Recently, I was in the mood for a fun slasher rewatch that served me thrills and nostalgia, and ended up settling on the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, starring Jessica Biel. It had probably been more than 15 years since I’d last watched it, and I had fond memories of it being the perfect amount of scary without crossing the line into torture porn, as pretty much all late 2000s horror films did after Saw hit cinemas.
Overall, I loved it as much as I did all those years ago, but there are certain observations that I made watching it at 34 that didn’t occur to me at the time. Things like the movie being set in the 70s, but having all the fashion be the most Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher-ified version of “70s fashion” that one could imagine. As in, the wardrobe department could’ve gone to any mall in 2003 and bought all the costumes from Jay Jays and Just Jeans, and it would’ve looked exactly the same. There’s zero authenticity to it, and I love it. Honestly it feels good and right for this film, and when I say “Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher” I mean that as a compliment to two trucker hat wearing fashion icons of the early 00s.
The cinematography — and the film in general — is a lot pervier and skeezier than I recalled. There are so many lingering, male-gaze creep shots in this film it’s hard to keep track, but the most notable one is, of course, this overly long shot of Jessica Biel’s ass. I mean, look, I’m not gonna lie, it’s a great shot of a great butt and it absolutely deserved an Oscar for cinematography, but it’s also… pervy and gratuitous and unnecessary.
Still, none of this compares to the main issue I had on rewatch, which is: you absolutely cannot walk down a highway while carrying a loaded gun in your vagina.
Now, if you haven’t seen the film in awhile, some lovely person uploaded the clip to YouTube for easy rewatching, but if you’re unable to do so right now, here’s the short version:
Jessica Biel and co come across a woman wandering aimlessly along the side of the highway. They ask if she needs help and she’s non-responsive. They pull over, and see that she’s disoriented and dehydrated, and decide they can’t leave her out on the highway when she’s clearly unwell.
Once in the car, she offers up a very cool icebreaker, telling the gang: “they’re all dead”, which freaks them out a bit. Upon seeing the butcher they’re driving past, she freaks out, tries to run the car off the road, and cries about how she “won’t go back there” because there’s a “bad man”.
It is very tense, but things get really hectic when she then pulls a loaded gun from between her blood-soaked thighs, tells them “you’re all gonna die” and promptly shoots herself in the head.
See, here’s the thing. You can’t do that! I’m sorry, but not for one second do I believe that it’s possible to walk for even a few steps, let alone down a highway, with a loaded pistol in your vagina.
Now, you might be thinking, ‘was it actually in her vagina, though? Maybe it was just tucked into her underwear under her dress!’
Reader, I wish. Aside from the fact that the gun would’ve been visible under the dress in the initial shots of her walking down the highway (the wind is blowing in her direction, pushing the dress behind her), they literally make reference to it again just a few scenes later.
The cop turns up and is disgusting and creepy and pervy — a running theme throughout the film — and asks where she got the gun from.
“She had it on her,” one of the guys replies.
The cop then sniffs the gun, smirks, and says, “you don’t say”.
It is… truly something.
So, yes. It’s absolutely canon that this girl was hiding a loaded weapon in her vagina while meandering down the highway trying to escape Leatherface, and with that in mind, I have just a few questions and thoughts, which are as follows:
- Ow.
- Why? (in general)
- Why not hold the gun in your hand where it will be easier to grab in an emergency, given that you will already be holding it?!
- Wouldn’t this make you walk weird?
- She doesn’t take the safety lock off, which means the safety was not ON to begin with. What if she’d been making a perfectly good escape down the highway and accidentally shot herself by pulling the trigger with her thighs?
- Was she, like… clenching heaps to keep it up there? It just seems like it would be heavy and fall out (and maybe go off accidentally when it hit the ground, because again, the safety wasn’t on!) because you wouldn’t be able to get more than the barrel up there, which leaves the rest of the gun just like, rubbing between her thighs?
- Again, ow!
- I’d just generally like to know more about how she managed to escape from Leatherface’s clutches with a loaded gun, and without anyone chasing her, since she wasn’t running so much as barely able to walk by the time we meet her on the highway.
- Again, it just seems like it would be smarter to hold the weapon you’re stealing while you escape, rather than injuring yourself to hide it, because if Leatherface or any of his pals caught her, surely it makes more sense to just go for broke and shoot them, rather than having to quickly rip a loaded weapon out of your vagina! Again, what if it went off in the chaos of it all? You’re not gonna be able to escape if Leatherface is coming at you with a chainsaw, so you reach down to quickly grab your gun, only to pull the trigger too soon from the adrenaline of it all! I mean, talk about shooting yourself in the foot, right?
- If you’re already stealing a gun, why not steal a bag to carry it in as well?
Anyway! These are… just some thoughts I’ve been having for a little while now. Hope you enjoyed! Bye!