Last weekend was the inaugural Niagara
Falls Comic Con, and more specifically MacabreCon!
It was a really good time with a
fantastic turnout. The convention centre floor was a fairly large
space with equal areas given to comic book artists, celebrities and
vendor booths.
There was also a gaming booth, which was demoing, among other things, the new zombie game Lollipop Chainsaw.
There was also an added element to this
event, that I made sure to take advantage of.
Take that, Fan Expo! |
I walked around the show floor, bought the newest Walking Dead trade from Mostly Comics and a DVD previously unknown to me from Suspect.
Starring Anna Friel!!! |
However, my main reason for attending
was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Reunion, which included a screening and a Q&A
with three members of the original cast, Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface)
Marilyn Burns (Sally) and Teri McMinn (Pam). The post-screening
discussion was really fun and all three seemed in very good spirits.
Teri McMinn, Gunnar Hansen & Marilyn Burns. |
It started out with them answering
questions about if they think there are any modern ‘Texas
Chainsaws’ to which the answer was a resounding no. Gunnar then
used the differences between the 1974 and 2003 versions of the film
to prove his point.
“Everytime they (the remake) have a
chance to make it really disturbing, they chicken out and splatter
blood on you. The great example being when the girl finds her
boyfriend hanging on the meat hook with his leg cut off, with his
toes touching the keyboard. They could have made that scene
excruciating because they are deathly afraid that Leatherface is
going to show up. What if that scene had been five, six, seven
minutes long? And she's struggling to get him off the hook. His toes
are touching the piano, so they're making noise, I mean the audience
would have been horrified because any second he's going to come back.
It would have been like the dinner scene (in the original). But
instead, she gives up immediately and guts him. Literally, it's a
bloodbath. Just a big bucket of blood splashes all over her. And I
thought, do they really think this is psychological horror? They
chickened out.”
It is pretty clear to anyone who has
seen the film that it was a gruelling experience to shoot,
so they all recounted which scenes were the most difficult. For
Hansen & Burns, it was the dinner scene, which was filmed over a
marathon shooting day of twenty-six hours in hundred plus degree
heat. For McMinn, it was her death scene which had to be shot over
and over because of director Tobe Hooper’s fondness for multiple
takes. It was McMinn who I found to be the most charming, especially
while relating her apprehension about a certain iconic camera setup.
“At that time wearing red short
shorts and your cheeks showing was a very risqué thing to do. I was
very worried because I came out to the set that morning and I see
Daniel (the cinematographer) hunched over the camera under the swing.
I knew what was supposed to happen and that I was going to have to
sit on that swing. I'd never taken Tobe on about anything so far,
but I went over and said 'come on, what's the camera doing there?'
So Toby and I argued for about ten minutes and after I stood my
ground, he just said, 'Oh Teri, dammit, I'll just shoot around it.'
So I thought, great, my cheeks won't be in the shot. Then of course,
when I went to the screening for the first time to see it, I was so
embarrassed to have, in Cinemascope and Technicolor, my cheeks going,
ba-badum-bada-badum across the screen.”
The trio also confirmed that Paul
Partain (Franklin) was just as miserable offscreen as he was on.
Burns made a point to mention that they had made amends at a recent convention though. It turns out that he'd been method
acting and deliberately staying in character the entire
length of the shoot.
Someone asked about the upcoming Texas Chainsaw 3D project, which Hansen and Burns are both in. They were forbidden
to say much, but did reveal that the movie picks up right after where
the original left off. Hansen added that he saw some footage while
doing some recent ADR and was quite impressed.
I had a great time at this show and I'm sure the event
was enough of a success to warrant future iterations. Congrats to those
involved for pulling it off. For me, it was back on the road and
straight up the QEW to the WWSFF event Night Shift.
To be continued…
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