A Rondo Hatton short until 'Rondo and Bob' is released

The release of Rondo and Bob at film festivals is on hold until, well, there are film festivals again! We were set to premiere during Megacon in Orlando at the affiliated Saints and Sinner Film Festival, but Megacon was first delayed, then canceled. It may be back in October. We may be part of it, but that's not a certainty.

In the meantime, what is there to do but make some short films from home! We created Meet the Creeper! for Roger Corman's Quarantine Film Festival. The Rondo Hatton mask Paul Smith created for Rondo and Bob was at my house, so we told Rondo's story. I enlisted my son and wife. Kirk Hunter did the editing. My son played trombone and wore the mask. My wife was Mae Hatton. The Austin Chronicle even wrote about the short. You can see the completed film here.

Granny from 'Chain Saw' found!

Photo © Joe M. O'Connell

It took more than a year to track her down, but we finally unearthed Granny, as created by Robert A. Burns for the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. She was in an undisclosed--and quite secret--location in Texas.

The purpose? Film her for my documentary Rondo and Bob about Chain Saw art director Bob Burns and his obsession with the actor Rondo Hatton. We are entering the main editing phase of the project so it was particularly sweet to find Granny, who is holding up nicely. My shooter/editor Kirk kept the zombies at bay while I took this snap.

You can see more about the documentary at rondoandbob.com or find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/rondoandbob/.

My next documentary is 'Rondo and Bob'

The cat has clawed its way out of the bag. I'm working on a documentary called Rondo and Bob about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre art director Robert A. Burns and the actor Rondo Hatton, whom Bob Burns was obsessed with. (See more at the web site here: Rondoandbob.com

Robert A. Burns

 Austin American-Statesman columnist John Kelso made the announcement in his column:


Joe O’Connell is doing his part to promote Austin’s eccentricity.

O’Connell, an old newspaper guy who has written about film for several Texas papers, is shooting a documentary about the late Robert Burns, the man who put the gore in the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with your blood and guts horror classics, Burns did the macabre artwork for the film. Although you wouldn’t guess he’d head in that direction if you met him; Burns was a real sweetheart, a soft-spoken guy with what I suspect was a genius IQ.

There’s never been another one like Robert Burns. They didn’t throw away the mold, because there was no mold. Although his South Austin home was a bit moldy.

Rondo Hatton

Burns lived in a two-story dust-collector in South Austin furnished with props from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” There was the arm chair, so-called because of the prosthetic arms Burns attached. When I visited Burns, a battery-powered rubber hand was crawling across the floor upstairs with a knife run through it, a prop Burns put together for an upcoming film project.

Burns made these masks.

What project? Who knows? But I’m betting it wasn’t “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

During my visit Burns sat me down and showed me the massacre movie on a small TV. His review? He had one complaint: All that screaming from characters being hacked to pieces made the film extremely loud.

Read the rest here.