Long awaited DVD release of "classic" Star Wars Trilogy not something to be excited about!

There is a great disturbance in the Force. The last time I felt it was back in 1997 when the Star Wars trilogy was re-released in theaters in celebration of the original’s twentieth anniversary.

The Star Wars trilogy, or what is now being referred to and, in many ways, rightfully so as “The Classic” trilogy that includes "Star Wars" (1977), "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Return of the Jedi" (1983) are finally coming to digital video disc (DVD) Nov. 4, 2004.

Speculation that the most popular science fiction series was possibly coming to DVD in Fall 2004, or should I say, “Rebel Rumblings”, began surfacing in late October last year on various Star Wars fan/toy websites such as Yakface and Rebelscum. The news was finally verified at a private conference Nov. 5, 2003, at the Presidio in San Francisco, Ca., Lucasfilm’s newest base of operations.

The invite went out only to various companies the studio had done business with over the years and wasn’t the kind of invite one gets in an envelope. The invitation included a figure of Darth Vader attached to a glossy black acrylic block with a brushed metal plate that read, “LORD VADER IS PLANNING A MAJOR ASSAULT. HE SUMMONS YOU TO SHARE HIS TOP SECRET BATTLE PLANS.”

The announcement may come as a delight but is it going to please everyone?

Speculation exists that what fans will see on Nov. 4 this year will not be the original 1977, 1980 and 1983 versions of the Star Wars trilogy; editions of which director/creator George Lucas has gone on record saying, no longer exist and will never see the light of day again.

Instead, what fans and DVD/film aficionados will get are the 1997 special editions which featured various changes Lucas and his team at Industrial Light and Magic made to the original prints with newly digitally enhanced footage. Personally, it was the opportunity to see all three movies on the big screen again after so many years, not the additional special effects sequences.

In the cases of the “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back” special editions, the digitally enhanced scenes ruined what was already considered flawless products to begin with. Some scenes as when Harrison Ford’s Han Solo met a computer-generated Jabba the Hutt for the first time brought cheers from audiences as did shots of X-Wing fighters attacking the Death Star from different angles instead of in a straight line. Others like the infamous “Greedo shoots Han” first sequence in the cantina not to mention the additional visual effects shots in “The Empire Strikes Back” ruined the flow of certain scenes and messed up the musical soundtrack.

“Return of the Jedi” was the sequel in what some said was the most disappointing finale in the series that benefited from the changes. “Jedi” ended on a more dramatic note showing celebrations on various planets. Gone was that embarrassing “yuck-yuck” song sung by those annoyingly, cute teddy bears called the Ewoks.

The original ’77, ’80 and ’83 versions are what 48,000 plus fans want to see released on DVD, however; those who’ve signed the online petition at www.originaltrilogy.com that is. The petition went online over a year ago when Lucas made it known that the originals would never be seen again.

Will Lucas reconsider his decision? Film buffs made their negative reactions known when director Steven Spielberg announced that only the revised 20th anniversary edition of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” would be available on DVD and not the original 1982 version. The Oscar winning director heard their protests and the end result was both the ’82 and 2002 editions were released on DVD by Universal/MCA Home Entertainment over a year ago.

Could Lucas react the same way and give the fans what they want? There is a part of me that hopes so. His decision against it is the only reason why I still own a VCR and still have the original videocassettes. If nothing else, those movies will be collector’s items; a part of film history now gone forever replaced by computer enhanced editions.

Then again, November is still barely ten months away. Marketing strategies as to how the films will be packaged and sold whether in a box set like the Indiana Jones series or sold separately are still being discussed.

Perhaps Lucas really does have some “top secret battle plans” up his sleeve and doesn’t want to divulge everything until he is ready. The studio’s recent decision to extend Hasbro license to continue making Star Wars toys until 2012 possibly suggests that when the yet untitled Episode 3 comes out May 25, 2005, that it may not officially be the final Star Wars movie.

