{"id":148734,"date":"2025-09-16T19:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T19:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/148734\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T19:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T19:42:07","slug":"chain-reactions-deftly-contextualizes-a-grisly-american-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/148734\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Chain Reactions’ Deftly Contextualizes a Grisly American Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Hollywood scraps over who\u2019ll be the next<\/a> to take a bite out of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre<\/a>, a new documentary is here to remind us just how much Tobe Hooper\u2019s 1974 original<\/a> stands alone. Chain Reactions<\/a> follows the elegant, thoughtful style of director Alexandre O. Philippe\u2019s earlier film-centric docs, including 78\/52<\/a> (about the shower scene in Psycho), Memory: The Origins of Alien<\/a>,\u00a0Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist<\/a>, and\u00a0Lynch\/Oz<\/a>.\u00a0Five talking heads and carefully chosen footage and clips weave together, exploring Texas Chain Saw\u2018s impact on cultural, artistic, and personal levels.<\/p>\n

The interviewees are also carefully chosen: comedian Patton Oswalt, filmmakers Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) and Karyn Kusama (Jennifer\u2019s Body, The Invitation), film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and author Stephen King. They all have in common a deep love of Texas Chain Saw, but they come at that appreciation from different angles and contexts.<\/p>\n

\"Chain\u00a9 Exhibit A Pictures\/Exurbia Films <\/p>\n

Oswalt speaks about his earliest movie memory\u2014a terrifying encounter with the silent Nosferatu at a childhood Halloween party, probably around the time Texas Chain Saw was released in 1975. A budding horror fan, he became fascinated with what felt like a forbidden text, an impression that held up once he finally got to watch Texas Chain Saw as so many Gen X kids did: on a friend\u2019s VCR, from a tape that had seen better days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has the feel that the killers in the movie have stolen a camera and are filming all this,\u201d he muses, and also points out that \u201cevery frame has something unnerving in it.\u201d You can tell Oswalt has watched Texas Chain Saw many times since that first viewing and has thought a lot about it, especially its portrayal of Leatherface and themes of blue-collar survival. His apocalyptic reading of what the sun represents in the movie is something I\u2019d never considered but now can\u2019t get out of my head.<\/p>\n

Miike\u2019s first Texas Chain Saw experience, he explains in his segment, came only by chance, after the Charlie Chaplin movie he\u2019d wanted to see was sold out. \u201cFor the first time, I felt movies could be something dangerous,\u201d he remembers, and admits buying that second-choice ticket ended up changing his life. If his 15-year-old self hadn\u2019t ducked into Texas Chain Saw, he says, \u201clife would have been different. I likely wouldn\u2019t be a film director now.\u201d He also talks about the film in comparison to Japanese horror, both traditional and the more recent J-horror releases\u2014and gives some fascinating insight into the use of violence in cinema, including his own notably squishy titles.<\/p>\n

Heller-Nicholas may be the least recognizable among the talking heads, but her point of view is no less interesting, especially as she speaks about growing up in Australia and how Texas Chain Saw was perceived there. Like Oswalt, she first got to see it thanks to a \u201cshitty VHS release\u201d and recalls that the yellowed, low-quality presentation actually enhanced the \u201cfeeling that you were watching something really covert that you weren\u2019t meant to see.\u201d The film leans into that sense no matter which version you\u2019re watching\u2014but Heller-Nicholas\u2019 memories are something people who\u2019ve only seen Texas Chain Saw\u2018s pristine 4K restoration will never fully understand, for better and for worse.<\/p>\n

\"Chain\u00a9 Exurbia Films <\/p>\n

Best-selling author King, who recounts watching Texas Chain Saw for the first time in the early 1980s in a nearly empty theater, appreciates the way Hooper\u2014who he worked with on 1992\u2019s Sleepwalkers; Hooper also directed the 1979 Salem\u2019s Lot<\/a> miniseries\u2014approached his tale with \u201cno barrier that makes you think this is just a movie,\u201d likening it to Night of the Living Dead in that way.<\/p>\n

King also digs into the difference between \u201chorror\u201d and \u201cterror,\u201d something he\u2019s uniquely qualified to speak on, while praising Texas Chain Saw for its \u201coutlaw\u201d aspects. \u201cThe artist\u2019s job is to make you uncomfortable,\u201d he points out, though anyone watching Chain Reactions has surely willingly endured that agonizing dinner scene\u2014including Grandpa\u2019s feeble attempts at striking a killing blow with his hammer\u2014more than once.<\/p>\n

Kusama also saw Texas Chain Saw for the first time on a big screen, at an art-house theater. Her discussion explores Leatherface\u2019s confusing role in the cannibal family and the ways the film can be read as \u201ca vision of America\u2019s failure\u201d as well as \u201ca depiction of primal human urges and disappointments.\u201d She\u2019s the only interviewee to point to the opening crawl\u2019s claims of the movie being based on a true story, a warning that barely prepares the viewer for the nightmare to come.<\/p>\n

After you watch Chain Reactions, you will immediately want to rewatch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to look for the new meanings the documentary may have helped you discover, as well as to appreciate the film\u2019s singular blend of beauty and grisly anguish. As Kusama notes, there\u2019s \u201calways more subtlety and meaning to glean from rewatching it.\u201d Even more poignantly, as Miike says, \u201cWe must hold Texas Chain Saw dear and continue to nurture it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chain Reactions opens September 19 in New York and Los Angeles; it expands nationwide September 26.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Hollywood scraps over who\u2019ll be the next to take a bite out of The Texas Chain Saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[79204,49,48,79205,75,79206,337,79207,19657,79208,22028],"class_list":{"0":"post-148734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-alexandre-o-philippe","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-chain-reactions","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-karyn-kusama","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-patton-oswalt","16":"tag-stephen-king","17":"tag-takashi-miike","18":"tag-the-texas-chain-saw-massacre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}