write34
Kill The Bitch

Prompt originally from AetherRoom.club
Created: 2023-10-09
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Description
In 1973, a bunch of kids set out to make an infamous splatter movie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Who will survive and what will be left of them?
Tags
horror, movie, 70s, mind break, murder, cannibalism, slasher
Prompt
Texas, 1973, the height of summer. Sally was tied to a chair, howling like mad with bloodshot eyes. Insanity might be the only reasonable response to her situation. Her friends and brother were dead, carved up by backwoods cannibals. The strong implication was that the sausage presented to her on the plate was long pork. The killers mocked her screams from the other end of the weather-beaten dinner table. The gibbering Hitchhiker scrunched his face in cruel mockery, his associate, The Cook, guffawed in good humor, the brother, whose identity was epitomized by the poorly-fitting mask of human flesh pulled over his head, Leatherface, hooted and pounded the table, and all the while the decrepit, corpse-like Grandpa slumped in his chair at the head of the table. The fact that this was just a movie, that Marilyn Burns — playing Sally — was supposedly not in any real danger, was no comfort as the cameras kept rolling, take after take, hour after hour on into the night with the nerves of the cast and crew wearing raw, ever closer to the edge. Tobe insisted on capturing the perfection of his vision for the six minute scene, shooting it from every possible angle. A bevy of reasons meant this pivotal scene that the movie hinged on had to be put in the can tonight. A dreamlike stupor came over the actors as they went on and on, hysteric, exhausted, bordering on psychotic mania. The hammer that Grandpa was supposed to bludgeon Sally to death with, an impossible task for his withered, feeble form, had its iron head replaced with foam but the shaft was still made of solid steel that hurt as Marilyn was repeatedly whacked with it. The blood in her hair was real. "Hit that bitch!" The Cook said, and the Hitchhiker parroted it, cheering on the old man to do it, to bring an end to the excitement and with it all their frustration and torment. "Kill her! Kill that bitch!" Gunnar heard Ed say. The mantra of it infected the air. "Yes. Kill. The. Bitch." he said to himself as he stepped forward. All perspective was lost as he succumbed to his surroundings. In that moment, he wasn't an actor. He was Leatherface, and this could all be over, they could all go home if he would just solve their problems by making the squealing stop. Gunnar was going to put an end to it, to... [Click to expand]
Texas, 1973, the height of summer. Sally was tied to a chair, howling like mad with bloodshot eyes. Insanity might be the only reasonable response to her situation. Her friends and brother were dead, carved up by backwoods cannibals. The strong implication was that the sausage presented to her on the plate was long pork. The killers mocked her screams from the other end of the weather-beaten dinner table. The gibbering Hitchhiker scrunched his face in cruel mockery, his associate, The Cook, guffawed in good humor, the brother, whose identity was epitomized by the poorly-fitting mask of human flesh pulled over his head, Leatherface, hooted and pounded the table, and all the while the decrepit, corpse-like Grandpa slumped in his chair at the head of the table.
The fact that this was just a movie, that Marilyn Burns — playing Sally — was supposedly not in any real danger, was no comfort as the cameras kept rolling, take after take, hour after hour on into the night with the nerves of the cast and crew wearing raw, ever closer to the edge. Tobe insisted on capturing the perfection of his vision for the six minute scene, shooting it from every possible angle. A bevy of reasons meant this pivotal scene that the movie hinged on had to be put in the can tonight.
A dreamlike stupor came over the actors as they went on and on, hysteric, exhausted, bordering on psychotic mania.
The hammer that Grandpa was supposed to bludgeon Sally to death with, an impossible task for his withered, feeble form, had its iron head replaced with foam but the shaft was still made of solid steel that hurt as Marilyn was repeatedly whacked with it. The blood in her hair was real.
"Hit that bitch!" The Cook said, and the Hitchhiker parroted it, cheering on the old man to do it, to bring an end to the excitement and with it all their frustration and torment. "Kill her! Kill that bitch!" Gunnar heard Ed say. The mantra of it infected the air. "Yes. Kill. The. Bitch." he said to himself as he stepped forward. All perspective was lost as he succumbed to his surroundings. In that moment, he wasn't an actor. He was Leatherface, and this could all be over, they could all go home if he would just solve their problems by making the squealing stop. Gunnar was going to put an end to it, to
Author Notes
The feverish intensity of the scene and the strain of the shoot had worn away at Gunnar's separation from the fiction. The slasher storyline was becoming bloody reality.
Memory
The filming occurred under brutal conditions. Sweating bodies were packed into the suffocating heat of the house under the hot lights of the set. A sort of primal insanity swept over the cast and crew as they made take after take.
World Info
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  • Jim, Cook

    Jim Siedow, playing The Cook, was the most professional actor on the set and the kindest to Marilyn, always looking out for her well being. His character is a conflicted sadist, enjoying the torture he is putting Sally through but afraid that it will produce some terrible reaction with which his twisted sense of morality and practicality are unable to cope.

  • Ed, Hitchhiker

    Channeling his schizophrenic nephew to portray The Hitchiker, Ed Neal brought a weird presence to his unhinged character. The Hitchiker was scrawny, acting in a way that seemed explicable only to himself and with a casual cruelty.

  • Sally, Marilyn

    Marilyn Burns was being tortured as much as her character Sally, the final surviving girl, was in the script. Her torment was encouraged and exploited by Tobe so he could capture the "reality" of the performance.

  • Grandpa, John

    John was buried under layers of makeup and a mask to play Grandpa. Directed to remain limp while he baked in an oven-like getup he had to resort to a kind of Zen to remain calm amid the madness. Earlier in the night, he'd been fed drops of Marilyn's real blood because of trouble with faking it.

  • Tobe, Director

    Tobe Hooper, the cigar-smoking director, did his best to immerse his cast in the horror laid out in the script, abusing them, while managing the ground collapsing under the production as they shot with budget, time, and effects constraints.

  • Leatherface, Gunnar

    Leatherface was the centerpiece killer of the movie. Toting a chainsaw and executing with a slaughterhouse sledgehammer, he had a child-like mentality, not truly understanding what he was doing but obeying his sadistic family lest he upset them. Leatherface wore a rotating collection of stitched together masks made from the tanned hides of victims.
    Gunnar's costume stank after weeks without being changed or washed.

  • house, set

    The old house borrowed for the shoot was stifling, with windows blocked out because the shooting had begun in daylight. It was rank like a slaughterhouse, stinking of stale sweat, rotting headcheese, chickens, and dog carcasses.
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