sheriffs and Ruth goes with them.

The bus arrives, we meet the woman from the bank and then we’re back in the Sheriff’s van where the old woman dies and Leatherface starts to panic - this is where shit really kicks up. He snaps the arm of the Sheriff in the back and then jams the compound fracture into his neck. In this scuffle the Sheriff’s gun goes off and shoots the deputy that’s driving and then they crash in a field.

These are the types of scenes that some people find disgusting, gross - whereas I am mesmerized. The pure creativity of a writer thinking this up. It’s brilliance in motion. A compound fracture to the carotid artery. What a way to go.

Then we’re back in town where they’re auctioning off all the buildings in town.

Lila wonders into the shop of Richter, the handsome local, and shows interest in holding a large automatic gun he has which opens the door for us to see and hear a bit more about the school shooting she experienced, the grief she’s carrying and how afraid she is of guns (which is obviously going to come back around for her character arc).

The auction wraps up, Melody is panicking now that the old woman has died and wants to leave with Lila.

We’re back at the van with Ruth and seeing that Leatherface has dragged Virginia (the old woman) out of the van, is sawing off her face and is about to really get some revenge on these city kids. Ruth is trying to whisper for help on the Sherrif’s radio and we see that the guy at the gas station has a radio and is hearing all of this.

Ruth plays dead as he beats the remaining Sheriff to death in the front seat. With this opening sequence I must say Netflix Leatherface is the most brutal we’ve seen in the franchise. There is not an ounce of bumbling idiot in this rendition, he is a well versed killer at the age of roughly 60. He calmly chokes Ruth out and slices her stomach open with a piece of glass.

We get a nice wide shot of Leatherface walking through the fields of dead sunflowers and walking down the road we can assume leads to town.

Back in town Richter takes the bus keys since the city kids caused Virginia’s death and he calmly says when they show the deed to the house they can have the keys to the bus back.

Dante claims the deed must be in the office back in Austin because he doesn’t have it. So Melody goes to search the house to make sure the old woman doesn’t have a copy….

We see the gas station attendant giving Sally Hardesty a call to come hunt Leatherface down. She grabs her gear, stares longingly at a polaroid of her friends in the van and heads off.

Now, the Texas Rangers are the elite task force in Texas, they’re the badasses, the shit kickers. So this is a vibe, I personally like the concept. HOWEVER, I think if I was a TCM die hard, and you made me wait 40+ years to see my girl Sally again and you just casually let me know she’s become a Texas Ranger, I’m kind of annoyed. Like could we have made this a duology at the least and we see her becoming a Ranger and trying to hunt Leatherface down (circa Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween trilogy 2018 arc). Ya know? Anyways.

Dante and Melody are back in the creepy orphanage looking around. Melody confirms the woman did have the deed to the house and Dante is an asshole but that’s ok because Leatherface is downstairs and is going to make sure Dante gets what he deserves with a meat cleaver. I really enjoyed the swinging door effect for this kill scene.

Melody sees Leatherface downstairs and Dante dead and she heads back upstairs to hide in the closet and eventually under the bed. We get our typical Leatherface getting ready scene, trying to get dressed and do his makeup. He gets pissed because of the bus of city kids outside, he trashes the place and leaves.

He comes back and starts smashing up the wall with a sledgehammer to clearly retrieve something but you aren’t going to know what it is BECAUSE IT’S TIME FOR YOUR AD BREAK. WE MUST HEAR ABOUT TWISTED TEA AND HOW IT’S THE KEY TO A GOOD PARTY. NOW LIBERTY MUTUAL WHERE A GUY IS BUMBLING ABOUT HOW TO SAY LIBERTY MUTUAL BUT YOU’LL REMEMBER YOU NEED INSURANCE. LASTLY, WHAT ABOUT KAYAK FOR ALL YOUR VACATION NEEDS.

Now we return to the movie to see Dante crawling his way outside with a gash through his face as the buyers party on the bus because it’s obviously raining outside now for the vibes. Again to the question I posed in my post on Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) - since when does it rain this hard in the state of Texas?

Richter spots Dante and comes out to confront him. He dies, Richter tells bank lady to go back on the bus and keep everyone on the bus and Richter and his gun head into the orphanage.

We jump upstairs with Melody and see Leatherface has pulled his handy dandy chainsaw out of the wall. He hides as Richter enters the room and Melody, in what is actually a very smart move, uses her toe to reposition the stand up mirror so he can see Leatherface behind the door.

Richter and Leatherface get in a brawl. Leatherface smashes his leg with the sledgehammer in a GNARLY leg break. They wrestle up against the window and Leatherface stabs him in the neck with a piece of glass. As he lays on the floor and tries to get the bus keys out for Melody, Leatherface smashes his head to oblivion with the sledgehammer.

We get a quick jump to Sally Hardesty arriving at the scene of the crime in the field, heavy vibes here with the car headlights casting shadows through the dead flowers.

Back in the house Melody tries to make a run for it. She sneaks over the bannister only to be met with Leatherface at the top of the stairs and this motherfucker THROWS HIS SLEDGEHAMMER AT HER. I’m telling you this is Leatherface 2.0 the terminator version. He’s ruthless. This knocks little Melody down the stairs and into the crawl space. But she’s fine of course, somehow. Leatherface is jamming his chainsaw through the floor trying to cut her to pieces, she crawls towards a grate where Lila hears her and

YOU DON’T GET TO KNOW BECAUSE IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER AD BREAK TO HEAR ABOUT SOME TYPE OF MEDICATION YOU CAN’T EVEN PRONOUNCE THAT HAS ALL TYPES OF SIDE EFFECTS LIKE ANAL BLEEDING.

This was the ad break that really pissed me off. Building up all that tension and pressure for the release to be killed by a fucking ad break.

Finally Melody and Lila get free and run back to the bus to bring us to one of the wildest kill scenes. I don’t know if it was the black light on the bus or the music but this was very much giving the Blade Rave scene type vibes.

The bus driver gets off the bus and we are greeted with his head being tossed back in the door. So you know. Shit’s going down. Leatherface makes his way onto the bus to be met with the group holding their phones up and going live. Including one individual saying “try anything and you’ll get cancelled bro” as if Leatherface even knows what that means. As the lights continue to strobe on the bus we’re flashing back and forth between kills and the screens of the phones where people are commenting things like “this is so fake” “Where is this at, looks so fun” because honestly that’s exactly how this would play out in current society. sigh

It’s the utter carnage of this scene and when Leatherface tosses a human leg through the air, I was cackling.

Lila falls to the ground and has a PTSD flash back moment, to be saved by her sister and dragged into the bathroom to hide as terminator Leatherface continues slicing and dicing up the bus. The sisters make their way out of the bus through a ceiling hatch but not before the chainsaw comes through the bathroom door and Melody has to utilize Chekov’s corkscrew and stabs his arm to give herself a moment to escape.

Sally Hardesty arrives and comes to the girls rescue. They pile in her car and she sets off into the rain with her shotgun to try and find Leatherface. She finds him upstairs in the orphanage covered in blood, trying to relax after a hard day’s work, and he’s having none of her bullshit. And instead of putting a shotgun blast in his chest, she’s in utter shock that she doesn’t remember her.

WHY.

THE SALLY OF 1974 WOULD HAVE UNLOADED INTO HIS CHEST AND WOULD HAVE BEEN DONE WITH IT.

He shows up at the car and goes to kill the girls. And now like a cackling maniac Sally starts unloading her shotgun on him, only landing one shot before he runs up on her and jams his Chainsaw through her belly, hoists her into the air and throws her into a pile of trash.

Wheeew.

I’m telling you terminator Leatherface, he also THROWS his chainsaw at the car as the girls try to drive away, causing them to crash and Melody to be wounded.

Obviously.

Lila tries to save the day by shooting Leatherface but the gun jams and she has to run away but don’t worry, somehow Sally is still alive and shoots Leatherface and he runs off. Lila picks up Sally’s shotgun once she finally dies and heads off after Leatherface.

In the abandoned movie theater Leatherface comes out of nowhere and tackles Lila into the hole of water in the floor. They both pop up out of the water. Lila crawls towards the gun and Leatherface again THROWS his chainsaw at her which I’ve realized is kind of more terrifying than how he’s handled it in prior films.

Sister Melody somehow got herself out of the car and made it here with the gaping wound in her leg and jumped on top of Leatherface’s back as Lila was having another PTSD flashback. He throws Melody and then Lila has an opportunity save Melody and pops up and shoots him with the shotgun until she runs out of bullets and then again Melody pops up with the chainsaw to save Lila and deals the last blow knocking him back into the water.

To which my non horror watching wife casually set down on the couch and asked “Is that a Ryobi chainsaw, why is it neon green”

Do with that what you will.

The girls make it back to the self driving car. Lila starts talking about how she’d be willing to move to this town (as a joke obviously). We’re all relaxing and BOOM Leatherface is back bitches. Snatches Melody right out of the car and SAWS HER HEAD OFF. And does the famous TCM chainsaw spin, with head in hand as well.

Credits Roll.

And if you’re patient and let the credits roll you shall be rewarded with a post credits scene of Leatherface walking back to the 1974 house…..

Wowza

The Future of the Franchise

Recently we’ve gotten word that we’re not done yet. A24 has landed the rights to the franchise. This will bring us a TV show created by JT Mollner, who I’m a huge fan of, he wrote the Long Walk and wrote and directed Strange Darling. We are also getting yet another movie, directed by Curry Barker, who created the viral sensation Milk and Serial and released his debut feature film this year Obsession. I have serious concerns handing the keys to the castle to such a newbie…..

Variety has learned exclusively that Barker will take the lead on the project, billed by insiders as a “reimagining” of the 1974 horror classic created by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel. Barker’s vision for the famed killer Leatherface and the gaggle of young things he terrorizes is under wraps.

Reboots are difficult waters to swim in. We’ve seen several flop and only a few enjoyed by horror fans. I hope he grew up a diehard TCM fan or I think he doesn’t stand a chance. But I’m happy to come back years down the road and eat these words if he proves me wrong. I’m not sure if we would’ve been better off with A24 or Blumhouse winning the bidding war. Blumhouse has at least handled the most recent Halloween trilogy but you could argue not everyone was the happiest with how that played out. I just hope they take care of our baby Leatherface and give us what we want. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

We also have been blessed with a Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game in 2023!

It’s a multiplayer, Dead by Daylight esque format where you’re either playing as the killer Slaughter family or one of the victims trying to escape from the farm.

I will be honest I own the game but have never played it. It seems to have gotten mixed reviews on playability and rather quickly got dropped from any type of support, so no more update releases with new content or updates to fix any bugs that might occur.

All in all they’ll probably continue to bleed the franchise dry like all horror franchises because they know we love the IP and we push the next generation to love it just as much.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really did enjoy this final film. Largely for the terminator esque approach to Leatherface, maybe because I too can’t stand self driving cars and gentrification of locals that just want to be left alone.

As for the characters, I’m glad we’re back to siblings fighting Leatherface. I said that in the beginning with Sally and Franklin that I’d like to see more of that and here we are!

All in all I really enjoyed the franchise, much more than I was expecting. I think in many of the movies, especially the later half, the writing and approach to the story telling really had you rooting for Leatherface and his family more than the protagonists, or maybe that was just me. I see the shine in the franchise and the premise of these movies that this family has always just been protecting themselves and what is theirs from intruders and outsiders which I think is something painfully prevalent in society from a plethora of angles.

We definitely established a bit of a pattern in the movies along the way from the arrival at some type of gas station/bbq joint, to meeting all of the locals that will either be a part of the family or support the family, to arriving at the home of Leatherface, the dismantling of the friend group one by one, landing at the dinner table with the family and the inevitable chase scene off the property and out of town (if the protagonist is lucky).

Lastly and maybe most importantly, I never gave this franchise enough credit for inspiring one of my favorites in the Devil’s Rejects. The firefly family is one of my favorite families of horror, largely due to baby firefly, because she’s my type of crazy. Looking at House of 1000 corpses, Devil’s Rejects and 3 From Hell, much of the style and structure of the films pull from TCM - as I mentioned in my post on Texas Chainsaw 2 - it’s glaringly obvious now.

In conclusion, for Slasher Sunday at the end of a franchise I will present you with my rankings, feel free to argue with me or share your feelings about it in the comments.

I thank you for going on this wild ride with me through Texas to discuss Leatherface in all of his forms.

TCM (1974)

TCM Part 2 (1986)

Leatherface (1990)

TCM The Next Generation (1995)

TCM (2003)

TCM The Beginning (2006)

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)

Leatherface (2017)

We will be taking a brief hiatus from Slasher Sunday so I can work on a dissertation on Pennywise for the Scarestack Society Spring of King and then we will be back with my main man Michael Myers in the Halloween Franchise. My birthday is Halloween. I live and breath for the month of October and I warn you now I will be so biased for these films but I’m so excited to cover them right in time to carry us into fall!

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WE ARE REBRANDING Slasher Sunday

It Shall Now Be Called FRANCHISE FRIDAY

Upon further thought, looking at the list, Hellraiser is not a slasher, but you will not rob me of slogging my way through all of those films.

A debate could also be made about Candyman, as well as rebranding to Franchise Friday makes me more comfortable to consider tackling Saw, Final Destination, and any other franchise requested or I feel like covering.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

It’s inevitable that once we’ve witnessed enough horror, we want to understand the origin. Because there’s only so much horror a person can cause before it’s redundant and we start to ask - how did we get here? Why did we get here?

That brings us to Leatherface (2017) - how did the Sawyer boys become as crazed as they are?

This film landed much higher on my rating than expected [I’m aware I’ve said that about almost every film, I apparently didn’t have high hopes for this franchise as a whole] I truly enjoyed this film, this was the first film that really had me rooting for the Sawyers. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has always been anti establishment, for the working class and against capitalism but this film was really the first one that hammered that message home to the point I was rooting for Verna and the boys.

We open with young Jed (Leatherface) celebrating a 5th or 6th birthday and what does he receive, baby’s first chainsaw.

There’s a “thief” tied up at the table with the family and Jed takes his first stab at using his new gift, with the assistance of his older brother Drayton.

We get a cut to a young couple driving who swerves to miss an animal in the road. We discover it’s no animal, but Jed wearing the carcass and hunched down in the road.

He runs off with the animal head and is chased by the young girl because she thinks he needs help.

Jed leads this girl into the barn where a trap is laid, she falls through the floor and has a massive engine dropped on top of her.

And of course, we come to discover this was the Sheriff’s daughter.

He threatens to send Drayton to the gas chamber and take Verna’s kids away from her.

We’re in what we can assume is a kid’s psychiatric home.

We meet Jackson and Bud and new young nurse Lizzie. As a viewer I assumed Bud was young Leatherface - He's a larger, scruffy kid that stands up for others but doesn’t speak much. Jackson is charismatic, personable and you could maybe even say talkative.

Eventually Verna appears at the home with a lawyer, she’s remarried now and is demanding to see her son. She storms through the place, causing a ruckus and in this the nurses tell the kids to go back to their rooms - well they swipe the keys in this moment and all hell breaks loose.

This takes us to Bud, Ike and Clarice escaping and Jackson and Nurse Lizzie being kidnapped by that gang.

Bud and Ike are in the shock chamber together and Bud breaks them loose.

