Editorials
[Set Report] ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’!
On January 4, 2013 Lionsgate will gas-up their chainsaw and pull the cord on Texas Chainsaw 3D, the John Luessenhop-directed “sequel” to Tobe Hooper’s classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre that stars Dan Yeager, John Dugan, Bill Moseley, Alexandra Daddario, Sue Rock, Tania Raymonde, Scott Eastwood, Gunnar Hansen, Tobe Hooper, Paul Rae, Keram Malicki-Sánchez, Ritchie Montgomery, Trey Songz, Marilyn Burns, Shaun Sipos, Thom Barry and Richard Riehler.
It’s hard to believe the film is finally hitting theaters as we sent Bloody Disgusting correspondent Alyse Wax to the Louisiana set back in August of 2011 (when it was titled Leatherface 3D). This morning we’re excited to finally bring you Alyse’s set report, along with two images exclusive to those who attended!
In addition to this report, Evan Dickson has interviews with John Luessenhop and Alexandra Daddario hitting later this week and early next week. Watch for more leading up to the Leatherface’s return right here on Bloody Disgusting.
By: Alyse Wax
Shreveport, Louisiana in the dead of August was not a thrilling thought for this city girl whose entire knowledge of Louisiana (outside of New Orleans) comes from “True Blood”. But the idea of checking out the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre film definitely piqued my interest. After all, early word was that this installment – which they were calling Leatherface 3D on set – was meant as a sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original classic, and completely ignored every other Chainsaw-related flick.
The studio picked a good day for ten journalists to come visit the set (aside from the 98 degree heat and 50% humidity). The film opens right at the end of the original Chainsaw, and “moves into modern time,” according to producer Carl Mazzocone. “Our version opens on the last scene of [Tobe Hooper’s] original, and shows the Sawyers’s arrest. All the other Texas Chainsaw Massacres don’t exist to us,” Mazzocone tells us. It’s not so much what they are shooting – bits and pieces of the police standoff – but where. We are actually at the Sawyer farmhouse. The design team worked with “forensic precision” to recreate the original Chainsaw house in a barren field in the middle of a military base. From the swing out front to the slashes in the front door, it really feels like we are in 1974.
“It feels like home,” said Marilyn Burns. The original “Last Girl,” Burns played Sally in Hooper’s Chainsaw and has a cameo in Leatherface 3D as Grandma Verna. Gunnar Hansen, Hooper’s Leatherface, also has a cameo in the film as the Sawyer family patriarch (“Boss Hog” as he calls him), and he was actually startled to see the house. “I was shocked at how real it was. It was creepy seeing it again.” A tour through the interior of the house revealed only one thing out of place. “A chicken cage was a little off,” Hansen laughed. “Otherwise, everything was perfect.” From a fangirl perspective, being at the house was overwhelming. The interior was slightly less impressive than the exterior; in the daylight, it didn’t have the griminess, that stench you can almost smell through the screen. Up close, the “arm chair” was very obviously created out of plastic limbs. But walking up that long dirt road towards the iconic house was positively breathtaking. It was chilling, surreal, and almost indescribable – like walking into a different universe. I was heartbroken to learn that the following week, the entire structure would be burned to the ground.
Burns and Hansen aren’t the only two Chainsaw alums to have roles in this film. John Dugan returns as Grandpa, and Bill Moseley – who was not in the original, but played Chop-top in Hooper’s sequel – appears as another member of the Sawyer clan. “What could be more fun?” Burns asks.
It is interesting to note that during our eight hours or so on set, the only “new blood” we got to interview was Scott Eastwood (yup, Clint’s son). All we got out of him was that he played a young cop. We didn’t get to speak to top-billed Alexandra Daddario (Bereavement), who plays Heather, the girl who comes out to Texas to collect a mysterious inheritance and discovers she is related to the Sawyer clan because she wasn’t on set. [She was offered at a later date, and Evan Dickson will be posting his interview tomorrow!] We also didn’t get to speak to Dan Yeager, who plays Leatherface in this film due to scheduling issues.