Lucas’ original plan was to make nine films. Since 1999’s “Star Wars - Episode 1: The Phantom Menace,” the filmmaker has maintained there will only six. Internet rumors continue to circulate, however, the director may hand episodes 7, 8 and 9 over to other filmmakers and screenwriters.

It may all just be wishful thinking on the part of the die-hard fans who simply aren’t ready to see the franchise come to an end next May.

To quote a wise little green, pointy eared Jedi Master, the future is difficult to see. “Always in motion is the future,” said Yoda.

One thing is for certain. The Star Wars trilogy DVDs will no doubt be a top seller in 2004. What’s uncertain is whether their long-awaited release will be a cause for celebration or one that’s truly disturbing.

©2/11/04

My Most Disliked Topics Media Covered In 2003

Every December as the year ends, critics list their best and worst in movies, television, music and books. Since I am still trying to play catch up on 2003’s movies, I decided to forego my own best and worst list and draw up a unique list for 2003. I call it “Nine things I got sick and tired of hearing the press talk about in 2003 that I am going to hear about, and in some cases, am already hearing about right now in 2004.”

Britney Spears: You know all the words. Sing it along with me. “Oops she did it again.” The former Mouseketeer locked tongues with Madonna at the MTV awards and graced the front covers of most every entertainment or fashion magazine in titillating poses in 2003. The year 2004 wasn’t even a week old when the press got wind of marriage to a childhood friend in Las Vegas only to denounce the proceedings a day later. It was one of the top stories on CNN’s website Jan. 3. Anyone with even an ounce of intelligence should realize it was just another publicity stunt on behalf of the 22-year-old singer who’s clearly running out of ways to shock people. All that’s left now is for Spears to reconsider Playboy magazine’s offer to pose nude. I know quite a few guys who’d snatch up copies of that issue.



Michael Jackson: Is the King of Pop really guilty of “lewd or lascivious acts” with a 12-year-old boy who is a cancer patient and claims Jackson gave him wine before molesting him at the star’s Neverland Ranch? Did the Los Angeles police manhandle him (or as Jay Leno joked on The Tonight Show maybe the singer should have suggested he be “boy handled?) as Jackson said to reporters in December? Perhaps Jackson really is innocent after all and is a victim of circumstance who just happens to like sleeping with little boys (though he has said in interviews that he sleeps on the floor on certain occasions). What’s worse? Jackson’s predicament or hearing the latest developments on the case?

The Scott Peterson Case: The guy deserves the death penalty for murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and unborn child. All right, I’ll be politically correct and say “allegedly.” But I really can’t think of anyone who deserves the death penalty more. Actually, there are some who deserve it just as much as he does. It’s just that no one else comes to mind because this despicable murder case has been in the press for more than a year. Perhaps when the trial is finally over, all that unnecessary and overblown news coverage will pay off if the jury hands down the verdict Scott Peterson really deserves.

Martha Stewart: I admit it would be humorous if the queen of K-mart did go to prison for insider trading. Perhaps she could make some improvements to the prison food. Then there’s the way the women’s prison block would look after she gives the place a woman’s touch. Perhaps Stewart could arrange a morning talk show from prison. All kidding aside, I seriously doubt the domestic diva is going to do any time. I predict it’s going to be a hung jury half made up of men who don’t like seeing women in charge of large corporations. On the other hand, women will be more sympathetic to Stewart’s plight. They want to see a female in charge, especially in a time when this nation could have a woman president in the White House before 2020. All Stewart did was dump $228,000 worth of ImClone stock at the last minute. It’s not as if she put millions of employees out of work the way greedy executives at Enron did. Now those are some people who truly deserve prison time.

Kobe Bryant: Did she, or didn’t she? Did he, or didn’t he? Those were the question asked when the rape case involving the famous basketball star broke the airwaves last year. They’re the same questions still being asked today. When it’s all over, it’s going to be a case of “he said, she said” and more than likely it will be the 19-year-old Colorado hotel employee and accuser who is in the wrong.