Clarice and Ike are young and in love apparently - shown by them having sex in the hallway during the mass chaos.

Jackson saves Nurse Lizzie from being killed so they run off together.

Ike and Clarice steal a car and pick up Bud wandering the grounds because Ike “owes him”. They then stumble upon Jack and Lizzie on the run and tell them to get in the car.

The remainder of the movie is this young gang of misfits, abused by the system, on the run from a crooked Sheriff who hates “delinquent” kids.

First stop is a diner for some food, maybe steal some money along the way. Ike and Clarice successfully murder damn near the entire place, sans one man who manages to get a shot off, wounding Bud and tells the sheriff which direction they headed and in what type of car.

The gang pulls over on the road and stumbles upon a mostly empty camper. It’s mostly empty except for the dead body Lizzie falls into and meets mouth to mouth in a nauseating scene.

That dead body is dragged into the bedroom so Ike and Clarice can fuck on top of it.

Yeah, you read that right. Clarice is that level of crazy as a teenager, she’s into a bit of necrophilia it would appear.

Finally everyone passes out so Lizzie looks to make a run for it. Only to be found by Ike in the woods. Jackson saves the day again tackling Ike and Bud takes it from there dragging Ike through the woods and curb stomping him on a tree stump and then sleeping next to his dead body.

Jackson, Bud and Lizzie try to make a run for it while Clarice is found by the cops and the crooked Sheriff eventually puts a bullet in her head. As a nod to the beginning of the movie, the gang end up hiding inside of an animal corpse to stay hidden from the cops and their dogs, and eventually start walking through woods covered in blood.

Lizzie tries to make a run for it AGAIN when she sees a cop car drive by. Bud confronts the cop, getting shot and eventually taking a bullet to the head.

Up to now, my assumption was that Bud was our Leatherface, I thought well maybe the bullet went through the back of his brain and that’s how he ends up the way he does?

We’re about to find out sweet JACKSON is our Jed, our future Leatherface. And it’s about to get gnarly real quick.

Jackson murders the cop for killing Bud, he and Lizzie drive off in the cop car.

The sheriff chases after them, since the cop radioed to dispatch that he’d found the three suspects. The sheriff successfully shoots into the car and through Jed’s face.

He continues to shoot and eventually Lizzie flips the car. She wakes up handcuffed to the inside of the car and Jackson’s gone.

She’s dumb enough to get on the radio and ask the younger sheriff for help.

This is just in time for the crooked Sheriff to snatch her out of the car and drag her into the barn he’s got Jackson hung up in [this is the scene we get confirmation from the Sheriff that this is in fact Jed Sawyer who killed his daughter].

The younger sheriff goes to Verna’s house to inform her where Jed is, we find out she’s been paying this man for tips. Just in time for Drayton and Nubbins to slit his throat in the front yard after she gets the information she needs.

They use the pigs on the farm to dispose of his body.

The family heads to the barn, chainsaw in hand, to save their baby Jedidiah.

He drops him into the same hole his daughter died in. And then alludes to Verna being Leatherface’s Aunt or Mother or both. Which again I pose the question as to what the fuck this family tree actually looks like.

The boys knock the cop unconscious, they pull Jed out and they head back to the house.

We see Verna fixing her boy up, stitching up his jaw back to his face and then she straps this half mask on to his face to keep his jaw secure as he heals.

Lizzie tries to sneak out of the house and is dumb enough to stop and try and help the Sheriff out of the house.

I’ll forever ask why characters do shit like this. I feel like fight or flight would trump morality at this point…..

They are grabbed trying to run out the front door. Jed gets to murder the Sheriff by chainsaw, Lizzie wiggles free and Verna sends her boys out into the night after her.

I’m telling you, I’m team Verna and Jed all the way. I don’t care much for Lizzie at this point, she’s part of the system, and part of the problem. Go Get Her Son!

Which he does and literally lops her head off in the woods after chasing her with the chainsaw, in true Leatherface form. The timing is also incredible as Lizzie says this is all the fault of his crazy mother - SLICE - never insult a crazy man’s mother.

We then cut back to the house. Verna is burning clothes. Nubbins and Drayton are feeding human remains to the pigs and Jed is in the basement making his first face mask, which I think is half Lizzie and half the Sheriff but it’s tough to tell in the dark.

He snaps, shattering the mirror we’re looking at and the credits roll.

Alternate Ending

There is an alternate ending that was tough, I definitely didn’t like it better as a whole but there’s bit and pieces I really enjoyed.

Lizzie runs upstairs instead of out the door and Verna follows her. Lizzie stumbles upon Grandpa and he and Verna watch as Jed confronts Lizzie. Instead of taking her head off he drives the chainsaw into her leg, getting it stuck and Grandpa has to wack her on the head with a hammer.

This shows Jed is still a kid. This is very similar to the opening scene when he is gifted the chainsaw, gets scared and Drayton forces his hand to push the chainsaw into the thief’s leg. Grandpa then thumps him on the head with a hammer in true Sawyer family tradition.

But back to our alternate scene. Then we’re in the basement and Lizzie is strung up on his hook with the lower half of her face removed which we can assume is the lower half of the mask Jed is putting on. We get a good look at her mangled face.

He puts his mask on and the credits roll.

Final Thoughts

I truly loved this movie. I think it feeds well into the moral of TCM franchise that systems are in place to break the working class and hard working people never get the support they need.

I’m still torn on how I feel about the bait and switch - the assumption Bud was Leatherface and Jackson and Lizzie were our good guys. On one hand I think it was done to help fight our bias against Leatherface and then rip off the band aid late in the third act to make you realize you were rooting for Leatherface all along. A part of me wishes they would’ve told us up front and we still could’ve rooted for him. I was rooting for Bud, I could feel the way these kids were mistreated, and where their rage was coming from.

All in all I loved this one. I think it’s also a Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the girlies. I like that we got a lot more from Verna, she’s a hard working mother doing her best to take care of these boys and protect their family.

I’m not going to lie, as a triple scorpio, I also really enjoyed Clarice. Bitch is crazy in so many ways but she’s just learned to survive in a system that’s trying to destroy her. She’s just young and in love.

As always, thank you for joining me to talk about the origins of our Jedidiah and the system that failed him.

Next week we’re back with our final installment of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, the dreaded direct to streaming iteration ——

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

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Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, this is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Welcome back fellow friends and cannibal lovers. We’re back and this time we’re returning to the beloved Sawyer family. We’re going to have a bit of a continuation of the 1974 story when a young woman discovers she’s been left property that belonged to a, shall I say, controversial, family…..

We open with film from the first movie from 1974 giving us a summary of events and it takes us straight into a sheriff’s car headed to the Sawyer place.

Upon arrival we’ve got a single sheriff outside the house and several Sawyers, including Bill Moseley returning as Drayton Sawyer and Gunnar Hansen making a cameo as Boss Sawyer, inside the house standing their ground and refusing to send Leatherface out to the cops.

In the process, a gang of rednecks shows up and lobs Molotov cocktails into the home and shoots up the place until everyone is dead and the place burns to the ground.

Upon walkthrough of the rubble where the rednecks are looking for the charred remains of Leatherface, and discover his chainsaw that they’ll be hanging over the bar, one said redneck discovers a woman from inside the house and her baby, very much still alive. He steals the baby for his wife and kicks the woman in the face and runs off….

We then cut to Heather present day who is of course working in the meat department of the local supermarket. She lives with her boyfriend Ryan (Trey Songz) where she likes to make art out of the tiny bones she brings home from work.

Quickly we jump right into things and Heather gets a letter saying her Grandma, from the Sawyers, has passed away and left her a house in Texas she needs to go claim. So her and her friends pack up and head down south.

Along the way they of course must stop at a gas station and this is where they bump into a hitchhiker that needs a ride. This is a very different vibe of hitchhiker than in previous films.

The handsome looks and soaking wet, near shirtless presentation should’ve been a dead giveaway for his inevitable fate…..

They proceed along the route - we get a nice throwback shot to a dead armadillo on the road - until they finally arrive at a gated, woodsy estate. The code to the gate to the new house is 08-19. August 19th is the day after the events of the first movie takes place which means it’s also the day the redneck raid occurred.

Heather roams the hall of the house and we confirm her “birthmark” on her chest is actually an S that was branded on to her in the fire from her mother’s S (for Sawyer) pendant necklace that every woman in the Sawyer family had, we see that in family photos lining the hallway.

The friends run to get food and leave the random hitchhiker behind, cause that’s always a good idea in a mansion you’ve just acquired. So he of course goes to rob the place and take anything and everything he can which takes him to the basement and the wine cellar where he meets Leatherface.

I enjoyed flipping this trope on it’s head and our hitchhiker ending up as the first victim for Leatherface and how we discover he’s living in the basement, because apparently, no one did a walk through of the place before settling the estate?

The friends arrive home, after bumping into the Mayor of the town who is the lead redneck that burned the Sawyer house down. Because in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie any local yocal we meet is going to be connected to the family somehow.

Next up on the kill train is Kenny (shown on the right above). He’s kind enough to cook for the crew, one has to assume the grill he’s using for steaks is no doubt charred with human meat remains….. He goes poking around in the kitchen, discovers the staircase to the basement and Leatherface hooks him in the back and drags him down the stairs.

This was an interesting premise here as it works against the normal slasher scenario where we’re all yelling at the screen “don’t go down their idiot” but here I can see where Kenny is coming from. Your friend just inherited a massive mansion, you’re poking around trying to see what it’s like, this is a well lit staircase, leading down into a wine cellar. One wouldn’t guess that’s a masked man lives down there and is waiting to butcher you and chop you up. It’s a good lesson to learn that, simply, in general -dark and creepy or well lit and clean - don’t go poking around where you don’t belong.

Ryan is playing pool by himself listening to Trey Songz, which feels very meta……

Nikki gets him to come out to the barn so they can fuck, all the while Heather is looking around upstairs and stumbles upon Grandma’s dead body. Which is wild work that she was given this house with a dead body still inside, but there’s also a Leatherface in the basement, so why am I surprised really.

Heather panics, rightfully so, runs downstairs to find Ryan but finds her cousin Leatherface instead, in the kitchen, cutting fingers off of a hand. He knocks her out and she wakes up to see him taking his chainsaw to the hitchhiker and Kenny. He still has his meat hooks up he likes to hang bodies from. While all this is going on Heather makes a run for it.

I’m not sure who decided Heather needed to be insanely uncoordinated and clumsy but it’s so over the top it’s laughable. She finally trips and stumbles her way into the graveyard, being chased by Leatherface. Just when we think she’s going to be carved up inside the casket she crawled in to, Ryan and Nikki come out of the barn half clothed and yell at Leatherface so he goes running towards the barn.

Ryan manages to lock the barn door. Nikki, despite being in panties and a button up, does think quick, grabs the shotgun out of a pickup, and shoots through the door adding in another corny line to the movie - something along the lines of

Heather comes driving into the barn and yells at them to get in. Ryan drives the van off as Leatherface chases them down. Again, in a laughable moment, he goes to plow through the gates but they don’t budge and instead wrecks the front end of the car and has trouble starting it back up. He finally does and they wait for the gates to open, they go peeling out yet stall/stop long enough for Leatherface to carve up their front tire which allows them to get 100 feet down the road before flipping the van.

I think that was a bit of a stretch, but ok script writers.

Leatherface heads towards the crash scene and torments the girls driving his chainsaw into the car as they’re trying to figure out how to escape. Like the behemoth he is, he also casually flips the van almost back upright, with his bare hands.

Heather runs off into the woods and makes her way over the fence into the town halloween carnival, which Leatherface chases her into. This is where we meet back up with the Sheriff who threatens to shoot Leatherface who, for the best 3D effect in the movie, shot puts his chainsaw at the Sheriff so it goes spinning through the screen.

We also get a quick flash of the pig from Saw, which oddly enough they did not address in the director’s commentary, the only thing that was addressed was how attractive the actress is that was under the pig mask….

Also, this was all happening while Heather was dangling from a ferris wheel, which Alexandra Daddario apparently performed this stunt for the shot!

The chase scenes in this movie are just silly honestly. But it’s a 3D horror movie, what did you expect?

Back at the police station, the sheriff’s conveniently leave a box of evidence out with Heather so she starts to read through it to discover the Sawyers were murdered by the rednecks in town, including her parents that raised her and stole her from her mother. So she escapes from the police stations while the mayor and sheriff are watching one of their sheriff’s follow a trail of blood into the Sawyer home.

Like any good hillbilly cop, this sheriff puts a bullet in the head of Nikki when she sits up in a cooler but don’t you worry, we get redemption when we watch Leatherface chop him up and peel his face off :)

Brutally, we watch Leatherface sew this face on to his own by driving the sewing needle through his own cheek.

Back with Heather, she meets up with the estate lawyer at the local bar to ask some questions and of course the mayor comes barging in to assault the lawyer and try and grab Heather. She escapes out the back with a knife in hand only to clumsily run into traffic and be hit by a car. She knifes the redneck in the face that hit her and runs off to encounter the young handsome sheriff in town.

Note to my movie watchers - if you ever encounter the local sheriff asking for help can you please not let him put you in the BACK of the car. Get in the passenger seat or don’t get in at all.

We discover the mayor is his dad, so of course he’s a crooked sheriff and he’s taking her to the closed down slaughter house to tie her up.

Annoyed at the fact they tied her up with her button up shirt fully undone so she’s nearly naked. This is not what the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is about. The boobs and the sex come with the young teenagers that Jason and Michael hunt down!

GET IT TOGETHER.

Now while all of this is going on, Leatherface heard all of this come in over the radio of the dead sheriff’s car so he grabbed his best tie and his handy dandy Chainsaw from his chainsaw closet and headed towards the slaughterhouse.

Here he discovers Heather is a Sawyer. As he awkwardly is thinking about chopping her up with his chainsaw he sees the S scar and then unties her. We then get the mayor and his redneck buddy coming in and it becomes a stand off. They’re beating the crap out of Leatherface and tying him up. Heather kills the redneck with a pitchfork and throws the chainsaw to Leatherface where we get the epic line

Which he does. He gets free and slices the achilles of the mayor and then his hands to allow him to fall into the meat grinder. The actual Sheriff lets all this go down as retribution and Heather and Leatherface head home.

Heather finally reads the letter from Grandma Verna, (who is played by Marilyn Burns, our final girl Sally from the first film!) who has gifted her the S pendant necklace, and explains Leatherface is her only blood relative and needs to be taken care of which we see she might be agreeing to as Heather picks up the food tray outside of Leatherface’s room and locks the doors appropriately and our movie ends with the iconic Leatherface door slam.

There’s a post credit scene where Heather’s parents are on the front porch of the house talking about telling them they love her and Leatherface answers the door with his chainsaw. Always looking out for his cuz!

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have never wanted a 3D TV so bad in my life. I by happen chance own a 3D bluray player and this movie just has some really fun, silly 3D shot moments you can tell. Perhaps a future purchase for myself.

I’m going to end up ranking this film higher than it probably deserves due to the premise. I’m glad we went back to the Sawyer family. I think it works REALLY well continuing from the first film. I think it’s a great way to bring Leatherface into the next generation, the inheritance of the house that Heather doesn’t even realize exists. The discovery of her family and the story of how they were murdered. The movie stands for everything the Sawyers represent, family over everything and protecting your own. Never mind being cannibals, none of that matters, they’re a hardworking blue collar family that has been mistreated at every turn.

