Those Quiet Moments: Night of the Nazgul

 

It was a nice gesture on my Mom's part.  Way back in 1978, when I was only seven, she elected to take me to an animated film.  It's just a cartoon after all.

That movie, The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship.

This is far in advance of Peter Jackson's efforts obviously.  This was an animated take by legendary 70's animator Ralph Bakshi.  He of classic groundbreaking filmdom.  He of unmitigated trash.  But I suppose, that in 1978, the only way to transfer Tolkien's tale to the big screen would be through animation.  Nonetheless, between Gollum, (who my mother would mock in whisper for years: "My preciousssssss") and the fucking Ringwraiths, I was at the least uncomfortable, at most, terrified. 

So I still remember the nightmare.  

I wake up; the house is cold.  I begin to stroll out of my bedroom and into the living room.  The house is well lit, but there's no one to be found.  Nothing to be heard but the sound of a steady and moderate wind.  I make my way through the living room, and begin to go down the hall to the kitchen.  I'm apprehensive at this point.  I don't know what to expect.  Where is everybody??  Something is not right.  As I enter the dining area, and turn to my right, I freeze.  And see why I feel the way I do.

Across that room, through the kitchen, is the back door.  That door is open and behind the screen door, which is lightly tapping the frame with the breeze is a room that some would call a mud room, or a tool room.  Either way, there's not much to it in my memory but people's shoes, dad's tools, and then the doorway out of the house. 

In this moment; however, standing in the middle of this room is a horse.  

Saddled by one of Bakshi's Ringwraiths. 

The Nazgul, with his glowing red eyes staring straight into me, and whatever's behind me.  Hooves clopping on the concrete floor of that room, as the horse awaits an order.   That humming wind still making its throaty drone. 

I awoke there.  But in some ways, I'm still there, 44 years later looking directly into the eyes of what my 7 year old mind had determined to be the essence of pure, unfiltered evil. 

I know part of my mind is still there, because the thought of this product of my Bakshi-fueled imagination still draws shudders to this day.

The Gobble Project: Pilgrim

 

They tell us the importance of the Thanksgiving holiday is to display how grateful we are for what we have.  That's what they told us when we were kids, as they gave us stories about the holiday's origin: the pilgrims and the Native Americans and the super-hoot they had together,  partying on down with turkeys, cranberries, corn (the Indians called it MAIZE) and ale.  

What a bunch of shit. 

So if a little bloodshed is what you like with your holiday viewing, then Pilgrim is for you.  We start with a short glimpse of a Thanksgiving marriage explosion and our young lead, Cody, has this implanted in her memory from the opening frame.   Quickly jump to the present day, Cody now resides with her Dad, Stepmom and half-brother.  It's Thanksgiving break, they're discussing it as a family and then that is when shit gets weird. 

Mom announces that she has hired some folks that come to your home, dressed in full pilgrim regalia, cook for you, dress up your home, and re-acquaint your fam with what Thanksgiving is all about.  

Yeah, I know, that's some weird shit to begin with.

Only these Mayflower in the Park nutjobs show up a day or two early, and gradually take over the home, trying to implant beliefs, build semi-allegiances, construct a shed by the pool (what the fuck?) before it all gets Helter Skelter.  I'll leave it there, as there is plenty to chew on from that point.  Yes, it becomes the rare Thanksgiving horror film. 

I did enjoy it, as the main cast was very convincing and entertaining, (or this thing would've never worked) it maintained a horro-comedy tone pretty nicely for the most part, and came to a pretty intense and satisfying conclusion and in just under 80 minutes; Pilgrim does not overstay its welcome like the real settlers actually did when they got off the Mayflower.

Just leave the kiddies out of the room for this one.

The Gobble Project: WKRP in Cincinatti Turkey Drop

 

My degree is in communications, specifically radio broadcasting.  There were two reasons I wanted to work in that field.  One: WKRP in Cincinnati.  I know it's a totally fictional radio station, and not a terribly realistic portrayal of one, and I know that when Program Director Andy Travis made the controversial decision to switch format to rock, Johnny Fever opened it with Ted Nugent's Queen of the Forest.  (But the late Howard Hesseman is a fucking legend, so I'm gonna let that go.)

