X Trilogy: Collector’s Edition Box Set is a three disc box set that has all three movies by Ti West: X, Pearl and MaXXXine and is the first U.S. release of X and Pearl on 4K UHD. It also has a 64-page booklet with a new essay by Jon Dieringer, unreleased concept art, costume sketches, behind-the-scenes photography, the original poster, VHS artwork created as set dressing for the films and more, as well as over 90 minutes of making-of featurettes and new commentary tracks on all three films.

X (2022):  Consider the law of diminishing returns: X is the best slasher that I’ve seen all year, last year, the year before and probably for the rest of this year.

It may also be the law of the desert island in that it may be the only slasher in years that approaches the blood-soaked heaven of 1978-1981, yet were it released then, would I feel the same way?

And after seeing tweet after tweet about how debauched and filthy and sexed-up this movie was, did we see the same film? Or am I really the “affable pervert” that Grindhouse Releasing said I was and I’ve become too desensitized? Or, probably more true, has this generation become more puritanical and repressed than we were?

Probably most importantly, I decided to just shut up and enjoy the movie.

What I came away with was a film that actually gave me that uncomfortable and awesome feeling of “I wonder what’s next” and a worry for each of its characters.

Back in 1979, a group of young filmmakers set out to make a dirty film in rural Texas, learning nothing from another Texas-shot slasher. And when their elderly hosts discover what’s happening, the cast find themselves in a way different movie.

Reading that description, I felt sure that I would dislike this movie, but then again, this was Ti West, who somehow took a very basic story in The House of the Devil and made something great and lasting.

I’ve been burned by an A24 trailer before. Come on, we all have. But again, I decided to shut up and watch the movie.

And I’m glad that I did.

Maxine Minx (Mia Goth, Nymphomaniac) dreams of being an adult film star and people knowing her name. This brings her to deepest, darkest New Zealand, err Texas, along with her producer/boyfriend/suitcase pimp Wayne (Martin Henderson), director RJ (Owen Campbell), his assistant/girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega, Scream) and two co-stars, Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow, the Perfect Pitch movies) and Jackson Hole (Kid Cudi!). As they go deeper into the rural world, we’re reminded — of course — of that aforementioned Texas film, what with the van that propels them and the farmhouse they end up in.

RJ has a goal. Just because it’s porn doesn’t mean that it can’t be art, he says, almost like a non-burnt out Gary Graver. Wayne knows something more important: porno chic died because middle America is stil too afraid to go to a porno theater and still blushes when they buy a skin mag. But if they can have that movie in the safety of their home? He’s ahead of the video era, Caballero and VCA before they’d even realized what was next. The themes of this movie are desire and age battling hand in hand and the fact that the new type of entertainment they’re making is based on the oldest joke there is — The Farmer’s Daughters — points to the intelligence of this endeavor.

Meanwhile, there’s Howard (Stephen Ure) and Pearl (also Mia Goth, we’ll get to that shortly), the elderly couple who owns the land. Howard barks at everyone while Pearly stays in the shadows, except for the moment where she invites Maxine in for lemonade, a remembrance of youth, some jealousy and a rebuffed sexual December to May advance.

That afternoon, Pearl watches Maxine and Jackson at work and begs Howard to make love to her one more time, but while the spirit and the emotional heart are willing, the flesh and the physical heart are weak.

That night, Lorraine surprises everyone by asking if she can be in the film. RJ tries to use art as the reason why the script can’t be changed; she defeats his argument and he watches her make love through the eye of his camera. That night, he leaves everyone behind but runs into Pearl and that’s where — nearly an hour into the film — “Don’t Fear the Reaper” plays and we’re reminded of exactly what kind of movie we’re in for.

The end of the film surprised me. I should have seen it coming, but the repeated dialogue, the divine intervention and Greek chorus of televangelists all came together in a way that I had no idea was going to occur. Seriously, that preacher gives Estus Pirkle a run for his money.

