Welcome to Now Streaming in Austin, highlighting locally made titles to watch while self-quarantining.
There’s a sad note to today’s local-created film, and its connection to an Austin institution that has taken a body blow today.
The news broke today that the Austin American-Statesman laid off seven of its longest-serving reporters – a devastating blow to our local news community, and another sign of the economic impact of both the coronovirus pandemic and corporate ownership more interested in cutting overheads than investing in communities.
So, as a tribute to them and the decades-long impact of the Statesman on Austin, we’ve picked a movie that was made within its corridors – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Tobe Hooper’s gruesome 1974 Lone Star cannibal classic was shot in the arid small towns and remote communities around Austin, but the UT alum headed right into the city center when he came back for his splatter-comedy sequel a decade later. Save for some exteriors in Bastrop, and the denouement at the shuttered Texas Battle Land theme park in Dallas, the bulk of the movie was filmed right in the heart of Austin. Cut-Rite Chain Saws (now the Mean Eyed Cat on West Fifth), the fictional KOLA radio station on Sixth – but most memorably, the station’s interiors, which were filmed in the Statesman‘s old printworks at Third and Guadalupe.
For more about the history of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 in Austin, read our 2019 interview with local filmmaker and film historian Mike Blizzard, “The Saw Remains the Same.”
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
• Hulu (Link)
• iTunes (Link)
• Sling (Link)
• Starz (Link)
This article appears in April 24 • 2020.
