Film Poster Analysis

2013 vs 1974

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: 2013 VERSION vs 1974 ORIGINAL

Contrary to the usual conventions of movie posters, Texas Chainsaw's image(s) overpowers the information such as Production company and Film distributors, and the only vaguely prominent text is of course the title, but also the tagline and the release date. As a devout TCM movie fan, I have noticed a variety of purposed differences in a vague attempt to separate this prequel from the numerous remakes and prequels existing. This could have been for copy right issues, or whether the original director had endured too many remakes to a point of ridicule. The first difference was of course, the title- Contrasting to the other remakes, whom all share the same title although added further onto it- E.g.- Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, etc- The 2013 remake doesn't at all include the word 'massacre' into the movie title. Despite this, fans are still aware that this film will associate with Leatherface and have a near identical narrative to the previous, simply due to the unique selling point of being located in Texas, and of course a chainsaw massacre. Regardless of the characters, with having merely 'Texas Chainsaw' as a title, the obvious connotation would be this horror classical chainsaw wielding killer. On an interesting point, I noticed that this film had eroded the rest of the remakes by only referring to the 1965 original- they do this by depicting the classic Leatherface mask's on the cover, along with new invented ones. This not only reinforces the idea of a sequel, but also will appear to TCM fans due to the recognition of the first being evident in the publishing, and even more so visually demonstrating the evolvement of the movie, as its still continuing its legacy almost five decades later. However, despite the obvious association with the original TCM, the tagline is entirely different. As the media develops and horror related imagery becomes more realistic, the Texas chainsaw massacre's have gradually became more graphic, widening audiences expectations. This also relates to the theory that the audience are almost immune to such graphic imagery, thus being partially attributable to the first Texas chainsaw, which in todays society would be deemed as mild- whereas when it first came out, caused such a mass anguish to a point of being illegal in various regions. Due to the legal issues, the cover of the original Texas chainsaw massacre was very basic in aesthetic. Although it is crucial to consider the lack of photo editing skills as such, the 2013 poster can already be perceived as rather graphic, and even the tagline "Evil wears many masks" is more horror related in comparison to the originals B-movie mode of address "Who will survive! And what will be left of them?" Accompanied with cartoonesque illustrations of Leatherface and his signature weapon. The 'faces' of Leatherface have changed throughout the decades, prior to audience immunity to graphic violence, Leatherface 'masks' are rather comic and certainly don't appear realistically human, whereas the masks on the 2013 version are increasingly evil as well as horrifically realistic, especially when they're constructed to appear a skinned version of one of the cast's face.

On a critical note, the 2013 poster portrays a variety of human masks on three platform, although to fully establish the expansion of this character and the changes from 1974 to 2013 would have been to construct the masks in a chronological order, using the three shelves to their advantage. The fact the marks are relatively new and unrecognised to the usual fan, doesn't give the movie the full justice. Although I must admit, this movie is utter horse shit. The Texas humidity and filthiness of the house is a theme carried throughout the films, although it wasn't as evitable in the first, probable to the poor quality of filming able to detect it, and is certainly carried out on the 2013 poster where these masks are situated next to a variety of human taxidermy and organs as such, as well as obscure medical equipment and rather beaten down ancient mahogany shelves- of course, enabling the audience to detect the horror genre.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: 2003

DESCENDANTS OF THE VILLAIN THE VICTIMS

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: 2003

Interestingly, when analysing covers for yet again another remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s release poster, I noticed that they had produced multiple versions all depicting one singular character, or aspect of the film such as the sewing machine that Leatherface uses to create his masks. The most plausible reason for this is to emphasise the fact that Leatherface isn’t the most significant character and to perhaps avoid re-using the same conventions of the previous re-makes and sequels. When taking into consideration the excessive following and reputation this film has, and the fact Leatherface is the most prominent association, displaying posters with additional cast members outstands the audiences expectations and even to a certain extent, produces excitement for the release as new characters such as ‘The Tea Lady’ whom when placed in the strange context of this movie, appears quite scary in her appearance and title, even more so the fact her character wasn’t apparent in the original nor any remakes following. Noticeably these posters share the same convention in that they both claim this movie was based on a ‘true story’, which I hasten to add that this statement is entire fabrication as these films did not portray any relevance to the event that occurred involving Ed Gein, although the producers are aware that by asserting this they will attract a wider audience out of sheer curiosity, or at least research further into the ‘true’ story therefore encouraging audience engagement. The use of producing multiple posters, dedicated to each individual character is a convention I may follow for the production of my film’s poster.