I also had no idea that Goth spent ten hours a day in makeup for the dual role, which she’ll take up again in Pearl, a prequel that was shot at the same time as this movie.

Even the soundtrack works, written by Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe, who covers Fred Fisher’s “Oui, Oui, Marie.” What doesn’t, however, is the moment where Snow and Kudi sing “Landslide,” as we’ve already established the closeness of the actors and this seems only in the movie to have them remind us they also do music.

As bad as 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, this is good. It feels closer to Eaten Alive, another Hooper film, what with the alligator scene — I winced when someone claimed this movie had a scene that echoed Alligator — and I love how the final girl is the least chaste character in the movie, continually doing drugs and putting herself first.

Here’s to more horror being committed to only being inspired by the past instead of wallowing within it, pushing itself to new heights. I was worried if West would ever come close to House of the Devil again; my fears were unnecessary.

Pearl (2022): Most sequels and prequels rely too much on the movie that they gestate from. Yet Ti West’s Pearl does what seems to be impossible: it takes a movie I really liked, X, and makes me love it. Together, these movies become so much more than the sum of their parts, creating a reflection in the same way the letter that informs them, that denotes pornography, that crosses out the violence on your old TV screen, bifurcating your mind and giving you so much more than you expected.

Back in 1918, during a very different pandemic, Pearl (Mia Goth) is trapped in Texas while her husband Howard fights in World War I. Her father is a shell of a human being, paralyzed and unable to even communicate, while her mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) keeps her on the farm, taking care of the dying man and the crops and serving as her whipping girl. Pearl dreams of a life far from here, of being special, of performing and oh yes, she may also be deranged.

Pearl dreams of more than just being in movies; as she watches them, she’s inspired to be more. She imagines the scarecrow in the cornfield is the projectionist (David Corenswet) who gives her attention. She makes love to it in a way that she never has with her husband. That same projectionist shows her A Free Ride, considered to be the first American hardcore movie, and that night, after she sets her mother on fire and leaves her to die from her burns, she makes love to that man.

There’s an audition for dancers for a traveling show and Pearl must be in that show. By now, she’s already pitchforked that projectionist, her mother and father, all acts that she confesses to her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro).

For nearly eight minutes, Goth breaks the film, explaining who she is and what she’s been through; a husband who has basically abandoned her, the joy she had when his child inside her died and how much she enjoys killing things. It’s astounding, a moment that takes this movie away from basic slasher into psychobiddy — and I say that with sheer delight and absolute kindness — territory.

How heartbreaking then that Howard arrives the next morning to discover his wife serving a maggot-filled pig to her dead parents, holding a smile that goes through the entire credits and dissolves into tears?

West, the director and writer, had worked on this with Goth as a backstory for her character but after dealing with COVID-19 filmmaking, he decided to keep working and make the prequel as soon as the filming of X wrapped, saying “I came out of quarantine and I was like, “We’re already building all of this stuff, it’s COVID and we’re on the one place on Earth where it’s safe to make a movie.””

He saw this film as being a combination of a Douglas Sirk film, Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz and a “demented Disney” film, while the film combined Mario Bava with, obviously, Tobe Hooper.

Both films show how Hollywood has influenced people for better or, well, let’s be honest — worse.

This isn’t the end, as Maxine will continue in MaXXXine. West says, “I’m trying to build a world out of all this, like people do these days. You can’t make a slasher movie without a bunch of sequels.”

I often despise any of the films of today, the ones I’m told that I must see. But since House of the Devil, I’ve been on board with West. It’s not always perfect, but I can say that he definitely makes movies that I in no way expect. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

MaXXXine (2024): I have never been at once more excited and more worried about a movie. After X and Pearl, I was beyond hyped for what would come next. To take my fever pitch ever hotter, this movie was sold as a giallo in 1980s Hollywood, a film like Body Double. I’d be shocked if Maxine and Holly Body didn’t do coke together at the AVNs or at least scissored in a Bruce Seven film)

But to so many American creators, giallo just means synth, bright colors and black gloves. Could Ti West pull it off and make this work alongside the first two movies?

