Shocktoberfest #2 - DIY Horror
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Oct 2 2010, 9:10 AM
Cheap, on-the-fly horror flicks are a dime-a-dozen these days. With the advent of digital video and HD cameras, any one with a few grand can rent a top-of-the-line camera package, use a Final Cut Pro editing set-up on their MacBook Pro and use software to create GG monsters and digital blood.
Indie movies cost just as much to make before— but these were guys making movies using short-ends (the hunks of film-stock leftover from other productions), noisy 16mm cameras and Moviola editing machines to make their labors of love, with the emphasis on “labor.” Most looked like they were shot in their parents’ basements, the local Moose Lodge or a nearby State Park— because they were. And no filmmakers have worked harder than Sam Raimi and Tobe Hooper did on The Evil Dead (1983) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Both are brutal, take-no-prisoners exercises in sheer terror and both, from all accounts, were just as tough to make as they are at times to watch.
Sam Raimi is best-known as the humble, understated guy behind Sony’s Spiderman franchise, but horror buffs have been Raimi fanatics ever since they saw The Evil Dead grace an 1982 issue of Fangoria Magazine, where Stephen King, after seeing an early cut, raved that it was the most “ferociously original horror film” in years. The follow-ups, Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn and Army Of Darkness, are lighter and goofier; The Evil Dead, on the other hand, is relentless. This is a film where the hapless hero Ash (the oft-abused Bruce Campbell) is not only attacked by his buddy, now transformed into a demon, but is mocked by another of his possessed friends, chained in the cellar below, at the same time. The FX are primitive — melty gore that would now be done with high-tech prosthetics or GG is chunky stop-motion animation — and the wild camerawork, often involving a camera being strapped to a two-by-four and raced through the woods, has an anything-goes film-student quality to it. But the film’s rough edges work in its favor. The damn thing is a perpetual motion machine — it never stops moving — and if the backwoods setting feels real, it’s because they shot it in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee (fans would trek out miles into the woods to try to find the “Evil Dead cabin” and steal a piece of it).
The new Blu-Ray of The Evil Dead from Anchor Bay features a documentary on the making of the film, “One By One We Will Take You: The Untold Saga Of The Evil Dead,” which, chock-full of outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage, shows what an ordeal it was to make the film far from civilization in the middle of nowhere— and then for Raimi, Campbell and producer Rob Tapert to try to gain theatrical distribution when the home video boom was just starting.
If Raimi and company froze while making The Evil Dead (to the point where cups of fake blood became popsicles), Tobe Hooper roasted in the Texas summer heat making the incredible Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in the early 70s. The film has never been bested in terms of sheer terror. Odds are you won’t turn into a demon after hearing a tape-recording of the “Necronomicon.” However, there’s a halfway decent chance you’ll run into the likes of the Hitch-Hiker (the manic Ed Neal) on the side of a blistering country road in the middle of a Texas summer. The actual plot about a family that uses wayward travelers as the key ingredient to their sausages is unsettling enough — despite that, the film is practically bloodless — but it’s the you-are-there, documentary-style vibe of the film which works so well. You believe in the likes of the crazy Hitch-Hiker; he’s the burn-out left behind at Burning Man who takes too many drugs and starts playing with his knife.
Hooper’s brilliance is his deliberate lack of artistry— or so you think (the soundtrack by Hooper and Wayne Bell is actually incredibly avant-garde and experimental). The home of the “Family” that contains the Hitch-Hiker, the genial-but-homicidal Cook (Jim Siedow), the Grandfather (John Dugan, actually a young man under saggy prosthetics) and the infamous chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), is art-directed to a tee by the late Robert A. Burns, full of furniture that contains bones and, in one horrific touch, a bird-cage that’s too small for the chicken inside it. Lead Marilyn Burns has talked about how much meat and detritus filled the set and how it all began to stink as it got hotter and hotter; the cast had to leave to avoid getting sick. The production was nearly as grueling as the events which take place on screen and, worse, after Hooper put it all together — editing it in his living room — the distributor, Bryanston, a shady operation with Mob ties that earlier put out the porn blockbuster Deep Throat, ended up declaring bankruptcy and, until they later signed a deal with a young New Line Cinema, Hooper and the rest of the crew didn’t make a dime.
There have been many so-called “low-budget classics” over the years, but truly, no films have earned their respect the hard way The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — literally made from blood, sweat and tears — have.
