‘Long live the new flesh!’ A digital design based on David Cronenberg’s 1983 film ‘Videodrome.’
 
Outside of the fact that he is a talented artist with a deep love of classic 60s, 70s, and 80s horror, unfortunately, I do not know, nor was I able to dig much up on self-professed “comic enthusiast, music freak, horror lover, and videogame collector” Nache Ramos. But here’s what I do know. Ramos is based in Alcoli (or Alcoy), Spain where he has been a graphic designer and illustrator for over a decade. His art has been used to decorate snowboards made by Wi-Me Snowboards, and for Australian snowboard company Catalyst. In 2018, he won a Guns ‘N’ Roses contest which asked fans of the band (via Twitter), to create artwork based on their 1987 album Appetite for Destruction. Other than well-deserved accolades for his submission, I’m not sure what Ramos got as a prize, but I suppose gaining exposure to G’N'R’s 6+million Twitter followers is very much a good thing. This was also the same year Ramos moved from using traditional artistic mediums to creating his work digitally. This brings me to Nache’s nostalgic interpretations which infuse the look of old-school comic books with Ramos’ love of science fiction and horror films he grew up with.

Like any horror fan worth their VHS collection, Ramos digs the films of director John Carpenter and has created several digitally designed homages to Carpenter’s films in vintage comic book style. Others include David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (pictured at the top of this post), Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Richard Donner’s bone-chilling 1976 film, The Omen. If this all sounds good to you (and it should), Ramos also accepts commissions via his Instagram. You can also pick up very reasonably-priced prints of Ramos’ super-cool fictional movie posters on his Red Bubble page. I myself picked up Nache’s take on Videodrome. Scroll on to see more of Ramos’ fantastic faux-vintage comics.
 

 

 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

A Japanese movie poster prominently featuring Sally (played by actress Marilyn Burns) for ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ 1974.
 
As we’re all in need of a good distraction right now, let’s momentarily escape into the cinematic world of hillbilly cannibals, as told by Tobe Hooper in 1974’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. First of all, it’s that time of year again if you’re still keeping track of the current date or happen to remember what we used to use calendars for. For myself, a year-long dedicated horror film fanatic, I make it a point to re-watch my favorite horror films during October’s 31 days, and TCM ‘74 is always one of them. Like so many great movies, it was filmed under remarkably difficult circumstances—yielding agonizingly authentic performances from its cast. To say nothing of the athletic screaming and real injuries suffered by one of Leatherface’s targets, Sally, played by actress Marilyn Burns (RIP). Let’s begin this dusty, blood-filled journey through Texas with some of the things Burns was subjected to on the film’s set.

Marilyn Burns is one of cinema’s best known scream queens and was in her early 20s when she won the role of Sally in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Burns had appeared in a few films before TCM, but, according to the actress, her scenes ended up on the “cutting room floor.” Shot in extremely isolated areas around Texas, Hooper’s goal of creating the isolation necessary for a killing ground to thrive was immersive. Filming began during the summer heat of 1973, where temperatures in the famous Texas Chain Saw house would reach 120 degrees. Actors would need to take a break from filming to vomit due to the heat enhancing the smell of rotting animal bones and carcasses. Outdoor temperatures were boiling into the 100-110 degrees region every day. Enter Burns, in one of the film’s many chase scenes, being pursued by 300lb, 6’4 Icelandic actor Gunnar Hansen (RIP) in full Leatherface gear, rumbling chainsaw in hand. To increase your blood pressure for this story, Hansen had never used a chainsaw in his life before he appeared in the film. The story of one of Sally’s more serious injuries on set while being relentlessly chased through the thicket by Leatherface, was revealed by Hooper in the Toronto-based newspaper Excalibur in 1974:

“She (Burns) had a few accidents on the set. After running through the thicket, she had to go to a plastic surgeon to have thorns removed from her breasts.”

 

An image of Hooper’s interview in Toronto newspaper Excalibur, March 27th, 1974.
 
So, as it pertains to Burns’ famous screaming in TCM, in this particular instance (and others in the thicket), Burns’ screams are all too real, and the blood on her shirt is largely her own. Talk about taking one for the team. Here’s another recollection from Burns about how she and the rest of the kids in the doomed van almost met their maker by messing around with gunpowder:

“It was real hot and miserable, especially when Ed [actor Ed Neal who plays the hitchhiker] came on and gunpowder had to explode, and we didn’t know what we were doing. They just put gunpowder on his hand and lit a match. We almost killed ourselves!”

Moving on to Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen probably suffered more than anyone else in the cast except for Burns. If you’re a horror nerd like myself, you probably know that Tobe Hooper required that Hansen’s Leatherface costume never be washed to ensure continuity. His smell would become intolerable to Hansen and the entire cast, adding to the oppressive feeling of decay and demise. Additionally, in nearly every case in the film (with the notable exception of Mary Church, Marilyn Burns’ stuntwoman), no stunt doubles were used. Hooper would film chainsaw segments in three stages—once with the real blade, another with just the chain “roaring” and a third with the clutch out (noted in the Excalibur article). So, let’s imagine the horror of being Gunnar Hansen, running through the dark, with a real, running chainsaw in his “Killing Mask” (one of three different masks worn by Leatherface depending on his mood). I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Lots, it turns out, including a one-take shot in the darkness with Burns and Leatherface where Hansen fucking tripped, sending the running chainsaw flying through the air. NO BIG DEAL.