Returning cast members were drawn back to the Massacre because they loved the script. “I heard it was going to be in 3D, and that was exciting,” said Burns. “Then I read the script and I loved it. I can’t tell you how many [Chainsaw] scripts I have read, tried to write, tried to produce… how many attempts from my friends…. I’ve seen so many millions of tries. I even went to see one of the remakes, because they told me it would be exactly like Chainsaw 1. But then I watched it and thought, ‘Wait a minute. This isn’t my movie.’ These people were dying, they came back to life, they added family, another town… forget it! But when I read this script, I was interested right from the beginning. I was amazed at what they had accomplished, all the twists and turns, all the surprises. It excited me!”
Hansen thought it was a good script as well, but it wasn’t what he imagined. “Years and years ago – before there ever was a second Chainsaw, I had a notion of what would make a good Chainsaw 2. Years have gone by. The older brother has escaped with Leatherface and the cook – who is not dead, but a pile of crumpled bones. They are living in an abandoned hotel at the edge of a small city in the Midwest. He has made a deal with the hotel owner to stay in residence and make sure the hotel doesn’t get vandalized. No one knows he is there with his brothers. Leatherface spends a lot of time just staring out the window, and at night he will take the cook and put him on his shoulders and go roaming through the forest. Some people decide to pull a scam on the owners and show up, and tell the cook that they are prospective buyers and have made this arrangement to stay a couple days at the hotel, to make sure it is what they want to buy. So this sets up, basically, another ‘teenagers trapped in an old house’ plot.”
What of this new Leatherface, anyway? We got to see one hazy iPhone photo of Yeager in full costume, and a few of us journalists got a split-second glance at a mask being transported – obviously a mistake, for it was quickly covered with Duvateen. Mike McCarty of KNB FX was heading up the effects on-set, and he promised that we would see the original Leatherface mask (no surprise since the beginning of this film overlaps with the end of the original). He also revealed that there would be “three new masks.” “The masks definitely have a lot to do with the story,” McCarty promises, as each new mask is the face of a new victim. “There is a mask that is one of his favorites, and there is a mask he wears at the end of the film.”
Naturally, the gore level was of particular interest. Though most of the violence and gore in Hooper’s original took place off-camera, the mind’s eye tricks most people into believing they are actually watching every gruesome detail. But in today’s age of torture-porn and shortened attention spans, you have to assume Leatherface 3D will be a bloodbath. McCarty says that his team arrived on set with about 20 gallons of blood, and that day he ordered more. “It’s a Chainsaw Massacre buffet,” he said simply. With hands stained red, I don’t doubt that.
I am a little concerned about the use of 3D. Mazzocone went with 3D because “I think 3D is cool.” He promises it will be “user-friendly” 3D that won’t cause nausea or eye strain, and that the movie was “written for 3D.” I strongly believe that 3D only works in more gimmicky situations (My Bloody Valentine 3D and Piranha 3D are both good examples) so I fear Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D will either become silly (not necessarily bad, but not the effect you want when trying to recapture the original) or the 3D will be pointless and a mere annoyance (as in the Fright Night remake).
It all sounds good on paper. The house looks phenomenal; the original cast approves. Mazzocone says that Tobe Hooper has been very supportive of their endeavor, and was going to make a cameo, but couldn’t make it work with his schedule. The producer speaks with a lot of love for Texas Chainsaw. “It’s a fine line between copycat and homage,” he explains. “I like the simplicity of Tobe’s. We respect his style, but don’t want to copy it.” Mazzocone specifically brought in Gunnar because he felt that after the original film, Gunnar was overlooked and typecast as an actor. “I wanted to show him respect.”
Curiously, in his deal to acquire the rights to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Mazzocone bought the rights to six sequels. How many franchises can you think of that were still worthwhile by the time they got to sequel six? Ultimately, we will have to wait until January, 4 2013 before passing final judgment. – Alyse Wax
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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