Totally.

Ten minutes into this movie, and I was sold. 

Maxine Minx has escaped death in Texas that claimed everyone else, the final girl who has moved beyond and become a major star in adult films, as they moved from grindhouses and jack shacks into the VHS era. The movie begins with her trying out for a mainstream film, The Puritan II, and yelling that every other girl in line can just go home. She has the part.

Of course she does.

While her contemporaries like Amber James (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby Martin (Halsey) are out partying in the Hollywood hills, she’s working a second job at Show World, dancing in a private booth for men there just to objectify and masturbate to her. That’s fine — she’s the one making the money. She’s interactive, like OnlyFans, before that was a thing, doing everything she can to keep making money and get the life she deserves.

At the same time, a black-gloved killer is stalking her and killing everyone near her, as well as sending detective John Labat (Kevin Bacon) after her. Maybe the guy dressed as Buster Keaton who wanted to rape her should serve as a lesson: don’t fuck with Maxine Minx. She brings a gun to a knife fight, forcing him to his knees to suck off her weapon before she stomps his sex organs into fleshy and bloody pulp.

The cops have gotten their hands on the video filmed in Texas, and Maxine has a copy sent to her, too. She watches herself get off, hiding the footage from her friend Leon (Moses Sumney). At the same time, she’s won over director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki) and scored a role in her film, which delights her agent and lawyer, Teddy Knight, Esq. (Giancarlo Esposito). What I love about Teddy is the care he shows Maxine when she reveals she’s being followed; sure, he also shows it through violence, as he and Shephard Turei (Uli Latukefu) help Maxine decimate Labat. 

Whoever is following her has an entire cult, one hiding their murders under the same killing ways as the Night Stalker. Even Molly Bennett (Lily Collins), the star of the first Puritan movie, is not safe. Everyone is going to these Hollywood parties and not coming back. Go figure: this cult is gathered to destroy Maxine — in the house from Body Double — and at its head is her father, Reverend Ernest Miller (Simon Prast). They’re filming a snuff movie they plan on releasing, all to prove that Hollywood is evil. You can see that their Christian mission is more evil than any of the filth that Maxine is part of.

Everyone is an actor, even the cops, Detective Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Detective Torres (Bobby Cannavale), who may save Maxine but are just as ineffective as any giallo police. It’s up to her to be the final girl all over again, the star of her own movie, facing down the man who has tried to ruin her and blasting his face into shotgun oblivion, all under the Hollywood sign. 

Again, while so many movies try to be 80s, this has the right look and soundtrack. I mean, Frankie’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome,” New Order’s “Shellshock” and Ratt’s “I’m Insane?” To make it all come back to giallo, this also has a Stelvio Cipriani song. Sure, it’s from The Great Alligator, but it’s a good song. Plus, this somehow has the Psycho house show up, and it never feels like borrowed interest. 

I’m glad that all my waiting paid off. I mean, it didn’t. I should have known this would be good.

Bonus features include:

X
○ Commentary with D.P. Eliot Rockett and production designer Tom Hammock
○ Pearl makeup timelapse
○ “The X Factor” featurette
○ Original trailer

Pearl
○ Commentary with D.P. Eliot Rockett and production designer Tom Hammock
○ “Coming Out of Her Shell: The Creation of Pearl” featurette
○ “Time After Time” featurette
○ Original trailer

MaXXXine
○ Commentary with production designer Jason Kisvarday and set decorator Kelsi Ephraim
○ “The Belly of the Beast” featurette
○ “XXX Marks the Spot” featurette
○ “Hollywood is a Killer” featurette
○ Deep Dive with composer Tyler Bates
○ Q&A with Ti West
○ Original trailers

You can get this set from A24.