On the different iterations of the DVD's some are spelled with the space in Chain Saw and some without. So what the hell is the real way to spell this?

It's the latter, but should be the former.

Neither. It's "Ghost Busters".

Actually, it's "Se7en".

I'm not familiar enough with TCM to know what the actual on-screen title is but the absolute slavishness to the onscreen title in movies like "Ghostbusters" and "Seven" (yeah, you read them right) is ridiculous.

God forbid the person that designs the titles of a movie does something creative like substituting a "v" with a "7" (or a long single compound word being broken up for the sake of space), from that point on you have websites like IMDB adhering to something that appears onscreen for a few seconds while every other example from the advertising to merchandise to the script uses the more conventional spelling.

Go to IMDB and do searches for "Batman Forever", "AI: Artificial Intelligence", "Alien vs. Predator" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and you'll find some hilarious alternate titles: the word "Batman" is represented by a logo in "BF" so "Forever" is listed as an alternate title. The words "Artificial Intelligence" appear on-screen first and then shorten to "AI" so it's listed on IMDB as "Artificial Intelligence: AI" and the "AvP" initials appear first and the extend to "Alien vs. Predator" so it's listed as "AvP: Alien vs. Predator".

But "The Talented Mr. Ripley" takes the cake. It's inventive title sequence cycles through many adjectives until settling on "Talented". Look at what IMDB lists:

I mean, how hilarious is that? Some anal-retentive nerd sat down and transcribed that due to this ridiculous "what's on-screen is the official title of the movie, no exceptions!" mentality.

But hey, if you wanna go into a video store and ask if they carry "The Mysterious Yearning Secretive Sad Lonely Troubled Confused Loving Musical Gifted Intelligent Beautiful Tender Sensitive Haunted Passionate Talented Mr. Ripley" more power to you.

Also, for what it's worth, IMDB claims to go by the original on-screen title of films that appeared during their first public screening where admission is charged, yet they list "The Evil Dead" instead of "Book of the Dead", which people paid money to see theatrically on October 15, 1981 (which is my exact date of birth by the way).

I either found it on imdb or wikipedia but apparenlty Tobe Hooper thought the word chainsaw had a space between, hense the on screen title the texas chain saw massacre.

I want to know if you actually typed that out, or if you copied and pasted from IMDB.

Copy and pasted from IMDB.

Great, now I have to go make a custom cover for this so it's correct!

Here is what each incarnation is actually titled:

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE [1974]
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE [2003]

The more I look at that "Ripley" title the more hilarious I find the thought of someone adding that to IMDB as the "complete title".

I remember when IMDB used to have obsessively-complete character names, too. Instead of "Fox Mulder" and "Dana Scully" you would have "Fox William 'Spooky' Mulder" and "Dana Katherine 'Starbuck' Scully" but they wisely did away with that somewhere along the line.

Back in 1974, it was "Chain Saw"

But by the time the first sequel came out in 1986, it became one word, "Chainsaw."

http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid...en&q=chain+saw

Google knows all.

I have the original theatrical AU daybill for texas chainsaw, and it is indeed spelled chainsaw.

I have that daybill too.

It's always been chainsaw to me!

And that ranks over the actual on-screen title card how?

Cuz Steve Irwin was Australian and he died by an Aussie Stingray Massacre.

That Mr. Ripley thing on the IMDB has bugged me for years. Unfortunately, it's easy to add crap into the IMDB, but very hard to delete.

Doh!

It doesn't really bug me because it's completely valid under what IMDB considers the official title of a movie, it's IMDB's definition itself that bugs me.