The execution of the concept was just cheesy and corny along the way and well a 3D horror movie is always a bit of a liability.

In closing, I’ll say I normally do my best to watch director’s commentary tracks to get you guys any fun facts or behind the scenes tidbits I can. I actually had to turn this commentary off. I couldn’t stand it. If I heard one more creepy comment about how beautiful Alexandra Daddario is, or how seductive she is, or how much thought they put into what panties Tania Raymonde was going to wear, I was going to take a chainsaw to the dvd.

I hope to see you next week for Leatherface (2017)

Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, this is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

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Oh my sweet reader, thank you for returning to me. I owe you an apology. I was awfully cranky last time, I had so many complaints about the Hewitt’s. Boy, was I so wrong. Learning about the beginning of Uncle Charlie and Leatherface sure was a fun ride!

SPOILERS INCOMING

To start, we find out Thomas, our Leatherface, was born on the floor of the slaughterhouse. We open with a younger woman collapsing, and a baby seemingly sliding right out of her.

We then see a young Luda Mae [played by the daughter of the actress that plays Luda Mae], the matriarch of the family from the last film, rummaging through the tossed out meat and discovers the baby wrapped in brown paper. So, begins the story of the Hewitt family.

This was in 1939.

Moving forward to 1969, we meet our gang of friends, two brothers headed back to Vietnam and their girlfriends.

As we establish our gang of friends we are getting cut shots of Thomas working in the slaughterhouse he was born in - that is now unfortunately shutting down. Upon being told he has to go home, and being treated awful, called slurs that were used freely in the 60s & 70s, he snaps and kills the manager of the plant. Because of this, the sheriff in town shows up on the Hewitt residence and asks for help in tracking down Thomas to arrest him.

This is how we find out this sheriff is the only one left in the department for this small town, so it’s a bit of a no brainer for Uncle Charlie to murder the sheriff, save Thomas and take over as corrupt sheriff of the town. The director went back and forth about if they should’ve made Uncle Charlie a deputy from the beginning or take this path, and they ultimately landed on this to set the tone of how Uncle Charlie navigates things.

And in even better news, the Hewitt’s then eat the sheriff for dinner so they ARE in fact cannibals. We’ve come full circle now and I’m much happier for it. I learned from the director’s commentary it’s New Line’s fault as they were very skittish about the cannibal plot line for the last film and it was actually Lee Ermey that added in the line about thanking the sheriff for the meal, to make it clear, the family are cannibals.

Back with our gang of victims, they stop at a very familiar local gas station/bbq joint and stumble upon two bikers. One of which chases them down the road trying to get them to pull over and when our Vietnam cowboy tries to shoot her through the back of the bronco, he successfully hits a steer in the road, flipping his uncovered car several times.

Our crazy sheriff appears just in the nick of time to shoot the reckless biker in the head and cart our 3 victims off to the Hewitt residence, this is where Chrissie becomes our Final Girl because she was thrown from the car and was lying in the field across the road upon the sheriff’s arrival.

The boys are strung up in the barn and the sheriff has some choice words for one of the brothers who burnt his draft card because he did not want to go back to Vietnam. We find out Uncle Charlie is a Vietnam vet himself and managed to eat some people while captive as a POW.

After some conflict, both boys get free and Eric heads inside the house to get Bailey. Bailey runs off with the car keys to the tow truck and Eric tries to get Dean. Which ends up being a failure of epic proportions. Thomas - Leatherface - Drives his meat hook into Bailey’s shoulder since she decided to drive with an open car door and he pulls her out of the vehicle. Fun tidbit, this scene was a lucky accident in the shoot and the door happened to swing open like that and they kept the scene in.

Dean steps in a bear trap and Eric plays insane Vietnam vet in a stand off with the sheriff and meets the butt of his rifle.

Dean and Bailey make it to the dinner table eventually and sadly Eric gets taken to the basement, and once you’re in the basement with Leatherface, you’re pretty much done for.

Chrissie returns to the house with the male biker, who manages to shoot Monty in the leg and this is how he ends up an amputee because eventually Leatherface takes a chainsaw to it to ease the pain, and has a bit sloppy follow through, nicks the healthy leg and well, just to be safe and avoid infection, Uncle Charlie urged him to take the second one off and even him up.

This is the insane, quirky, camp we’d been missing.

A bit darker this go around but still laughable.

Chrissie makes it down to the basement. Which. Still has standing water in it.

The fact this basement has had standing water for four years and has caused no structural damage or problems is impressive. They just don’t make houses like they used to ya know?

So in the basement, Leatherface is feeling good after getting warmed up with his chainsaw upstairs on some legs and thinks I’d like to drive this through this guys torso. So poor Chrissie is hiding underneath the table as Leatherface drives his chainsaw through her boyfriend’s stomach and chest……

And then she gets to watch him cut his face off and secure it over his own.

Oh dear reader, that reminds me, up until now Leatherface has literally been a Leatherface. He has a half mask made of leather. Apparently pretty boy Eric was so handsome he felt the need to give human skin a try.

NOW Leatherface gets called upstairs by his uncle which gives Chrissie an opportunity to escape.

After a very sweet interaction where Uncle Charlie tells Thomas he likes his new face -

I just appreciate a supportive family -

Chrissie is AT THE DOOR of this house of horrors and hears Bailey screaming.

Now.

I know I don’t know the bond shared by two women who sent their boyfriends off to Vietnam, but I’m sorry, the ONLY people I’m going BACK INTO this house for - after I witnessed this insane man shove a chainsaw through my boyfriend’s chest - is my best friend of 25 years, my older brother or my wife. The girlfriend of my boyfriend’s brother is probably not making the cut.

Sorry sister.

But upon finding her friend she obviously gets knocked out after untying Bailey, and we all wake up on the kitchen floor for meal prep where it is very obvious we’re eating someone for dinner. Maybe the biker. Maybe Eric. Maybe both since we’re feeding 7….

At the dinner table, after mouthing off about the Hewitt’s clearly fucking their cousins, Leatherface scoops Chrissie up and goes to take her to the basement but she manages to stab him in the back so he drops her. She makes a run for it and in TRUE TEXAS CHAINSAW FASHION SHE JUMPS OUT THE WINDOW.

Sigh, I miss Sally.

But I appreciate the tribute.

Thomas sets off on a sprint with his chainsaw to catch her.

Dean comes to and beats the shit out of the Sheriff on the front porch, bashing his front teeth out - which explains why they’re removable in the last movie.

We then flash back to Chrissie who is running through the woods in the dark (classic) makes her way to the slaughterhouse and comes across the car keys of the dead plant manager.

Dean shows up and sacrifices himself to save Chrissie, she runs off and now I have questions about the timing of the following events. Because we see Chrissie and Thomas exit the slaughterhouse at what appears to be the same time. But he somehow managed to beat her to the car and hide in the back seat undetected……

Because guess what Chrissie, you’re not making it out of the Hewitt’s in one piece. Thomas is shoving his chainsaw through your back.

Everyone is dead and Leatherface is walking off into the night with his chainsaw.

10/10. Give me more.

I LOVE IT.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I have several at this point.

First and foremost. I wanna give a big hell yeah to killing everyone. We rarely get that because studios think we have to have a happy ending. Due to this being a prequel, and members of the family all having to live, I think that helped their case in killing off all of our protagonists and supporting characters.

Details on the movie, in the directors cut they mentioned that they really wished they could’ve released an unrated cut on dvd as they made several edits for the sake of ratings. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see the unrated cut!

We do have three alternate endings to discuss:

Number 2 is closest to what we ended up with, but instead of a narrator the text is on the screen.

Number 3 is also very similar but instead of the chainsaw through the stomach it looks like he reaches around the seat and stabs her with a knife.

Ending Number 1 Chrissie doesn’t even get the car out of the meat packing plant, Leatherface pops up at the window of the car and kills her right there.

My personal opinion, I think they chose the best ending!

Next up is where we are in the franchise. It seems to be the natural progression of these franchises that after dragging the storyline out for 20-30 years we start to ask the question of an origin story, or someone feels like they need to tell it. I think it’s a shame, a lot of these horror franchises really begin from a place of a boogie man type figure murdering people just because. It adds to the horror that we don’t have a reason for why they do what they do….

Overall, I thought it was a cohesive origin story for the Hewitt family. Leatherface not actually being born to the family is believable and a theme that kind of carries into the next film. How the uncle became Sheriff totally makes sense. Our band of friends were likeable and I was rooting for them. Another one that will land higher up the rankings than anticipated.

However, listening to the director’s commentary can be a dangerous game sometimes because it was a bummer to hear the director speaking about stringing the actors up in the barn and the scenes where the Sheriff beats the crap out of Dean and eventually Dean bashes the Sheriff’s head off the ground. Trying to rationalize, oh there was a small pad there but I mean they’re really taking a beating, Taylor Handley ending up with bruised ribs. Or the worst, admitting that in the scene they wrap Eric’s head in plastic wrap they opted out of using the breathing tube because it looked bad so Matt Bomer’s willingness to let them wrap his head in plastic wrap, without a safe word or sign for when he was actually unable to breath, is not something to brag about - it’s a concerning trend of the industry that hasn’t seemed to change much. I just find it hard to believe that you have to throw caution and safety standards out the window to produce a good horror movie. It starts to beg the question are we blurring the lines too much between production and actual horror?

Please come back next week for:

Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013). Because every good franchise has a 3D installment.

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Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, welcome dear reader to Slasher Sunday. This is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

Oh dear reader welcome back. I’m not sure where the sun has gone, but we’re still in Texas and we’ll be meeting the Hewitts this time - who have a dark, dreary, damp farm for us to fight our way through.

This movie was one of my first horror watches as a teenager. It was one of my favorites for a long time, largely due to the shock factor of some scenes, because I’d never seen anything like it. A decade later, boy did this suffer a fall from grace on this rewatch, but we’ll get in to that later.

Blah Blah Spoiler Warning Blah Blah

We open with a narrator telling us about the tragedy of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then we cut to black and white footage of the police walkthrough of the crime scene which merges perfectly into the screams of a group of people playing on a river.

August 1973

This was a shock on this rewatch. I watched this as a teenager and this gives every bit the vibe of taking place in the late 90s. I’m not sure what the wardrobe and actors thought they were getting away with, but it was in fact NOT feeling like the 70s, and was not a great remake of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was not even in the same galaxy.

We meet our group of friends driving down the road in their van. We learn they are back from a drug run into Mexico and headed to a Lynard Skynard concert. You’ve got your typical stoner [Morgan], main couple [Erin and Kemper] and secondary couple [Piper and Andy].

We drive by a very dazed woman walking in the road that the girls feel like they must pickup.

The boys oblige, they pick the girl up and thus ensues one of my favorite horror moments.

She’s kind of mumbling to herself about they took him and it’s not safe and a bunch of generic statements that anyone with two brain cells would start to think this isn’t a good idea, we should’ve left her be, or if we weren’t in middle of nowhere Texas in 1973, perhaps we’d call the cops.

THEN

THIS GIRL PULLS A GUN FROM BETWEEN HER LEGS AND STICKS IT IN HER MOUTH AND PULLS THE TRIGGER.

BRO.

As a teenager this BLEW MY MIND (yes, pun intended).

Even now, on this rewatch it’s still WILD to watch. And then the cinematography of the camera tracking through the hole in the head and out the window is top notch stuff.

Now as the movie progresses, anyone who is new here may perceive the locals as just creepy, but dear reader - you and I know - every person we meet moving forward is no doubt a member of the Hewitt family or at the least - their supporters.

These friends arrive at our BBQ serving gas station, ran by a woman this time - which is greatly appreciated. We get a spot light on the crazy women of Texas as these movies progress…..

After some direction from this very kind [sarcasm] woman, the friends head down the road and wait to meet the sheriff they’re hoping will help them with the dead body in the back of their van, but this sheriff will obviously not be arriving but first they stumble upon a small inbred child that leads them to the nearest house - The Hewitts of course - to use the phone.

We get a copy cat Grandpa character who answers the door, wheelchair bound, with no legs. He says only Erin can enter the house - hello red flag - after she uses the phone she falls for a ploy of Grandpa needing help to get back into his wheelchair, which gives him an opportunity to grab her ass ……

Erin’s boyfriend finally enters the house to see if she’s ok, snoops around the house a bit, only to get himself killed by Leatherface (to no one’s surprise).

While all this is happening the friends are with the “sheriff” at the van - who is no doubt a member of the Hewitt family. He’s an absolute perv in nearly too many ways to count.

Erin returns back to the van only to discover her boyfriend is still nowhere to be found and her and Andy head back to the house. Andy and Leatherface meet quickly inside and Andy meets his fate on the beloved hooks of Leatherface. This is only after a chase scene where Erin manages to get away off the property and Leatherface saws off Andy’s leg. YIKES.

Once up on the hooks, like a good butcher, Leatherface packs the leg in salt and wraps it in a nice piece of brown paper and ties it off.

At this point, Erin returns back to Piper and Morgan and tries to flee in the van, only for the creepy ass Sheriff to return and make their lives hell.

The Sheriff takes Morgan away in the cop car and Leatherface appears to get the girls. Erin simply stays in the van while Piper tries to run for her life and gets chopped up by the chainsaw.

This is the reveal of Leatherface casually wearing Kemper’s face.

CAN YOU FUCKING IMAGINE?

Erin runs for her life through the woods to arrive at a camper with two women and a baby inside. Erin drinks the tea she’s offered, because surely it’s not laced with something, passes out and wakes up in the Hewitt household. These are the women that explain Leatherface had a skin disease as a boy.

Now if there was any doubt before, we have confirmed the woman from the bbq station, the sheriff, grandpa with no legs and the kid in the woods are all family……

Leatherface scoops Erin up and throws her in the basement with Andy who is still strung up on the hooks — this is the wettest basement I’ve ever seen and not sure why there seems to be running water from the ceiling and standing water on the floor - other than to soak Jessica Biel’s white tank top.

She finds Morgan in a bathtub, drags him out and tries to save him. They go on a pretty lengthy chase with Leatherface to end in Morgan dieing to save her and Erin successfully taking Leatherface’s arm off with a meat cleaver. So now he’s missing an arm and has a gash in his leg. Leatherface from the Hewitt family is not faring well.

Erin stumbles out to the street and gets picked up by a trucker that takes her back to the bbq joint asking for help. Now - it is POURING. I'm talking state of Washington type of rain. I’ve never seen rain like this in Texas, let alone in the month of August….

I digress

Ultimately Erin steals the baby (that we can assume belonged to the hitchhiker in the beginning of the film), runs the sheriff over with a cop car and heads out of Texas.

The movie ends with the footage of the crime scene walkthrough and Leatherface popping out and murdering the cops.

Final Thoughts

The focus of this movie seemed solely on Leatherface and the Sheriff. I missed the familial fuckery of insane cannibals around the dinner table, the lack of cannibalism and family dynamics was a let down.

Seeing Leatherface unmasked was a cool touch, no nose in sight, but to then have it explained he suffers from a skin disease was - stupid - at best.

