#2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - As a kid, just the title alone freaked me out. That title haunted me, it just sounded like an awful film. My friends, who I don't think had seen it for themselves, kept telling me that it was a true story, which made it that much worse. I didn't get to see it for a few more years, probably when I was about 12-13. I hardly wanted to press play on our VCR, just it's reputation alone had me freaked out, but i had to see it for myself. The film did not disappoint in the least, it felt so horribly violent that I was disturbed for years. But I loved every minute of that torturous first viewing and of course I had to watch it many more times over the years.

Even now this movie unsettles me. It's so brilliantly made; realistic and visceral. It feels more like a documentary than a fictional film. Still one of my top 5 horror films.

On looking for information about this film, I learned that is a remake, the original doesn't look much better, see the trailer for it below.

I watched it because Tobe Hooper directed it. He hasn't made a good film since the 80's, at least that I've seen, I've skipped a lot of them, but I keep hoping something will pop up. His best film is my all-time favorite horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which freaks me out for it's grittiness. His 2nd best film is Poltergeist, which has been rumored to have been mostly directed by Spielberg, who produced it. Lifeforce and Invaders from Mars are both fun in a cheesy 80's kind-of-way. Since then it's been a lot of cable TV shows and straight-to-video shlock, nothing of note. With Toolbox Murders, the streak continues.

The film is about a couple moving into a "famous" old apartment building in Hollywood. The place is full of wanna-be actors; which leads to a ridiculous scene, while the lead girl is walking down the hall she hears what she thinks is somebody getting killed; there's a couple guys reading a script one of them starts screaming like he's getting killed, the girl runs away from the door and before anybody makes a move suddenly the cops bust in; and then call the girl an idiot for the false alarm. Yet there was no call made! I went back and watched the scene twice just to make sure I didn't miss something, but nobody touched a phone in any shot, and the cops literally show up about 10 seconds after the girl runs from the door. Sloppy filmmaking!

The whole movie is pretty worthless; the acting is poor, the script and editing are horrible; worst of all, the directing is lazy. There are a couple of decent kills and once the killer shows up, his make-up is fairly cool; so at least the make-up guys were on the ball. That seems to be a common theme with these low-budget horror films. Don't bother with it, even if you're a horror fan, it's a waste of time.