Horror Throwback

I sat down and watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time since I was 12 years old. After watching the flick, I went on imdb.com to see what other people thought of it. I wasn't surprised: a 7 out of 10 rating, with a lot of people calling it a masterpiece.

It isn't. The first half is kind of scary, but the second half is pretty funny until it's simply irritating. The girl screams, and screams, and screams, and screams, and screams...it really goes on for that long, to the point where you're hoping Leatherface will just do her in already.

That said, I can see how it would have been pretty effective in the '70s, back before slasher flicks became the mainstay of the horror genre.

On another note, I took a sidle over to The Exorcist to see what people thought of it. The flick happens to be my favorite horror film of all time, and it looks like a lot of other people like it, too. But I was struck again by how genre fans see themselves as experts and mindreaders. Case in point: someone wrote an innocent comment on the imdb.com site, asking if Regan playing with the Ouija board caused her possession.

Well. How dare you? Here's the answer from one commentator (and only one; apparently it dignified no further response):

This has been very well-discussed around here. You might want to read thru some of the older posts - it's been thoroughly tossed around. Regan did not become possessed thru the Ouija board alone. Any number of factors led up to her possession - puberty, her father's absence, her isolation and loneliness - factors that made her vulnerable. But the possession itself is strictly the act of the demon. Regan is a totally innocent victim, and did not bring the possession on herself, even thru use of a Ouija board.

So there.

Stuff like this cracks me up. I suppose that somewhere, somehow, either Billy Friedkin or William Peter Blatty said that these were the reasons Regan got possessed. What I remember from Friedkin's commentary on the DVD is one long lecture about spirituality, the death of his and Blatty's mothers, and a comment now and then about how he liked to film people walking up flights of stairs. It's the most dreadfully boring and utterly irrelevant director's commentary ever.

Genre fans are great fans, but they're also the most stubborn and protective. Who else sits on a website and so thoroughly tosses an issue around that when someone wanders by and asks a question, they're instantly told to pipe down and search the archives? It's 2009. The movie was made in 1973. It still has an active chat room?

I remember Alfred Molina gave an interview shortly after Spider-Man 2 came out. He played Doctor Octopus in the movie and the interviewer asked him if fans were now approaching him on the street. Molina said something like, "Well, you meet a different kind of fan. I'll ask them if they liked the movie and they'll say, 'Nevermind that! Tell me if Doc Oc really believes...'"

If a genre fan believes something is the best movie ever, then you cannot question one frame of it. They know. You do not. And, if you do question it, be sure to search "Ouija board" to see how wrong you are before you dare question poor Regan's innocence.

For the record, I've always thought that the Ouija board brought on Regan's possession. If you look at the movie - and just the movie; no interviews, no books, no blogs, just the movie - Regan shows a Ouija board to her mom. The little puck thingy dances across the board, moved by an invisible force. Five minutes later, Regan's possession begins. So sure, maybe somewhere Friedkin floated a line that the Ouija board had nothing to do with Regan puking pea soup - a story I've never read or heard - but anyone watching the film for the first time would see the Ouija board as a very significant reason that she starts going off the rails, as opposed to, say, pubescence.

I write movie reviews for this blog, so I guess I can come off like a know-it-all, too. But reading comments on imdb.com that profess so much knowledge is a laugh. Sometime a movie is just a movie, and sometimes the scene you're watching really is the scene you're watching.