Movie

This last Saturday I decided to join my friend, Jordan, to revisit a habit we started in high school and are now half-heartedly keeping alive (because we’re busy now; because we’re not in high school now): watching the newest, and worst-looking horror movies. On this particular rainy Saturday afternoon our choice was the new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ” an equally hilarious and unnecessary reboot of the slasher/torture porn franchise. And to see this bloody garbage, we went to Springfield’s Palace Theater.

Located at 2220 West Chesterfield Boulevard, The Palace is inside of Chesterfield Village, which is basically a fake village in Southwest Springfield. If Springfield, Missouri, were a brain, Chesterfield Village would be the part of the brain that thinks its body is capable of something more, and is suffering an identity crisis, cloaking itself in well-groomed lawns, odd roads, a giant fork prop, and outlet malls that look too classy to contain businesses in Springfield. Chesterfield village is a fancy fantasy (a “fancytasy?”), and The Palace is a looming, neon pink-and-turquoise-glowing reality check, symbolizing and epitomizing every other instance of tackiness in all of Springfield (including that giant fork in the road from before).