It was the environment that appealed to me.  Reason number two was a movie:  Oliver Stone's absolutely electric Eric Bogosian piece Talk Radio cemented my want to be in the field.  More environment. Totally different.  In one, you're rockin' the free world (or at least 5000 watts of an Ohio metropolitan area), the other, letting people know what idiots they are as you discuss how the world is really, for all intents and purposes, playing out the string.

Yes, I was eventually disappointed.   I started in a newstalk/oldies station, and despite my part time status, I guided Kenosha, WI through a tornado touchdown, and was on the air when the ground war in Iraq broke out in 1991 and made a seamless switch to national coverage.  The second gig was a brand new oldies station in the center of the state, where my Program Director decided my last name HAD to have two syllables. 

World, I introduce you to Rob WillSON.  Hear the sound of the insides of my skull as my eyes roll.  

I pulled the worst shift of my life there.  Christmas Eve, Midnight to 6.  A program, not on disc or tape mind you, but a series of vinyl records that guided you through the history of Christmas and golden oldies. It needed to be played on a turntable in Studio B as the main studio didn't have one.  The total program was 3 hours long, so I had to repeat it.  All night, running back and forth from A to B, flipping albums in B, then broadcasting from A.  

Happy Holidays.  

Right out the higher education door, the pay was crap.  So I, with great disdain, changed fields. The rest is history.  I worked about 2 part time years in the radio biz.  

Anyways.  That's a lot of digression.  Thanksgiving always reminds me of that legendary WKRP episode where Les Nessman broadcasts from downtown Cincinnati as turkeys are dropped from a helicopter onto the multitudes.  It's a poorly thought out turkey-giveaway promotion thought up by the station manager as he's having an existential crisis about his lack of anything to do since hiring a program director to run things. (I always wondered what the "lucky recipients" of the birds were supposed to do with them since they were live).

Nessman's play-by-play is reminiscent of the Hindenburg disaster's broadcast of panic, and the description of the aftermath back at the station is comedy gold.  This never gets old, and I will always recommend this episode be sprinkled in any family's holiday viewing (It's only 23 minutes after all).   It may not warm the cockles of your heart, but it will certainly warm up the funny bone.

Those Quiet Moments: Spooked on a Bike

In my college days, due to epilepsy, my 10 speed bike was my only mode of transportation when I had to go it alone.

Usually my best friend out of a group of us gave me a joust home at evening's end, but I stayed up a bit too late at his house and he wasn't feeling well this October night.  I would be pedalling it.

As Halloween was approaching, the three of us were engaged in the topic of "frightening songs".

We weren't into the bands Suicide or Throbbing Gristle at this point, so tapping into the intro to ELO's Fire on High or Bloodrock's DOA, maybe King Crimson's Court of the Crimson King was about as far as it went.

You know, the commonalities.

Well, the evening drew to a close, my friend Sean, a Prince fanatic, handed me a clear store bought cassette. He knew when I was alone my headphones were glued to my head.  Shit, everyone knew this. 

"Bro, listen to the second track on your way home.  It might change your mind a bit about what we were talking about."  Thinking nothing of it, I clicked the tape into my Walkman, said my goodbyes, and was on my way. 

The night was brisk, and I wanted to feel the bite of the breeze and watch the lightning from an approaching storm dance on the sky, so I took a bit of an alternate route home.  What I was hearing over my headphones wasn't all that scary, so I guessed that my friend must have misjudged. 

I was wrong. 

The tape needed to roll forward a few minutes to what Sean had intended me to hear. 

Prince's Others Here With Us began to play.

I readjusted my route home almost immediately as with every moment forward into the song, I swear things were moving in the shadows of my periphery, the lightning took on grinning shapes, and things were dancing up and down my spine. 

I should have been smart enough to stop the tape, right?

No, because I was stupid. 

And it was October….

Canuxploitation: Sudden Fury

 As a first of a series of Canadian flicks of the 70's exploitation age, I'm starting with 1976's Sudden Fury.  A bit of a strange film for sure, as it starts with a single scene with its lead, Dominic Hogan, pensively waiting for someone to arrive as he nurses a cocktail.  Then He makes a phone call to find that the person he's waiting for, obviously his wife or significant other, is not where she's supposed to be. 

You are given immediate empathy for this character.  He appears to be worried sick, almost in a panic.  A true sad sack. 

