Second Viewing: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

For my “Second Viewing” series, I’ll be taking a look at movies that I’ve reviewed already. This won’t necessarily be my literal second viewing of each movie (this happens to be my third for this one), but I’ll choose to do it for movies of which my opinion changes.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a great movie, and it’s amazing it’s taken me this long to see it. The first time I saw it, I suppose I was too young. The movie was too slow for me, and it seemed to end right when it was getting good.

Now that I’ve seen it three times, I definitely like it a lot. Tobe Hooper uses every trick in the book to make this movie as frightening as possible. That comes right down to its whole “this is based on a true story” opening, which seems like a cliche now.

So much of this movie feels like a cliche in general, but that really just speaks to this movie’s influence. Little of it is irritating in its own right. I think the movie creates compelling reasons for dumb characters’ actions.

But the characters are the weak point of the movie. I do like Franklin (Paul A. Partain) for how annoying he is, and how much he annoys the other characters.

But there really isn’t a whole lot to these characters. Even Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), though she gets credit for being one of film’s first final girls, isn’t particularly interesting. Marilyn Burns does lend her a good amount of authenticity, though, and when she’s horrified, you really feel it.

The movie has a great deal of manic energy towards the end, and part of why that works so well is how slow the movie starts out.

It’s a well paced movie that amplifies in horror as it goes along, and that just makes it all the more terrifying.

Rating: 8/10