Bit By Bit, They Carved a Nightmare...
Everybody tell Lion’s Gate exactly how much you want to see Tobe Hooper’s remake of The Toolbox Murders in theaters. They’re keeping me up at night with this prickteasing little insinuation that they’re considering a midnight circuit run to accompany the DVD release in fall of 2005, and I and many others would rest easier if those coy little so-and-so’s would just call it a night and commit.
Has everybody seen this thing? I know Mr. Hooper has been taking it around to festivals all year, and it seems like the general reaction has been favorable. Last I heard it played to an enthused crowd at the Egyptian this passing August, and we all should hope that it continues to flit about as long as possible between now and the time we’re allowed to take it home. It’s dirty and unpleasant and doesn’t make a lick of sense, but doesn’t that describe a good number of canonized genre offerings? Not that I’d necessarily go so far as to canonize it, but my memory of it from the genrefied Danger After Dark program for the Philadelphia Film Festival this passing spring is a pleasant one. After a relative ebb in the flow of visceral shocks and atmospheric fright from the man who inflicted The Texas Chainsaw Massacre upon the world, Tobe Hooper has suddenly cultivated a full-blooming flower of evil from the barest seed of an idea born in another movie about power tool mayhem, made not long after his own initial triumph in that field. Tobe’s Toolbox Murders (perpetrated, by the by, with the aid of Tobe’s actual toolbox) is a grim, filthy, and almost needlessly jarring extrapolation on Dennis Donnelly’s original bare-bones suggestion about a maniac doing a little nail gun-enabled spring cleaning of the immoral inhabitants of his apartment complex. As Hooper readily admits, his Toolbox is a remake in name only, so be warned: not even its notoriously severe predecessor will prepare the audience for the trauma incurred by viewing its descendent.
Ectomorphic May antiheroine Angela Bettis has just moved into a labyrinthine, claustrophobic, never more than half-lit apartment building where she finds herself regularly disturbed by constant electrical disruption, noise produced by her criminally weird neighbors, and inevitably, the violent dispatch thereof. The play by play is unimportant, as the meandering narrative culminates in a murky, Freemasony mystery that’s nearly impossible to pick apart. But don’t let that distress you. Instead, allow yourself to be distressed by the almost surreal levels of sturm und drang permeating LA’s infamous Ambassador Hotel in which the film (and Robert Kennedy, famously) was shot by May cinematographer Steve Yedlin; or, by the disfigured homicidal handyman whose visage and modus operandi actually live up to the gold standard achieved by Chainsaw’s Leatherface; or, if none of that does it for you, than by one of the single most gruesome murders this reviewer has ever witnessed in her life-long study of the spectacle of simulated violence. The victim actually begs for death. You might, too.
Despite the high level of aggression born by Hooper’s new project, and that of the exponentially more brutal classic which he bestowed upon us thirty years ago, make no mistake -- Tobe is a sensitive artist. I have this on good authority from Danger After Dark programmer Travis Crawford. Mr. Crawford was responsible for Tobe’s entertainment during the day of his visit to the Philly Fest, and the first order of business was to take Mr. Hooper where all DAD guests are taken – the Mutter Museum. For the uninitiated, this is an institution of medical history that caters to the local med student populace, but which appears more like a turn of the century odditorium. It’s filled with malformed homunculi in jars of formaldehyde, plastic renderings of ocular injuries, and it houses the world’s largest colon. A string of other genre luminaries have made that journey under the festival’s auspices, ranging from Alex De La Iglesias (Common Wealth) to newcomer Jorge Olguin (Sangre Eterna, the Chilean mall-goth thrill machine that is a thousand-fold better than Underworld), and all of them came away with photos, teeshirts, and a general feeling of childlike glee. However, in an unforeseen twist, the man whose trademark work of art was banned in Britain for something like “psychological torment” all but swooned like a neurasthenic Victorian housewife at the sights he was shown. After manifesting an entirely tragified reaction to an umpteenth exhibit, the venerable director was asked whether he wasn’t sorry he’d come. Responding to his host’s blushing apology, Tobe “Chainsaw” Hooper intoned with solemn resignation (I paraphrase), “No, no…I suppose this is just one of those things you have to see in your lifetime.”
I take this to mean that Hooper has a heart of gold, and that he crafted Chainsaw, if not other films, with the extreme sensitivity to the potential hell of embodiment that enables his best work to drive the present author to tears. That in mind, I’d like to pick his brain someday regarding his reaction to the original Toolbox Murders. I recall my initial viewing experience with that dubious classic, sitting in a rotten red velvet-garnished theater in Pitman, New Jersey at a screening hosted by a little revival outfit called Exhumed Films. Despite snickering fanboy references I’d heard to the film as a campy balls-out slasher artifact, I found Dennis Donnelly’s Toolbox to be one of the most grim, unapologetic, and peculiarly disaffected films of its type that I’d ever seen. The disconnect between the film’s somnambulant cinematography and sleepily sentimental Top 40 country soundtrack, and its unremittingly cruel homicides drove me into a state of near-catatonic disquiet. Though I’d never in a million years side with such a faction, I almost felt a pang of sympathy with the feminist factions that called upon this specific film as an example of why this strain of moviemaking should not be allowed to persist. Coincidentally, I was in the company of the aforementioned Mr. Crawford during this particular screening. I should note that this fellow is responsible for my awareness of such video uber-nasty as Don’t Go In the House and In a Glass Cage before I repeat what he said about a particular scene wherein one victim is brutally slain, apparently in direct punitive response to her pleasuring herself: “Feminist critics at the time said that this film is ‘Dangerous and should not be seen’…and I’m inclined to agree.”