We then jump cut to the this man and a woman who must be the wife that had him so emotionally disheveled driving in the deep outback of Ontario, Canada, as Hogan decides he wants to take a "short" deviation from their intended destination. 

He wants to show his wife land he would like to develop, and wants her inherited money to make it happen,.  Based on past business failures in ventures like this proposal, his wife, Canadian starlet Gay Rowan, says no.  

Hogan suddenly is one not to be sympathized with so much anymore.  A true psychopath emerges.  Albeit one who resembles a middle-aged Rupert Grint with blond hair and terrible 70's platform shoes.  A lot happens after his initial explosion at Rowan, so I do't want to give a lot away.  Especially since a chunk of this film is very twisty.  

It's not perfect, mind you.  You have a married couple that my wife and I thought were father and daughter showing up. Yes, the age difference is that clear.  The dialogue is a tad immature sounding, and comes off worse when everyone is screaming at one another.  But it doesn't take away from a fine end product. 

Sudden Fury is a truly original screenplay, deviating from the typical excessive violence and creating uncertain anticipation as to where its headed next.  You'll be a touch on the edge of your seat until its somewhat strange denouement, but it's satisfying enough. 

This is the only film directed by Brian Damude, and I think he could have had a reasonable career in filmmaking had he pursued it beyond this number.

Sudden Fury is Canuxploitation at its best here, and I recommend sitting down blind and just letting the film happen.

Maybe set yourself up with some Wilson's soft drinks first, eh?

The Gobble Project: Grumpy Old Men

 Grumpy Old Men is one of my favorite comedies of all time.  Its representation of the upper Midwest is so accurate, that when things are happening out of doors in Mark Steven Johnson's film, I feel like I'm there in the frigid cold and milk-white snow.

And I miss it so much.

The film takes place leading into Thanksgiving.  I love Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.  They can do no wrong on screen and their presence in this frozen Minnesota wasteland is so true and feels so real that all the pieces of a wonderful holiday movie are in place.

Most disagree on this being a holiday film.  It's the kind of argument had about Die Hard and Lethal Weapon (both Christmas movies by the way).  But if you take this movie apart, its easy to see how it's all there.  The weather-engulfed scenery and hijinks, the families attempting to manage some sort of bonding rituals, and heartwarming results.

Matthau and Lemmon's characters are age-old friends who have been severely arguing off and on for 40 years, basically.  For many reasons.  This time around it's Ann-Margret. 

They refer to each other as "moron" and "putz".  Sometimes with affection, often with venom.  They use the winter elements to prank each other as their common friends watch with dismay and shaking heads.  In essence, they act like 8 year olds in 70 year old bodies.

But it's a touching film too. There is a scene that always gets my eyes to water a bit.  Matthau's character has saved Lemmon's life, as he has suffered a heart attack.  At the hospital, he's asked by the nurse as he's the one who brought him in to the facility, 

"Are you family or friend?"

A short pause, a thousands thoughts cross Matthau's face, and he says, in a raspy tone with shaky enunciation that makes my peepers well up no matter how many times I've seen this film:

"Friend."

Oh, this is a holiday film alright, and a Thanksgiving fit indeed.

Despite the often crass humor, you are gifted with the opportunity to watch the masters of their craft who have worked together nigh on 12 films in their cinematic history.  They were the original Odd Couple and I love them dearly. 

And miss them every day. 

If you want a film about friendship and love, Grumpy Old Men is it.

By the way, both this film and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men,  have the best collection of out-takes at the end that are not in a Jackie Chan film.

The Gobble Project: The Star Wars Holiday Special

I don't remember it vividly, which makes sense, because the history says that George Lucas hated it so much he didn't allow it to be aired again or released on home video.  Seriously, I was a Star Wars nutjob. Like a Trump Supporter for Star Wars.  It was crazy, and the only thing I remember about this damn thing was that I watched it at my aunt's house. It aired on November 17, 1978, and I remember being wicked excited about the whole thing, though the fam around me was less than jacked up about watching it. 

I get it.  I was 7.  Memories from that age don't tend to be stored in the databanks some 44 years later, but it's almost a total vacuum, man.    Even with the cast from the film returning? All those wookies running around Kashyyk a week before Turkey day?  How could it fail?  Could it have been THAT bad?

Yes, says the Magic 8 ball.  Yes it was. 

