Hot mess...

I agree with other posters who have described this movie as an inconsistent mess. It was...it really was a hot mess. I watched it last night for the first time with such high hopes after having heard this movie regarded as one of the horror greats...and especially with its being "loosely" based on a true story that just made it all the more appealing.

After watching it however (actually WHILE watching it if I'm to be honest) I found myself feeling very let down and actually kind of annoyed. And 99.999999% of the time I felt that was any scene that involved the stupidly moronic character "Sparkplug." Given his idiotic performance, and the fact that not a single scene he was in was at all laughter inducing, I have now re-christened his character's name as "Buttplug." Seriously, I don't know what the film makers were thinking putting that garbage into what otherwise could have been an amazingly scary and suspenseful movie. It was just too all over the place. I don't care if he was the director or not, that didn't give him the right to put himself on the actual celluloid to in turn screw up what could have been a true classic horror masterpiece.

I also agree with the pointless need to turn this into some whacked out Dukes of Hazzard/Smokey and the Bandit type road movie. Any scene where they showed the cars in some kind of a chase HAD to have the obligatory slowed down camera shots with the cars veering all over the roads like there was no control to them what-so-ever. Now I've never driven a car from the 40's (which is when this was supposed to have taken place), but was the physics of the planet in such disarray at the time that anytime you slightly turned the steering wheel of your car you were catapulted around the road as if it were covered in two inches of ice?? WTH was that about?? Just to make it look more "adventurous and action packed" to us viewers? It was really just piss poor film making. Nothing more, nothing less.

And the music...let's not even get started on the atrocity of the music in this movie. Thank God Halloween came out two years later and basically redefined the importance of a good score and its need in a horror movie. Because TTTDS just didn't have that at all. And again...to add salt to the wound they even went so far as to add stupid "light hearted/clown music" to the score in some scenes (usually the ones with Buttplug) that just completely took away from any of the credibility that the movie was beginning to build to that point.

If this movie was remade (and I'm not talking about the sequel that is coming out soon...I mean a TRUE remake) there really is a great story to tell here. I would definitely keep the narrative portions, but I would make them feel much darker ala The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and use a narrator with a much scarier deeper gritty sounding voice. All the lame comedy bits need to go. All the pointless road movie chase scene bits need to go. The music score needs to be amped up and darker. And basically at that point, you have an awesome horror movie.

I would liken my experience with this movie to going to a restaurant that I had heard great things about. The food, no matter how well promoted, is just gonna end up tasting like ass if it's not prepared and served the right way. That's what this movie was like. Sadly. : /

Oh, and one more thing...you just read my signature.