Ben and J. Lo: It’s clear that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are NOT Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. And after the two of them did “Gigli,” (Affleck says the title is pronounced and sounds like the word, “Really”), it’s clear this on-screen couple is no Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Last year’s news was whether the duo known as “Bennifer” will ever tie the knot. The couple’s decision to finally call it quits last week will be the topic of 2004.

Saddam Hussein: The guy’s a coward. I would have liked it better if the man who compared himself to Nebuchadnezzar II, a Babylonian king who once ruled Iraq, had gone out in a blaze of glory battling American troops the way his sons died last summer. If nothing else, his death would have spared the world of having to hear about “The Trial of the Century: when the former Iraqi leader is tried for decades of crimes his own people later this year.

Rush Limbaugh’s Addiction to Prescription Pain Killers: The only ones who took great pleasure in hearing about the controversial talk show host checking into rehab after admitting he was addicted to and being investigated for supposedly purchasing illegally prescribed pain killers were the bleeding-heart liberals and the largely liberal press. Newsweek’s cover story last fall on the “Maha Rushie’s” recent downfall was NOT news. It was a dirty, if not pathetic attempt to kick a man when he’s down. Liberal’s revenge is what I call it and it just goes to show how the media can’t find anything better to cover.

Terror Alerts, Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: It’s all a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t when it comes to Homeland Security raising the terror alerts to red, especially during the holiday seasons. The reason why is obvious: to prevent another 9/11 style attack from happening again. The fact is Americans now know better. We’re going to continue doing exactly what we’ve been doing since the events of 9/11: going about our daily lives but be vigilant and aware of our surroundings. It’s a good bet if anyone takes over or tries to blow up a plane, as demonstrated by shoe bomber Richard Reid, the passengers are going to do something to stop the terrorists. A recent videotape from Al-Qaeda’s Chief Executive Officer Osama bin Laden didn’t stop Americans from flying over the holidays last month. It was law enforcement organizations from around the world who, in fact, stopped terrorist agents from boarding planes headed to the United States by canceling certain flights abroad. What it all comes down to is when the chips are down, the only thing Al-Qaeda has on their side is scaring the hell out of people idle threats of retaliation.

©1/28/04

Writer’s obsession with all things JFK

Late last month, when I suggested to the Et Cetera’s editor, Liz Foster, about having the newspaper do an editorial and campus question on the 40th anniversary of the JFK assassination for the 11/26 issue, she immediately got excited.

The JFK assassination was a topic right up her alley, Foster said, telling me how she had books on the subject and at one point, even authored a twenty-page paper about the “great crime of the century.”

“I still cry every time I watch the funeral,” she told me.

I could understand where that fiery interest was coming from because I used to be interested in all things JFK and all things Kennedy years ago.

I owned hundreds of books on the subject that not only covered the assassination and biographies on JFK but numerous others about America’s First Family both hard and soft cover.

It wasn’t just books. Anything that had to do with Camelot I added to my growing library. If it were a recent newspaper article in The Dallas Morning News, I’d cut it out. If I saw any old issues of Life magazine at Half Price Books located on Northwest Highway in Dallas that featured the youthful president or his family on the front cover I’d buy it, no matter what the price was. It wasn’t just books or magazines.

I had a shelf reserved for movies like Oliver Stone’s conspiratorial 1991 opus “JFK”, “Ruby” (1992), and Executive Action (1973) with Burt Lancaster to documentaries to such made-for-tv movies as “Missiles of October” (1974) and the 1983 mini-series, “Kennedy”, with Martin Sheen.



Is it any coincidence that Sheen plays a democratic president on NBC’s “West Wing?”

It got to the point that every time Tom Kelley, friend of mine not to mention a die-hard Republican came over he would get upset and utter the same question he had said to me so many times before.

“What is your damn fascination with the Kennedys,” he’d ask.

I could never offer up a justifiable answer to his question.

Reasons

Looking back now, I can produce about a handful of answers. One I have always been fascinated with the Mafia and gangster movies. When it comes to the JFK assassination, there is no way anyone is going to convince me the events that happened in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963 didn’t have the mob’s name written all over it.

