Chain Reactions
Official synopsis: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s impact on 5 artists — Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, Karyn Kusama — through interviews, outtakes, exploring how it shaped their art, psyche from childhood trauma.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) launched not only director Tobe Hooper’s career. Its influence also inspired other filmmakers, writers, and other artists, not to mention a bevy of sequels, prequels, reimaginings, and rip-offs. Director Alexandre O. Phillippe’s documentary Chain Reactions focuses on how the horror classic affected writers King and Heller-Nicholas, comedian Oswalt, and filmmakers Kusama and Miike. The time spent with each interview subject is longer and more focused than many documentaries that feature a large number of talking heads, allowing viewers to truly understand how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre drove them to, or at least in, their varied successful careers. Clips from the film help illustrate the interview subjects’ commentaries about its social issues, storytelling, cinematic techniques, and personal impacts. Highly recommended for cinema lovers, whether or not they are fright-fare buffs.
Hey Folks! It’s the Intermission Time Mixtape
Official synopsis: A mind-altering mixtape from AGFA (American Genre Film Archive)! Mid-century America runs amok in this haunted found-footage ode to moviegoing and the snack bar. In the tradition of Negativland and Devo, AGFA’s archival gremlins have spun a mountain of vintage cinema and drive-in ads (courtesy of Something Weird Video) into satanic word salad. Beneath, behind, and between the movies lie carbonized hot dogs from Hades, velvety vapid voiceovers, bewitching visuals, and pizza from the eighth dimension. Take a psychedelic trip to the lobby with us.
With Hey Folks! It’s the Intermission Time Mixtape, codirectors Bret Berg and Joseph A. Ziemba have taken — from a series of six videotapes — several hours of ads, announcements, and the like that ran before and between features at drive-in and walk-in theaters back in the day, and edited and otherwise visually and sonically played with the lot.The result is a 70-minute barrage of classic Americana that will have those who remembered those “Let’s go back to the lobby”-era ads either fondly recalling sitting through those bits and hankering for huge pickles and drive-in hot dogs, or less fondly recalling for shelling out for cardboard-like pizzas that were quite different looking than the ones show on the big screen. Those too young to have experienced should get a kick out of what they missed, or perhaps find themselves wondering what the big deal was. In either case, Hey Folks! It’s the Intermission Time Mixtape is a fun 70-minute blast of nostalgia.
Chain Reactions and Hey Folks! It’s the Intermission Time Mixtape screened as part of Boston Underground Film Festival, which ran March 19–23, 2025.
