Seeing as how part five of the biggest horror film franchise of the new millenium will be coming out in a matter of days now (about nineteen of them, in fact) I figured I’d take the opportunity to connect with you folks out there on a more visceral level and talk about the Saw franchise, starting with one and working back to four.

Okay, first off, Saw came out during a pretty low point in my life.  Halloween of 2004 was pretty lousy for yours everfreakintruly, out of work due to a rolling practical joke of an economy, and when I started seeing trailers for this little beauty I was intrigued.  It was nice to see something interesting for a change, because even from a cinematic standpoint 2004 was a downright canker sore of a year (The Village, Van Helsing, The Day After Tomorrow, I’m looking at all of you).  You had to go down fifteen movies on the year’s best grosses before you found something even vaguely resembling a horror flick (once again, Van Helsing, I’m looking at you).

So when Saw shrapneled its way into theatres, I was more than eager to go catch it.

I did not regret it.

A twisty, beautiful confluence of events and plotlines, with all the blood and razor wire a gore junkie could ever want (and I’m not all that fond of gore; I come for the plotlines), Saw failed to disappoint on any level.  Oh, sure, maybe sometimes it got a little ahead of itself with the twists, but when that door slammed shut just after “Game over. You lose.” I got a CHILL.  An actual chill!  Have you any idea how rare that is, that I should get chilled by a horror movie?

I remember walking out of that theatre thinking, man, if they do another one of these next year I will CAMP OUT for tickets if I have to.  It is just that good.

The horror film market was absolutely glutted with films at the time.  The direct to video horror market was basically just beginning, and horror was no longer just the stuff of October.  You could walk into a video store virtually every week and find a new horror flick on the shelves from the various DTV companies (Anchor Bay, MTI, Dej occasionally, First Look, The Asylum, Heretic, Brain Damage and, yes, even Lions Gate) that were cranking material into the market as fast as they could.  So it became a challenge–how to distinguish yourself from the masses of material that were steadily engulfing the market?  It was nuts, and it was the perfect time for a movie like Saw to come in and dominate the floor by just being so much more devious than everyone else.  A movie dependent on traps, where the killer did not kill at all, but rather put his victims in a horrible no-win situation where life could only be obtained through horrendous suffering?  Nothing like it existed at the time, really, and that was what made it so amazing.

Little did we know, however, that the best…and the worst…was yet to come.  Saw had only just begun, and oh yes, there would be blood.

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