It’s the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s 40th Anniversary.

A friend of mine ranks director Tobe Hooper’s low-budget masterpiece above ‘Citizen Kane’ in importance. It’s been cited as the best template for ‘true’ horror: a movie where no hero saves the day and the monster doesn’t die.

Thanks to the 4K transfer recently released on BluRay, Leatherface lives in better condition than ever. Nearly 1,000 hours of color grading and restoration work took place during the transfer process from the original 16mm A/B rolls.  Hooper even got involved with the audio restoration.

I had my Texas Chainsaw cherry shredded at MondoCon, watching the film’s 4K remastering on the big screen.  The movie was accompanied by a new score, played live and damn loud by composers Umberto and Antoni Maiovvi.

Releasing a series of new scores for classic horror titles is a great idea, fitting with the Mondo mindset.  But this first foray’s crossbreed of Italo-Disco and No Wave noise didn’t function like a soundtrack should; it amplified sound instead of mood, and often drowned out the dialogue.  Death Waltz Originals released a limited-edition vinyl, which is perhaps the better experience.

Feeling a little empty from the ear-bleeding experience, it was a great pleasure to get filled up by another Texas Chainsaw Massacre tie-in — the Grand Central Cafe and Club Car Lounge.

The Grand Central Cafe originally stood on Quick Hill in Robinson County, and was home to those cannibalistic sausage-eaters, the Sawyer family.  The classic Queen Anne cottage was dismantled and relocated to Kingsland, TX, amidst the gorgeous Texas Hill Country.  I headed out for lunch with a posse of horror directors, actors, distributors, producers and festival organizers from across the British Commonwealth.

It’s a pilgrimage all true horror fans should make, especially if carnivorous.  The solicitous chef provided heaping servings of real Texas grub — creamed corn soup, creamy shrimp gravy served with buttered toast, chicken-fried steak as thick as the Bible, a two-pound burger with a knife stuck through the center, surrounded by perfect onion rings, washed down with a potent summer cocktail: Leatherface Lemonade.

Who needs a chainsaw to finish one off, when you can simply order deep-fried pancake balls stuffed with chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch chips?

If you can handle over 3,000 calories in one sitting, this is the place to lunch.  It’s clearly a local favorite, and the occasional appearance of tattooed horror fans seems to add to the diners’ delight.  One woman couldn’t stop cooing over us — “I just think you all are so cute with your cameras out, takin’ pictures.  So you all are fans of the Texas Chainsaw Mass-acre?  All that blood?  I just think it’s precious and I love that you all have your cameras.”

Honestly, the staircase is the only original fixture left from the film’s time period.  And the restaurant’s merchandise inexplicably uses the logo of the remake.  But for a fanboy day trip, Grand Central fit the bill and burst the stomach.

Last month brought the final print edition of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide (2015), and Mr. Maltin attended Fantastic Fest as both guest of honor and head of the comedy jury. Fulfilling those prestigious roles, he shot rifles, watched ‘Bros Before Hos’ and basically proved himself to be a living badass of film history and criticism.

Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly (authors of punk guide, ‘Destroy All Movies!!!’) moderated an hour-long discussion with Maltin, discussing the beginning of his career and his views on the current directions of film and criticism.

His career began when he was thirteen-years old (!), submitting articles to fanzines listed in Forrest Akermann’s Favorite Monsters of Filmland.   He helmed Film Fan Monthly from the time he was 15 years old, and edited it for 9 years, sending it out via mail-order to around 1500 subscribers.

By the time he was a freshman in college, aged 17, he had unwittingly talked himself into the job of editing “TV Movies”, a competitive volume to “Movies on TV” — books that basically attempted to provide information on all the classic Hollywood films being recycled for non-prime time network programming.

Honestly, Maltin’s description of his childhood viewing habits didn’t differ much from my memories, except I found the classics on regional and cable networks.  It’s remarkable to realize that the cultural currency of the 1930s-40s was still shared with generations of kids through the 1980s, which explains why Maltin’s comprehensive guide became such a touchstone.

The entire Fantastic Fest discussion with him can be found here on the Green Screen of Death.

A true festival highlight was the opportunity to play MALTIN’S.  Producer Ant Timpson (The ABC’s of Death 2) devised the game with his brother in the early 1990’s.  Basically, it’s a cinephile’s spin on Balderdash that became enough of a phenomenon to get mentioned on the longest-running British soap, Coronation Street.

These are the basic rules (copied-pasted-and cut down to size):

PLAYERS WRITE LIKE FILM CRITIC LEONARD MALTIN AND FOOL FRIENDS INTO BELIEVING THE FAKE MOVIES ARE REAL!

Grab an old copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, a stack of A6 paper and 4-6 friends.  Each player takes a turn as “Maltin.”  (To complete the illusion, wear fake glasses, beard & mustache.)  ‘Maltin’ chooses a film title that no one recognizes from the guide and writes down the actual review.

Given only the title, all other players must create a mini-review that adheres to Maltin’s style.  Players write their names below the fake synopses and hand them over to ‘Maltin’, who will read all the reviews aloud — maintaining an even and neutral tone.