It was a classic mafia hit. Pure and simple.

Another reason is because, like most of our parents, my dad told me about living through that tragic day, where he was and what he was doing and watching the funeral. For him, as for most people still alive today who remember 11/22/63, it was their generation’s rendition of Sept. 11, 2001. Nothing would ever be the same after Nov. 22. Just as nothing has ever been the same for our generation since Sept. 11.



One of the reasons I was interested in the Kennedy mystique was like all major icons of the 20th century, whether they’re presidents or entertainers whose star faded too soon, there is always going to be the lingering question of what if? JFK’s death is forever frozen in time.

Would he have followed through on his supposed campaign promise in ’64 to pull troops out of Vietnam as has been suggested by historians or conspiracy theorists over the years? There is no doubt that had he won in ’64, JFK would have likely paved the way for brother Robert to enter the White House, possibly followed by younger brother Teddy. Perhaps Vietnam would have never escalated like it did under Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency and Richard Nixon would have never been president. Perhaps the only thing we would have known about Watergate was that it was a hotel.

Perhaps JFK would not have lived through a second term anyway given the recent information about his medical condition that up until recently was never fully publicized.



Here we are now forty years later. Chances are that most, if not all the potential suspects who might have had something to do with the events in Dallas are likely dead. Jackie and JFK Jr. have passed on. The only one left to carry the family torch is daughter Caroline.

What hasn’t extinguished it seems is the public’s fascination.

Today

Hundreds of people visit the Sixth Floor Museum formerly known as the Texas Schoolbook Depository, more so around November than during other months. It’s a place as popular as the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, and the sites where the World Trade Center and the Murrah Federal Buildings once stood in New York’s Manhattan district and Oklahoma City. Many of the spectators who come are those who remember the horrible events of that day. Others bring their children while many more who weren’t even born at the time or old enough to remember visit the site.



What has faded, however, is my personal interest in Camelot. Years ago, I would have gladly shelled out $30 or $40 dollars for such newly published books as “Remembering Jack” which boasts never published photos by Kennedy photographer, Jacques Lowe. And “President Kennedy Has Been Shot” that features eyewitness broadcasts and interviews with journalists who covered the events in Dallas. The case has been talked to death (no pun intended).

Other than when the government finally releases the files on the JFK assassination in the next few years, what new information could possibly be dug up on Camelot that we haven’t heard or read about already?

The only book I might possibly get would be the compilation of news stories The New York Times wrote back then. But is their coverage any different from the republished issues I have of The Dallas Morning News and Dallas Times Herald that covered those days?

The library I had is gone now. Practically all the books have been sold off. All I have left on the shelf is “The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis” (2002) that recounts the conversations JFK, and his advisers had during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale: An American Tale” (1996), which I will read one of these days. The Life magazines I had all sit in a plastic bin at a storage facility. Gone are the video documentaries while some of the VHS movies have been replaced by DVDs. The only reason the custom framed “JFK” movie poster still hangs on my wall is because I haven’t found anything else to put up in its place. I am not sure though as to where those silver dollars are.

For many, interest in “the great crime of the century” continues but for this columnist, I have moved on. So has Mr. Kelley but should he ever come around one of these days, of all the questions he may have for me, the one thing he won’t be asking is anything having to do with President John F. Kennedy.

©11/26/03

Jessica Lynch – not a hero

How many of you have heard of Pvt. Michael J. Deutsch, a member of the 1st Squadron, 1st Calvary, 1st Armored Division from Dubuque, Iowa, who was killed his M113 Armored Personnel Carrier hit a landmine in Baghdad, Iraq July 31, 2003, according to CNN’s website.

How about Chief Warrant Officer Sharon T. Swartworth, a Judge Advocate General Office of the Headquarters Department of the Army and Pentagon from Virginia, who was killed when the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter she was in was shot down in Tikrit, Iraq Nov. 7, 2003?

