The Texas Chainsaw Manicure

Opening next Friday - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, which comes along to fill in the backstory as to why a bunch of horny teens got sliced to ribbons by a power-tool-mad hillbilly. Turns out that a few years earlier, another group of horny teens got sliced to ribbons as well (Spoiler alert)!

I saw the trailer for this a couple of weeks ago - I couldn't tell by watching the teaser but apparently this one takes place in the late sixties, though that probably won't preclude it from having some generic crap-metal over the end credits.

This prequel to a remake was produced by Michael Bay, who is actually an unacknowledged master of modern horror - he was already riding a wave of property damage spectacles like Armageddon before the September 11th attacks. I wondered how he would conduct himself in the face of all that - did he not feel even slightly psychically or karmically responsible? How wrong I was - in 2003 he made Bad Boys II, which was practically an Al-Qaeda recruitment film. The film begins with a Klan Rally (complete with Bay's director credit over the image of a burning cross - 100% true!) and ends with the last surviving bad guy being blown to meaty bits by a landmine in front of the prison at Guantánamo Bay (no relation).

Charnel houses like Wolf Creek, Hostel, Saw, The Passion of the Christ and The Hills Have Eyes don't interest me. I'm not a prude - I saw Man on Fire twice in a week! I think it's because I like my pro-torture movies to be served straight up. Eli Roth dressed up Hostel by saying it was supposed to be an allegory/commentary on American foreign policy and attitudes. Whatever, Chomsky. Meanwhile Tony Scott's hero maims and kills half the male population of Mexico to avenge the murder of a little blonde girl who's not even dead (Spoiler alert)!