Overall, this rewatch was tough for me. This is a movie that sits in my “favorites” from when I was a teenager and new/young horror movie watcher. The shock scene with the hitchhiker. The reveal of Leatherface wearing Erin’s boyfriend’s face. Jessica Biel in a white tank top (I’m sorry, I guess I was no better than a teenage boy).

This was my shit.

Watching this now as an adult, who has seen the original movies:

This is shit.

I’m not super excited to learn more about the Hewitt’s, I missed the scorching sun, I missed a badass final girl - sorry Erin, Sally was out here jumping out windows and here you are, white tank top tied up and soaking wet, following sounds into the darkness and drinking tea from strangers - and I really missed the cannibals.

I guess we can’t enjoy them all dear reader. I will still love the hitchhiker scene forever. Please come back next week for:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

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Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, welcome dear reader to Slasher Sunday. This is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

Dear, sweet reader, welcome back to Texas.

It’s prom night.

You know what that means.

We’re getting in a car wreck and getting killed by rednecks.

Wait a minute? Is that not how your prom night went?

Well let’s discuss Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4: The Next Generation - also listed as “The Return of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” on Letterboxd and other corners of the internet.

Spoilers Ahead

This is a favorite of mine. This is my answer, my hill to die on, when people ask what horror sequel do people hate that you love. Here lies this masterpiece of a movie with young Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. I have to assume many hate this movie because Leatherface is not our real focus in this take. This picture he’s almost silly, where the true brutality is portrayed in Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey’s character).

I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s discuss how this movie plays out.

We’re at the prom and Heather finds her boyfriend cheating on her. Angry, she runs away and speeds off in a car with her boyfriend chasing her down. Just so happens, nerd Jenny (Renee Zellweger) and her date were in the back seat, allegedly getting high.

Now, friends Jenny and Heather and their two dates are headed out of town when of course they get in a car wreck on a back road. This car wreck leads us to our crazed hillbillies from the Slaughter family - we’ve moved on from the Sawyers for now, they’ll come back later in the franchise.

Vilmer appears first and very calmly snaps the neck of a high school boy and runs the other boy down with his tow truck. This is the earliest in the franchise so far we’ve encountered the crazed hillbillies in the movie, they’re normally a late third act reveal.

Heather and her date have already stumbled upon the family house to be snatched up by Leatherface - typical.

Jenny gets picked up by Vilmer and escorted personally to the house and this is where pure and utter chaos unfolds. Vilmer starts to truly take form as our villain, hooting and hollering like a frat brother on a Friday night while simultaneously beating his girlfriend and yelling at his family members. There is just this madness in Vilmer’s eyes that is mesmerizing from McConaughey.

We get a chase inside the house (of course) when Jenny eventually breaks free. Runs upstairs and jumps out the window in true Sally Hardesty fashion. This I appreciated. Our Final Girl in Renee Zellweger giving a nod back to the original. She tries to make a run for it in the car out front when Vilmer jumps off the roof to stop her…..Cue our Final Girl waking up tied to a chair at the dinner table.

Grandpa is still alive. Somehow. This go around he can walk but he still resembles a corpse.

The dinner table, as always at the family house, is full of hooting, hollering, killin, setting people on fire this time, and an unexpected dinner guest….

Cue Halloween 6 vibes with the cult when a strange man in a suit with body mods on his belly has a spat with Vilmer that sends him over the edge into an emotional breakdown—

The strange man licks the face of Jenny and then sees himself out.

I had to do some googling for an explanation and fans claim Illuminati like influence into the Sawyer family, where if one family dies or is killed off, these people in suits provide more family members to continue the Texas Chainsaw Massacre….I don’t know. If you’re a die hard fan, please fill me in.

Anyway, back to the chaos, as Vilmer is having his melt down, crying, yelling and self harming, Jenny like a good Final Girl takes this as her cue to book it out of the house. After a wrestling match with Vilmer where she messes with the remote to control his leg -

I forgot to mention Vilmer has a contraption attached to his leg controlled by what looks like VCR remotes. Why? no one knows.

She makes it out of the house and BOOKS it. Let me just say, Renee Zellweger had to have ran track, because I don’t think I’ve ever watched a horror movie and thought damn that girl can run. Off she goes down the road being chased by Leatherface and his chainsaw. She makes it into an RV to be saved by an older couple that crashes the thing once Leatherface and Vilmer catch up in the truck. She ends the movie getting into a limousine that conveniently appears - and we find out it’s the illuminati man.

Credits roll.

Final Thoughts

I will say in addition to my obsession with Matthew McConaughey playing a crazy Texan, I think this movie has its moments of nonbinary representation - it’s giving LGBTQ cult classic. Leatherface has a Buffalo Bill moment when we see him putting on a woman’s face and chest while wearing a woman’s night gown to dinner - instead of his normal suit we saw him in in the last three films. I also found it kind of endearing that Vilmer would cut off the face of a woman for his brother, and not question why he wanted to wear a woman’s face instead of a man’s.

This movie also had me googling wtf the Sawyer family tree looks like and I was laughing thinking - is this what non fans of Halloween go through when they watch the movies thinking how the fuck do these timelines go together?

This landed me on Reddit on the TCM page of course and this was the best I could find. Slightly misleading formatting perhaps but the makeup of the family is confusing. Basically all the men are brothers to Leatherface….. I would like to mention Nubbins and Chop Top being twins, which tracks for those two characters honestly.

Then Next Generation introduces the Slaughter family - hence why they’re not on the family tree.

And we will eventually enter the Hewitt timeline, but we will get their next time.

This piece was a little shorter, I didn’t go into the nitty details of Vilmer and his antics because honestly I don’t think words do it justice. You just need to take the time to watch the film and watch the madness unfold. Go in knowing Leatherface is not the man attraction. I can’t see how you wouldn’t have a good time.

Slasher Notes

• This is the first entry of a random pair of boobs into the TCM franchise. Darla - the girlfriend of Vilmer who just so happens to be where Heather runs to the first time she asks for help, chooses to flash a car through the window of the office she’s sitting in….. I don’t think very many of our future franchises wait until the fourth film to have nudity, but we will have to wait and see to confirm that.

• We have established a pretty solid formula at this point for the TCM movies - establish our group of friends, inciting incident, meet a stranger that will end up being a part of the killer family, stumble upon killer family’s house, escape, be captured, wake up at the dinner table with the family, second and final escape. We will see this in many of our beloved franchises, an equation that is followed that allows the films to all be the same, but sort of different.

As always, thank you for joining me to talk about a killer family in Texas. Next week we’re back with an introduction into the Hewitt’s and a discovery that one of my favorite horror movies as a teen, does not hold up as an adult ——

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

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Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, this is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

Well, well, well. Dear reader we’ve landed in Texas once again. This iteration in the franchise gives us an expanded Sawyer clan, which we will dive in to. I found them a bit tame on the crazy scale compared to the first two movies and a few movies to come. We are starting to catch on though, any stranger we come upon in this tiny Texas town will no doubt be a part of the Sawyer family or in cahoots with me.

I must also mention this movie is the start of Newline acquiring the IP rights to Leatherface. Newline being the studio who, up to this point, had created Nightmare on Elm Street 1-5. So, the house that built Freddy was now trying to buildup our man Leatherface into a horror franchise king. They some how landed on Jeff Burr (shoutout Ohio native) as the director, fresh off of Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy they handed him the keys to his first big studio ship and told him good luck. Listening to the commentary, sounds like he didn’t have a great time jumping from independent film maker to studio pawn, leaving his support system behind and walking on to set solo, unsupported, trying to tackle a bigger movie. Perhaps that shows in how things play out for us here….. The directors commentary also mentioned there being 11 submissions of different cuts of the movie before they got approval with an R rating, some commenting on how the final cut was much different than what they’d expected.

We start with our typical rolling text on screen that tells us Sally has died in a mental health facility in 1977 and W.E. Sawyer was convicted of the Texas chainsaw massacre crimes and died in the gas chamber in 1981.

To start, we’ve got Michelle and Ryan who are on a cross country road trip to Florida. They are stopped in Texas as they’re driving through a massive body dump site that the cops are investigating, so we as the viewer, know the Sawyer family must be close by…..

I totally missed that our queen Stretch, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 makes a very quick cameo as a news reporter in this movie. About 5 seconds and no lines but it’s a nice touch once you realize she’s there.

If you’ve been following along for the last two films you know where we’re stopping next, the gas station, and we’re going to be bumping into a creepy local that we will find out later is in fact a member of the Sawyer family.

I forgot to mention, Michelle hits an armadillo and it’s injured on the side of the road and needs to be put out of its misery but she can’t bring herself to do it so she makes Ryan bash his head in with a rock. This is going to come full circle later in the movie, just trust me on that.

Now, back to the gas station. Kind cowboy Tex (Mr. Viggo Mortensen) introduces himself to Michelle and saves her from the very creepy gas station attendant, who has himself a peep hole to look into the women’s room.

Eventually this gas station attendant gets angry at all of this interference from Tex and pulls a shotgun out, Michelle and Ryan drive off. We see the attendant shoot Tex - or at least that’s what we think we saw.

Later on we see a truck, very similar to the one from the last movie, peel out of the gas station and chase after their car. They throw roadkill on the windshield of Michelle and Ryan’s car causing them to pull over. They end up with a flat as well and in the process of changing the tire, Leatherface appears, leg brace and all. I have to assume the brace is from the chainsaw cutting into his leg at the end of the first film…..I do enjoy people late in a franchise trying to tie new things into the scenario. Shame he had no brace last movie, but I still give an A for effort for the thought.

We get our first stand off with Leatherface, that goes as expected, sparks fly from the chainsaw, he rips the trunk of the car off and the couple speed off with a tire that doesn’t have lug nuts fully tightened….. This is just in time for Tex to stumble out into the road and cause the couple and Benny, a kind stranger that’s going to get roped into this situation, to wreck their cars.

Oh, forgot to mention, Michelle and Ryan took this particular road because Tex recommended it. Obviously…..

Now things get weird, because we’ve got the entrance of Benny as well as this girl covered in blood who we’ve seen has been watching Leatherface, and we now realize she’s escaped from the Sawyer family. She helps save Benny at one point but eventually Leatherface carves her up in the woods.

Back to the plot, if you’ve been with us for the last two films, you know what’s coming next. Michelle is down to being our final girl, is running for her life and stumbles upon a house she just waltz right in to. Whose house you ask? Well the Sawyer’s of course.

This iteration of the family still has Grandpa, old as dust now really, a son with a hook for a hand, Tex (Viggo Mortensen), Leatherface, Mama and a little girl. The little girl looks very similar to Tex with blonde hair so we can assume it’s his daughter?

WRONG

It’s Leatherface’s daughter.

I really enjoyed the addition of the little girl. She’s creepily carrying around a baby doll named Sally, that’s actually a skeleton. They’ve finally set up a hammer contraption to knock Ryan out and drain him of his blood so we don’t have to watch Grandpa fumble with the hammer like the last two movies.

They spoke on the commentary about how they wanted this iteration of the Sawyers to have more technology than the last movies, making their killing a bit more efficient. So they’ve got several gidgets and gadgets laying around that they’ve acquired from all of their victims, as well as this massive killing contraption which is very efficient, even the little girl was able to use it to murder someone, her tiny hands wouldn’t have been able to hold a big hammer, let alone swing it. The Sawyers have always been mindful and loving of all members of their family.

Just as they’re about to prep dinner and get things going, Benny shows up with a machine gun of sorts and lights the place up. Michelle takes this as her cue to make a run for it. Benny says he’ll handle Tex and she needs to run towards the swamp. Which we see Leatherface get in the car and chase after her.

Benny and Leatherface eventually end up fist fighting in the swamp while his chainsaw is spraying water in the air like an ornate hotel fountain. Benny meets the chainsaw and loses and Michelle smashes Leatherface with a rock and stumbles off.

We see her again in the desert where Benny pulls up in the gas station truck to try and save her, not realizing the creepy gas station attendant was in the back. Michelle eventually shoots him and gets Benny in the truck and drives off.

I personally prefer the alternate ending!! Clearly the studio always wants the viewer to get their happy ending — Heavy eye roll

The alternate ending — Benny meets the chainsaw again but a bit more gruesome so we know for sure he’s dead dead. Charred Tex comes stumbling out of the woods (he was lit on fire in the initial fight with Benny) and attacks Michelle who pushes him into a trip wire and he gets hit with a spike trap against the tree. Then, in true campy horror movie fashion, Michelle bashes Leatherface with the rock yelling “Sorry little guy” over and over - which is what she said to the armadillo in the beginning….

She stumbles to the road still and flags down a sheriff car only to discover the creepy kid is in the back seat! She drops to her knees in defeat and it zooms in on the bumper stick that says don’t mess with Texas and the movie ends.

10/10 a MUCH better ending. But at least we’ve got it on the DVD I guess.

Final Thoughts

This one was fine.

The family dynamic got expanded with the addition of Mama and the little girl which I think was a good touch. I think I didn’t care much for the characters if i’m honest. Michelle and Benny didn’t give me much to really root for them. Good news is, it wasn’t awful it just wasn’t great, not my top. In a franchise someone has to land towards the bottom, ya know?

After listening to the director’s commentary it seems to have been a bit of a logistical nightmare behind the scenes and it’s funny how when big studios get too heavily involved they sure know how to fuck up a good thing. Or perhaps the MPAA is to blame because it sounded like they were fighting for their life to land on an R rating and not NC-17, which I guess comes with the territory of a cannibalistic chainsaw wielding family.

Either way, I will see you next time you little armadillos for one of my absolute favorites,

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.

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Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, this is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

Oh loyal reader welcome back. You just can’t get enough of this family of cannibals can you? Me either - so we lace up our boots and continue the trek through the Texas sun - turn up that radio and lets rock.

This movie has a very different feel to our original. Perhaps the decade in-between them and the emergence of Michael, Jason, and Freddy has something to do with that.

To start with, we open with a very similar setup to the first with text rolling across the screen and a narrator reading- describing the horrors of the Texas chainsaw massacre and the continued horror 13 years later. But instead of cutting to rotting corpses - we get about 2 minutes of production credits rolling across the screen:

LAME

This kills the effect we had in the first movie where we’re all sitting there, without our phones, and no internet, wondering - is this a true story? wtf am I watching?

We move on to two young men drinking and driving recklessly in a car. They call into a radio station to request a song from DJ Stretch. They stay on the phone with her as they play chicken with a truck and cause it to run off the road. Later on they call back for another request, again keeping the phone on, they encounter the same truck on a bridge. SURPRISE Leatherface is riding on the back of the truck with a corpse and his chainsaw and cuts into the boys and their car, all the while the radio station is recording all of this…..

Snap to the crash site of the cars and we meet a cowboy named Lefty and discover he’s the Uncle of Franklin from our first film. He’s on the hunt for these chainsaw wielding maniacs, so to make sure he’s prepared for this battle, he heads off to the chainsaw store to buy three chainsaws of his own…..

Foreshadowing for the amount of camp we will get from this movie later on. Or I mean, right now, as he’s going crazy in the chainsaw shop. because. I guess chainsaw shops are a thing?

