Hawaii 2024 Review: CHAIN REACTIONS Roars with Recollections

What do Karyn Kusama, Stephen King, Patton Oswalt, and Takashi Miike have in common? They all speak of their experiences on a certain film that influenced them in one way or another in Alexandre O. Philippe’s (Lynch/Oz, 78/52, Memory: The Origins of Alien) latest documentary, Chain Reactions.

And of course, the influential film in question is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Tobe Hooper’s grim masterpiece exploded into American cinemas 50 years ago, and its grip on genre-loving viewers and filmmakers hasn’t lessened. Or maybe I should say that the roar of the titular chainsaw hasn’t gotten any less quiet. I was at the 44^th Hawaii International Film Festival last week, and not only did I see the restored 4K screening of Texas Chain Saw, but I took in Phillipe’s doc, which made for a great double feature.

The doc, which just won the Best Documentary on Cinema at Venice, opens with an old CRT TV showing footage from Texas Chain Saw, followed by the first interviewee, comedian and massive horror fan Patton Oswalt. The doc is also peppered with unseen-until-now outtakes, courtesy of Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw co-writer, Kim Henkel.

Oswalt recalls watching a 1980 VHS that “has the feel that the killers in the movie have stolen a camera and are filming it,” meaning the murders and torture. Oswalt touches on objective camera, too: “the beauty of the shot is mocking us.” He compares Texas Chain Saw to Nosferatu a few times, which I feel is a bit of a stretch visually, but in terms of what the films want the viewer to feel, perhaps. I did not, however, expect to see footage of a 1970s autopsy film, but the connection in gruesomeness tracks. Another analogy Oswalt makes to Texas Chain Saw is Gone with the Wind.

Next up, we have one of the most prolific genre filmmakers of all time, himself rightly influential, Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer). It was funny and accurate to hear that after watching Texas Chain Saw (known as The Devil’s Sacrifice there), Japanese audiences thought that Texas was a dangerous place. Well, it still can be. Anyway, Miike recounts that he happened upon a screening of Texas Chain Saw one day by accident and saw a screening on a whim.

Like many filmmakers, his life was forever changed. So much so, that he says that he probably wouldn’t be the filmmaker he is today without seeing it at age 15. He even shot Audition and Ichi the Killer on 16mm film blown up to 35mm prints because Hooper did that with TCM. Fear is truly universal.

The third interview features Australian critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, who didn’t get to see TCM until 1984 because it was banned there. Similar to Oswalt, she speaks on the film’s menace: “it feels like Leatherface cut the trailer.” And like Oswalt, she saw the film on VHS, so yellowed and degraded that she had no idea what the film really looked like until years later. The deteriorated tape reinforced the feeling that you weren’t supposed to see the film, that it was taboo like I Spit on Your Grave and Faces of Death. The yellowed quality reflected her Australian neighborhood back to her, particularly since she lived not far from where Picnic at Hanging Rock was filmed, and traumatized by the bush fires in 1983 that devastated that area.

“It’s a film you feel before you think about,” Heller-Nicholas muses, and goes on to compare certain shots in TCM to Francis Bacon and Rembrandt, as well as the chaos of Hieronymus Bosch. Art certainly does influence film, and I really enjoyed her segment.

Chapter Four starts with a voiceover: “My first horror movie was Bambi.” Cut to Stephen King, who needs no introduction. The master horror author saw TCM at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado while writing The Shining in 1982. Like the subjects before him, he says of the film’s grime: “It looks fucking real. It works because there’s no artifice about it. You can’t tell where fact ends and fiction begins.”

King goes on to compare TCM to both Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” and The Blair Witch Project, saying that the artist’s job is to make you uncomfortable. I can’t say I disagree. He continues: “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the only movie about psychotics that was made by a psychotic.” However, he worked with Hooper and says that he didn’t get that feeling at all, of course: “He’s like the rest of us who do this for a living,” meaning that there’s the sane, public side, and then there’s the crazy thoughts and the research that probably puts certain writers and artists on watchlists.

The last chapter features the awesome Karyn Kusama (The Invitation, Jennifer's Body), from whom I wish I could take film classes. She saw TCM at the Angelika Film Center at age 19. Even then, she realized that it had a grindhouse rep, but recognized the film as an American masterpiece on patriarchy. “It’s the saddest, scariest depths of masculinity on film.”

She speaks on Leatherface’s strange role as both overgrown, murderous child and at times, filling a motherly role, worrying about what’s going on when the young people come knocking and enter his family’s home. “They are stuck in an America that doesn’t exist anymore, and it has driven them insane.” Yeah, I feel that.

She continues, speaking on how the families become intertwined, and muddy your expectations of what America is, and that in the film’s ending, “the sun rises so we see evil better.” Kusama talks about how Hooper and TCM’s director of photography, Daniel Pearl, frames subjects in thresholds to show that they’re moving away from their old lives.

Specifically on Hooper and TCM, her insight is great here: “Its thesis seems to be: America is a madness, and I want you to look at it.” I can’t argue with that. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is as timely as it’s ever been, and even more so now. If you’re a fan, you’ll need to add Chain Reactions to your watch list.