Before he puts his knife away, Franklin notices the hitchhiker’s dried blood on it. “Oh, I don’t know, I just started doing that…” replies the dazed Franklin. “Franklin, what are you doing, you maniac?”, asks Kirk. While left alone in the van, Kirk notices Franklin gouging holes in the van interior with his pocketknife. Soon the group stops at a gas station, but there’s no gas, so they mainly just freshen up and buy some eats. Then he smears the symbol on the van while running alongside it, blowing raspberries into the air like some deflating balloon. In a flurry, the hitcher slices open his own hand with Franklin’s pocketknife and gives it back to him he takes Franklin’s picture and tries to sell it to him finally, he takes his own straight razor, slices open Franklin’s arm, and then burns the photo before being kicked out of the van. He admires Franklin’s pocketknife and reveals he, too, carries a blade-a rusty straight razor. Wheelchair-bound Franklin is immediately suspicious (“He looks like Dracula!”) but the hitchhiker takes a shine to Franklin. In a very memorable scene, the group of weary travelers decides to pick up a hitchhiker because they’re afraid he’ll “melt in the heat”. Okay, that one may have been reaching but I’m pretty confident about this next one. They don’t necessarily look similar to me, but I’ll let you be the judge: For years this has bugged me pointless imagery to invoke fear or secret insignia with deeper meaning? I Googled the symbol for Saturn (for the heck of it) and this is what I found. Stay with me.)Īfter they kick the hitchhiker out of their van, he smears some sort of symbol on the door in his blood. So here we have yet another reference to space and planets (I know the sun is a star, I’m not some saphead. The entire opening credits are set over what appears to be the sun, bubbling and bursting with solar flares. And then I remembered the opening credits: Sure, that’s an old horror standby, but it shows up 3 times in this movie. But then I started noticing repeated shots of the moon throughout the film. Other than a device used for foreshadowing, it seems to serve no purpose. At first viewing, this is the extent of any sort of reference to planets/horoscopes. …When malefic planets are in retrograde - and Saturn is malefic - their maleficies are increased.Īfter they’re attacked by the hitchhiker (more on that in a sec) she reads co-traveler Franklin his horoscope, which is equally ominous. During their sweaty van ride to the old Hardesty farmhouse, Pam busts out her trusty copy of A to Z Horoscope Maker and Delineator. This one is pretty speculative and abstract but still got me thinking. For what it’s worth, these all just occurred to me for the first time ever about 24 hours ago and I haven’t had the time to fully explore their concepts. I started making mental notes of things I’d never really drawn connections between in my many repeated earlier viewings. As I sat there marinating in the 5 beers I’d consumed an hour earlier (hey, I was running late and had to pound ’em-had to!), watching the film unfold in a way I’d never seen it before-on a 50-foot wide screen-things started occurring to me. This past weekend, I caught a big screen showing of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at a nearby revival theater. Yet despite my voluminous viewings, I still discover new things (which speaks of the brilliance of the movie). I’d estimate I’ve seen the movie in the high double digits, if not at least 100 times. From that point on, it became my favorite horror film. It was unpredictable, unrefined, and dangerous. I’d been raised on slick, accessible franchises like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was gritty, sweaty, caked in blood. It was so different than any other horror film I’d seen up until that point. I first saw it as a teenager and was immediately blown away.
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