No? Perhaps you might have heard briefly of First Sgt. Robert Dowdy. He was a member of the507th Maintenance Company killed after his convoy was ambushed in Iraq March 23, 2003. Was that a maybe a “no, I still don’t know who you are talking about?”

Perhaps If I ask you if you have heard of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, every one of you is will say yes. Thanks in part to both the press and television news media, not to mention our own government who have made this brave woman into something she herself has said she is not, a hero.

Websters.com defines a hero in five ways. One of them is “a person noted for feats of courage and nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life.”

By that definition Jessica Lynch is not a hero.

The facts speak for themselves. The Humvee Lynch and other members of the 507th Maintenance Company made a wrong turn on March 23 when they were ambushed by Iraqi forces. Except for Lynch, everyone who was with her inside the Humvee was killed that day and she was unable to defend herself because her weapon had jammed.

Don’t get me wrong. The situation Lynch was in when captured by the Iraqis, possibly tortured and perhaps raped was horrific. Just knowing she lived through it makes her brave. But she isn’t the hero here.

It’s not her story Hollywood should have made a television film about. It’s the ones who died fighting when her Humvee was attacked that day and the servicemen who went into the Iraqi hospital to rescue Lynch.

“Don’t they know it was dad’s Humvee,” said daughter Kristy Dowdy in the Nov. 17, 2003 issue of Newsweek who reportedly tears up every time the media talks about Lynch. “Don’t they know it was Dad doing stuff?”

The same went for Sgt. Donald Walters, a 33-year-old cook and mechanic and member of the 507th who was also killed in the ambush and left a wife and three daughters. Newsweek quoted from a military report that suggests Walters fought bravely.

“I am angry,” said Arlene Walters, Donald’s mother who according to Newsweek wants the government to give her son a hero’s due. “It seems like after a soldier is dead, they’re forgotten.”

Lynch’s ordeal is nothing more than an embarrassing public relations ploy – a feel-good campaign, which the media happily got on board.

©11/26/03

The Curse of Flight 191

When it comes to supposed ghost stories in the Dallas area, I can tell you that a friend of mine and I ate at Snuffers restaurant located on Greenville Ave. one busy Friday night. I assure you I did not see or feel any cold presence of a spirit as opposed to what the local newspapers and websites about the supernatural have said over the years. I do not see how one could when the area of the restaurant we sat in was so loud and full of patrons.

I have also never encountered any strange occurrences while dining at the Trail Dust Steakhouse in Mesquite. Of course, I have only eaten on the first floor. I have never been on the second floor, which is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of John Brown; a construction worker who fell to his death while building a railing over the left side of the dance floor, according to www.theshadowlands.net/places/texas.htm.

The same can be said for the restless spirit that supposedly resides at Eastfield Community College in Mesquite. Legend has it that a spirit believed to be a member of the Motley family who are buried in a cemetery plot near the college, watches play rehearsals in the Performance Hall ever since the campus was built in the 1970s. Then again, I have never met anyone who has been in a play production who can verify that such events have happened.

There is one story I can tell you though that happened to me back on Halloween night in 1994. I wouldn’t exactly call it a ghost story, but it is an eerie coincidence nonetheless.

But for me to tell you the outcome, I’ll have to take you back to a sunny mid-Friday afternoon in what was the start of the holiday Memorial Day weekend in Chicago 24 years ago. The date was May 25, 1979.



Shortly after 3 p.m., an American Airlines DC-10, Flight 191, jet fuel spewing from its wounded left wing where an engine used to be, crashed into a trailer park and exploded minutes after takeoff from O’Hare Airport, killing all 271 passengers and crew and two more on the ground.

Six years later on Aug. 2, 1985, a Delta Airlines L-1011 crashed at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport as it attempted to land in a heavy thunderstorm. The accident was the result of wind shear.

More than a handful of passengers, all of whom were sitting in the tail section survived, however, 137 perished including one on the ground.

