Chadzilla ROARS!!! (The Official Blog of Chadwick H. Saxelid, Writer)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Hoyt, By Himself #1 (of 1)

"I am your elder and better, I am an officer of the Law, and I am a veteran to boot.  Not to mention the fact that I am the one with the fuckin' gun!  You will be respectful!"

Travis County, Texas.  May 7, 1972.

Sheriff Hoyt (memorably portrayed by character actor R. Lee Ermey in the remake and its prequel) catches a case of the yaps while collecting fresh meat for dinner.  Before the poor, unfortunate soul is killed, gutted, and cleaned for meal time, Hoyt tells the boy of the brutal treatment and starvation that he suffered while a prisoner of war in North Korea.

Brutal treatment and starvation that made him into the man he is today.

Here is yet another comic book that has been sitting around, collecting dust, for several years, patiently waiting for the day when I will have nothing better to do than to pick it up and read it.  Well, that day has finally come and, you may ask yourself, was it really worth holding onto the comic for five or so years before finally getting around to reading the damn thing?

Yes... and no.  But a lot more of the former and precious little of the latter.

Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning do a wonderful job of capturing Hoyt's voice.  I could hear Ermey speaking the lines while I read them, which made the story feel vibrant and alive.  Artist Wes Craig and colorer Randy Mayor gave the "present day" wraparound panels a red tinged hue that gives the tragic events a suitably sanguinary look.  Another interesting touch is that we never see the victim.  Most of the panels are from his point of view, which gives the issue a nightmarishly personal feel.

The flashback story is almost entirely in black and white, save for some occasional splashes of blood red to punctuate the gruesome events taking place in the snowbound and starvation plagued camp.  Craig gives the younger Hoyt a gaunt faced and demonic look that really makes some of the more subtle moments spine tingling to look at.  My favorite is a three part panel where Hoyt smothers a sick officer to death.  Craig has Hoyt's frightening visage slither out of the darkness the same way that Michael Myers' pale face slid out of the darkened room behind Laurie Strode in the original Halloween.  It's a wonderfully disturbing series of images.

Not so great is having "Tommy" (a.k.a. Leatherface) show up at the end of the story, just to save Hoyt's bacon and recapture his escaping prey.  It kind of cancels out the whole "By Himself" theme of this one shot.  Hoyt has shown that he can handle himself, and he should have been allowed to handle himself all the way through to the very end of the story.  I know that Leatherface is the real "face" of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but this was supposed to be Hoyt's moment to take center stage.  He should have been allowed to finish what he started.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: About A Boy #1 (of 1)

Fuller, Texas.  July 9th, 1958.

Mr. Hansen, a well meaning teacher from the town school, visits the Hewitt residence to talk about their boy, Thomas.  The teacher tries to warn Mrs. Hewitt that her son, who will grow up to become the beastly chainsaw wielding behemoth known as Leatherface, is a emotionally disturbed youth in dire need of special attention.  Mrs. Hewitt, however, does not feel that there is anything wrong with her boy, at all.

Here's a little unexceptional and predictable one-shot prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake that hits all of the necessary story beats, but doesn't quite manage to hit them hard enough to make much of a memorable noise.  Is that a metaphor that even works?

I don't think that, if you are a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, you will find About A Boy to be all that bad of a story.  As I said, it hits all the necessary Southern Gothic and gory story beats that one expects there to be in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre story.  I just thought it delivered the "goods" in a rather lifeless matter.

Not lifeless, though, is Joel Gomez's penciling, aided by Troy Hubbs' inking and Randy Mayor's coloring.  The story is peppered with some truly breath taking images, both of the atmosphere building kind and the "Oh, God, that is nasty" kind.  I think the art alone makes this one shot worth seeking out.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Cut! (One Shot)

"Ya know, it's a strange thing, though... 'round here, Blair has a whole other meaning."