Now, apparently there are slivers of it that are worth adoration.  Disney + shows the animated segment of it that introduces the most overrated character in the franchise, Boba Fett.  If you read this wonderful historical piece from the website, you'll learn that the portion on Fett was put together by the animation house known as Nelvana.  They created A Cosmic Christmas (It has nothing to do with Star Wars) but I'll be talking about that next month as I delve into THE SANTA PROJECT.

Do some book learnin' here  if you're curious and dig your Star Wars history.

Even though there's a void where this holiday special is concerned, I still spent the better part of the next 18 months collecting Star Wars figures, comics, Topps trading cards, (some from breakfast cereal and Wonder Bread) and other paraphernalia from Lucas' imagination that probably set the parents bank account back a little bit.  With all Star Wars did right, one little goofy Holiday Special can be forgiven.

Right?

The way some over-entitled fans are trying to murder large portions of the whole series now, that's a question better left to the ether.

 

The Gobble Project: Home for the Holidays

 

I always found those movies about some guy or gal who had moved far away from home and due to circumstances, whether they be as dark as a funeral, or as typically mundane as the Holidays, comes home.  Good examples:  Beautiful Girls with a lived-in Timothy Hutton, This is Where I Leave You which has slick plot devices and a great cast with Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, and a hilarious Adam Driver.  There's a bunch. 

I've been that person. It's amazing what "home" looks like when you've been away from it forever, from the town you lived in itself, to the places where your parents and siblings now reside.  There's a whole bushel of mental and emotional avalanche that comes with your "return".

For Thanksgiving, there's Home for the Holidays. This dances a fine line.  Holly Hunter and her brother, Robert Downey Jr. are the ones coming home. So, they're kind of alternative rock actors in the first place.  

Well, Downey WAS.

But when these kids come home, there's some deeply buried disdain within the love of this clan.  There's a curiously senile member of the family with a bit of a secret.  Sisters so tightly wound they're gonna snap, at any given moment.  There's poor Charles Durning, who just wants some peace for God's sake, and a transcendent Anne Bancroft trying to hold it all together. 

Every person here is carrying some sort of shit around, but none more than Holly Hunter.  She just lost her job, and her teen daughter has decided making the trip home from Chicago to Baltimore with Mom on Thanksgiving just isn't the shit.  Downey's gay "I don't really give a shit who I offend" brother serves as a buffer for Hunter, but only to a slim degree.  She's got edges of her own to flash.

This may be the angriest holiday film I've ever seen with the exception of Ted Demme's The Ref.  No one is swinging axes, mind you, but there's some sharp dialogue bandied about with barbed edges.  But at the end, family is family, and if one member has to force all these motherfuckers to sit down and be schooled on that fact?

Well, so be it. 

That said, this movie may not be for everyone, but Home for the Holidays has a hell of a lot going for it besides just that terrific cast.  It's underrated, and I think folks ought to take another look at it. 

Maybe this year. 

Those Quiet Moments: The Hum

                                       

I have a distinct memory of being a small child.  Kindergarten, or maybe pre, and being awoken in the middle of the night by something to this day I'm unsure of.   A low level, quiet, and distant humming. Barely there, but enough to make me get out of bed and wander the house, eventually looking out windows.  It was baffling, I found no answers, and went back to bed. 

This continued for years.  I have memories of being in elementary school, living in rural Wisconsin, hearing it, chalking it up to distant traffic and disregarding it.  Then later in life, I lived in places nowhere near highways, or even roads with frequent traffic and hearing it.  The Hum. 

The Hum.  Out there, lurking.

In High School, there I was, during the Witching Hour, peering out my bedroom window, head cocked to one side like a curious German Shepherd.  In Trade School, hearing it seep into my ear canals as I slept to a pause in my sister's basement in Kenosha, WI.  Oh, still getting up, walking the house, checking the windows, wanting, needing an explanation so rest could come.  

Wanting confirmation that I wasn't crazy, schizophrenic and hearing things that weren't there.

"What the hell is that?"  An eerie, consistent, and ethereal deep hum.  I told no one.

I heard it through the days in the 90's when my oldest was an infant, then the 2000's.....the break of the early 2010's, the year I lived in my brothers upstairs bedroom, following me like a magnet on an anvil.  Now, in Texas, it still sometimes crawls into my ears in those overnight hours when slumber cracks open and drops me out onto some kind of ledge...

