The Texas Porn Star Slaughter
‘X’ is exactly what you want from a movie titled ‘X’
The kitschy new gorefest X teaches all the usual horror movie lessons, like never run around outside in your underwear and never walk down into a dark basement and never, ever, go on a road trip in Texas, especially if you’re young and/or beautiful.
But director/writer Ti West’s salute to 70’s grindhouse movies and skin flicks also wants to make a surprising sex-positive statement too: foreplay is an important part of any long-term relationship. Remember that. Also: moisturize.
West’s X is a grimy homage to Tobe Hooper’s timeless 1974 freakshow The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie drenched in sweat and blood. I rewatched it a few weeks ago and you can still smell it through the screen. Like Hooper’s low-budget masterpiece, X is about a van of young Texans who meet their fate at the hands of mutant rednecks living in a large house in the middle of nowhere.
I don’t want to give too much away. In Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, real America is a dangerous place populated by monsters who don’t like hippies or outsiders or anyone who ain’t from ‘round here. In X, beware kindly ol’ grandmas.
West is fluent in b-movies, especially those made during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. The Texas…
