As much as I don’t like the Platinum Dunes era of remakes, I can admit that Marcus Nispel* is a good director and that it was cool that Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel served as co-producers, Daniel Pearl returned to be the cinematographer and John Larroquette reprised narration duties.

A significant difference is that the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre only hints at the gore that the Sawyer family inflicts. Here. bodies are slashed in half, people live agonizing moments after being impaled on hooks, faces get torn off and even Leatherface loses an arm.

August 18, 1973. Erin (Jessica Biel), Kemper (Eric Balfour), Morgan (Jonathan Tucker), Andy (Mike Vogel) and Pepper (Erica Leerhsen) have just bought two pounds of weed in Mexico and are on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert when they make the same mistake as another set of teens by picking up a hitchhiker. However, this one is in shock and eventually pulls a gun from between her legs and blows her brains out.

That’s when this movie hit me in the face, as it slow motion had smoke coming from her mouth and pushed the camera out of the bloody hole in the back of their car. That blood, that broken glass, that death — they are no longer in our world of reality but trapped in the deepest, darkest and deadliest place in America.

Welcome to Texas.

Instead of giving us killers to identify with — or sympathize with, as other films in this series seem to do — Leatherface and the Sawyer clan are brutal and uncompromising killers who take what they want and operate with ruthless efficiency.

Meanwhile, this film looks absolutely stunning, with sweeping camera moves and what is probably the best use of the 2000s gunmetal blue color palette I’ve seen. Other movies try and fail at what this film does so well.

Plus, R. Lee Ermey seems to be having a blast here.

Here’s to growing up and giving movies a chance beyond casual dismissal.

*To the director’s credit, he was against the idea of remaking the film and said that it was blasphemy to his longtime director of photography, Daniel Pearl. Pearl, however, had shot the original movie and wanted Nispel to direct the film so that he could start and end his career with the same movie. He also realized that if he just copied the original movie shot-for-shot, there was no reason to make this movie. So, he shot it like a traditional movie, not a documentary.

How weird is it that Pearl shot Chainsaw and Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” and “Butterfly” for Mariah Carey?

The Arrow Video release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible), along with extras such as brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon; archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye; a third audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky and a fourth with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski. There are also new interviews with Nispel, Pearl, Brett Wagner, makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard, and composer Steve Jablonsky; a making of doc; a feature on Ed Gein; a feature on the cut scenes as well as deleted scenes, including an alternate opening and ending; screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen; a behind-the-scenes featurette; cast and crew interviews; theatrical trailers and TV commercials;  and cncept art galleries. It all comes inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea, along with a double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold.

You can order it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Burned at the Stake was on the CBS Late Movie as The Coming on September 16, 1987 and March 3 and July 6, 1988.

Also known as The Coming, this movie starts in the late 1600s in Salem, as Ann Putnam (Susan Swift) is caught experimenting with black magic. To protect herself, she turns over the names of those who were also involved, sending Reverend Samuel Parris (John Peters) on an orgy of stake burnings to not only destroy all of the witches but to bring back the fear of the Lord in his worshippers. Meanwhile, in 1982, Loreen Graham (also Susan Swift) is possessed by Ann’s spirit.

By 1982, Bert I. Gordon had given up on giant animals after Empire of the Ants and would go on to make movies like Let’s Do It, The Big Bet, Secrets of a Psychopath and Satan’s Princess. That said, along the way, he’d made Picture Mommy Dead and Necromancy, so he was about more than Costco-sized vermin.

Ann Putnam is a real person who, at the end of her life, tried to atone for all the people who died at her hands — well, as the result of her identifying them — and said that they were innocent. As for Gordon, making this near the end of a long career, he’s put together a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be supernatural or a dream. He’s still making an occult movie that could play as a made-for-TV film minus all the profanity and gore the genre had embraced by 1982.

In this film. Putnam can only save a young girl by changing history and bringing someone back in time to fix it. It honestly makes no sense, but it had enough eerie visuals to keep me watching. There’s a skeleton-handed killer who the movie never really explains and we wonder who the protagonist is, who the villain is and how we’ll get the story all figured out. I wonder if Gordon ever divined it himself.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Firepower was on the CBS Late Movie on March 9, 1983.

Firepower started as a Dirty Harry film, written by Bill Kerby, but was later rewritten. At one point, it was going to have Terence Hill as the star. Then, producer Carlo Ponti came on and got his wife, Sophia Loren, hired for $1 million. The expectation was that Charles Bronson would be the star before he decided he wasn’t interested. Some say it’s because they wouldn’t hire Jill Ireland. Whatever it was, so much money had been spent that the movie had to be made, so James Coburn, in one of his last starring roles, came on.

