Texas Franchise Review

That’s it from Texas for now. Put away you bible and your belt buckle and stop doing that to your sister, we are moving on. But it’s been good times, right? Cannibalism and torture, wearing human skin and eating dinner with your kidnap victim - it has been good times. We may be more confused than ever about how many relatives Leatherface has, but at least we can recommend which movies you should watch:

Franchise Ranking

Texas '04
Texas 2	☆☆☆☆
Texas '74	☆☆☆
Texas 3	☆
Texas the Beginning	☆
Texas Next Gen	φ
Texas 3D

Next up: The Omen.

Yeah, there are five of those.

*Salty can’t fucking believe that Texas 2 is not number one and is at a loss for words… other than these: Texas 2 is an amazing blend of a certain culture in a certain time period and seamlessly blends horror and comedy that is as black as a woodchuck’s asshole on a moonless night in a concoction fit for the most discerning connoisseur of horror. It is a travesty that a faithful representation of the films greatness is not presented here, but I have faith that you, anonymous reader will settle any question by going out and judging for yourself… or you could save yourself the trouble and take my word for it: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is the motherfucking shit.

**Okay, lets just agree that this list didn’t come out the way that anybody wanted.

Texas 3D - Please don't make me watch this ever again

Maire says:
I think the point of this movie is to destroy the franchise. It could have been good, but they did their best to make it horrible. Seriously, every character is so loathsome, that by the time they start dying, you wish it would have started sooner. And even then you’re left unfulfilled and curing those “damn kids these days”.

I won’t even talk about the 3D parts. Can we please leave this horrible idea back in the Captain EO exhibit, where it belongs?

If you’ve seen this movie, you have my sympathy, and I really hope it wasn't your introduction to the franchise.  Truly worthy of a shitpickle rating.

Corey says:
Hey! Bill Moseley plays Drayton Sawyer!  Cool!

Salty says:
Texas Chainsaw 3-D (which we watched in 2-D and still managed to understand it) starts off expecting its viewers to not have seen the original 1974 film. It wants you to know that there is some old film called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it wants you only to know that that old movie happened and there is a guy called Leatherface in it. That’s it. If you know anything else about the original movie, you will be alienated via continuity errors and character discrepancies. By the way, do you like rap in your horror movies? Okay, well it’s in there anyway. Seriously.

After a highlight reel from the original film we pick up exactly where the original left off. How exactly? The Black Maria is still parked outside the Sawyer house, that’s how exactly. Although apparently the Sawyer family has managed to asexually reproduce, because now there are like a dozen members (including Bill Moseley doing a creditable Drayton Sawyer, and Gunnar Hansen doing an even more creditable douchebag pseudo-intellectual cashing in on the lone highlight of his lackluster career - you suck, sir). A posse of vigilantes shows up and after a wild-west shootout Leatherface escapes to his aunt’s house down the road and one of the Sawyer family’s newly spawned babies is kidnapped. Seriously.

Cut to x years later (mysterious), the baby is grown up (with the Sawyer family crest burned onto her chest somehow) and she gets a letter that tells her that she has inherited the Sawyer estate, even though she was kidnapped and no one knows it blah, blah, blah she and her boyfriend and 2 other people go to check out the inheritance and pick up a shifty hitchhiker on the way who, in a surprising twist, tries to rob them blah, blah, blah Leatherface, now named Jebediah instead of Bubba or Tommy, is at the house and starts killing people blah, blah, blah her best friend and boyfriend are having an affair, though it works out fine, because they both get killed before anyone finds out blah, blah, blah she’s the only one left alive. Seriously.

Our protagonist escapes Leatherface only to fall into the hands of the police, who turn out to be at the whims of a corrupt former vigilante mayor! The mayor, having found out that this girl is a Sawyer, decides to have her killed. So he has her tied up in a factory and Leatherface shows up to kill everyone, but he finds out that this girl is his relative and they team up to kill those that would do them wrong. Now Leatherface and the girl are tentatively friends and they go back home to learn how to live with one another. So, it’s like a happy ending.


Seriously.

Maire	Corey	Salty
☆	☆	☆

Good News, Everyone! We've Watched Them All!

With Dominion and The Beginning behind us (not to mention some colossal delays because of yours truly), we've come to the end of the Exorcist series.  In some ways, I feels this may be one of the more divisive series as far as House of Sequels consensus goes.  Some films that I thought would have been an easy perfect score (the original) didn't make it, and I totally cock blocked (to Maire and Salty's surprise) II from the dreaded shitpickle.  That's what makes this series (and this project) so interesting, though.

We all get different things out of films.  Some of us obsess over directors and camera angles.  Some of us are obsessive gorehounds.  Some of us love awful acting and cheap sets.  And that's all ok.  The beauty of horror is that we can all come together and discuss what we like, what we don't like, and the community is always better for the conversation.  

The Exorcist series has everything.  It has pure, classic horror.  It has hokey 80's sentiments.  It has beautiful characters that are in every film.  And, it has shitpickles.  But, the fact that 3 humble students of the craft can't come together and tell you which is the best is a testament to not only how diverse the series is, it's also a monument to how awesome the horror community as a whole can be.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go eat some pea soup.


Franchise Ranking

The Exorcist	☆☆☆☆
The Exorcist III	☆☆☆☆
Exorcist II: The Heretic	☆
Exorcist: The Beginning
Dominion: The Prequel to the Exorcist

Please Enter... the House of Sequels!

It started as a joke, one of those "wouldn't-it-be-cool-if" sort of ideas that you quickly forget about.  I don't remember what we were watching the first time I presented the idea to watch all of the greats, but I imagine it was during a viewing of one of the big boys. (I'd like to say it was Hellraiser, but that's surely hindsight bias).  The rest of the gang thought it would be fun, in the way that eating the giant steak in under an hour at the Big Texan would be fun. Everyone had a good laugh, and the idea got swept under the table until the next time we were watching a great, and I had forgotten that I had already brought the idea up before.

And then Salty brought over The List.

I'd like to say that it was inked in human blood and bound in human flesh, but in reality it was just pencil and stuffed in a pocket until it came to rest on my study table.  Written on a shopping list, it denoted every franchise and sequel (later modified by The Rules) that we would have to (HAVE TO) watch. It had everything, from venerable titles like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th to complete shitpickles like Leprechaun and Puppet Master.  It was daunting. It was merciless (did you know that there's like 8 sequels to Children of the Corn?).  It was, once I saw the extent of what it would entail, the dumbest idea I've ever had.

So we decided to do it.

Now, here we are.  More than anything, this blog is a chronicle of our adventure.  We're putting this together to leave a record that yes, we did this ridiculous thing.  We want to have some sort of document that we can point people to when they say, "Did you REALLY watch Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave?"  But we’re also doing this for you, those folks we somehow conned into reading this.  Some of these films you may have never seen before.  Or maybe it’s been 20 years since you’ve seen The Exorcist, and you kind of remember what happens, but you don’t remember how you felt about it.  Or, you want to read about some poor saps that had to sit through a series that has one decent film and a bunch of direct-to-video crapfest sequels.

Step inside the House of Sequels.  It’s kind of dusty, but we think we’ll be hospitable enough for you to want to stick around.