Our radio DJ Stretch sets off to track down Lefty after an article in the paper asks for witnesses of the ordeal. She tries to explain she’s got a tape recording of the whole crash but he wants nothing to do with her or her tape. He kicks her out and she heads downstairs, back to her Radio DJ job reporting on the Texas/Oklahoma chili cook-off.

Who is the winner you ask? Why none other than Mr. Dalton Sawyer himself. So, yes, he just won a chili competition with human meat, confirmed by the judge picking a human tooth out of her mouth.

Stretch plays the recordings of the killings on her radio station and this is how she ends up with an encounter with Bubba and his brother. Here we discover Bill Moseley as Chop-Top Sawyer and he is pretty terrifying. Holding his wire hanger, singeing it with a lighter and then scratching it into his hair as he navigates the radio station, killing everyone between them and Stretch.

There’s a nice reversal of roles from the first movie - in the beginning of our chase -where Stretch slams a large metal door, keeping Leatherface out but nevertheless after some time he smashes through the wall like the Kool Aid man.

Leatherface and Stretch have a painfully awkward interaction where the chainsaw is used as a blatantly massive, phallic symbol

Between the camera angle, Leatherface cutting into ice and soda cans which spray Stretch over and over in the face, her screaming “Are you mad at me?” and then moving on to “How good are you?” and Leatherface licking his lips uncontrollably darting his eyes around. You have to question

But this is where our sweet Bubba falls in love with Stretch, leaves her alive and heads back to Chop Top, who he lies to with a shake of his head saying he has killed Stretch.

Stretch then gets in her car and chases after these lunatics. Seeking more meaning in her life than being just a radio DJ……

She arrives at this run down tourist attraction where the Sawyers live underground. She ends up falling through wood planks into their underground tunnels - like a slap stick routine, Lefty reaches down with a skeleton arm telling her to grab it and he’ll pull her up. Said arm obviously breaks and she tumbles - comically long - underground into this new house of horrors for the Sawyers.

This set is honestly pretty cool! I like the style of it, very original, but again, totally different vibe than the first film. The family has gone more looney tune silly, than back woods scary in my opinion. Just bringing a different brand of creepy this round.

Stretch is lurking around trying to escape and stumbles upon Bubba prepping some meat for his dad to cook for the big game tomorrow, it is Texas/OU weekend after all. She’s hiding and of course knocks something over so Bubba finds her. Like the true romantic he is, he places the skin of her coworker’s face over hers and his cowboy hat and then proceeds to dance with her…….

That’s a true Texas gentleman if I’ve ever seen one.

She then does some more lurking and gets spotted by Dalton who tells Bubba to go get her. He chases her through the tunnels with his chainsaw —

— also while all this is happening, Lefty and his three chainsaws are making their way through this underground setup, randomly cutting into support beams and causing crumbling rock and debris to fall.

— Bubba and Stretch are running until a collapse traps her and they bonk her on the head with a bone, like a true cartoon character and then we end the movie very similar to the first.

Stretch wakes up tied to a chair made of human bones sat at the dinner table with the Sawyer family. She’s screaming. Bubba is dressed in his dinner suit and tie. Same M.O. - the boys go get grandpa and try and let him crack the girl on the back of the head so they can eat her.

How Grandpa is still alive is a mystery….

In blasts Lefty to save the day.

He and Leatherface have a duel to the death with their chainsaws. He also manages to drive one of the chainsaws up Dalton’s ass…..

Stretch runs off chased by Chop-Top, they run up this weird tower where they find Grandma’s skeleton and a chainsaw….. Chop-Top loses this stand off and I think we get another pretty iconic, or ridiculous ending, depending upon how you want to look at it.

I can say with confidence, that it’s an ending that is not discussed enough in horror circles because how did I not know it ended with the final girl dancing around like a maniac with the chainsaw.

Stretch was pretty high on the badass final girls list for me!

Final Thoughts

A bit of a let down for me with the addition of the sexual undertones. We know it’s rampant in slashers but the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre had none of it and it was very effective. No boobs. No if you have sex you’re dead. It was a simple case of if you go snooping around where you don’t belong, cannibals will kill you.

I’m not sure if the arrival of Michael, Jason and Freddy and the death of the promiscuous teens forced them down this path but I would’ve preferred they stayed the course. Keep me in Texas. Keep me in the baking sun, with rotting corpses and a hungry cannibal family.

After these first two movies I can see how the Sawyers truly paved the way for the Firefly family - whom I love - to take form.

For anyone who somehow does not know the Firefly family, they are the focus of Rob Zombie’s trilogy - House of 1000 corpses, The Devil’s Rejects and 3 From Hell. The fact Bill Moseley stars in both is iconic. This all clicked for me honestly when Stretch was running through the underground tunnels, it felt VERY similar to House of 1000 Corpses.

Overall, I still enjoyed the campy silliness of it. I found Stretch to be a badass and curious to see where we go next with the Sawyer family.

Please come back next week for Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

Slasher Sunday - What is it?

If you’re new here, this is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so i’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Until next time 🖤

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Welcome dear reader to Slasher Sunday. This is a series of pieces I will be writing and posting on Sundays walking us through all of the slasher franchises we know and love.

Before we had the Firefly family we had to have the Sawyers. Consider this your horror history class as we go back and examine who paved the way for what we have now.

What will these slasher Sunday pieces entail? Well we’ve got roughly 67 films to move through so I’m sure these pieces will ebb and flow and develop a life of their own.

The numbering the title refers to what number of franchise we’re on (1).1 and what movie within that franchise we’re discussing 1.(1).

Who made the cut you ask?

1970s:

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Halloween

1980s:

• Friday the 13th

• Nightmare on Elm Street

• Hellraiser

• Child’s Play

1990s:

• Candyman

• Scream

• I Know What You Did Last Summer

If we really get rolling maybe we’ll carry it into the 2000s, we will have to wait and see.

Now, lets dive into the original, the beginning of it all -

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

I do love the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Perhaps it is because part of my family is from Texas and from my experience in rural Texas, this film feels legit for what you might stumble upon.

We open with a narrator reading off scrolling text on the screen that kickstarts the dread and unease of our film. It leaves us, the viewer, wondering everyone’s favorite question - is this based on a true story?

I dearly miss the days where movies could have this effect, before we could pick up our phones and ask google or an AI bot if the movie is a true story or not.

We cut to black and then we get one of the most well known sounds in horror - and one of my favorites - the flash and chime of a camera and we are seeing flashes of body parts.

This takes us to a close up on a corpse that looks like it’s melting in the summer sun of Texas, while we hear a radio broadcast explaining some crimes of grave robbing from the cemetery we can assume we’re looking at.

Well done to Tobe Hooper here, really, we are barely 5 minutes in and you’re already thinking - what the fuck. Did this happen? What is this all about? Why isn’t there any skin on the face of those dead bodies? Why does it feel like it’s 115 degrees? He does a beautiful job capturing the claustrophobic heat of Texas - as a kid I spent Summers running through fields with my cousins and watching this film I can feel that same heat and humidity of the Texas sun. It adds a level of horror to the film much in the way a desolate hotel in the middle of the Colorado snow - setting is everything.

Then we cut to our group of friends in a van. Our primary characters are going to be Sally and her brother Franklin.

This gang of friends picks up a hitch hiker. The hitch hiker helps to keep the unease of the setting, as well as their stop at the gas station. We learn a valuable lesson here, we as viewers don’t need anything massive, heads rolling, guts spilling - all we need are some weird locals that make you uncomfortable.

After we’ve established the creepy locals - let us find the creepy setting.

Cue our band of friends arriving at Grandpa’s run down house. A house that no one has any business exploring. Obviously two of our friends need to scamper off to go skinny dipping, but instead of stumbling upon the river they’re in search of, they stumble upon ANOTHER house they have no business exploring.

If I knock on the door of a home in a rural area of any state, especially Texas, I am not opening the door and I SURELY am not entering the home if it looks like this.

But we’re in a scary movie, so of course dumb decisions need to be made.

We get our first look at Leatherface as he grabs one of our friends and you’re thinking JESUS who is this man and why is he wearing human skin on his face?

We also love an iconic moment in a movie:

So now we’ve effectively split our friend group up, so obviously the rest of the friends are going to go looking for our murdered couple.

Ultimately, we end with Sally and her brother Franklin as the last two alive. I really like this sibling duo being the ones fighting for their lives. I’ll be curious how many more sibling pairs we find in our Slasher Series, I know Halloween has one or two, I think Friday the 13th has one - I would like to see more honestly!

We end with Sally alone and fighting for her life in the house of horrors -

I have skipped over the details of everyone meeting their deathly fate with Leatherface partly because you need to watch this iconic film and also, there’s no gruesome blood to detail for you….. Many viewers walk away thinking this is a bloody gorey film but they were shooting for a PG rating [per the director’s commentary] so all blood in play was more on people and the walls, not used for kills. The most notable kill is Pam getting scooped up by Leatherface and thrown onto meat hooks hanging from the ceiling.

Moving on.

We discover the hitchhiker and the man from the gas station are family members to this man wearing human skin - Sally also makes the terrifying discovery that this man at the gas station has been selling HUMAN meat for the BBQ in town.

I really love that this movie gives you no real answers as to why this family is the way they are. Why are they cannibals? Why is one wielding a chainsaw and wearing a mask of human skin? Why are grandma and grandpa nearly dead in the attic in rocking chairs? How long have they been doing this?

All you know is Sally breaks free in just the nick of time to avoid being killed and eaten and she makes a run for it to the road in hopes of surviving.

Sally quickly became a blood soaked fan favorite. Credit to Marilyn Burns, the actress, she has got an incredible horror scream and she played the traumatized final girl INCREDIBLY well. So well, fans have made short films recreating her escape from the house that thousands have viewed and bloody disgusting wrote an article about.

What tropes/ slasher structure did we gain?

• The 90 minute run time. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a quick watch at 83 minutes but it shows an effective slasher can be made in 90 minutes or less.

• A group of friends stumbling upon something/someplace they have no business being.

• The silent killer. Leatherface does grunt and gesture at the things, he’s expressive but still not communicating.

• The traumatized final girl.

Final Thoughts

I must confess, this was my first watch of the original.

I’m not sure if anyone else suffers from feeling like you’ve seen a movie, but you set down to watch it and realize you’re wrong. I blame the amount of documentaries and talking head shows I watch, where I’ve seen enough clips, I’ve basically seen the movie. Or is it perhaps I have watched it on streaming, interrupted by buffering and ads everyone 5 minutes, and now that I’m watching it on DVD it feels like a completely different experience. I’m not sure. But I deem it a first watch, and I enjoyed myself.

Despite being an AVID gore hound in modern movies, I have so much respect for the original slashers that really had no gore but still manage to make you feel queasy and nervous - hello scene where they stick her finger in Grandpas mouth and he suckles on it - WHAT THE FUCK.

Against the Grain

I wish we would have kept the slasher killer as a runner. Leatherface hauling ass with a chainsaw after you is much more affective than if he walked….. It begs the question of would Michael and Jason be even scarier if they were big boys that weren’t afraid of some cardio to chase after their victims.

I appreciate the lack of boobs and rampant sex - it’s just a trip for some friends that goes really wrong when they go snooping around someplace they don’t belong.

Overall, I enjoyed it.

Behind the Scenes

Some tidbits I picked up from one of the commentary tracks:

• The working title for the film was Leatherface. Which is ironic since we will later get two Leatherface films. Head Cheese was another option - which is a wild ass choice.

• Listening to the description of how a gang of misfit 20 year olds made one of the most iconic slasher films is a horror show within itself. They were using a live chainsaw in these scenes with no safety precautions, other than removing the clutch? Which seems like it would in fact not be a safety precaution. But Gunnar Hansen explained scenes where he told cast members to not move under any circumstances or they’d be dead - or when he slipped and fell during a chase scene with a live chainsaw in his hands….. WILD TIMES. Not to mention the cast being exhausted after a 20 hour shoot and Gunnar giving up and taking the safety tape off of a knife to actually cut Marilyn Burns to get the shot.

• The bones and teeth around the house and yard were sourced from a local veterinarian they found that apparently disposed of all pet carcasses into a pile somewhere. They showed the crew to the pile and let them pick through it….

That’s a wrap for Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The beginning of the Slasher sub-genre.

Please come back next week for Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.

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• There will be spoilers abound

• I will often refer to Black Christmas 1974 as “the OG” for shorthand

• Trigger Warning: There will be discussion of rape and sexual assault as that is a large part of this movie - nothing detailed but if it is a triggering topic perhaps skip this one and meet me on the next post 🖤

As a self proclaimed substack newbie I am honored Kyle (Horrorble Writer) reached out and asked if I would like to contribute to the Scarestack’s 25 Days of Slays. I knew without a doubt my choice was Black Christmas (2019)!

Black Christmas is a name that resonates with slasher fans. It’s one of the OGs of 1974 right there with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Before we had Michael, Jason and Freddy - we had Billy in the attic.

The movie went on to span a trilogy of films:

Black Christmas (1974) - created by Bob Clark, who went on to make the Christmas Classic, A Christmas Story.

Black Christmas (2006) - often referred to lovingly as Black X-Mas, an origin story for Billy from 1974.

Black Christmas (2019) - which I am here today to preach the good gospel about, is on my Mount Rushmore of horror, right next to Jennifer’s Body.

Why the Hate?

Sadly, I've discovered several people don’t even know there’s a 2019 version. I’m not sure how it ran under the radar, I looked into what other movies were released in December of 2019 and nothing stands out to have over shadowed the movie.

If we want to examine it as the red headed step child of the trilogy, I think it maybe suffers from a little bit of the Halloween 3 syndrome of why are we straying from the original concept? Black Christmas 1974 - there’s an intruder in the attic of the sorority house that is killing the girls one by one and this continues with 2006. 2019 takes the threat and makes it more super natural with possessed fraternity brothers, and nothing seems to piss slasher fans off more than taking their old fashioned murderer and giving it a supernatural element. Perhaps it would have done better without a Black Christmas title? I don’t agree with that choice but I’m fishing for a reason here people.

I’m not sure if it’s this or the amount of pure hate feminist art seems to garner in general - articles and reviews online range from:

“Woke Slasher remake is an unholy, unscary mess” - The Guardian

“We get it Sophia Takal, you hate men 🙄 Aggressively anti-men to the point of satire. The message was well meaning but has zero nuance and every single male in the film was a one dimensional piece of shit. I wanted a Christmas slasher and not neo-feminism men bashing for 92 minutes. We’re all women hating rapists apparently. Good to know. Fuck this movie” - Joe from Letterboxd

“i hate this?? i was feeling jolly before watching this?? also?? the original Black Christmas is more feminist than this pile of shit lmao
this has got to be some kind of overreaction to Black X-mas’s portrayal of sorority girls but even then it’s fucking ridiculous bro” - Amelie from Letterboxd

Some of my favorites were the men commenting making sure to include “even my girlfriend hated the film”.

I’m not sure if it’s just the men coming out of the woodwork complaining about the portrayal of fraternity brothers or women in sororities upset about the portrayal of the sisters sharing menstrual cups……

Now I would like to point out 2019 does have a rotten tomatoes score of 41% where 2006 sits at a measly 14% - so maybe there are more people out there that love it just like me…..

As an outsider to the greek system, but someone who spent plenty of time in fraternity and sorority house basements binge drinking for four years - everything felt accurate to me.

