#1: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Hey Grandpa, we’re going to let you have this one.

What would Halloween be without nightmares, horribly graphic nightmares that jerk you awake in the middle of the night and allow you to enjoy the even better feeling of realizing, “It was only a dream. It was only a dream.” Co-writer/director Tobe Hooper’s appreciated but still under-appreciated debut masterpiece is the closest any horror film has ever come to truly capturing the experience of an unrelenting, claustrophobic nightmare. But unlike “Last House on the Left” (which I strongly considered putting at number one) the story of five twenty-somethings out for a Texas road trip who meet up with a bizarre cannibal family does not collapse your soul into a black cloud of depression. In fact, it’s just the opposite — the horror of it all exhilarates.

To set us on edge from the word go, the story opens with a menacing and foreboding tone that promises horrible things to come with the help of John Laroquette’s straight-forward, documentary-style voice over (which perfectly matches Daniel Pearl’s gritty, washed-out cinematography) and a series of grotesque photographs taken at a crime scene where a number of grave-robbings have taken place. The photographs flash onto the screen, one after another with an unnerving, deliberate rhythm made even more disturbing by wince-inducing sound effects. It’s into this macabre setting our young protagonists enter – three guys, two girls – driving their Scooby-Doo van. They’ve come to make sure their grandparents’ graves aren’t among those desecrated and to relive some pleasant memories by visiting old childhood haunts.

Sally (Marilyn Burns — one of cinema’s great unheralded screamers) and the wheelchair-bound and childish Franklin (Paul Partain) are brother and sister; the other three are friends and, except for the petulant Franklin, coupled up. They all make the fatal decision, though, of picking up a disturbed hitchhiker who sits in the back of the van to regale them with graphic inside information about the local meat slaughterhouse before staging a strange ritual that involves, among other things, the burning of Franklin’s photograph, the cutting open of his own hand, and finally marking the van with blood after the five freaked out passengers get over their shock and kick the weirdo out. (more…)

I’ve noticed a lot of my brothers and sisters on the right are up in arms at Law & Order: SVU after last week’s episode. I did not see the whole episode in question but did see a clip where a character played by John Larroquette mentions three well know conservative talk show hosts and calls them a cancer on the land.

Before I get rolling, in the spirit of full disclosure I will admit to being a Law & Order junkie. My DVR is full of my favorite Law & Order: Criminal Intent episodes, which is by far the strongest of the three series. I will also admit that in my mind Law & Order: SVU is to the Law & Order brand what Deep Space Nine was to the Star Trek brand. It is a weak cousin that may have been spreading the brand a little too thin. (more…)

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“No accident it happened on NBC, which is propaganda central in the U.S.A. It’s also the lowest rated network.”

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