For all his efforts, and after waiting nine months for his paycheck, Hansen, who wrote a book about his experience in the film, received a whopping $47.50 for his performance in TCM. The final insult would come from the media in his homeland of Iceland who were completely unaware of Gunnar’s participation in the film and gave the film a two-star rating. And since we were just discussing chainsaws, let’s find out more about how they contributed to Wayne Bell’s infamous “score.” And who better to talk about what that was like than the man himself:

“Pretty much my job was finding all the sound effects we needed, which often meant inventing ways to make them. You have to ask yourself, what does chainsaw teeth hitting a wheelchair sound like? How do you capture it? What we would now have a few effects editors, a background editor, and a Foley team do, I did it all myself back then. We didn’t do any post chainsaw. We made a point to capture what we needed while we were on set. Gunnar, the actor that played Leatherface, was a real team player – most of the production chainsaw you hear in the film was operated by Leatherface himself.”

Of course, there are other sounds throughout TCM, including noise made by kids’ toys—specifically of the musical variety such as cymbals, maracas, and the ever-popular xylophone. Bell also amusingly recalls “torturing” his Kay stand-up five-string bass doing anything they could to cultivate other creepy sounds to enhance the film. According to Bell, these additional sounds were recorded in a room in Hooper’s house, filled with all kinds of instruments. Any animal sounds heard in the film are credited to Bell’s father, a very talented animal sound imitator. Who knew? Fun fact! Any chicken sounds you hear are from actual chickens, not Bell’s pet-imitating Dad. Though no actual “soundtrack” exists for TCM, the original quarter-inch tapes do, and Bell has mused about the possibility of putting out a “LoFi, distorted, noisy and dirty” version of it someday. One final thing regarding the sounds you hear in TCM concerns the uneasy noise you hear during the opening and again after the film. Bell is very protective of the sound, which he describes as a “stinger” that he created that has become synonymous with TCM ‘74, and to date, he has never revealed how it was conceived or made. Kind of like the secret ingredient in a certain barbeque sauce.
 

Put on a happy face! Three of Leatherface’s masks. Image source for this and the following three images.
 

A candid shot of Burns traipsing through the thicket in the dark.
 

Another image of Leatherface pursuing Sally through the brambles.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
I guess there’s not much more to be said about The Texas Chain Massacre that hasn’t already been given. One of the most influential seventies American films after Star Wars and perhaps The Godfather and Jaws.  What I remember of it at the time of its release has little to do with the film but everything to do with expectation and rumor.

I first heard of the movie in the schoolyard. I was too young to go see it and living in Scotland meant if you didn’t see a movie on release then you had to make do with the semaphore of rumor, exaggeration and bullshit. Which is the part that kinda interests me because why would a junior high school kid in Scotland hear about The Texas Chain Massacre unless it was something important? There was no Internet, no Google, no streaming services, no mobile, none of that stuff. Information was read in comics, newspapers and magazines or recieved second, third or fourth hand from friends who had a relative in Canada or went for a holiday to Florida where there was a bad frost and all the oranges on the trees turned into fruit sorbet. That kind of thing.

The first story I heard about this particular movie came (I think) from a guy called John Scott, who claimed some of the actors genuinely died during the making of the movie and there was this guy called Leatherface who was a butcher and he was still out there dancing with his chainsaw in the sunlight.

I had no idea what this meant, but the name “Leatherface” implied something utterly perverse and deranged. Was it a gimp mask? Or, maybe an Ed Gein flesh mask? We all knew about Ed Gein as he was our parents’ bogeyman because of Psycho, a film one relative described to me as “the wickedest movie ever made.” Gein was a real life monster like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were real monsters. We all knew something about the horrific things they had done. But then again, what we knew of Gein was mainly through exaggeration and myth. In fact, half the stories I heard about the old cross-dressing cannibal had nothing to do with him and more to do with the speaker’s imagination, which in comparison to the actual crimes—or even those of Hindley and Brady—were utterly anemic.

The second tale I heard about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a reiteration of the first, that the film was based on a true story. As it turned out this was what the film actually claimed, true events which took place on August 18th, 1973. But as filming on this movie finished four days before the date given in the opening titles this was unlikely, if not impossible. That was director Tobe Hooper’s intention. He considered America during the Nixon years to be riddled with fake news and propaganda pumped out by the government.