*shrugs*

Let’s Discuss the Feminist Masterpiece - Black Christmas (2019)

To begin, this is the only movie in the trilogy written and directed by women.

Written by: Sophia Takal and April Wolfe

Directed by: Sophia Takal

Writer April Wolfe, director Sophia Takal and actor Imogen Poots from the film “Black Christmas.” (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) - From the Article “How Black Christmas became a fiercely feminist slasher movie for the #MeToo era”

It’s already at the top of my list for this reason. I unashamedly will always watch, promote and push movies written and directed by women and LGBTQ individuals because our voices matter. It has also been proven time and time again that these creators most often create movies and art that I relate to heavily, that hit me right in my soul - duh, because I’m a lesbian woman….

A great example of the importance of female filmmakers is Takal’s quote from the Los Angeles Times article “How Black Christmas became a fiercely feminist slasher movie for the #MeToo era” -

“When Blumhouse approached me about making this, one thing that was really important to me was making a movie that felt like it was moving the slasher subgenre forward,” said Takal. “We weren’t just making a movie about expendable women whose primary purpose was to be killed for entertainment.

She also speaks on how important it was to her to keep the rating PG-13 so the film, including topics of sexual assault and rape, could be accessible to younger girls and women. With the potential to make this access to the topic an opportunity for these young women to be educated and potentially more comfortable having conversations on the topic. This focus on rating didn’t come without challenges:

Ultimately, the subject matter was less of a concern to the MPAA than some of the film’s language. “It’s so funny the things that are allowed and not allowed,” said Takal. “Like ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Taken’ are PG-13 movies but ours would’ve been R-rated if we said ‘slipped me a roofie and then your dick.’”

We will get to this song lyric later, they managed to still get this song lyric across with a quick cut to the audience and some background noise tossed in…

Now let’s examine the movie beat by beat - because I can’t help myself.

Consider me your friend at the party who is talking about a recent movie or book she’s read and loved and proceeds to tell you the entire plot line - because we can’t help ourselves. But really, it’s not the entire plot, in hopes of this not being 10,000 words but it’s the major beats followed by my ramblings about things that tie into Black Christmas 1974 and Toxic Masculinity.

We open on a quote on screen:

This quickly sets the tone of this college we will be at for the next 90 minutes.

We open with a Christmas party in a sorority house - true to the 1974 film. In the pan around the house we see a unicorn statue which is a nod back to the 1974 film.

One of the sorority sisters is on the phone with her sister walking home on campus and this is how we get into our first kill of the movie. I must confess, I love when the director takes us straight into the action.

Lindsey is walking home in the dark and we start hearing a ping on an app called yip yap. We see a stranger is texting her claiming to be The Calvin Hawthorne. He asks

This is the perfect modernization of the creepy, caller from 1974. In the OG this caller makes pig noises when he calls the house. No one makes menacing phone calls anymore, it’s all online threats now ya know. So I found this transition onto an app perfect and not to mention this *ping* noise becomes a part of the movie where, when you hear it, you know the girls have something menacing coming….

We’ve got threatening texts while simultaneously we see a man walking behind Lindsey. The director Sophia Takal does a wonderful job in her framing of this scene because it’s that moment every woman has experienced where a man is walking close enough in the vicinity behind you that you start to think is tonight my night? Which we see Lindsey has her car keys laced through her fingers, ready for danger, like we’ve all been taught.

I must also mention I LOVE the lighting in this sequence as it’s really all the Christmas lights from the houses in the neighborhood so it’s a fun christmasy vibe to the upcoming danger. After some running and pleading for her life Lindsey succumbs to a hooded figure stabbing her with an icicle and then dragging her dead body out of frame which leaves an imprint similar to a snow angel.

Then we get our title card.

As we pick up pace in the sorority house and meeting the sisters there are several easter eggs to enjoy throughout.

• We open on a beautiful white cat that looks identical to the cat in OG 1974. The cat from 1974 is named Claude, this cat is named Claudette. I love it.

• The sorority sister that storms in asking to use a diva cup has a shirt on that says “Your manologue is boring me” - I wish they would’ve made official merch for the movie with that line.

• There is discussion of a Christmas performance and then the sharing of a hair clip, which will cause problems later on….. along with the missing vibrator from the opening scene, and the diva cup.

There’s a continuous shot in the sorority house that I really enjoy, I’m a nerd for a one shot, no cut take, and in the directors commentary Takal admits it was a difficult shot to nail and required enough takes it put her and Imogen (who plays Riley) at odds for the day.

So we see Riley, our main character, walking to class and she passes the yard Lindsey died in and we see a young girl rebuilding the snowman she knocked over before she was killed (more easter eggs).

We start to stack micro aggressions around campus that show Riley is living in a man’s world and having a tough time. She shows up to class to listen to her white, male professor - Gelson - lecture exclaiming “Men bonding together invented culture to defend against female nature”. Please take note in this scene behind his head on the chalkboard SWINE is written largely as well as CANNIBALS - DISSOLVING OF SELF and SIRENS (TEMPTATION).

• Gelson and the fraternity brothers are pigs, not to mention the pig emoji sent by The Calvin Hawthorne on yip yap.

• The whole premise of the fraternity pledges are they are losing themselves and being turned into an army - toxic masculinity does manage to eat men alive like cannibals do.

• There are several lines from the frat brothers calling the women “teases” “you wanted it” - sirens, temptation, it all connects in my brain….

He’s going on and on with a reading that sounds like it was from a male author when indeed it was written by a female author, he then calls on Riley to speak on the quote (despite her not raising her hand) and takes the opportunity to twist her words and point out how he’s a good professor and not deserving of a petition to get him fired for teaching largely white male texts.

Enter Kris, a fellow sorority sister we find out has created the petition. In conversation Kris lets us know she has already gotten the Calvin Hawthorne statue removed from the administration building on campus and it’s been moved to the Founders Fraternity house where we will spend the rest of the movie. We also learn he was a problematic man, slave owner in the north and into the dark arts that he used to sacrifice disobedient women….. (cough cough, foreshadowing)

Riley heads to work as a barista where a fraternity brother visits to let her know Brian (her rapist) will be in town to meet new pledges and through this conversation with him and the other sorority sisters we find out Riley was raped 3 years ago and nothing really happened to Brian. A story we hear all too frequently.

We move on to the frat house for the Christmas talent show.. Three of the four girls are seen getting ready in Mean Girl-esque Santa costumes and Riley asks where the fourth girl, Helena, is. She goes wandering through the house looking for her. Again, in my experience, the creepiness shown when she’s wondering the halls, and the weird portraits of white men on the wall, and peaking into the room to see the brothers in cloaked hoods being anointed with black sludge with black sludge coming from the eyes of the Calvin Hawthorne statue - all feels completely plausible for something to stumble upon in my frat house experience.

For those maybe not catching on the patriarchal tones so far - the black sludge is a metaphor for toxic masculinity…..

Moving on, Riley finally finds Helena, very intoxicated, close to being sexually assaulted. To my point earlier about Sophia Takal wanting to keep this movie PG-13 so younger girls could watch it, this scene is a very good lesson in how to navigate this type of situation and keeping both yourself and a friend safe.

Now maybe a lesson in what not to do, is Riley sends Helena home alone….you never send the drunk girl home alone but I suppose this is a horror movie and questionable decisions must be made for people to die.

This is how Riley gets roped into performing in the show and I have linked the scene below because it is a cult masterpiece. It’s a banger of a tune, it is on Spotify if you want to add it to your Christmas party playlist, but most of all, it is pure perfection and could be considered the catalyst in the movie for the violence the women endure in Act 3. Big shout out to the song writers Benjamin Hanby and Riki Lindhome, if I were in their shoes, this would be the magnum opus of my career.

• One tidbit missed in the link below is the beginning of the scene the frat house announcer says “Now the girls from Mu Kappa” and a woman in the audience can be heard yelling the correction “WOMEN”. It’s the tiny details that I love so much.

On to the next day we have more continuous shots in the sorority house for me to swoon over, really painting the picture of the hectic nature of the holidays. Riley is carrying the white cat - Claudette - down the stairs and discovers the cat has black paint on his paws. So we can assume a frat boy made his way into the house…. dun dun dun

The group leaves the house to go Christmas tree shopping and Riley gets a phone call from Helena’s mom asking where she is, so we can assume our drunk friend may not have made it out of the house.

The friends bring the Christmas tree home and they’re attempting to set it up as Riley voices her concerns over the disappearance of Helena and Lindsey. When the boyfriend of one of the girls interrupts and argues about trying to get the tree setup…. In the director’s commentary Takal admits she pulled inspiration from Jack Torrance for this boyfriend, which I think she nailed. I find him to be annoying, with his aggression building over the course of the film, which allows him to play the perfect part of the “Not All Men” argument later on in the film.

Riley goes to speak to the useless campus cops about Helena’s disappearance (I mean he’s eating a mayonnaise and turkey sandwich on white bread, he clearly can’t be trusted for help).

Like any good Final Girl, Riley takes it upon herself to go to the Fraternity house to look for Helena, where she gets a massive jump scare from Professor Gelson. In this scene he drops some papers Riley notices a list of the sorority sisters organized by sorority - fishy - and he also casually in conversation reveals to Riley their performance was posted online for thousands to see.

We move back to the Sorority House with all the women and the one boyfriend and an argument breaks out about the video of the performance online that has gone viral. This kitchen scene is a great encapsulation of how differently people will cope with rape and a friend/loved one being attacked in this manner. Riley is furious over the video because at the end she can be heard saying

So now thousands online know her business which she’s clearly uncomfortable with (rightfully so). Whereas her friend Kris wants these guys to pay and wants Riley to heal and be ok. Earlier in the movie she tells her

OOF right in the heart strings.

This interaction is all too accurate as the boyfriend speaks up asking -

“What did you expect?”

and mansplains -

“Not all men have power. Not all men are rapists. But you imply it with your constant man hating”

to which Kris responds -

“DID YOU JUST NOT ALL MEN ME”

……which we have all wanted to yell at one point in our lives…..

His girlfriend kicks him out of the house and as he exits he tosses out the “You’re hysterical” because obviously any woman with an opinion is in fact hysterical.

*sarcasm for those of you who are new here*

This is where Act 3 kicks off and the shit officially starts to go down.

Arrows fly through the house and a cat and mouse chase starts with several fights and kills between the sorority sisters and the hooded fraternity pledges. The fight ends with one of the women getting to a cellphone to call 911 and we watch campus security roll up to the house - only for us to discover it is not their house, it’s the sorority house down the street where those women (shown in the very beginning of the movie) are also being attacked by hooded fraternity pledges.

• We do see one of the women in this house stabbing a fraternity brother with the unicorn statue mentioned earlier. Which I love.

This is a great expansion to the focus on Riley and her sisters, clarifying that these assaults and attacks are not isolated, these men are attacking women all over campus - as they so often do. It also makes this slasher movies special as it is not a single girl, or a single group, it is all of the women in this film are being attacked and being forced to fight back.

Back to Riley’s sorority house, I must describe one of the fights as it does give a nod to the original Black Christmas - as Kris is wrestling with a frat brother trying to get car keys and get out the door, Riley puts a bag over his face to suffocate him.

These clips are shown next, the drying cleaning bag kill from Black Christmas 1974, followed by the dry cleaning bag kills from Black Christmas 2019.

If you’re keeping score, you’ll see a pattern of Sophia Takal arming the women of this movie with the weapons used by the killer in Black Christmas 1974 - a bit of sweet redemption one could say.

The night progresses, the women of both sorority houses continue to fight and Riley makes it to the fraternity house. She has a suspicion that the fraternity brothers are using some type of black magic ritual to possess their pledges. She wants to go to the house to smash the Calvin Hawthorne statue to end the black magic curse.

Riley sneaks into the house and as she’s alone and looking at the statue she hears Helena screaming. She goes to save her and unties her as she gets bashed on the back of the head and Helena gives us a devilish smile. So we know she’s up to no good….

She comes to tied to a chair in front of the statue and Professor Gelson is there and he is ready for a lecture. He explains to Riley:

Hawthorne foresaw the threat posed by women, so he took precautions in case they strayed too far out of line. A master of the dark arts he left instructions on how to create an army of young men to take our power back.

Tired of seeing ourselves falsely accused, our livelihoods threatened, marginalized and belittled. Reduced to spectators in our own lives. Upon graduation our army will venture into court rooms, board rooms and the halls of Congress to set the world right.

The boys used the statue and performed a hazing ritual where they read the incantation inside the statue of Calvin Hawthorne and the spirit of Calvin Hawthorne filled the pledges - possessing them with supernatural strength and drive. All we had to do was name the women who had stepped out of line and these boys took care of the rest.

We see an altar filled with the missing diva cup, the missing vibrator and the hair clip Riley gifted to Helena. So we see our drunk little Helena was enlisted by the frat to fetch these items for the ritual.

Women who are willing to be obedient, like Helena, will be spared.

Until Helena realizes her necklace has been placed on the altar…..

“But I did everything I was supposed” - *hooded figure snaps her neck*

I think her role is important in this film because there will always be women in this world that serve the patriarchy and vehemently fight for and protect men - even to their own detriment.

After this, Riley exclaims she will bow and she will behave, as many women have to do to protect themselves in certain situations, full well knowing they’re looking for a way out any chance they can get. This then kicks off an epic battle scene style fight between the sorority sisters and the fraternity brothers as they bust into the room to save Riley.

Riley breaks the Calvin Hawthorne statue and Kris throws a lamp down to set the professor on fire -

Fun fact from the director’s commentary: Kris was written to yell SUCK MY CLIT as she throws the lamp but due to the PG-13 rating they had to cut out CLIT. Massive bummer….

They lock the boys in the room make their way outside and watch the fraternity house burn down in the snow.

The End

Credits roll.

Then we get a cute little post credit scene of Claudette licking up a pool of blood in the house.

A Few Fun Facts before Closing…

• Did you catch the call from dispatch to campus police says the address of the sorority house is 1974 Elm Rd…..a nod to the 1974 film and nightmare on elm street perhaps?

• Our queen Imogen Poots (actress that played Riley) also played the daughter in 28 Weeks Later….

• The mask the fraternity brothers are seen wearing:

Was modeled after a Scold’s Bridle - an iron mask used in the 18th century to keep nagging wives quiet. There seems to be several different designs on google but the following photos give you the gist.

• Lastly, Sophia Takal makes it clear she wanted to use several fraternity brothers as killers as a metaphor for the waves of toxic masculinity. As we navigate life, fighting and thinking we’ve overcome one wave, another pops up right before us, making the fight feel endless.

My Love For This Film Runs Deep

On this watch it became very clear to me the two main reasons why I love this film so much.

• The First:

I have never watched this film and viewed the fraternity brothers as possessed by Calvin Hawthorne. I watch this film and see guys I went to high school with, fraternity brothers and athletes I came in contact with in college and the men I encountered daily in my career in athletics. This was never a possession film in my eyes, these men are the embodiment of my lived experience in this world.

• Secondly and Probably most importantly:

I relate to Kris and Riley on a level I have never seen in a slasher film before. I am a die hard slasher fan but the reality is, I’ve never related to the innocent babysitter, I’ve never really related to the friend that dies for having sex with her boyfriend. I’ve rarely, if ever, seen a reflection of myself on screen the way I did in Kris and Riley.