(It is also important that ‘Maltin’ quietly clarify questions regarding pronunciation, grammar or illegible handwriting with respective players, because any verbal slip-ups can cue others that the synopsis is fake.  Players do not include other information, such as stars, running time, rating or year in their synopses.)

Players must then choose the real synopis.

SCORING
Choosing the real synopsis = 2pts
Getting your fake synopsis chosen = 1pt per player
No player chooses the real one = 2pts to the Maltin

A game of Maltins consists of everyone playing as Maltin once. The highest score wins and is crowned King Maltin.

Despite my best efforts, I did not get an opportunity to sit at the finalist table to face off against the real Maltin.   Thankfully, I spared myself the indignity of being decimated in battle.  Maltin kept his throne, handily defeating the contestants; he knew every movie title and his fake synopses were — surprise — as persuasive as the real things.

Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide is dead; Long Live the King!

For Italians, ‘mondo’ means the world.

For cineastes, ‘mondo’ refers to the exploitative Euro-sleaze pseudo-documentaries depicting scores of topless women, tribal rituals and true carnage. ‘Mondo Cane’ established the formula (although I hold a fondness for ‘Ecco’ with its toothsome footage of reindeer castration.)

For collectors, ‘mondo’ refers to Austin-based company, Mondo Tees, who design limited-edition movie poster screen prints (plus, T-Shirts, vinyl & VHS releases) featuring classic and contemporary films for a covetous global fan base.

When I first attended Fantastic Fest, Mondo Tees ran a small shop out of its home base, the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar.  (Alamo is its parent company.)  Under the creative guidance of Justin Ishmael, Mitch Putnam and Rob Jones, Mondo has grown into its own gallery space and become an entity worthy of its own convention —

Which must have been part of the game plan from the outset: ‘Mondo Cane’/’MondoCon’. C’mon!

I had the privilege of attending the first MondoCon, held at the Austin Film Society.  It was like stepping into an alternate universe.  I’ve never encountered so many people who prized Baron Munchausen, The Iron Giant and Howard the Duck — much less knew about them.

Almost equally astonishing to me: a 13% oak-aged English Pale Ale brewed for the fest by Dogfish Head — that quickly sold out.  Sigh.  It was too brief an encounter, “Mondo Beer.”

Weekend passes gave people the opportunity to buy limited edition prints and vinyl, as well as attend a variety of panels that mostly dealt with lost masterpieces — the never-weres, the contenders that could have been:

‘2001: The Lost Score’ (which Mondo released on vinyl.)  The daughter-in-law of late composer, Alex North, told of the backbreaking work he put into creating an original score for ‘2001’, and of Stanley Kubrick’s devastating deception.  It wasn’t until watching the premiere screening that Mr. North discovered that his work had been scrapped for the now-iconic classical temp tracks.

‘Godzilla 1983’.  Storyboards showed what was meant to be Godzilla’s first cinematic step onto American soil, with F/X by Rick Baker.

And my favorite — the insanely amusing anime-that-wasn’t: Geoff Darrow’s ‘Shaolin Cowboy.’  Darrow is the gifted artist for comic classics ‘Hard Boiled’ and ‘The Big Guy and Rusty the Robot’.

‘Shaolin Cowboy’ was being produced by the Wachowski siblings as a follow-up to their hugely successful ‘AniMatrix’.  It’s the tale of a schlubby Master who tries to repay the woman who kindly covered his dinner tab — and ends up in the middle of a gang war between a 5-headed mafioso and a vengeful crab. Throw in a talking poodle, a donkey and a zombie horde, and it’s one hell of a missed masterpiece.

But MondoCon is about more than what never was.  Other panels shared the work that goes into realizing a limited edition movie poster print, or a toy model.

And the grand cappers to each day were separate admission screenings of ‘Ghost in the Shell,’ ‘Total Recall’, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’, and the world premiere of ‘FUTURE SHOCK! The Story of 2000 AD’ where attendees received a limited-edition poster print or vinyl pressing.

I thought spending $80 to doze through ‘Ghost in the Shell’ sounded insane, but look at the beautiful foil print given to attendees:

The above image doesn’t capture the foil’s full effect: light makes rainbow-hued arcs shoot across the graphic design.  In my opinion, the poster contains more color and action than the film.  Within minutes, it was selling on eBay for $350-$475.

OK.  Maybe all the attendees weren’t really fans of Munchausen and Howard.  Maybe some were speculators.  But anything that adds value to these genre properties can’t be bad.  Especially when the outcome looks so glorious.

Film Festivals. I’ve been to a handful: the Berlinale, Toronto, Sundance and Telluride. They’ve all got their own personality, but Fantastic Fest is the one con huevos y cerveza.

The festival is held at the Alamo Drafthouse, where the movie theaters have full meal and drink service. It’s a welcome amenity, even during a festival whose programming often doubles (in a good way) as an appetite suppressant. Appropriately enough, the kitchen prepared a non-edible 10th anniversary feast for opening night:

That’s right, there was an all-out food fight. And then there was a piñata party where Eli Roth tried to bust open both human and candy fillings.

The next day, people got pie-creamed in honor of (and homage to) the fest’s 35mm revival screening of ‘Bugsy Malone’ and the awesome-sounding upcoming anthology series highlighting kid cult films, Kid Power!

With all this food, how could I ever lose my lunch?