Mike, a wannabe "extreme" horror movie director, and his friends are out scouting True Crime locations in order to find the perfect place to film Mike's "transgressive" Blair Witch style project.  After a detour through Wisconsin, to find the old Gein place, the group winds up down in Texas, attending Meat Fest '07, not too far from where the infamous Texas Chainsaw Massacre is known to have happened.

When a talkative Meat Fest '07 vendor, one who just so happens to be driving a familiar looking van, offers to show the group the old Blair place, it is an offer that they cannot refuse...

While I cannot praise Cut! for having anything about it that could, even remotely, be accused of resembling originality, I still found its tongue and cheek parodying of the then (and still) current fetishism with the grimness and grittiness of the "seventies horror movie" rather amusing.  I also liked how the one shot incorporated Mike's "ironic juxtaposition" of an old Meat Industry Education film with the brutal atrocities that were happening in the story itself.  

Those elements elevate the routine to the point of being lackadaisical execution (pun intended) of the remainder of the story to the almost tolerable.  I use the term almost because I just cannot forgive the laziness of having someone dispatched with a chainsaw while the people standing and talking in the very next room hear nothing.  Add to that the complete and utter lack of any sympathetic characters to become interested or invested in and the result is moderately entertaining geek show, at best.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre #s 2 & 3: Americarnivore Parts 2 & 3 (of 6)

"Because some of these kills are fresh!"

Federal Agents Henkle and Baines, ignoring the orders of Federal Agent Hooper, explore the dump pit tunnels beneath Fuller, Texas and find that they lead straight to the Hewitt home.  WTX News reporter Kim Burns and her crew arrive at the Blair Meat Plant to do a location story about the horrible events of the previous year.  But the past is far from being mere history.

Hooper, Henkle, and Burns...can there please be a moratorium placed on the practice of naming characters after prominent genre figures, it has long since become a tiresome cliche.  But other than that not so cute nudge n' wink at the original film's cast and crew I found nothing tiresome or cliched about the second chapter of the Americarnivore story arc.  It had me on the edge of my seat from the opening panel all the way to the Here-We-Go-Again cliffhanger.  Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have really done an excellent job, creating a story that is drenched in How-Bad-Is-This-Going-To-Get suspense.  But the book is elevated to the level of outstanding by Wesley Craig's art and Randy Mayor's colors.  Each and every panel oozes with Southern Gothic atmosphere and Grand Guignol grue.  This book is shaping up to be the best Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel never made (into a movie, that is).

"This is like the center of the sicko-verse."

Kim and Marcus search for the missing Karla, but they find some serious trouble instead.  The vengeance obsessed Baines coaxes the rest of the Federal Agents into helping him take the fight to those carrying on the Hewitt family tradition, but Agent Hooper still has a lot to learn about Old School Justice seeking.

Oh.  My.  God.  This issue is just vicious, it had me gasping and groaning in shock and dismay as the noose closed (literally) around poor, doomed Karla and, several pages later, Marcus.  I know I just praised the outstanding work of Wesley Craig and Randy Mayor a few paragraphs ago, but the first seven pages of this issue (which consist of Karla's unfortunate fate) is simply brilliant.  Rather than keep the reader in a safely objective point of view, the sequence unfolds almost entirely from the viewpoint of the bound and gagged Karla.  This gives the scene an immediacy and power that all the gore in the world could not deliver.  The creative team behind this book not only clearly know and love horror, but they also understand what makes it work and work well.

But the horror doesn't stop there, and why should it?  There are still plenty of victims out there to be hacked up for barbecue and Kim and Marcus are quick to step up to the plate.  It is here that the book's solid writing shines, with the tour guide set-up in issue two playing out in a truly unsettling manner.  This was the point that had me gasping and groaning with shock and dread, and I loved every single panel of it.  It is stuff like this that makes me proud to be a horror fan.

And the issue three cliffhanger is absolute perfection.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre #1

"This is the wrong end of Texas, Bond.  This is another fuckin' planet."