Unfortunately, Riley’s experience is far too relatable for too many women. Watching her struggle to cope while still being in the environment where the rape occurred, running into Brian’s friends, having them make comments about her being a liar.

I think even more so, I am the Kris friend in the group. I am loud. I am pushy. I will be the first to tell a man to fuck off and go away if they’re bothering our group. I want the best for my friends but sometimes I can be too much, too fast. It’s all coming from a place of love.

If you are looking for a slasher film to put on and scroll your phone to, this is not the one. This is a movie for people that want to watch, to dissect, to connect dots, find easter eggs, find secondary meanings. I know this has been a rant, but can you believe I have left out several talking points and easter eggs (like I said, we would’ve been going for 10,000 words if I want all in). Understand, this movie is an experience, a master class in how to take a slasher from 40+ years ago and modernize it for a new generation.

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Thank you

If you have managed to stay with me and read this far, thank you. I don’t think Kyle realized on extending my first invite to contribute to the Scarestack Society that I would be penning a nearly 5,000 word review? dissertation? Love Letter? about one of my all time favorite movies. I just hold this movie near and dear to my heart. I think writeups did it a disservice referencing it has a horror movie in the #MeTooEra - It is simply a fantastic movie with accurate depictions of the lived experience of women around the world. It is nuanced, tip toeing the line of being man hating with a sprinkle of the best musical number you’ll see in horror. This is right where I want to be.

And lucky for you we have covered the full trilogy this holiday season.

Kristen gave us Black Christmas (2006): Blood, Guts, and Blush

I’ve given you Black Christmas (2019) - All I Want For Christmas is the Fall of the Patriarchy

Tomorrow Kimberly Ramsawak will be ending our 25 Days of Slays with Black Christmas (1974): Horror Concierge

I hope you have enjoyed yourself!

Buy Me a Cold Brew and/or Movie Ticket

Please make sure you check out our other pieces covering Holiday Horror!

Christmas Horror Movie coverage from the Scarestack Society

12/1 Silent Night Deadly Night 3: Kyle (Horrorble Writer)

12/2 The Nightmare Before Christmas: Abandoned Places George R. Galuschak

12/3 Silent Night Deadly Night: Molly O’Blivion

12/4 Anna And The Apocalypse: H. is for Horror H. H. Duke

12/5 Terrifier 3: Meat Head Media

12/6 The Advent Calendar: Sahar Writes Sahar Khan

12/7 Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Stephen Duffy

12/8 Violent Night: Robo Pulp Media @robopulp

12/9 It’s A Wonderful Knife: Thehumangaze

AND

The Lodge: Offscreenshaman

12/10 Mean One: Beverley’s Horror Corner

12/11 Silent Night: Skyla

12/12 The Legend of Hell House: Jamie B.

12/13 A Christmas Horror Story: Strange Matters Mike Duffy

12/14 Deadly Games/Dial Code Santa Claus: Hellish Views - Harry Evans

12/15 Black Christmas (2006): Blood, Guts, and Blush Kristen

12/16 Krampus: Pop! Goes My Brain: Joanne Thornborough

12/17 Elves: Creatures of War Emma

12/18 Santa Jaws: Movie Malpractice Sean Mo

12/19 Better Watch Out: Habitual Cinema Jean-Pierre Diez

12/20 Rare Exports: The Macabre Tavern Yanni Hamburger

12/21 Christmas Bloody Christmas: Horror Hangouts

12/22 Silent Night Deadly Night 2: Tales From The Tape Brandon Rae

12/23 Gremlins: B-Movie Tea

12/24 Black Christmas (2019): That Horror Lesbian

12/25 Black Christmas: Horror Concierge Kimberly Ramsawak

I can’t stress this enough.

Queens of the Dead (2025) is an absolutely iconic zombie film, it is the horror movie the gays have been waiting for.

To describe it briefly, I’d say it’s Shaun of the Dead vibes but instead of two drunk British guys it’s gays and drag queens in a night club.

The film takes place on Easter Sunday, which already is a great touch because, ya know, zombie Jesus.

How does the apocalypse start you ask?

A drag queen trying to have a Grindr hookup in the back of the church.

Said drag queen then makes her way to the club (obviously) and then our group realizes, after kicking everyone out, they need to lock themselves in to stay safe as word of a zombie outbreak throughout the city is spreading.

That’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot, as to avoid any spoilers, because I NEED you guys to go watch this film.

So I’m going to tell you about a few very gay moments in the film I especially loved and why it’s so important, as well as my one complaint.

Ok, let’s get my one complaint out of the way — the use of CGI effects. It’s not overwhelming to the point of ruining the film but I would’ve loved a bit more gore and practical effects but if I had to guess, I think most of the budget went to casting. Which if I had to choose one, I’d prefer the path she took as she stacked the cast with names like Katy O’Brian, Nina West, Jack Haven, Dominique Jackson, Margaret Cho, Tom Savini, Cheyenne Jackson, Shaunette Renee Wilson as well as a few other new names I wasn’t familiar with but am hopeful this movie could be a jumping off point for them!

Now to my obsession with this film.

What I need you to understand, this is so much more than representation, it takes us so far past the gay best friend trope, even a gay protagonist. This is living and breathing gay culture in a way I have never seen before in a horror movie. Let me explain…..

I was absolutely cackling when the zombie drag queen shows up to the club, because instead of anyone being worried we hear people in the crowd throwing lines like:

Because they assume the zombie was simply just another drunk bitch that couldn’t walk in heels.

And this feels so right for how things would go down in a gay club if a single zombie drag queen showed up stumbling around.

Moving on, as people start to turn and things spread, they try and trap a zombie, in what you ask? well obviously the go-go dancer cage. The gays are nothing but resourceful.

To watch gays and drag queens corral a zombie with bar stools into this cage as LET’S HAVE A KIKI plays in the background, my old gay heart grew three sizes. Oh if only I had been able to see this moment in theaters *sigh*

Then there is the drag queen culture, with one of them surviving a bite to the ass because the zombie came away with nothing but foam, since the girls normally wear hip and butt padding. Not to mention a death scene where she exclaims

Aside from the incredible, nuanced gay culture moments - I say nuanced because if you’re not one of us you might not get it - Tina does a great job referencing her father’s work.

One of the dancers for one of the drag queens gets on their TikTok Live and drops a

As well as Tom Savini appearing as the mayor of the town giving a press conference explaining

Lastly, in true Romero fashion she makes sure to give us some commentary on society right now. What did she choose? Technology. The presence of cell phones, social media, viral videos and live videos are all consuming throughout the movie. Accurately depicted and plays a fun roll in how the zombies play out.

This movie will now live on the top of my comfort movie list. It is gay and it is fun. It’s not about our pain (looking at you I Saw The TV Glow) it about our lives, the clubs, the chosen family, the night life, the silliness. All of it. It’s amazing.

Queens of the Dead is now available on Shudder. I’d urge you to buy it on digital and continue to say your prayers to Zombie Jesus that we get a physical media release, preferably a steelbook!

If you enjoy horror movies, LGBTQ movies, or best case scenario like Queens of the Dead — Gay Horror movies — feel free to subscribe.

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I also have always dreamed of hosting watch parties and serving snacks, dinner, drinks that pair perfectly with the movie. I’m just simply not that fancy yet.

Jennifer’s Body

First up, Jennifer’s Body. My favorite movie of all time.

An Indie band tries sacrificing a virgin to the Devil in hopes of gaining more success as a band. Little do they know, cheerleader Jennifer Check is anything but a virgin - “I’m not even a back door virgin” she proclaims - and things go very wrong. Jennifer comes back as a boy eating demon, ready for a bloody good time.

In honor of Jennifer’s first meal back on earth as a demon, we will be having an entire rotisserie chicken, bones and all.

Love Lies Bleeding

Next up is Love Lies Bleeding. Another favorite of mine, an absolute banger of a movie from the Queen herself, Rose Glass.

This is a lesbian love story between Lou (Kristen Stewart) who is a small in stature, recluse in nature gym manager and Jackie a well built body builder, with an outgoing presence to her. They are the perfect odd couple (I say that with love, I think the balance is perfect) - an in true messy lesbian fashion, Jackie ends up with a job working for Lou’s criminal dad. Shit goes down hill quickly.

Due to the opposing natures of the women, we have two meals to choose from.

If you’re feeling big and jacked like Jackie, we’ve got a Pre-Workout drink with creatine, electrolytes and caffeine. A dozen egg whites and a protein shake to wash it all down.

If you’re feeling a bit more recluse, tiny, you can go with Lou’s menu - a cigarette, a 6 pack of PBR and the egg yolks we had to pick out of Jackie’s egg whites.

Honey Don’t

Are you in the mood for more of a lesbian cop flick?

Honey Don’t gives us Honey Donahue, a private investigator who has been called in to solve a string of weird deaths linked to a mega church ran by Chris Evans.

I would argue she’s been known to use her Lesbian intuition to solve crimes.

For this we’re going with a cop’s diet - a glazed donut, black coffee, burger and fries from a diner - optional night cap of a finger bang in a dive bar.

Lowlifes

This is one of my all time favorite Tubi original films! More people should be talking about it.

A family road-trip turns into a stranded stay at a remote house.

I’ll keep this one vague because going in blind assures the best experience.

To match the RV road trip, grilling out experience of the family we’re going with hotdogs, burgers and steaks that are bloody rare.

Evil Dead Rise

What a glorious trip Evil Dead Rise is.

Gave us one of our favorite title cards of all time.

I also never knew I needed to see a drone used in a horror movie (I used to fly drones for a living).

A distant sister shows up to visit her sister and her kids - these kids of course open a book they shouldn’t and play a vinyl record they should not - and all hell breaks loose.

Mommy was too busy with maggots to cook dinner so we’ll be offering up fried eggs with freshly grated cheese on top.

No guarantee you’ll end up with just cheese that’s been grated…..

I hope you enjoyed my silly little list.

What movies come to mind for you for a movie and a meal pairing?

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For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for this article I'm sorry it’s late.

*crickets*

This article was supposed to be posted well over a month ago as part of a series where I reviewed the sequel timeline for Halloween - 1,2,4,5,6.

Here’s the thing, I hated 6. When I set down to write this article my notes were a jumbled mess and I told myself I needed to rewatch it to be a bit more coherent, and honestly, I would rather let the murderous gingerbread men from Krampus take me up the chimney than to rewatch Halloween 6.

But I am a woman of my word and it felt wrong to move on to writing about Holiday Horror when the first series of articles I promised you dear substack subscribers was not finished. Therefore I’ve made the executive decision to simply write this article from my jumbled, messy, incoherent notes because realistically if you walk away from this article, and hate it or it doesn’t make sense, it would match the vibe of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers experience, am I right?

To Begin:

*spoilers warning: that may or may not be accurate, who knows*

I think the most important bit of information from this movie is the fact Paul Rudd plays an older Tommy Doyle. In all of my years of Halloween fandom, how did no one tell me this?

We open with Jamie giving birth in some type of dank dark basement. A mystery man takes her baby and puts the Thorne symbol in blood on its belly. This is the tattoo we saw in Halloween 5.

Later in the movie, doomsday prepper Tommy Doyle explains to us this symbol is part of a Celtic legend. The tattoo represents a demon that has come to spread sickness, and one child from each of the tribes who was infected, a blood sacrifice of the next of kin on Samhain would spare the lives of the entire tribe [I think, kudos to my incoherent notes].

Massive red flags from the fandom

I have serious problems with fan discussion that Jamie is pregnant with Michael’s baby, as in, he raped her at some point……I say absolutely not. Do people not comprehend that if your niece has a child, that is still your bloodline and family??

Moving on:

This movie centers around Kara Strode, Laurie’s cousin, and her son Danny. There is a reference to Danny hearing voices, just like Michael did as a kid. So much of the movie has shots of the kid hearing this deep looming voice telling him to do something that’s not a great idea…..

The meat and potatoes of the movie is this cult of Thorne trying to sacrifice Jamie’s baby. My notes that can’t be trusted claim Michael kidnaps Kara at one point and takes her back to Smith Grove where this gathering of the cult is preparing to sacrifice the baby.

Tommy Doyle makes it to Smith Grove to save Kara, the baby and Danny…..I have no notes on who took the baby and Danny and how they ended up at Smith Grove. Sorry, I was probably preoccupied with the absurdity of it all.

Michael ends up murdering the members of the cult right before the sacrifice occurs. Paul Rudd beats Michael Myers with a pipe…..how am I supposed to believe that fight? Tommy and Kara run off with Danny and the baby.

The movie ends with Michael’s mask on the ground and yelling in the background which sounds like Loomis being killed by Michael, which I wonder if this was a late add on after the passing of Donald Pleasence RIP.

Reveal of the Jeepers Creepers looking man in the hat

We find out that this man

Is Dr. Wynn from the beginning of the movie who asks Dr. Loomis to come back and help find Michael. He’s ultimately the leader of the Cult of Thorne.

We also find out the woman Tommy Doyle lives with is a member of the cult. Apparently the town of Haddonfield has been overrun with this group.

Non Butcher Knife Kills

• Impaled a woman’s head with a spike.

• Good ole fashioned neck snap.

• Farm equipment.

• Small axe.

• Another electrocution kill, to the point this time the body explodes.

• I hypothesize that he maybe shoved a body in a washer? because the husband opens the washer and the amount of blood simply would not have been that much if Michael was looking to, I guess, wash the sheets that were splattered in blood from his last kill.

Final Notes

I am a certified Halloween 6 hater, it’s official. I don’t really see a reason to watch it ever again. Perhaps in part because I’m a Laurie Strode die hard and we’ve gotten so far away from her at this point. I don’t need the cult, I don’t want the cult. Not to mention, from a story building perspective I can’t even comprehend how we went in this direction.

Also.

The halloween theme is a catastrophe of the worst kind. There have been some really bad ones but this one is the worst in my opinion.

The final list of who is writing and directing what?

Just so we can start to look at who’s responsible for what here.

Halloween (1978)

Writer: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Director: John Carpenter

Halloween II (1981)

Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Writers: Dhani Lipsius, Larry Rattner, Benjamin Ruffner

Director: Dwight H. Little

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Michael Jacobs

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers

Writers: Debra Hill, John Carpenter, Daniel Farrands

Director: Joe Chappelle

If you followed along thank you so much for reading! Here are links to the full series:

Halloween (1978)

Halloween II (1981)

Halloween 4 (1988)

Halloween 5 (1989)

What’s coming next?

Holiday horror!!!! duh

I am lucky enough to be contributing to the Scare Stack Society’s 25 Days of Slays with a piece on Black Christmas (2019) dropping on Christmas Eve. This is one of my top 5 films of all time, so I’m very excited.

Hopefully I will leave some other pieces of coal in your stocking throughout the month.

There is always more to come 🖤

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As I’ve gotten older my love for movies has grown astronomically. I’m not sure how or why honestly, but I can be moved to tears by a movie from its beauty, its message impact, relating to a certain character, for so many reasons….. I just can’t get enough of movies, I find them to be so important to the human existence.

My most recent endeavor was to read the Practical Magic book, partly due to the upcoming sequel. Practical Magic is a comfort movie for me. I will watch it dozens of times from August - November and not to mention any time I want throughout the year. The Midnight Margarita scene brings me the utmost joy.