It brings to mind the album cover of Manfred Mann's 70's album,  The Roaring Silence.  Just faint enough, but present enough to drive me insane.  Will I ever have an answer for that goddamn hum?

I have tinnitus now, after 20 years of working in a loud factory environment.  Bad enough that business took two knees and a pair of discs functioning capabilities, it had to screw up my ability to truly enjoy music. Then I had a severe sinus infection 10 years ago that reduced my hearing capacity in my left ear even further.  

But under that grinding, staticky, high pitched whine that is tinnitus' calling card, often in dead silence of night...

Welcome my son.  Welcome to the Machine.

Underneath all that.  The Hum does return, just to remind me that it's never going to go away.

But I guess I'm not alone:

Movies I Stayed Up Late For: Zorro

"Zorro" was a 1974 multi-country production starring Alain Delon, star of the internationally regarded Le Samourai and Scorpio, who made his biggest American splash as a pilot in the cumbersome Concorde:Airport 79.  

My put-upon sister took me to see "Zorro" theatrically during a late 70's re-release. I remember some serious swashbuckling activity, fantastic stunt work involving equine action, a lot of Alain Delon smooching, and the Oliver Onions song Zorro's Back, which was used to great effect a couple years back in the Wes Anderson and Luke and Owen Wilson collaboration, Bottle Rocket.   

After seeing the film, I ran around the living room, fencing air villians with a stick, my mom's afghan around my shoulders, as I became the Somers Village Zorro.  In reality, I was just an idiot. I've spoken in this blog about heroes I had as a kid.  French heartthrob Alain Deloin was one of them.  to this day, he's my favorite Zorro. Yeah, yeah, I know, the serialized episodes from back in the day, Antonio Banderas, The Gay Blade, etc, et al.  

No. It's Delon. 

This film enjoyed some great late night runs on our pre-cable television sets back in the day, and I eventually was able to track it back down on disc sometime in the early 2010s.  Of all the movies from my youth, this one is the one that I am still the most shocked I was able to locate on Blu-ray.  So join me in singing the long-forgotten (unless you happen to be Wes Anderson) classic: 

The Gobble Project : Turkey Noir

On TMC's terrific Noir Alley, Eddie Muller introduced the wife and I to 5 against the House.   It's an odd film about 4 college age kids (kids? well... two were in Korea, so they're on the GI Bill, but these do not look like college kids).  One's a rich kid, whose "genius" has his mind busy working on "systems" (that probably are not pertinent to his grades), another who is the typical fast-talking and annoying hanger-on that speckled the era, and movies about the time period (see: The Wanderers, Grease) demonstrate this fact.  You know these characters, crackin' wise constantly, and unable to shut up.

Then there's our two GI Bill boys fresh from the Korean skirmish, who are late for their law degrees, and one guy's quasi-femme fatale (a young and fresh Kim Novak).  

The rich "genius" has devised a plan to rob the then-famous Harold's club casino in Reno the week of Thanksgiving.  Which had me humming this ditty from my college days:

This planned activity is not a crime, says our young whiz-kid, as he has no plans to keep the cash. He just wants to see if he can pull this thing off.    Well, it seems one of the two vets has some head issues from the war that flicker early on in a violent outburst that began as defense of a friend.  (This is Brian Keith in a pretty stalwart performance).  He's decided he wants to keep the money, natch.  This unfortunately will put his buddies and Miss Novak in harm's way. Now, they're not such friends, anymore. 

Happy Turkey Day, Pals!!

A youngish William Conrad does a nice turn here as the casino employee victimized by the crime.  He reminds me of a young Orson Welles here, as this is long before Jake & the Fatman  and Cannon.  This all turns into a sloppy casino mess before the holiday can even be celebrated.  (Ocean's Eleven they are not).  

It's a fun little noir however, and it falls right into the Turkey Day Window.  Enjoy!!

The Gobble Project : Intro and Miss Peach of Kelly School

 As a kid, I really geared up for the holidays internally.  There was a sense of anticipation that began in mid-October and ran until New Year's Day.  When I reminisce on it, I get a warm fuzzy feeling, and visual images that aren't unlike being pulled into a time machine with the air swirling with Life Saver's Books, Holiday Specials, and the smell of Turkey.  