He was quoted in Psychotronic Video issue 9, saying, “I did it for the money, the locations (the Caribbean islands), and to work with Sophia Loren. The director was Michael Winner. He’s probably one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever met. Yet, I thought he was a good guy when I first met him. But when he got on the set, he was almost like a total dictator. I found it hard to work that way. The most fun I had was when I got to drive a bulldozer through a house in the islands.”

This Janet Maslin review is, to me, a rave: “Mr. Winner directs movies the way others toss salads, which means that Firepower is best appreciated at a kind of mental half‐mast. A lot happens. None of it makes sense. Some of the performances Mr. Winner gets from his supporting players are rip‐roaringly awful, as is Gato Barbieri’s loud and schlocky score. However, there’s a nice chemistry in the teaming of Miss Loren, Mr. Coburn and Mr. Simpson, each of whom has an unusually physical presence on the screen.”

Those are the kind of reviews that make me watch movies!

Adele Tasca (Loren) watches her husband get killed with a letter bomb and blames his boss, one of the wealthiest men in the world, Karl Stegner (George Touliatos). Turns out the drug they worked on causes cancer, and Stegner wants to kill all the loose ends and disappear.

FBI agent Frank Hull (Vincent Gardenia) turns to a former secret agent, Sal Hyman (Eli Wallach), to help track down the big pharma villain. In turn, Hyman hires retired hitman Jerry Fannon (Coburn), who is now gardening and wants nothing to do with the world of murder. But for a million dollars, he takes the job.

When his assistant Catlett (O.J.) is killed by the mob, it becomes personal. Working with Adele, he tracks down Stegner, who isn’t who he says he is. He’s Anthony Franciosa! Man, the cast! Victor Mature in his last movie (paid $5,000 cash — for just 8 hours work — so that it wasn’t taxed), Jake LaMotta, Billy Barty, Paul D’Amato…did I go back in time and work in the casting office?

In his book, Winner Takes All: A Life of Sorts, Winner said that he and O.J. remained close friends, even when Simpson was accused of a double murder, a charge of which Winner was sure he was guilty.

Michael Winner, noted lunatic, a man who nearly died after eating nothing but steak tartare and nothing else, said this: “In the meantime, Nicole arrived and was fatuous and unpleasant. O. J. was a delight, and Al Cowling was a delight. I stayed very friendly with them for many years after the movie.

The trial doesn’t affect my opinion of O. J. After his first trial, I was in a serious political discussion with Adam Bolton of Sky News. The Attorney-General and some MPs were there. Adam Bolton introduced me. “And Michael Winne, who was a friend of O. J. Simpson’s.” I said, “No, not was, Adam. I am a friend of O. J. Simpson’s.”

I think the O. J. Simpson trial showed clearly that the LA police fabricated so much evidence that the jury was right to find him innocent.

I wasn’t about to re-try him. Regardless of my opinion, it doesn’t alter the fact that he was acquitted of murder, whether people believe he did it or not.”

Years later they met and this is what Winner remember: “He also maintained his outrageous sense of humour. We were driving around Hyde Park Corner, a crowded and dangerous spot. I nearly hit two people. O. J. said, “Watch out, man! They’ll say O. J. killed another two!”

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Anything That Moves follows nubile sex worker Liam who bikes with his girlfriend — his partner in both business and pleasure — through the city delivering snacks and divine satisfaction to his love-hungry clients. Meanwhile, a serial killer’s gory murders are piling up and all the evidence seems to point back to the lovers’ bed. 

If you have been wondering what Ginger Lynn and Nina Hartley are up to these days, writer/director  Alex Phillips has you covered with his latest feature Anything That Moves. The two actresses add adult-film authenticity to this tale of bicycling sex workers Liam (Hal Baum) and his girlfriend Thea (Jiana Nicole), who get caught up in the case of a serial killer who targets Liam’s clients.

The film’s aesthetic combines 1970s era porn vibes with that decade’s sleazy, gory grindhouse horror gruesomeness. There’s more here than mere pastiche, but social issue elements and sincerity tend to get muddled amongst all of the calculated weirdness and exploitation activity.

There’s no denying the fine 16mm cinematography work by Hunter Zimny, who marvelously captures the oppressiveness of both the Chicago summer and the powers that be that try to hold down the sex workers, along with the sex scenes that vary from tender to violent as well as the decidedly graphic horror mayhem. The performances are all committed in their own ways, from the more sincere to the over the top, the latter including Frank V. Ross and Jack Dunphy as two police officers accusing Liam and Thea of being prime suspects.

Anything That Moves is a unique vision. If you’re in the mood for what Fantasia’s official synopsis describes as “a psychosexual dark comedy thriller” that bounces around but never seems to quite settle on a main thematic focus, it’s certainly worth a view. 

Anything That Moves screens as part of Fantasia 2025, which takes place from July 16–August 3 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.