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I   In Within Heaven and Hell (1996), Ellen Cantor’s voice-over tells the story of a doomed love affair while the video footage toggles back and forth between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Sound of Music (1965) – between bursts of blood and bursts of song, between a sadist on a rampage and the fantasy of family, between dream and nightmare – which is to say: the footage tells the story of a love affair, too   Cantor’s voice – at once curious and chewy, deeply matter-of-fact – describes the time she fucked her lover in a hotel room when she was on her period Her blood was smeared across both their bodies, three red handprints went up her back like she was a ladder getting climbed to safety She and her lover said to each other, ‘It’s just like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ which plays on the screen as she narrates the memory: Leatherface lunges across dusty floorboards, a girl in cut-off shorts rises from a porch swing to walk toward the back door of a farmhouse Don’t do it! we want to shout during horror films, whenever characters walk toward closed doors Don’t do it! we want to shout during the ordinary days of our lives, whenever friends walk toward selfish lovers   But we also get it We get the curiosity of the girl and we get the way she compels us We get the grotesque pleasure of watching her get bloody, the pleasure of getting bloody ourselves, getting tangled up with the bodies of others and getting marked by someone else bleeding: lust as bloodbath The narration of a bloody scene between lovers nicely inverts the blood logic on screen: instead of a man getting a woman bloody, a woman is getting a man bloody It’s still the woman’s blood, but it’s not from a wound – it’s not a sign of what’s been done to her, or taken from her   If hell is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, then heaven is The Sound of Music We move between their respective visions of extremity – love as senseless peril and love