the groundhog day project

The original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released 1 October 1974, but the crawl at the beginning of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 establishes that it happened on 18 August 1973. This one was released 22 August 1986, but is set “14 years” after the original. That isn’t important information, but after yesterday ‘s blog entry, the discrepancy was noticeable for me. What is important to note is that this film doesn’t really seem to be cashing in on the popularity of slasher films. It’s not one of Nowell’s (2011) “carpetbagger cash-ins.” Hell, I’m not sure this film falls within Nowell’s “first teen slasher film cycle” in terms of timing. Looking at the release dates of just the more popular slasher films I’ll be watching this month, I see no real gap from Halloween in ’78 to Halloween H20: 20 Years Later in ’98. That is to say, there’s a 4 year gap between The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in ’74 and the original Halloween , and a gap of four years after H20 to Jason X . I think N...

Ten or so minutes into Halloween II is a scene I saw filmed. I was just a wee little, impressionable child, quite excited at a) seeing a movie filmed, and b) seeing a Halloween movie filmed. And, I mean sequel to the original, not related to the holiday. I never celebrated Halloween as a kid. Church I grew up in didn’t go for pagan holidays like that. Unfortunately for little kid me I didn’t get to see the stunt with the guy in the mask mistaken for Michael—you know, the explosion scene. The scene at the end of the alley, in which Dr. Loomis tells Sheriff Brackett that he shot Michael 6 times—that’s the one I saw. Was standing in the front yard of the house to the right of the alley. My sister’s future in-laws lived there. But, anyway. there are two notable things about Halloween II in terms of commentary on the slasher subgenre.. First, there’s some evidence that supports Clover’s (1987, 1992) notions about the killer undergoing a pyschosexual fury. Second, just like the first tw...