One of the most notorious aspects of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is that, despite its lurid title, premise (five young people encounter a cannibalistic back-country family, one lives to tell the tale), and tagline (“Who will survive and what will be left of them?“), the kills in the iconic proto-slasher are delivered with little to no special effects, blood, or gore. However, in spite of, or in fact because of this, the movie has not lost one ounce of its brutality and power in the 50 years since its original release.
Not being bloody does not make the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie feel lacking in any way, even in the wake of modern gore-fests such as Terrifier 2 or In a Violent Nature. For instance, when Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) lowers Pam (Teri McMinn) onto a meathook, our imagination is supported by a multitude of factors to feel the sharpness of the instrument and the terrible weight of gravity, from her terrified reactions to the uncanny way she is rigged to hang in the air to the dread-inducing wait she is forced to endure for what Leatherface does next.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Is An Exercise In Pure Horror
Every Element Of The Movie Exalts In Relentless Brutality
While Pam’s death is one of its more potent moments, the movie is an unrelenting battering ram for nearly the entirety of its runtime. While it spawned multiple sequels and remakes in a variety of Texas Chainsaw Massacre timelines, the original 1974 movie is content to be pared-down and simple, honing in on the five main characters — particularly nascent final girl Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) — and using every possible aspect of cinema language to emphasize their descent into Hell.
[The movie] gives the impression of accidentally catching a glimpse of a horrifying sight through a dirty window…
Daniel Pearl’s cinematography perfectly captures the movie’s tone. While shots like the iconic moment where Pam is tracked walking into the house bely his skill behind the lens, he captures the goings-on with a grubby, tactile aesthetic that gives the onscreen events weight and realism that a more polished movie wouldn’t have. It gives the impression of accidentally catching a glimpse of a horrifying sight through a dirty window rather than sitting in the theater watching a movie. However, that is not to say that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre could ever be mistaken for a documentary.
The sound design and editing often make it feel more like an experimental film, where jarring close-ups, quick cuts, and Wayne Bell and Tobe Hooper’s jangling, atonal score work in tandem to give the movie a frantic, unsettling energy. This is particularly the case in the iconic third act sequence where Sally is forced to endure a twisted “family dinner,” where Hooper encourages Burns to put pedal to the metal, thrashing and screaming to the point that it seems her eyes may burst from her skull as sound and image collide around her, putting us directly into Sally’s head.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Is Well-Served By Its Cast & Storytelling
Committed Performances And Powerful Subtext Make It An Enduring Classic
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a minor miracle of every department working as one to service the whole, but it wouldn’t work at all without the total commitment of its cast. The crop of victims largely eschew the amateurish acting that would mar later cheap slasher movies and Edwin Neal and Jim Siedow are both giving gonzo, go-for-broke, unpredictable performances as the unnamed family members Hitchhiker and Old Man respectively. Still, the biggest standouts are the fearless Burns and Hansen’s Leatherface.
While Leatherface is a hulking, chainsaw-wielding killer wearing a mask made of a human face, Hansen’s performance delivers unlimited pathos, reminding us he exists in a state of perpetual arrested development due to his careless family. He is just as scared as his victims are, frightened of his family’s wrath, unsure why there are so many intruders in his home, and acting on impulse. The fact that the movie’s iconic villain is not truly a villain at all only serves to highlight the amoral nature of the universe Hooper has crafted around the movie.
[The Texas Chain Saw Massacre incorporates] a mélange of the most dire circumstances of the early 1970s into one nightmarish ordeal.
Hooper, who co-wrote the movie with Kim Henkel, turns the movie into a primal scream of rage, incorporating a mélange of the most dire circumstances of the early 1970s into one nightmarish ordeal. In addition to being an early slasher, Chain Saw is a reaction to growing sentiments of futility around the violence of the Vietnam War and the economic turmoil of the time (the family has turned to cannibalism only after losing their jobs at the slaughterhouse). It is even a potent exercise in vegetarian messaging, forcing its characters through the same violent system as animals in a slaughterhouse.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Remains As Shocking & Propulsive As Ever
The Movie May Be Bleak, But It Has Not Lost Its Exhilarating Power
The nihilistic slaughterhouse violence of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains effective to this day, both because the kills retain their shocking power, except for a few effects like the mask bringing the aged Grandpa to life, and because it takes place within a world that already feels hopeless and deplorable. The implied gore may have been a result of a low budget, but it also means the movie has aged more or less perfectly.
Grandpa is played by John Dugan, who also appeared in 1994’s
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
and 2013’s
Texas Chainsaw 3D
.
Everything around the violence in the Tobe Hooper horror movie feels bitter and cruel, from the drunk man lounging at the cemetery in the beginning to Sally’s brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), a wheelchair user, accidentally being knocked down a hill while urinating on the side of the road to Sally finding her old family home crumbling to dust and filled with spiders. The production design of the killer family’s home helps emphasize this too, filling every corner of a seemingly normal rural house with bones, feathers, and hideously beautiful works of art made from various pieces of corpses.
Though it is brutal, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains relentlessly propulsive and exhilarating. Despite its many imitators, there is still no experience that quite comes close to feeling the alchemy of every single element racing at top speed to jangle the nerves. Watching it is like being welded onto a roller coaster seat, all the way through to the all-time classic ending, which spends exactly zero time winding down. The second it’s finished telling its story, the movie hurls us back out into the real world without a crash pad, which is its cruelest trick of all.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is playing in theaters for its 50th anniversary beginning October 1.