It has been almost a year since the crimes of the Hewitt family were discovered, but the deranged killer know as Leatherface remains at large.  FBI Agent Hooper (yes, Hooper, and there's also an Agent named Henkle, as well) brings a Cold Case team to Fuller, Texas to see if they can plow through the dead end the notorious mass murder case has hit.  Also en route to Fuller is the WTX news team, led by reporter Kim Burns.  Already in Fuller are Leatherface and what looks to be a new family of inbred lunatics hungry for some fresh meat.

The old cliche "the more things change, the more they stay the same" is given a prime example of its truth in Wildstorm's premiere issue for its recently launched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Nope, nothing new here.  But unlike the recently ended run at Avatar Press, Wildstorm's take on the Massacre Mythos at least spins its tale off of the hit film into a potentially interesting direction, the future.  Unfortunately Avatar writer Brian Pulido chose a far less fertile route, that of a prequel, something that robbed each and every tale of not only suspense, but also negated to possibility of any surprising plot developments occurring.  Writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have not made that same mistake.  Their story moves forward, not backward, and they even makes subtle references to other films in the Massacre Mythos.  Not that any Texas Chainsaw Massacre story is all that different from another.  At least the book has a bit more story potential than its previous version did and, on a strictly visual level, Wesley Craig (art) and Randy Mayor (colors) recreate the gross and gritty feel of the movies so effectively, you might feel the need to take a shower after reading it.  Right now, however, I'm just going to take a wait and see attitude about the whole thing.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Fearbook

"You want justice in this town, this is where you come get it."

Two couples en route to a picnic stop for gas at the station in Fuller, Texas.  Their pleasant afternoon outing ends there...

I don't know if it was the one-shot format, or just the way the story was told, or that a new writer was scripting the story, but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's entry in Avatar's Fearbook cycle turned out to be a fairly effective little horror story.  Yeah, it was the same-old-same storywise, I can't ignore that, but writer Antony Johnston kept the pace quick enough so that the story's Grand Guignol elements packed a bit more punch than they did in the overlong three issue arc, The Grind.

Overall it is only a minor increase in the quality of the book, nothing to get ones hopes up, and not nearly enough to convince me that this little venture has the kind of narrative legs that the other New Line Cinema's House of Horror titles seem to have.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Grind #3

"Is this how you repay your loyal servants, Lord?"

Juli Ann, her sister, and the daughter of the bus driver are captured.  Now they are captive dinner guests of the Hewitt's.

Maybe if Juli Ann had stood more than a snowball's chance in Hades of getting through the night, I would have been on the edge of my seat.  But knowing that the clan would survive, intact, to terrorize the wayward souls in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie this comic spins-off from, Juli Ann's failure was a foregone conclusion.  Not even the attempt at a bait and switch ending really works.  There is one dangling plot thread, though.  Whether or not that spins into another story arc (Perhaps Fearbook?) or is just allowed to hang, unresovlved, is a decision for Brian Pulido, or whoever is assigned to write the next story, to make.

I'll read it, but I doubt that I'll like it.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Grind #2

"The night, as they say, is young."

Julie Ann, the Choir outcast with a troubled past, manages to get an upper hand on the sadistic Sheriff Hoyt.  It seems that the Hewitt Clan has itself a worthy opponent.

Of the New Line Cinema properties being spun off into the comic book format, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the least impressive.  I think I know why that is.  Because any and all stories that feature the characters - especially that psychotic enforcer of Travis County law, Sheriff Hoyt - need to take place prior to the events of the original film, the fates of any and all who run afoul of the Hewitt Clan are rigidly predetermined.  They are all doomed.

Even though Julie Ann is a solid combination of teen-aged angst and survivalist spunk - the moment when she deserts a classmate stuck in a trap, leaving the helpless girl to face Leatherface alone, showed just how far Julie Ann was willing to go to save her own skin - the fact that her battle was lost even before it began is something that is impossible to get past.  It isn't a question of if she will survive, but of how, exactly, that the Hewitt Clan will dispatch her.  I don't really find that to be a story concept capable of building any suspense, beyond the level of morbid curiosity, that is.

