Directed by Tobe Hooper
Review based upon the Universal Pictures DVD release
Former school teacher Tobe Hooper claims to have gotten the idea for “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” while out Christmas shopping. He was accidentally pushed against a rack of chainsaws by crowds in a hardware store, and had a flash fantasy where he wished he could use one of the chainsaws to demolish the crowd. He says at that moment the whole film “opened up before his eyes”. So began one of cinema’s most famous attempts to push the limits of the permissible. It wasn't really the first, as Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left” was there a couple of years earlier, and went even further than “Texas” ever did in its brutality and savagery themes. However, out of the two films “Texas Chainsaw” is the most famous, and the most notorious of the video nasties in the 1980's.
The movie opens with Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her paraplegic brother Franklin (Paul Partain), along with her boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danzinger) and another couple, Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn), travelling across Texas to visit their childhood home. En-route they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) who proves crazed, and tries to set fire to the van. The stranger shockingly slashes his and Franklin's wrists before jumping out. The group carry on to the homestead, where Kirk and Pam go searching for a waterhole. They inadvertently cross onto another property, where the huge and terrifying Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) attacks them. While the others begin to search for the missing couple, the only question is who will survive and what will be left of them?
“Texas Chainsaw” and “The Last House on the Left” were part of a genre of independent horror films in the 1970's, which really went out on a limb in their determination to shock. The seminal work here was Romero's “Night of the Living Dead”, with its image of the dead coming back to life to devour the living. Also, in more mainstream fare, there was Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” about a mild-mannered professor who's driven to brutal acts to survive by an assault on his home by unruly locals, and not long after that was John Boorman’s “Deliverance” about four men whose wilderness idyll is brutally overturned by their torture and rape by a group of backwoods hillbillies. These three films formed the basics of what some cr
itics call the 'Backwoods Brutality Cycle'. This mini-genre of films circle around the theme of an ordinary people forced to defend themselves by an assault that comes out of the blue without rhyme or reason; the sense of a home or a placid middle-class way of life at siege from forces of lawlessness beyond the door. These movies suggest a dividing line between civilized America in the cities, and the backwoods where people have become inbred, brutish and harbour a deep-seated resentment for all interlopers.Like “Night of the Living Dead”, Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw” redefined horror by stripping it of every classical motive; the assaults coming without rhyme or reason. Leatherface isn't a monster of science or a demonic conjuration; he's even bereft of the cursory psychological explanations of the killers in psycho-thrillers in films like “Psycho” or “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane”. In this sense “Texas Chainsaw” operates not unlike the bird attacks in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead” or even the truck assault in Steven Spielberg’s “Duel”, where such attacks come stripped of all raison d’etre and in doing so evoke an undeniable existential anxiety. These are also films stripped of all classical expectations - there's no guarantee of a handsome hero coming to save the heroine, and no guarantee of a happy ending where Leatherface will be struck down by a lightning bolt. Indeed, as in “Night of the Living Dead”, not even being cast as the hero is any guarantee that anyone will survive the film. Equally, Hooper throws out all conventions of horror technique - there are no build-ups of suspense, and no edgy string underscoring as the characters enter the farmhouse. The brutal surprise of the attack on William Vail, with Leatherface simply appearing from behind a hidden door, slamming him on the forehead with a sledgehammer and leaving him there twitching while moments later Teri McGinn is thrown up on a meat hook, is something that's almost over before you're even aware of what's happening. As such, it always leaves the audience utterly startled, and is a brilliant example of the power this flick still has even today.
The movie is all-out and no holds barred horror, a full frontal dive into a naked assault on its central character. The half-hour long attack on Marilyn Burns, which consists of nothing on the soundtrack bar screams and the buzz of a chainsaw while the camera wildly careers in on extreme close-ups of screaming throats and wide-open eyeballs, has a jagged ripped-open intensity. You can literally feel Marilyn Burns’s sanity fraying at the assault. Hooper sets out to wear down the viewers
nerves from the outset. Within the first five minutes the Hitchhiker appears out of nowhere, with Edwin Neal appearing unbalanced from the outset. He suddenly cuts his wrist with a razor, sets a photo on fire in the van, slashes crippled Paul Partain’s wrist before jumping out and running off. Bear in mind that this is only the first five minutes, and it has the effect of grinding an audience down in foreboding about what's yet to come. In addition, the killing of three characters one after the other only about a third of the way through, which leaves the viewer fearfully uneasy about what's in store for the remainder of the film.It's also a picture that can make its amateurishness work for it, with the crude photography and editing succeeding in giving the flick an even more ragged and raw edge that a more professional production would've lost. On the downside though, even the most risilient genre fan would want some of the awful babyish gibbering and whimpering of Paul Partain’s performance to have ended on the cutting room floor.
Hooper also borrows from “Last House” by making an entirely untrue claim at the beginning that the film is based on events that happened in Texas. In truth this flick is only partly based on the exploits of Wisconsin necrophile and multiple murderer Ed Gein. The quite amazing interior decoration of the house from Bob Burns, and Leatherface with his mask of human skin, is quite clearly drawn from the story of Gein who built furniture out of bones and even wore human body parts. "Texas Chainsaw" was one of several flicks based on various elements of Gein's exploits. Others include “Psycho” and “The Silence of the Lambs", as well as the intriguing "Deranged” and the disappointing “Ed Gein”.
Hooper also borrows from “Last House” by making an entirely untrue claim at the beginning that the film is based on events that happened in Texas. In truth this flick is only partly based on the exploits of Wisconsin necrophile and multiple murderer Ed Gein. The quite amazing interior decoration of the house from Bob Burns, and Leatherface with his mask of human skin, is quite clearly drawn from the story of Gein who built furniture out of bones and even wore human body parts. "Texas Chainsaw" was one of several flicks based on various elements of Gein's exploits. Others include “Psycho” and “The Silence of the Lambs", as well as the intriguing "Deranged” and the disappointing “Ed Gein”.
Overall, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is a horror classic that any discerning horror buff should see at least once. This picture looks and feels like a nightmare on celluloid, and as such when seen on the big screen it possesses an atmosphere quite unlike anything else. A brutal and nasty movie, this is an impossible film to like but very easy to admire thanks to its timeless power.
10 out of 10
Grim, dirty, unpleasant and impossible to shake off... one of the mmost important horror films of all time
