True Detective season two has the same visage and DNA of the first, but it needs to speak up for us to hear. The intro’s graphical sleepy and haunting imagery and auditory sensations are there, only Californiacated. So is the symbolism, with the overhead shots of vapid intersecting freeways that look like rigid arteries interconnecting a vile heart of darkness with the industrial landscape fingered together like a cold computer processor. All of it I’m hoping with throttle forward with the novelty of the first series–but only time is the measure of all things truly divine.

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The Deepest Cuts is a weekly invitation into some of the sleaziest, goriest, most under-explored corners of horror and cult film online. Every title will be streamable and totally NSFW. Whether it’s a 1960s grindhouse masterpiece, something schlocky from the 90s, or hardcore horror from around the world, these films are guaranteed to shock, disturb, tickle, or generally blow your mind.

The slasher film has a number of purported origins; the most common choices tend to be either Psycho (1960), the urtext for the modern horror film in general, or Halloween (1978), one of the most successful independent releases ever and the inaugural film of the so-called “golden age” of the slasher. More discerning viewers might suggest Black Christmas, an influential and especially watchable film that preceded Halloween by four years. But earlier than that, released in 1972, is Italian director Mario Bava’s proto-slasher masterpiece, most commonly known as A Bay of Blood or Twitch of the Death Nerve (though it has been released under, at the very least, six other titles).

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Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater –prominent writer/directors, Texas natives (both have roots in Houston) and coincidentally my two favorite humans. Their latest films were nominated for Best Motion Picture this year and, delving further, their careers have evolved at very similar rates, humbly paving the quaint dirt road that was the indie film scene in the ‘90s with Slacker and Bottle Rocket. Onward, they transitioned to tastemakers, acquiring cult followings with Dazed and Confused and The Royal Tenenbaums. With each film Anderson and Linklater make, their toolbox gets a little bigger without compromising their eclectic and pridefully offbeat styles, one vastly different from the other, yet hauntingly similar. Which leads to the question, who does it better? 

Both Texas boys, Anderson and Linklater began their film careers humbly and close to home, filming in Ft. Worth, Houston, Austin, and other Texas towns. Their horizons expanded as their budgets and reputations did, eventually allowing them to make what are popularly regarded as their opuses, The Grand Budapest Hotel, filmed in Germany, and Boyhood, Linklater’s “love letter to Texas.” But, allow me to ask, whose film locations are better?

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