In a rather ironic twist not connected to the American Airlines disaster, 13 years before the Delta crash, pilots aboard Eastern Airlines L-1011’s recalled one particular incident where the ghost of a dead pilot who worked for Eastern and perished in the company’s L-1011 crash in the Florida Everglades Dec. 29, 1972, appeared before a flight crew with the words, “There will never be another crash on an L-1011. We will not let that happen.”

The incident was reported in author John G. Fuller’s book, “The Ghost of Flight 401.” If such an event did occur and the spirits of the dead pilots were watching over the safety and maintenance of Eastern’s L-1011’s, was the ghostly promise meant for just that airline only?

Both American and Delta jets had the flight number “191.” Is it possible that when a flight number is given to a certain plane, if it happens to be one from a jetliner that crashed years before, does that mean the aircraft is cursed?



It wasn’t the crash at DFW Airport I was thinking about that Halloween weekend in October 1994, however. For some reason, my mind was on the tragic events in Chicago years before. The only reason, to this day as to why I couldn’t get the event out of my head was because one, my parents had flown to “The Windy City” that weekend to see relatives.

Two, I had this unsettling feeling something wrong was going to happen to a plane between the time my parents were away and the time they would be flying home which was Monday, Oct. 31. Yet at the same time, I didn’t think anything was going to happen to the aircraft my parents were on.

That night, when I came home on my break from work, my mom told me they learned while in Chicago that an American Eagle twin engine propeller Aerospatiale ATR-72, carrying 68 passengers and crew, went down in a field in Roselawn, Indiana killing all aboard.



The plane was in a holding pattern waiting for clearance to land at O’Hare when ice developed on its wings causing the aircraft to go into a spin.

My parents and I have flown to Chicago lots of times since ’94. This was the only time, though, that I had a feeling something ominous was going to happen. To this day, there have been no unexplained phenomena in the fields near DFW Airport and in Roselawn, Indiana where the Delta Airlines L-1011 and American Eagle planes crashed. Reports of ghostly apparitions appearing on various Eastern L-1011s ceased within a few years of the Dec. 29, 1972 crash and the airline ceased operations in 1991.

The same cannot be said for the trailer park near O’Hare Airport in what was one of the deadliest air disasters in United States history until the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Since the ’79 crash, residents have reported hearing moans and cries and seeing bobbing white lights while dogs bark uncontrollably for no apparent reason in the direction where the DC-10 went down according to the website, www.prairieghosts.com/flight.html.

Some have reportedly found apparitions standing at their doorsteps saying they “need to get their luggage” and “make a connection” only to disappear seconds later. A man walking his dog near the crash site ran into another person who smelled of jet fuel with smoke billowing from his clothes. The person told the resident he had to make an emergency phone call only to vanish.

The most repeated incident the website says continues to happen is near the departure gate at O’Hare Airport used by Flight 191. Travelers have reported seeing a man, whose business attire seems out of date, make a call from a telephone booth and then vanish into thin air.

The stories have gotten enough attention that ghosthunter Richard T. Crowe includes the crash site on his four-hour haunted bus route of the Windy City every year, which is profiled on the website at http://www.ghosttours.com/.

Believe it or not.

©10/29/03

My Personal Worst Films: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre «
R, 98m. 2003

Cast & Credits: Jessica Biel (Erin), Jonathan Tucker (Morgan), Erica Leerhsen (Pepper), Mike Vogel (Andy), Eric Balfour (Kemper), Andrew Bryniarski (Thomas Hewitt - Leatherface), R. Lee Ermey (Sheriff Hoyt). Screenplay by Scott Kosar based on the 1974 screenplay by Kim Henkel and Toby Hooper. Directed by Marcus Nispel.

The best advice studios should heed is to stop remaking the great movies and concentrate more on remaking the bad ones. What I liked most about director Gus Van Sant's remake of "Psycho" (1998), for example, was that in shooting the film exactly the way Alfred Hitchcock shot it, he proved that the classics should be best left alone.