Nothing exists like bringing all those family members together.  As I got older, the heartwarming nostalgia became even stronger as family members began to live further apart and the re-connection created a real strong heartstring pull.  Besides family connecting and the dinners, the TV Special was a huge deal as a child of the 70's.  With the advent of cable and the addition of streaming, television has become so watered down, it's hard to know what's on, much less when.  This was not the case in those days.

   

Now, mind your reactions, the explosions of channels has caused cable services to really have to work at it to create a quality product to bring in and sustain an audience.  Quality has suddenly become a commonality, if you want people to watch what you're making.  Cable saved us from the onslaught of endless trashy reality shows, and streaming returned the cinematic feel to television.  

Still there's something to be found in the network and syndicated originals of the 70's.  Before frickin' Survivor and American Idol came along and ruined scripted material by washing it away. 

I was a huge reader of the comic strip in the Sunday papers.  Miss Peach was one of my faves as there was great wisecracking humor from the kids, and some nice life lessons that could be derived. 

Miss Peach made a minimized leap to television with some slight regularity and the occasional holiday specials.  My fave being Miss Peach and the Turkey Raffle. It aired at least once on WFLD 32 out of Chicago on Thanksgiving Day, and to see those characters come to life from newsprint to puppetry (Miss Peach was live action however herself) was kind of a revelation.  Here's a little history on how that happened: Flexitoon

I don't remember it with great clarity, but I couldn't wait to watch it.  And it carries with it a great air of nostalgia to this day.

The Witch of November

One of my favorite songs of all time is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by my personal poet laureate, Gordon Lightfoot.  (He's a great story himself, you know, check this out).    Jack Black and Todd Louiso in the Stephen Frears piece, High Fidelity discuss its incredible nature as one of the greatest songs of all time about death.  Believe it or not, the released version was done on the first take.

    

Tonight in 1975, The Witch of November came early and resulted in difficult seafaring on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes in general.  It resulted in the sinking of the ore freighter, The Edmund Fitzgerald.  

I seem to have memories of the news of the disaster from early childhood and Lightfoot's melody hangs heavy in my heart to this day.  When I see footage of deep ocean waves on television, my stomach drops into a hidden trough in my abdomen.  When The Witch came through, the Great Lakes can take on those qualities, complete with rogue waves, and the ability to sink a ship in seconds. 

Memories of these newscasts still linger in my mind like a ghost in a haunted house.  

Old ghosts, but ones with power nonetheless. 

I wish peace to all who have lost loved ones to the beast of the deep so suddenly and with such dark circumstances. 

Here's a link to a list of memorial services for those sailors for November of 2022.  One is even virtual.

Well over 10 years ago, a young man named Timothy McCall of Indiana set up a great site dedicated to the ship and the wreck. Informative and empathic, it grows and expands with the times, please take some time to check it out here.

 Here are the names of the lost 29 men of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

And in-depth discussion of that night and the events from PBS Wisconsin.

Samhain Project 2 : Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

 I was genuinely surprised by TCM III.  I've done some research on the history of the series and this one is generally regarded as the weakest by many.  I have a hard time figuring out why that is. Now, don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect, and there are clunky moments probably caused by studio meddling, but I actually genuinely liked this film.  

One thing I enjoyed is the feeling I got that they were trying to blend the two distinctly different tones of Tobe Hooper's original and sequel.  To a degree I feel director Jeff Burr and crew had some success in doing so. 

Its gore from KNB FX is extremely limited, and I guess that's the case with the unrated version as well, (also allegedly from studio meddling, and wrestling with the MPAA).  Make no mistake, the film is grim enough in my view, but true gorenuts will be disappointed with its lack of gristle, as it doesn't even approach the splatter level of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

A nice cast of genre veterans and an early appearance by Viggo Mortenson, who does not appear to be slumming it, adds a professional vibe to it that could have been lost.  The introduction of Kate Hodge who has had a lengthy career (many will know her from the Brandon Lee film, Rapid Fire) is here along with William Butler (Tom in Tom Savini's Night of the Living Dead) and Ken Foree (Peter from Dawn of the Dead), and much more. They do quite a bit with roles that could have been phoned in by lesser performers. 

Overall, Leatherface has a lot more going for it than the pundits give it credit for and I give it a Halloween recommendation.