The concept of two generations of women in a household dancing and drinking together seems so special. I could write you several pages about how much I love this movie. A family of witches passing things down from generation to generation. Some members of the family embracing those powers, some trying to move on and do something else. It’s just a powerful movie in my eyes.

Sitting down to read the book I was impressed by how the world expanded.

*slight spoilers for the book ahead*

The daughters Antonia and Kylie have a much larger role. Gillian comes back and makes an impact in the girls’ lives as the “cool” aunt. We see the daughters find “love” interests [I use quotes since they’re just kids, but they have boys they're crushing on]. Gillian settles in the house, gets a job and finds a new love interest. I greatly appreciated this because it’s a redemption arc for Gillian, she’s not just a wild child with a shitty boyfriend, she’s found a sweet man she learns to trust. For most of the book, the Aunts don’t reside in the house but at the end Sally calls them for help with Jimmy coming back from the dead. So, instead of the community of women from the town helping contain him, it is just the Owens women, the aunts, Sally, Gillian, Antonia and Kylie in the garden, handling the situation.

At the end of it all, Practical Magic as a book and a movie is about generations of women living under one roof, dealing with life and love and I think that’s so special. I was not lucky enough to be in a family that stressed the importance of the generations of women in their family. I’ve watched my wife take family photos with women across 4 generations in her family and I think that is so incredible. So, media like Practical Magic that depicts those relationships, I hold close to the heart.

As much as I LOVED the expansion of the book - learning more about the girls and Gillian playing a larger role was great. I think the unfortunate reality is movies simply don’t have an opportunity to build a world and cast of characters in the manner a book does. For some reason, studios seem to really hate to make a 2-3 hour movie. So what Alice Hoffman built in 300 pages, is nearly impossible to fit into a 100 page script. I just think there is a reason we have books and we have movie adaptations and I’m in support of both.

Why would we want them to be identical or INCREDIBLY close?

What would be the point in reading the book and watching the movie then. In theory, haven’t you already watched the movie in your imagination as you read the book?

I don’t want to get my head lopped off here but I thought to write this post because I see a LOT of people very angry over Frankenstein and the upcoming Wuthering Heights. I just want to say, please let people create their art. It’s art for a reason. It will impact some people and maybe not others and that’s fine. The books will do the same. Let’s all be ok with that and less angry and nasty in the comments.

Other Book Adaptations of Note for me

You by Caroline Kepnes

I got hooked on the Netflix show and then devoured You, Hidden Bodies and You Love Me. I think the show led to the writing of additional books, which is great. I prefer the books to the show as the seasons developed, but I’m forever indebted to the show for helping me find the books.

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

This show took Netflix by storm. It was written for Starz so there’s a lot more nudity and sex than your normal Netflix show. I much prefer the show to the book. I’m impressed with this adaptation really taking the book and RAMPING UP the female forward sex and lesbian tension. Of note: in the show they show a man going down on a woman where the book is written in the scene the woman is on her knees for the man. I also really appreciated the mutual attraction between Margo and Sophie is palpable in the show where in the book it feels much more like an obsession on Sophie’s part. It’s the tiny details for me I appreciate.

If you enjoy mostly movies - especially the witchy, gay or horror filled ones you might wanna follow along for more posts.

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I had to sit for several days with how exactly to articulate this piece. You can thank my fateful meeting with AMC Fear Fest because the last two days I've turned the live stream on, Halloween 5 was playing, as if saying — GET BACK TO YOUR LAPTOP AND FINISH YOUR WRITING.

I really did enjoy 4! So I’ve been grappling with, why did 5 miss the mark — other than the obvious of starting out with making Jamie mute….

Stop Torturing Kids and Give Us Teenagers We Know and/or Care About

This is what I landed on. I think 4 worked so well because we kind of had a 2 for 1 Final Girl setup with Jamie and Rachel. Jamie was the target but Rachel was there to care for her and protect her — much like we would see the Final Girl with her best friend or boyfriend/girlfriend. It felt less manipulative and abusive of a young child.

In 5 we lose Rachel rather early in the film in a lackluster kill from Michael. It’s a bit of a peek-a-boo setup where Rachel gets out of the shower, Michael is there with a pair of scissors to stab her in the chest, right after a warning phone call telling her to get out of the house, which she does and returns to be killed while getting ready.

This is where we shift gears to focus on Tina and her friends. Tina was Rachel’s best friend in 4, so we know of her but I don’t much care for her well being, and surely not her friends she’s partying with. Tina does briefly show up for Jamie after the death of Rachel, which turns into Jamie and her friend breaking out of the clinic to protect Tina.

Here is where the plot falls to bits — Why is a 9 year old trying to protect a partying teenager on Halloween?

I mean I know why, she’s like a big sister figure; Jamie has psychic abilities to know Michael is on the prowl and Tina is in danger. But the logistics of a 9 year old being a hero belongs in a cartoon, not my Halloween Slasher movie.

Especially after Tina is killed in the woods protecting Jamie - now all we have is a kid. I’m not interested…..

That is my overarching feeling on the film and now I'll hold your hand as I step you through this plot.

I mentioned this topic in my piece on Halloween II — this movie also starts with the last 10 minutes of the previous movie which I’m really pushing for this technique to be brought back for current franchises!

So, we find out at the end of 4 the cops shot Michael into underground tunnels which he was able to crawl through. He tries to choke this man he meets underground but he collapses before he’s able to and then we jump to 1 year later.

This continues my question of, did the David Gordon Green trilogy really steal a large part of its story structure from Halloween 4 and 5 because Michael in underground tunnels, hello Halloween Ends.

Let’s begin by discussing the continued mess of plot holes in this movie.

Jamie is in some sort of child psychiatric facility and is full mute due to the trauma she suffered (apparently) and Loomis is bullying her hard to try and get her to talk about where Michael is. He references her being 9, despite last movie her being 7. This is a year later, so she should be 8. I know this is a tiny detail but still….

Next is the discussion of how Jamie stabbed her step mother. About halfway through the movie she’s announced at a Halloween pageant as Jamie Carruthers so clearly it’s no longer a foster situation and she has been adopted. But this wouldn’t make it her step mother, I think they’d just say mother…..Sorry but the details drove me nuts and had me questioning if I was paying attention.

Overall for me Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers is pure camp.

• You’ve made poor Jamie mute and possessing some type of telepathic or psychic connection to Michael - she has epileptic type fits every time Michael kills someone.

• We get a few shots of Michael without his mask as well as in a different mask.

• They make a serious point of making a joke of all police officers that appear throughout the movie.

It is so many levels of pure chaos and silliness.

As the movie gets rolling, right from the jump we kill our final girl queen Rachel. Michael has broken into the house and stabs her with a pair of scissors, one has to assume the same pair Jamie killed her mother with.

So now we’re left with Tina, Rachel’s best friend, to look out for Jamie.

We eventually lose her to the famous butcher knife as she fights off Michael to protect Jamie in the woods.

Throughout this movie we have a mystery man in steel toed cowboy boots with a cute little P symbol tattooed on his wrist walking around. He arrives in Haddonfield via the bus.

This P symbol matches the tattoo that was (apparently) given to Michael by the guy in the tunnel system. In Halloween 6 we will learn it’s the Thorne symbol, but i’ll get to that in my next piece.

Michael manages to kill Tina’s boyfriend/crush. Dresses up in his halloween costume (the photo I included earlier), steals his muscle car and drives Tina to the party. Thankfully she wanted to stop for a pack of cigarettes so the cops come swooping in thanks to Jamie’s psychic work and save Tina, reuniting the two. This is where we hear Jamie’s first words as she says Tina’s name and then she’s magically talking again, just like that……

Tina heads out to party at the farm, and Jamie and her little friend break out of the children’s clinic to go save Tina.

At the Halloween party, we see a kid dressed up as Michael Myers.

I must say I am really impressed by the amount of people in this town who are comfortable dressing up as Michael Myers and risk being shot by the cops.

We get a handful of kills I will discuss in our last section as well as Tina, Jamie and Billy being chased through the woods by Michael in a car — Here is where Tina dies.

Eventually Loomis uses Jamie as bate to get Michael to show up at his old house. He’s full blown lost it, sending the cops away from the house and smashing the radio of the cop assigned to protect Jamie.

Again, a theme we see in the David Gordon Green trilogy of Loomis being a bit off his rocker.

Michael of course shows up, and attacks Loomis. The poor cop assigned to protect Jamie does his best but eventually gets killed by Michael as Jamie runs off.

So, just as Michael has Jamie cornered in the attic and is about to kill her. Jamie says, “Uncle, let me see.”

To which, in the shadows, he takes his mask off.

Jamie says “you’re just like me” and we see a single tear fall from his eye.

She reaches to touch him which cause him to freak out, putting his mask back on and flipping the coffin she was laying in.

This is where I have to say - what. the. fuck. - you’ve taken the boogeyman and made him an emotional uncle??? I won’t stand for it.

Loomis catches Jamie at the bottom of the stairs as she was running away and proceeds to parade her around in front of Michael to bate him into following them into a room, where - like a cartoon character - Loomis drops a chain net over Michael and proceeds to shoot him with a dart gun four times. Then he rips a piece of wood off the window and beats Michael with it.

I’m telling you, this movie is nothing more than camp.

We end with Michael in a jail cell. When Mr. Cowboy boots and top hat shows up and breaks him out by blowing up the inside of the police station.

THE END.

Michael Myers Kills without a Butcher Knife

I will say in this movie Michael at least has a butcher knife with him for really the entire movie it seems like, despite not always using it.

• Stabs Rachel with the scissors

• The shitty boyfriend gets some type of hand held gardening tool to the face, I don’t know what it’s called but I own one…

• Dog #3 dies

• A pitchfork to the back for horny teen #1

• A scythe to the head for horny teen #2

• Stabs the cops in the neck with the pitchfork

• Attempted vehicular manslaughter chasing down Tina and Jamie

• Another hanging

Who is writing and directing what?

Just so we can start to look at who’s responsible for what here.

Halloween (1978)

Writer: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Director: John Carpenter

Halloween II (1981)

Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Writers: Dhani Lipsius, Larry Rattner, Benjamin Ruffner

Director: Dwight H. Little

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill, Michael Jacobs

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard

I AM BAFFLED JOHN CARPENTER AND DEBRA HILL HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS MOVIE.

Make sure you checkout my reviews of Halloween 1, 2 and 5. Follow along for my upcoming review of 6 - the worst of them all.

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Who knows, if you’re lucky I might dive into other Slasher Franchises.

Tis’ the season.

This Halloween season I’m diving into the sequel timeline to watch Halloween 4-6 for the first time!

Here is where Danielle Harris enters the chat and we’ve lost Jamie Lee Curtis.

To start off, this movie absolutely nails the fall, Halloween vibe. The opening sequence is pure perfection—pumpkins, leaves, and rural setting snapshots.

*Spoilers abound - you’ve been warned*

Halloween 4 is where a string of horrifying plot holes begins for me.

We begin with the transport of Michael Myers from a medical facility back to Smith Grove. His face is bandaged up, one would assume from the burns he sustained in Halloween 2. Obviously since Michael is being transported, he will be escaping, that’s just the way this goes.

We move on to focus on 7 year old Jamie (Danielle Harris) who is living with a foster family because her parents died 11 months ago. We confirm her mother is Laurie Strode when Jamie is looking at a photo of her crying….

Earlier in the movie we get confirmation from a medical professional in the ambulance transporting Michael back to Smith Grove, that he has a niece.

We’re also shown that this is Haddonfield in 1988.

So this is 10 years after Halloween 2. Which means virginal Laurie Strode got married and had a kid in the 3 years following Halloween 2……. seems unlikely but ok.

Also if this is 10 years later, why is Michael still wrapped up injured?

Nonetheless, I honestly really was digging his mummy look.

We will discuss the plethora of kills Michael has on the way to Jamie that has nothing to do with a butcher knife a bit later in this piece.

What I would like to discuss, is the parallel between this movie and Halloween Kills that I’ve never seen anyone discuss, which makes me question if I’m following the wrong people or if it’s really not being discussed frequently.

As more bodies appear in Haddonfield we get a mob mentality response from the old men in town who decide to gear up with their shotguns and chase Michael down, much like the mob in Halloween Kills. Both mobs killing an innocent man in the process of doing what mobs do.

The peak of this movie goes down at the Sheriff’s house, because this is where the Sheriff brings Jamie and her foster sister Rachel to keep them safe. Rachel’s boyfriend/crush is there because we find out he’s sleeping with the Sheriff’s daughter.

Another “this feels like Halloween Kills” moment is when the boyfriend/crush squares off with Michael. It felt VERY similar to Cameron’s meeting with Michael in Halloween Kills. So I’m now questioning how much of Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends is actually stolen story structure from Halloween 4 and 5…..

Does anyone else feel this way?

Moving on, Michael chases the girls (Jamie and Rachel) through the house, eventually out on to the roof. AND LET ME BE CLEAR. We need to put Rachel in more Final Girl discussions. This woman fought off Michael Myers, on a rooftop, with her foster sister crawling on her back and eventually lowered the kid off the roof safely. Rachel suffers a fall off the roof and survives. This is all PEAK Final Girl material for me.

Loomis takes Jamie to the school to try and keep her safe, which fails, but he does set off the fire alarm to alert police where they are. So the mob shows up at the school and offers to transport the girls out of town to keep them safe and we get a fun and wild ride of Michael crawling into the back of the pickup, killing the rednecks in the back and then the driver of the truck forcing Rachel to take over driving the truck (which is a stick shift might I add). AGAIN what a Final Girl queen. She eventually slams the breaks, throwing Michael from the truck, when he stands up she gases it and hits him — throwing him through the air (a little bit of an LOL moment with the stuffed dummy flying through the air). Police show up and the mob and the cops shoot Michael dozens of times.

We end the movie back in the house with Jamie and her foster family - for the ending of the century. Jamie in her little clown costume, very similar to young Michael’s clown costume, goes upstairs and STABS HER FOSTER MOM WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS.

THE END.

LEGENDARY.

Overall, I really enjoyed Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. I think I could put it in my rotation of Halloween favorites.

The List of Michael Kills with no Butcher Knife Involved

• Thumb through the skull of a man.

• Stabbing the mechanic with a long spear like object and then hanging said mechanic.

• Beats a woman with a phone.

• Over these 3 movies he has now killed 2 dogs with his bare hands.

• Electrocution by throwing an innocent man into an electrical box causing a town blackout.

• Cut off the arm of a cop.

• Impales a a woman with a shotgun.

He is clearly a man of opportunity. I still question how we landed on the butcher knife.

Who is writing and directing what?

Just so we can start to look at who’s responsible for what here.

Halloween (1978)

Writer: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Director: John Carpenter

Halloween II (1981)

Writers: John Carpenter, Debra Hill

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Writers: Dhani Lipsius, Larry Rattner, Benjamin Ruffner

Director: Dwight H. Little

Make sure you checkout my reviews of Halloween 1 and 2 and follow along for my upcoming reviews of 5 and 6.

Subscribe now

Who knows, if you’re lucky I might dive into other Slasher Franchises.

Tis’ the Season.