All you sleaze cineastes out there know that the original version of this film got the Blue Underground royal treatment in the recent past, so I say to everyone: see them both, it matters not in which order, and push for the theatrical release of the latter. You’ll be glad you did.
Has everybody seen this thing? I know Mr. Hooper has been taking it around to festivals all year, and it seems like the general reaction has been favorable. Last I heard it played to an enthused crowd at the Egyptian this passing August, and we all should hope that it continues to flit about as long as possible between now and the time we’re allowed to take it home. It’s dirty and unpleasant and doesn’t make a lick of sense, but doesn’t that describe a good number of canonized genre offerings? Not that I’d necessarily go so far as to canonize it, but my memory of it from the genrefied Danger After Dark program for the Philadelphia Film Festival this passing spring is a pleasant one. After a relative ebb in the flow of visceral shocks and atmospheric fright from the man who inflicted The Texas Chainsaw Massacre upon the world, Tobe Hooper has suddenly cultivated a full-blooming flower of evil from the barest seed of an idea born in another movie about power tool mayhem, made not long after his own initial triumph in that field. Tobe’s Toolbox Murders (perpetrated, by the by, with the aid of Tobe’s actual toolbox) is a grim, filthy, and almost needlessly jarring extrapolation on Dennis Donnelly’s original bare-bones suggestion about a maniac doing a little nail gun-enabled spring cleaning of the immoral inhabitants of his apartment complex. As Hooper readily admits, his Toolbox is a remake in name only, so be warned: not even its notoriously severe predecessor will prepare the audience for the trauma incurred by viewing its descendent.
Ectomorphic May antiheroine Angela Bettis has just moved into a labyrinthine, claustrophobic, never more than half-lit apartment building where she finds herself regularly disturbed by constant electrical disruption, noise produced by her criminally weird neighbors, and inevitably, the violent dispatch thereof. The play by play is unimportant, as the meandering narrative culminates in a murky, Freemasony mystery that’s nearly impossible to pick apart. But don’t let that distress you. Instead, allow yourself to be distressed by the almost surreal levels of sturm und drang permeating LA’s infamous Ambassador Hotel in which the film (and Robert Kennedy, famously) was shot by May cinematographer Steve Yedlin; or, by the disfigured homicidal handyman whose visage and modus operandi actually live up to the gold standard achieved by Chainsaw’s Leatherface; or, if none of that does it for you, than by one of the single most gruesome murders this reviewer has ever witnessed in her life-long study of the spectacle of simulated violence. The victim actually begs for death. You might, too.
Despite the high level of aggression born by Hooper’s new project, and that of the exponentially more brutal classic which he bestowed upon us thirty years ago, make no mistake -- Tobe is a sensitive artist. I have this on good authority from Danger After Dark programmer Travis Crawford. Mr. Crawford was responsible for Tobe’s entertainment during the day of his visit to the Philly Fest, and the first order of business was to take Mr. Hooper where all DAD guests are taken – the Mutter Museum. For the uninitiated, this is an institution of medical history that caters to the local med student populace, but which appears more like a turn of the century odditorium. It’s filled with malformed homunculi in jars of formaldehyde, plastic renderings of ocular injuries, and it houses the world’s largest colon. A string of other genre luminaries have made that journey under the festival’s auspices, ranging from Alex De La Iglesias (Common Wealth) to newcomer Jorge Olguin (Sangre Eterna, the Chilean mall-goth thrill machine that is a thousand-fold better than Underworld), and all of them came away with photos, teeshirts, and a general feeling of childlike glee. However, in an unforeseen twist, the man whose trademark work of art was banned in Britain for something like “psychological torment” all but swooned like a neurasthenic Victorian housewife at the sights he was shown. After manifesting an entirely tragified reaction to an umpteenth exhibit, the venerable director was asked whether he wasn’t sorry he’d come. Responding to his host’s blushing apology, Tobe “Chainsaw” Hooper intoned with solemn resignation (I paraphrase), “No, no…I suppose this is just one of those things you have to see in your lifetime.”
I take this to mean that Hooper has a heart of gold, and that he crafted Chainsaw, if not other films, with the extreme sensitivity to the potential hell of embodiment that enables his best work to drive the present author to tears. That in mind, I’d like to pick his brain someday regarding his reaction to the original Toolbox Murders. I recall my initial viewing experience with that dubious classic, sitting in a rotten red velvet-garnished theater in Pitman, New Jersey at a screening hosted by a little revival outfit called Exhumed Films. Despite snickering fanboy references I’d heard to the film as a campy balls-out slasher artifact, I found Dennis Donnelly’s Toolbox to be one of the most grim, unapologetic, and peculiarly disaffected films of its type that I’d ever seen. The disconnect between the film’s somnambulant cinematography and sleepily sentimental Top 40 country soundtrack, and its unremittingly cruel homicides drove me into a state of near-catatonic disquiet. Though I’d never in a million years side with such a faction, I almost felt a pang of sympathy with the feminist factions that called upon this specific film as an example of why this strain of moviemaking should not be allowed to persist. Coincidentally, I was in the company of the aforementioned Mr. Crawford during this particular screening. I should note that this fellow is responsible for my awareness of such video uber-nasty as Don’t Go In the House and In a Glass Cage before I repeat what he said about a particular scene wherein one victim is brutally slain, apparently in direct punitive response to her pleasuring herself: “Feminist critics at the time said that this film is ‘Dangerous and should not be seen’…and I’m inclined to agree.”
All you sleaze cineastes out there know that the original version of this film got the Blue Underground royal treatment in the recent past, so I say to everyone: see them both, it matters not in which order, and push for the theatrical release of the latter. You’ll be glad you did.
posted by claire donner at Thursday, September 09, 2004
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