"My family's always been in meat."

Sometimes when I'm searching for movies to tell you about I stumble on one so notorious it requires no review, a film about which so much has been said over the last four decades, anything I try to add to the conversation would be superfluous.

That generally doesn't stop me from talking about it, though. The news here is the movie is available.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

You probably already know the story to this 1974 Tobe Hooper classic: a forgotten, white, working-class family have lost their jobs to automation in their chosen trade, and The Old Man (Jim Siedow) has to run a convenience store off the side of the road selling BBQ and gasoline, except he has no gasoline.

During their funemployment, the boys become quite the artists, dabbling in sculpture, photography, mask-making, you know, stuff they can do with dead bodies to keep them busy between murdering van loads of lost hippies.

Marilyn Burns stars as Sally, whose nipples protrude through her light blue sweater vest the entire film. A lot of critics fail to point out how well she fills out a pair of white, hip-hugging bell-bottoms.

Sally and her whiny, wheelchair-bound brother Franklin ( Paul A. Partain) have invited a few friends on a road trip in the Texas scrub land to find their late grandfather's house. They run out of gas and stumble upon the family of redneck cannibals and the worst kind of culture war ensues.

Gunnar Hansen turns in an iconic performance as Leatherface, the lumbering, mentally-challenged, masked necrophiliac who wields the chainsaw, but all the bad guys are fantastic.

This movie contributed a lot to the lexicon of modern horror, most notably the chainsaw as a tool of violent mayhem.

Roger Ebert called it "some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement."  It's been often imitated, never duplicated. If you haven't seen it, it's time. If you have seen it, it's time to see it again.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre streams on Amazon Prime, as does the documentary Texas Chain Saw Massacre: A Family Portrait for you trivia buffs.

"You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die!"

Death is unpredictable. Sometimes when it happens, we don't necessarily have all the tools at our disposal to properly honor the life that was lost, or in my case, the soul that was gained.

For example, William Peter Blatty just died and Netflix has taken The Exorcist down. If you were hoping Death would go any easier on famous people in 2017, I have a feeling you're going to be disappointed. This week also saw the passing of William Onyeabor.

Shame about Onyeabor, really. He was a fantastic man.

It all reminds me of how just about this time last year Angus Scrimm died and the best movie I could find to talk about was John Dies At The End, and how I had to wait forever to see Scrimm's signature work.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Phantasm.

As many times as I've watched this 1979 Don Coscarelli film, and it's been many, I still can't say for sure what exactly happens and why. It's like a weird dream. It starts with this blonde woman having sex in a cemetery with a guy named Tommy, who has a handlebar moustache. By the sound of things, he finishes, and then she stabs him, and then she turns into Angus Scrimm. You get a sense that the sequence of those events is important. The blonde lady could have turned into Scrimm before murdering the guy. Scrimm didn't have to finish Tommy off, did he? But he did. What does that mean?

Then we learn at the funeral that Tommy was in a band with Jody (Bill Thornbury) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Reggie is the ice cream man, and Jody drives a sweet car and has a little brother named Mike (A. Michael Baldwin). Jody and Mike's parents died, and Mike is afraid he's going to lose Jody, so he follows him around everywhere, and asks a old, blind, psychic lady for advice. She has her granddaughter instruct Mike to stick his hand in a black box, and whatever's in there won't let go of his hand until he learns not to fear.

Later, Jody picks up the same blonde lady that was actually Angus Scrimm that killed Tommy at a bar and they go to have sex in the cemetery, but Mike was following and watching from afar, when all of a sudden he gets attacked by satanic jawas.

I could go on forever about the strangeness of this movie, how Scrimm's severed finger turns into a giant, red-eyed fly, how Scrimm, undercover as the undertaker is actually an alien stealing corpses and sending them to another dimension, but the coolest thing is the flying silver balls that stab people in the head and pump out all their blood.

Phantasm is a strange trip you can watch time and again, enjoy the visuals, and still not know what the hell is going on. It streams on Shudder.

"It's got a death curse!"

Sometimes when you're clicking through your favorite streaming service, you might get the idea that the Ole Devil's power and influence over this world are waning. When faced with sub-standard pre-weekend viewing selections, some people even start to doubt my existence.

"If the Devil is real," they reason, "how come Big Trouble in Little China is the only John Carpenter movie on Netflix? If the Devil has any power, why is Creepshow 3 on Hulu, but never Creepshow or Creepshow 2? If he can't even force Amazon Prime to get its shit together and carry the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series forever, then why call him The Devil?"

Look, I work in mysterious ways, OK? Streaming services are run by people who have Free Will, so the best I can do, same as you, is complain like I did on Thursday, May 12, 2016. It appears my complaint has been heard.

Today is Thursday, January 12, 2017, so this week's Thursday Thriller is, I shit you not, Friday the 13th.

How's that for power and influence?

This 1980 Sean Cunningham film is about a murderer stalking the woods of Camp Crystal Lake where Steve Christy (Peter Brouer) is preparing to open up for a highly profitable season of providing upscale American adolescents with memories for a lifetime. I mean, I guess that's why you try to re-open a camp no one else will touch because of its history of having two counselors murdered there 30 years ago, and the year before that a special kid drowned in the lake. The locals don't go near the place. Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) says, "It's got a death curse!" Not many people would be ballsy enough to undertake such entrepeneurial risk, but Steve Christy loves risk .He sports a moustache and a neckerchief and no shirt.

Pretty soon, Christy's staff start dropping like flies.

If you haven't already seen Friday the 13th, you've at least heard about it. It spawned 10 sequels and a remake,was the basis for one of the worst Nintendo games ever and is due for a video game reboot, Drawing heavily on Halloween as an influence, it helped set a tone for popular horror in the 1980s.

It's a mystery who's killing off the young folks, and if you're familiar with the series only by reputation, you're probably wrong about who it is.

But was it any good?

It made a fuck ton of money and earned its place in horror history.

Kevin Bacon dies in it. Tom Savini did the makeup F/X. Just watch it.

Friday the 13th streams on Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime and YouTube. If you're looking for a guy in a hockey mask, you might go ahead and skip to part 3.

"Wendy darling, light of my life, I'm not gonna hurt ya."

I meant to tell you about a particular movie almost a year ago, but I got sidetracked by Death. He brought me Abe Vigoda and instead I wound up talking about The Stuff. However, the movie I wanted to discuss is still on Netflix, and thanks to millions of people who have nothing better to do with their TV or Internet time than gawk at the mentally ill, it's back on everyone's mind. 

No, there's not a movie about Donald Trump's cabinet yet. I'm talking about how Dr. Phil pointed a camera at Shelley Duvall so she could say crazy things about how Robin Williams isn't dead, just shape-shifting. He's both, but I don't have time to explain how that all works to feeble-minded mortals like yourself. I've got a movie to talk about.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Shining.

This 1980 Stanley Kubrick film is based on a Stephen King novel. King hates the adaptation.

It's the story of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Duvall) and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd). The boy has psychic powers and talks to his finger. Jack is a writer seeking some solitude so he takes a gig as winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a swanky joint that rests atop a mountain in Colorado. The Overlook is haunted by the old caretaker, who got cabin fever one winter and chopped up his family. His daughters also haunt the overlook. So does some old lady.

 

So do people who like to put on bear suits and fool around with men in tuxedos, and vice versa.

What happens in a nutshell is Jack goes crazy and tries to kill his family with an ax. It's scary, it's trippy, and making it sure as hell didn't do Shelley Duvall any favors, healthwise. 

The Shining is a feast of disturbing imagery and sound that'll make your skin all prickly, no matter what Mr. King says. It streams on Netflix.