The original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974), directed by Tobe Hooper, who years later would go on to make the supernatural ghost story, "Poltergeist" (1982), was by no means a classic. I thought it was perverted garbage, but it was perverted garbage made on a cheap stylish independent level that could well be the stuff nightmares are made of. If the film was shocking when it came out, it was because like the foul mouthed, vomit-spewing obscenities uttered by the demon possessed Megan played by Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (1973), no one had ever seen horror like this on the big screen before.

The most haunting shot in Hooper’s film, if I remember correctly as it's been years since I have seen it, is the way it ended showing the director’s certifiably psychotic creation, Leatherface, running around in a Texas field brandishing his buzzing chainsaw like a wild man. By comparison, the most frightening image in this remake is the last shot of Leatherface being captured on a grainy black and white crime film.

Movie remakes are, after all, curiosity pieces; a chance to see another filmmaker's take on what was already, if it wasn't one of the greatest movies of all time which "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not, it was at least the most chilling. Curiosity is the only reason why this remake grossed close to $30 million opening weekend, other than a good marketing campaign.

I went into this updated version produced by director Michael Bay ("Pearl Harbor" - 2001) stupidly thinking this might be an even better improvement upon the original. It took less than 10 minutes to realize how wrong I was. If curiosity does indeed kill cats, then chances are I'm probably "already dead" like the grungy, wheelchair bound old man says to one of the victims who has trespassed on his grounds.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake is completely devoid of any scares, suspense or vivid horrific imagination. Like the original, the remake is a nightmare but it's a nightmare of our own choosing, paying to sit through this formulaic piece of celluloid trash. It's a joyless, slow moving, masochistically twisted geek show that might as well have been shot as a snuff film since all we are really watching for more than 90 minutes is seeing five young people terrorized. Four of whom are hacked to death by either the villain's chainsaw, machete or hung up on meat hooks in a slimy, wet underground dungeon filled with preserved body parts in jars. By the time the film was over, I felt like I needed a bath.

Jessica Biel is the fifth person, not to mention the heroine who does everything she can to keep from being sawed up by a demented, disfigured being called Leatherface whose visible trademark, other than the skin sewn face he wears from his victims, is wielding a chainsaw. Watching it, I almost wished the Biel character hadn't escaped. This way, we would have been spared the disturbing tale begun by the narrator (John Larroquette) who also narrated Hooper's original film telling us how the story we are about to see is true (but really isn't).

The picture has no shred of originality unless you count the scene where a hitchhiker, who Biel and her pot smoking entourage picked up, blows her brains out creating a blood-stained hole in the back window of their van. It's the way the scene is shot as the camera focuses on the shock of the five travelers and then moves backward taking the audience through the woman's bullet ridden skull that soon takes us outside the vehicle. I'll give the filmmakers this much. I have never seen a scene like that done before except when the characters on "CSI: Miami" (2002) conduct autopsies.

If there is any real difference between this new version and its predecessor, it is that this one was likely made on a larger budget. It features two known stars (Biel from television's "7th Heaven" - 1996) and R. Lee Ermey, best known as the sadistic drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) as a deranged toothless Texas sheriff. For me to say that the best shots in the movie are of how ominous and isolated Leatherface's old run down, two-story farmhouse looks at night when surrounded by fog would be a waste of newsprint.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not a tribute to the original nor is it an improvement. It's as much a waste of a movie-goers time as it is a waste of my time in writing a review of it. I can think of no real rhyme or reason as to why anyone would recommend it except maybe they're as sick as the murderer is in this movie. The film was inspired supposedly by the true story of Ed Gein, a serial killer who back in the late 1950s butchered up several people including the mother of a deputy in Wisconsin. He was also the inspiration for Wild Bill; the vile transvestite cross-dressing villain Jodie Foster's novice FBI agent Clarice Starling went after in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991).

I can think of a better horror/suspense film to see that was loosely inspired by Gein’s murder spree which is "Psycho" (1960). It is the one black and white suspense thriller that to this day still spooks actress Janet Leigh every time she steps in the shower.

©10/20/03