The Big Picture · Discussion · Top Five
February 22, 2022/ 93 min/ Sean Fennessey · Alex Ross Perry
Netflix's tenth 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' is the excuse. The real subject is fifty years of disreputable cinema, and Alex Ross Perry brought a spreadsheet.
69 films across 7 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (2022) and the Ten-Movie Franchisea street sequel, and a head-spinning attempt to map the timeline
Netflix's direct sequel to the 1974 original. Mixed bag: half social commentary, half kill fest, doesn't quite work, but the final 90 seconds land. 74 minutes long, a 31% Tomatometer score, and a Sally Hardesty legacy-sequel angle that gets almost no screen time.
The original, in Perry's top 10 of all time. 16mm poetry, palpably gross production design, a family dynamic nothing else in the franchise matches.
Tobe Hooper's own sequel, and Fennessey's favorite of the sequels: a comedy where the original is grindhouse horror, written by L.M. Kit Carson.
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, New Line's entry in the original four-film timeline.
closes out the original Tobe Hooper lineage's timeline
the Platinum Dunes remake
Platinum Dunes' prequel to their own remake
a direct sequel to the 1974 original that ignores every other sequel
Perry's easy pick for second-best in the franchise: a prequel from the directors of 'Inside,' with a French New Extremity nastiness and real sympathy for how the boy becomes the monster.
the French horror film by the directors of 2017's 'Leatherface'
Ti West's upcoming release, teased as delivering what this movie doesn't
cited as a legacy sequel that actually balances new characters against old ones
the comparison point for resurrecting an aging slasher IP
producer Fede Alvarez's prior remake
Perry's example of a film that needed a rewatch to click
The Sex Lane: Nudie Cuties to Deep Throatextreme sexuality and extreme violence as the two ways of getting people out of the house
the exploitation 'hygiene film' Perry points to as the starting line for the genre
a Bergman film plenty of people went to see for the nudity
sold as art, watched as something closer to pornography
the mainstream crossover into true pornography
cited as the deeper end of the sexploitation cycle
The Violent Lane: Grindhouse to Tarantinofrom post-Vietnam shock to the tape-trading 90s
a studio-funded outlier ahead of the 1970s curve
the other studio-funded outlier
Wes Craven's debut: a Bergman revenge story dragged through the American gutter
the one film on the list that also crosses over into official 1970s Hollywood history
described as dirtier under the fingernails than its peers
Lucio Fulci, reclaimed in the late 90s: genuinely difficult to watch and phantasmagoric
the quasi-documentary compilation series now valuable enough as IP that Legendary is reportedly developing a new one
sold direct-to-VHS via cable ad, the era's other tape-trading curio
low-budget indie, paired against 'Natural Born Killers' as the studio-scale version of the same 90s cycle
Tarantino's taste, more than any single scene, is credited with widening what American audiences would sit through
Entertainment Weekly's editor-in-chief reportedly called it a mainstreaming of sadism
a Japanese documentary partly credited to Leonard Schrader (Paul Schrader's brother), billed as 'before Bowling for Columbine'
the shockumentary that somehow landed an Oscar nomination for its score
Torture Porn and the French New Extremity
called an absolute masterpiece of the French movement that also produced 2017's 'Leatherface'
one of the Takashi Miike films cited for brutality
part of the Korean and Hong Kong wave Tarantino's taste helped popularize stateside
Found Footage, Screenlife, and What's Left to Shockon a culture that can stream a real death on the news
the found-footage template that felt genuinely new
screenlife horror's viable start
Perry's read: all concept, no follow-through. A movie that's over once you know the title
cited for its tone rather than any single shock
Brian De Palma's Iraq War film: Perry's example of footage too close to real atrocity to work as entertainment
cited as a rare recent film that uses real American torture as backstory without turning it into spectacle
a new Daily Wire film starring Vincent Gallo (directed by D.J. Caruso)
an earlier Gallo film, invoked as an 'indisputable masterpiece'
the other Gallo masterpiece namedropped in passing
Gaspar Noé, described as scandalous on release and an institution now
the French extreme sex-violence film that hit around the same time as 'Irreversible'
cited as the tender side of Lars von Trier, against the deliberately upsetting side
Michael Haneke
the case study for how little most audiences see of the wider world of foreign film
unheralded on release, now regarded by horror fans as the film that goes furthest of anything from its decade
Honorable Mentionsnamed before Perry got around to his official five
Argento, the movie that first opened Perry's mind to this whole world
one of Perry's 10 favorite films ever, left off the ranked list because a recent restoration made it too accessible to still count as disreputable
Alex Ross Perry's Most Disreputable Moviesranked five to one, reserved for films whose reputation still scares people off
No. 1: the real Ed Gein film. Lower-key and therefore more insane than its more famous cousins, with a cannibalism angle 'Texas Chainsaw' only implies.
No. 2: a German film about a girl warped by obsession with a pop star. Still shocking, Perry says, despite great music.
No. 3: the basic pick, and still the one that made Perry's wife physically ill on a rewatch decades later.
No. 4: an unseen-by-Fennessey Spanish film about murderous children, ending on the same button as 'Hostel Part II.'
No. 5: a Spanish slasher whose tagline is 'you don't have to go to Texas to have a chainsaw massacre.'
Also mentioned raised along the way
The Ed Gein cinematic universe PsychoThe Silence of the Lambs
In passing Spider-Man: No Way HomeChristineHome AloneBoogie NightsHer Smell
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The DeuceBeavis and Butt-HeadIn Search of Darkness
Ads Boar's Head Friar's Turkey BreastNetflix FIFA World Cup Launch Edition
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