It all started in 1974 when a man wearing a human mask made of skin began horrifying audiences with a cheap suit and a chainsaw. Nobody truly knows what it was that caused Leatherface to become the menacing horror icon he is today. Maybe it was the human skin masks, maybe it was the creepy dysfunctional family, or maybe it was the fact that he swung around a giant chainsaw to kill people.

Leatherface, circa 1974 and his more updated look in 2006.

Well, regardless of Leatherface’s chainsaw revving legacy, the chainsaw itself saw a decline in its horror-like appeal during the 80’s and 90’s, that is, until its recent menacing revival in the video game industry over the last few years.

Exhibit A) Resident Evil 4 & 5

I’m not sure which one’s scarier… a man wearing a potato sac over his head and a chainsaw, or a woman with a serious case of leprosy and a chainsaw? 50/50?

They were so pleased with the addition of the chainsaw villager(s) in RE 4 that they decided to release an actual chainsaw controller for both the Gamecube (pictured above) and PS2.

Resident Evil 4 marked the triumphant return of the chainsaw to its former horrifying glory. If you’ve played the game, which I highly recommend, then you should remember the very first time you heard the initial rev of the chainsaw in the opening village. Leon enters a Las Plagas infected village where the people are more interested on seeing what his insides look like than they are in his questions concerning the whereabouts of the president’s daughter. Leon proceeds by eradicating the hostile villagers with guns blazing. Everything seems to be fairly easy, and despite the anxiety from the swarming villagers, Leon can hold his own. However, the player suddenly hears a gas powered chainsaw rev up in the distance and automatically begins to panic. It doesn’t matter where you are in the village because the chainsaw maniac with a sac over his head (very reminiscent of Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13^th: Part 2) will find you and sever your head off. What’s even more unsettling than the wildly wielding chainsaw man is the fact that normal pistol bullets don’t necessarily halt his attempts towards you, and he seemingly never dies. I remember the first time I played the game, I sat there with my shotgun and unloaded shell after shell and he just kept getting back up with that damn chainsaw.

Resident Evil 5 hits store shelves sometime in Q1 of 2009. Watch out for flesh eating villagers and another giant chainsaw wielding guy. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Resident Evil 5 saw a lot of lime light at this year’s E3 and as a result we were rewarded one of the first glimpses at the new chainsaw bearer. Unlike sac-head from RE 4, this chainsaw man is tall, dark and eerily skinny, not to mention incredibly terrifying. I can only imagine that he’s faster, stronger and harder to kill than his RE 4 predecessor. I guess we’ll just have to wait until early next year to see this Leatherface wanna-be in action.

Exhibit B) Gears of War (series)

You probably can’t see from the ridiculous amount of blood in this screen shot, but that is in fact a Locust getting chainsawed…Ouch?

You can say whatever you want about how awesome Gears of War was, and I’ll let you say what you’re looking forward to most about G of W II; however, deep down in your heart you know that the coolest thing about this rather new franchise was the inclusion of the chainsaw gun. You know the feeling of injuring your opponent just enough to finish them with the chainsaw or sneaking up on them and anticipating the future satisfaction of unleashing the chainsaw upon their unbeknownst self.

Gears of War quickly became the 360’s flagship game in 2006. Its mission was to satisfy gamers until 2007’s release of Halo 3, yet the franchise became something entirely bigger than itself. Later this year, gamers will have another great chance to get to chainsawing the helpless in full force and online in Gears of War 2.

Exhibit C) Mad World

Not much has been revealed about this mysterious game in development for the Wii, but one can see from this screen above that it looks particularly friendly. The game’s visuals are strictly black and white with a barrage of red that frequently paints the screen. Players assume the role of Jack, who as it seems has a thirst for blood and lots of it. There hasn’t been any news on the game’s plot or an in-depth view at the protagonist’s life. All people know right now is that Jack likes to kill people, and he likes to do it in several different ways – one of them being with a chainsaw, which just so happens to be built into his arm. This is a great addition because being as it is a Wii game, players will have the opportunity, nay, the privilege to personally wave their Wii remotes as if they were make-shift chainsaws – umm, yes!

So what was the leading cause to rekindle the dying fire of chainsaws in the media? And why did the video game industry choose to be the fuel to the fire? I haven’t the slightest idea, but I like it…I like it…a lot.

If you have any other chainsaw oriented games that I neglected to mention, feel free to shoot me a comment.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Dillon (D-Dub)

Continuing upon last week’s bottom half of the countdown – here is the top five worst video game to movie adaptations ever. So sit back, relax and prepare to laugh….and laugh some more as I cap off the following top picks for the most absurdly awesome video game movies period.

5) The Resident Evil Trilogy (2002 – 2007)

It truly pains me to add this franchise to the list because of my love for the actual series. Capcom’s Resident Evil games are phenomenal adventures and really helped shape the current face of the survival horror genre. Even though none of the Resident Evil movies truly followed any of the games’ plots (other than a few common enemies and character names) they weren’t complete disappointments like Uwe Boll’s creations (Bloodrayne, House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark). I personally like all of the Resident Evil movies and although they are at heart poorly acted, un-scary, riddled with gaping plots and overall fairly bad films, they didn’t totally ruin the series. I wish they would have kept on par with the actual events in the games, but that’s simply Hollywood for you. However, I’ll always be left thinking what the movies could have been.

4) Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Now, I’m not quite sure why this movie rubbed me the wrong way, but I remember nodding off to sleep in the theaters when I was watching this flick. The biggest thing I remember about this movie was just being bored. The acting wasn’t the greatest, Angelina Jolie can do better, and the action sequences seemed to lack the essential element of an action sequence – the action. The story was pretty unbelievable, but at this point in the countdown which movie has even been remotely believable? Jolie fit the profile for Lara Croft perfectly, aside from the graphically enhanced cleavage, but for some reason I was just never enthralled or interested in Tomb Raider’s action or plot. At least Uwe Boll’s movies made me laugh at their overall ridiculousness. Tomb Raider, aside from Jolie’s short-shorts, just made me want to sleep.

3) Alone in the Dark (2005)

Where do I begin? Oh, I know, let’s begin with who stars in this incredibly bad survival horror flick. We’ve got Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff. When was the last time anyone saw any of these big name actors in a good movie? Wait let me rephrase that – how did these actors even get to be big name celebrities? It seems that director Uwe Boll…wait isn’t that the same director as House of the Dead, which placed number 6 on last weeks half of this worst video game movie adaptations list? Yes it is. Apparently Uwe Boll has a knack for taking decent video game franchises and ruining them by bringing them to the big screen. Anyways, back to my point. It’s as if Boll decided to throw a charity call to these three actors, whom before further disgracing their careers in Alone in the Dark hadn’t appeared in a big name movie in a long, long awhile. Face it Christian Slater wrecked his career with his countless drug run-ins, Stephen Dorff was great in Blade and only in Blade, and Tara Reid…well, I just don’t have anything good to say about her.

You’re not fooling anyone with that smarty pants get-up Tara. In fact, you look more like an on-call stripper.

Anyways the movie’s original script was intended to follow closely to the actual game Alone in the Dark, which was influenced largely by horror writer extraordinaire H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. However, Boll ridded himself of that script when he took over as director. The movie totally strays from the captive feel of the game and throws in ridiculous scenes that feel like they’ve been ripped right from the Matrix trilogy. But contraire, Tara Reid did receive an award for her role as an archeologist in the film. Yeah, she was presented with a Razzi Award for worst actress in 2005. Good job Uwe Boll, keep up the quality work.

2) Street Fighter (1994)

You had to know it was coming, right? Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Street Fighter has done everything in its power to earn its well-deserved spot on this countdown. You know the funniest thing about this movie, aside from the actual movie itself, is that I know exactly where I was and who I was with when I saw this movie in theaters. My mom had dropped off my brother and I at the local theater to see this film while she went shopping at the nearby mall. That was nearly 15 years ago, and I still remember the theater being completely packed. To make fun of Street Fighter would be as easy as taking candy from a baby. Rather than rag on this film for its numerous failings, let’s salute it. I mean writer and director Steven E. de Souza (Judge Dread, Beverly Hills Cop III and ironically worst movie number three on our list, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) did the best job he could to incorporate nearly all of the character in the Street Fighter universe into the movie. Sure the acting was horrendous, the story was whack, the costumes – ridiculous, the dialogue atrocious and the movie as a whole probably one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my 22 years on this earth, but that doesn’t mean anything in comparison to the glorious gain one can attain from watching this flick. If you’ve never seen Street Fighter I suggest you rent it, nay, buy it. I can sum up the entirety of Street Fighter’s ridiculousness in two examples from the movie. Point one: Van Damme, an actor with a famous over-the-top French accent, plays American Colonel William F. Guile, the epitome of the United States. Point two: Van Damme wears an American flag tattoo on his bicep throughout the entirety of the movie almost as a reminder that even though he sounds French he is really supposed to be American. The funny thing about the tattoo – it smudges in the final fight scene against Bison. Oops! Point taken.

1) Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Is this really a surprise to anyone? Super Mario Bros. just barely slides by Street Fighter as the all-time worst video game movie adaptation ever conceived. I honestly have no idea where to start with this one. I know I usually joke about how bad the movie is and this and that, but for the first time on this countdown I have no idea what to say – I’m utterly speechless. Well, let’s start with the fact that this film, from start to finish, made absolutely no sense at all. I mean the Mario games have always been a little trippy and as a whole have never really made much sense outside the mission of rescuing the princess; however, Super Mario Bros. the movie just flat out doesn’t compute. There are dinosaurs with huge bodies and small heads, parallel universes, weird futuristic cars and… Dennis Hopper? I understand why this movie grabbed the caliber actors that it did because it was the first video game to movie adaptation, and it was the infamous Mario franchise but this movie was just plain weird and not in a good way. It took an already confusing but good video game and turned it into a more confusing and bad movie. Defining moment: the Koopa’s de-evolution guns were spray painted NES Super Scopes. Whoops! You can thank Super Mario Bros. the movie for influencing the other nine horrible films on this countdown because it was the flag ship, the forefather, the originator which would spur all future video game movie adaptations.

Tiny heads… nice hair… wait, is that a NES Super Scope? Yep.

Well that’s it for the list of worst video game movie adaptations ever. If there is any movie that I left out or movie that you think should be ranked lower or higher let me know. As always, thanks for reading.

-Dillon (D-Dub)