'The Wild Man of the Navidad' Comes to Life at the Performing Arts Center

Greeks Productions and the screenwriter of the original ‘70s horror classic “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” presented a special screening of their vintage horror flick “The Wild Man of the Navidad” Friday, Oct. 26, at the Performing Arts Center. A reception and question and answer session followed the screening, which was part of the University’s 60th Anniversary Speaker Series. Dr. Bill Huie, professor of communication and TV-film, was emcee, and Austin rockabilly band Charlie Hurtin and the Hecklers, which provided the film’s music tracks, performed.

Greeks Productions is Duane Graves and Justin Meeks, who wrote, directed, edited and co-produced the film. Both are 1999 Communications –TV/Film graduates from Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and are former students of Kim Henkel, the film’s co-producer who also wrote and produced the original “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” An unsettling brew of dark comedy, suspense and terror, the 85-minute film (rated R) is adapted from the real-life journals kept in the early 1970s by Dale S. Rogers. The journals tell of a mysterious, but violent creature lurking in the woods that terrorizes residents for years near the small Texas town of Sublime.