That said, writer Brian Pulido has, yet again, perfectly captured the feel of a spin-off book's source material.  He did such an excellent job of capturing the essence of the Hewitt Clan that I could hear the actors voices speaking the dialog.  Too bad Pulido's hard work serves a concept that doesn't give him any opportunity whatsoever to do something new, or even interesting, with these sick and twisted characters.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Grind #1

"The story you are about to read is an account of the tragedy that befell a group of six choir singers."

The Jefferson Girl's Choir bus gets a flat tire just as it begins to pass through Fuller, Texas.  It isn't all that long before Sheriff Hoyt and a certain chainsaw wielding masked fiend show up to torment them.

Any viewer of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or its 2003 remake, to which this comic serves as a prequel, knows that there were dozens upon dozens of junked vehicles hidden in the fields around the family compound.  It doesn't take an Einstein level intellect to figure out that each and every one of these vehicles would have a distinct story of its own to tell.  What is problematic about this approach is that, because of the nature of both the original and remake's resolution, the story behind any one of those numerous vehicles is incapable of generating any real suspense, because the fate of the characters is predetermined.  They aren't going to escape.  So The Grind is just watching disposable characters getting disposed in monstrous ways.

Setting that sizable quibble to the side, writer Brian Pulido does a good job of recreating the narrative structure of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, right down to the opening narration.  But mimicking what has been done before does not a suspense filled story make.  It has to do something fun or fresh with the characters and situations to make reading the comic worthwhile and, right now, it just isn't doing that.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

"You're so dead, you don't even know it."

A group of friends, returning from a brief trip to Mexico and now en route to a concert, pick-up a woman they find wandering alongside an isolated stretch of Texas highway.  The woman is distraught and, after seeing the direction the group's van is headed, becomes hysterical and shoots herself in the head.  With the woman's dead body in their van, the group looks for the local sheriff.  Instead they find the sadistic clan of psychos that the woman had been fleeing.

I don't have all that much against remakes.  But the idea of a redux of Tobe Hooper's seminal movie struck me as rather pointless.  Hooper's film was a brutal and simple descent into utter madness that had not only birthed several sequels of various quality (of which I prefer Hooper's own over all the others), but an entire sub-genre of movies wherein a group of friends and/or family runs afoul of a group of slobbering psychos.  The best of these is, arguably, Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes, a movie that, ironically enough, has been remade as well.  So the screenwriter and director not only had the daunting task of remaking what many consider to be the most grueling and terrifying film of the seventies, but one that had been parroted and copied to the point of its story becoming a tired cliche amongst horror fans.

What the new version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre brings is another villain to the horror film pantheon, Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Emery).  This addition to the TCM clan, which is named Hewitt in this incarnation, (the family name was revealed to be Sawyer in the first, Tobe Hooper directed, sequel to the original film) is, in all honesty, a more intimidating character than Leatherface.  The reason for this is the more personal interaction he has with the victims.  He clearly enjoys toying with them while playing policeman, getting off on the power he can wield because he wears a badge.  The best scene in the film is when Hoyt "interrogates" Morgan (Jonathan Tucker) in the back of the blood soaked van.  It's a skin crawling exercise in sadism that is more squirm inducing than any of the overly familiar antics of Hoyt's apparent sibling, Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski). 

Leatherface's bag of tricks (screaming incoherently, waving a roaring chainsaw, and chasing down victims and cutting them to pieces) is the same old stuff that had started to go stale even before the original film had finished unspooling in front of its first paying audience.  In fact, it is so tiresome that this time around I was checking the clock on my DVD player again and again to see how much more of it I had to sit through until it ended.  Great, ten more minutes of running and screaming.  When does Hoyt come back into the movie?  Not nearly enough and, considering how this movie ends, it is not surprising that they are doing a prequel.  How else would they be able to bring Hoyt back?

So see it once for Hoyt, if you must.  If a scary R. Lee Emery isn't enough to lure your interest, then just watch this version instead.  It's both shorter and far more entertaining.