Cheap, on-the-fly horror flicks are a dime-a-dozen these days. With the advent of digital video and HD cameras, any one with a few grand can rent a top-of-the-line camera package, use a Final Cut Pro editing set-up on their MacBook Pro and use software to create GG monsters and digital blood.
Indie movies cost just as much to make before— but these were guys making movies using short-ends (the hunks of film-stock leftover from other productions), noisy 16mm cameras and Moviola editing machines to make their labors of love, with the emphasis on “labor.” Most looked like they were shot in their parents’ basements, the local Moose Lodge or a nearby State Park— because they were. And no filmmakers have worked harder than Sam Raimi and Tobe Hooper did on The Evil Dead (1983) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Both are brutal, take-no-prisoners exercises in sheer terror and both, from all accounts, were just as tough to make as they are at times to watch.
Sam Raimi is best-known as the humble, understated guy behind Sony’s Spiderman franchise, but horror buffs have been Raimi fanatics ever since they saw The Evil Dead grace an 1982 issue of Fangoria Magazine, where Stephen King, after seeing an early cut, raved that it was the most “ferociously original horror film” in years. The follow-ups, Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn and Army Of Darkness, are lighter and goofier; The Evil Dead, on the other hand, is relentless. This is a film where the hapless hero Ash (the oft-abused Bruce Campbell) is not only attacked by his buddy, now transformed into a demon, but is mocked by another of his possessed friends, chained in the cellar below, at the same time. The FX are primitive — melty gore that would now be done with high-tech prosthetics or GG is chunky stop-motion animation — and the wild camerawork, often involving a camera being strapped to a two-by-four and raced through the woods, has an anything-goes film-student quality to it. But the film’s rough edges work in its favor. The damn thing is a perpetual motion machine — it never stops moving — and if the backwoods setting feels real, it’s because they shot it in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee (fans would trek out miles into the woods to try to find the “Evil Dead cabin” and steal a piece of it).
The new Blu-Ray of The Evil Dead from Anchor Bay features a documentary on the making of the film, “One By One We Will Take You: The Untold Saga Of The Evil Dead,” which, chock-full of outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage, shows what an ordeal it was to make the film far from civilization in the middle of nowhere— and then for Raimi, Campbell and producer Rob Tapert to try to gain theatrical distribution when the home video boom was just starting.
If Raimi and company froze while making The Evil Dead (to the point where cups of fake blood became popsicles), Tobe Hooper roasted in the Texas summer heat making the incredible Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in the early 70s. The film has never been bested in terms of sheer terror. Odds are you won’t turn into a demon after hearing a tape-recording of the “Necronomicon.” However, there’s a halfway decent chance you’ll run into the likes of the Hitch-Hiker (the manic Ed Neal) on the side of a blistering country road in the middle of a Texas summer. The actual plot about a family that uses wayward travelers as the key ingredient to their sausages is unsettling enough — despite that, the film is practically bloodless — but it’s the you-are-there, documentary-style vibe of the film which works so well. You believe in the likes of the crazy Hitch-Hiker; he’s the burn-out left behind at Burning Man who takes too many drugs and starts playing with his knife.
Hooper’s brilliance is his deliberate lack of artistry— or so you think (the soundtrack by Hooper and Wayne Bell is actually incredibly avant-garde and experimental). The home of the “Family” that contains the Hitch-Hiker, the genial-but-homicidal Cook (Jim Siedow), the Grandfather (John Dugan, actually a young man under saggy prosthetics) and the infamous chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), is art-directed to a tee by the late Robert A. Burns, full of furniture that contains bones and, in one horrific touch, a bird-cage that’s too small for the chicken inside it. Lead Marilyn Burns has talked about how much meat and detritus filled the set and how it all began to stink as it got hotter and hotter; the cast had to leave to avoid getting sick. The production was nearly as grueling as the events which take place on screen and, worse, after Hooper put it all together — editing it in his living room — the distributor, Bryanston, a shady operation with Mob ties that earlier put out the porn blockbuster Deep Throat, ended up declaring bankruptcy and, until they later signed a deal with a young New Line Cinema, Hooper and the rest of the crew didn’t make a dime.
There have been many so-called “low-budget classics” over the years, but truly, no films have earned their respect the hard way The Evil Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — literally made from blood, sweat and tears — have.
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