The third tale was something to do with a guy who used two teen girls to source young boys to rape, kill and torture. This made the film seem far more debauched and unsavory. We were skeptical about this, which shows you how our pre-pubescent minds had some kind of warped standard where torturing, killing and eating people was okay, but raping, torturing and killing people—especially boys—was a step too far. Go figure. But as it later turned out, this was a tad closer to the truth as co-writer Kim Henkel had:

...noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne ... said, “I did these crimes, and I’m gonna stand up and take it like a man.” Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.

The final story of note was the one where someone said The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was so horrific that it had been banned. This happened to be true, well at least in certain countries, but we didn’t know where and why or how the film had been banned. It was just left to our imaginations to ferment the worst possible scenarios as to what the film was actually about.

It was more than a decade before I got to see the film and thought it well-made, clever, and entertaining. Though I guess I would have paid top dollar to have seen the movie my fevered imagination had concocted all those years ago.
 

 

 

 
More snaps of the infamous cinematic cannibal family, after the jump… 

 
Dangerous Minds was saddened to learn that director Tobe Hooper died on Saturday. Hooper is best known for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, his 1974 low-budget horror masterpiece concerning a group of young people terrorized by a family of cannibalistic nutjobs. The movie was an artistic, critical and financial success, grossing more than $30 million in the U.S. Hopper’s anticipated follow-up was initially given a limited release in 1976.

Eaten Alive is a horror/exploitation film about a deranged hotel owner who kills his guests and feeds them to his pet crocodile. It has solid B-movie cast, including Marilyn Burns, who memorably screamed her head off in Chain Saw, and a heavily made-up Carolyn Jones, who was “Morticia” on the The Addams Family, playing brothel owner Miss Hattie. A young Robert Englund (a/k/a “Freddy Kruger”) is great as the lowlife “Buck.” Englund utters the unforgettable first words in the picture: “Name’s Buck. I’m rarin’ to fuck.’” The dialogue was later adapted by Quentin Tarantino and used in Kill Bill: Volume One.

Eaten Alive was given a wide release in the states in 1977, and in 1978, a slightly edited cut was approved by the BBFC, the British ratings board. Released in the UK as Death Trap, it gained notoriety a few years later, after it appeared on home video.
 

 
In Britain during the early 1980s, there was a moral panic regarding the availability of certain movies on VHS. At first, motion pictures that came out on video didn’t have to be rated, meaning anyone of any age could rent them. Especially violent and gory pictures like Driller Killer and I Spit on Your Grave were singled out as being inappropriate for young people; the films identified as such came to be known as “Video Nasties.” In 1982, Death Trap was one of those successfully prosecuted under Britain’s Obscene Publications Act, and the distributor had to surrender all VHS copies to the court. If you’re wondering the fate of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, well, it was denied certification by the BBFC in 1975 and didn’t come out in Britain until 1999—! The following year, Death Trap was once again made available on home video in the country.
 

Hooper and actor Neville Brand on set.

After repeated disputes with producers, Hooper quit before filming of Eaten Alive was complete, leaving it to be finished by others. While the final product certainly doesn’t match the quality of Chain Saw, the picture isn’t without its merits. Many scenes are effectively unsettling, especially those involving the terrorized child staying at the hotel, which are particularly unnerving. Hooper’s use of color is notable, and the atmospheric outside shots look really cool.
 

 
I tend to agree with this IMDb user’s assessment of the film and of Neville Brand, who plays the hotel owner:

‘Death Trap’ reminds me of Dario Argento’s movies. Not in the subject matter, or directorial style, but in the sense that what you’re seeing is a filmed nightmare, devoid of logic, but full of memorable over the top images. The sets are cheap and nasty, the acting varies from quite good to plain silly, the “plot” can basically be summed up as: people check into a seedy motel and get fed to a pet crocodile by its nutty owner, but you know what? It’s still a hell of an entertaining trashy horror movie.

Neville Brand (‘The Ninth Configuration’) gives a gonzo, almost vintage Timothy Carey-like performance as psycho scythe wielding “Judd,” owner of the one place in town you really don’t want to check in to.

 
More after the jump…

Dennis Hopper (dressed as his character ‘Lt. Boude “Lefty” Enright’) and director Tobe Hooper on the set of the 1986 film, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2’.
 
As I know many of our Dangerous Minds readers are also fans of movies that curdle even the blackest of blood-types, I’m sure that you will enjoy ogling these “behind the scenes” shots from some of my favorite horror films like Dario Argento’s Suspiria, the second installment of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw franchise, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (that features a chainsaw-wielding Dennis Hopper, pictured above), and the films of the great John Carpenter, among others.
 

Dario Argento goofing around on the set of his 1977 film, ‘Suspiria.’
 
Images of Dario Argento not being laser-serious for a change on set (pictured above), to candid photos of actors hanging out during their downtime still dressed like their gory characters, as well as amusing shots of FX master, Tom Savini in action happily creating fiends that have frequented your nightmares for the last few decades, follow. That said, some of what you’re about to see should be considered NSFW. But you knew that the minute I said “chainsaw massacre,” right?
 

Director John Carpenter with P.J. Soles and John Michael Graham on the set of ‘Halloween,’ 1978.
 
More after the jump…