undefined

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The: Collector's Edition (Dbl DVD) Prepare yourself for a level of fear like you've never experienced before! From filmmaker Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II) and starring Jessica Biel ("7th Heaven") comes one of this year's most hardcore and terrifying film. You've been warned. ]]> Additional Features ------------------- It's a safe bet that Marcus Nispel's audacious 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will gain increasing favor among horror fans over time (after all, some recognized its brilliance immediately, unlike Roger Ebert), so it's a good thing this Platinum Edition DVD serves up a full menu of goodies. Listen up, filmmakers: this is the way audio commentaries should be done--smart, comprehensive, and divided into three separate, feature-length categories (Production, Story, and Technical), allowing Nispel, producer Michael Bay, screenwriter Scott Kosar, and various cast and crewmembers to sound off on virtually all aspects of the film's creation. Nispel's the real winner here, offering articulate explanations for taking this job after a rewarding career as an accled director of high-profile commercials and music videos. The German-born director is intelligent, knowledgeable, and respectful of the horror genre as a stylistically liberating launching pad for first-time directors. Indeed, everyone involved has very sound and justifiable reasons for tacking what seemed, at first, to be a foolhardy mission. The commentaries alone would make this disc worthwhile. Disc 2 offers a feature-length documentary, chronicling the production process from start to finish; it's somewhat redundant with the commentaries (which were culled from the same interviews), but it's informative, revealing (especially in showing the long-term collaboration between Nispel and cinematographer Daniel Pearl, who the original Chainsaw), and occasionally quite funny (as when actor Eric Balfour strips naked before exiting the set on his final day of shooting). Much more disturbing, but equally fascinating, is the graphically explicit documentary about Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, the real-life inspiration for Psycho's Norman Bates, The Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter, and Chainsaw's Leatherface. (This is grisly stuff, folks, so keep the kids away.) The remaining features are typical Platinum fodder--trailers, screen tests, a DVD-ROM storyboard viewer, etc.--but the deleted scenes are (in this case) worth a look, if only to hear an interesting anecdote about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and to confirm that Nispel originally went farther with gore before trimming for an R rating. All in all, these are great supplements to a film that, to everyone's surprise, is every bit as terrifying as its celebrated predecessor. --Jeff Shannon