The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Revisiting a Horror Classic
I recently had the opportunity to watch Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its entirety, my first viewing of the film without any television censors. Having grown up watching various horror films, but never dwelling on Texas Chain Saw, I had certain expectations. What follows is an examination of how the film shattered all of them.
I don’t know how to accurately rate The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It’s gross, dirty, dated in some ways, and definitely not the film its reputation and sequels might lead one to believe.
But on its own, I’ve found it to be a singular work, one which explores the absolute evil which lurks just off the beaten path. Misdirection and misinformation play a central role in the experience of watching this film, from its opening narration and newsreel exposition to the unhinged depravity lurking inside the Sawyer home. We’re told these events are true, but they can’t be… right? We expect a group of vaguely shallow teenagers to engage in the typical debauchery horror films feature, but the characters here aren’t looking for that. They want to visit an old house, and on their way, they pick up a hitchhiker. Everything that follows is a spiral downwards into a dirty, disgusting hell which grows more nightmarish and horrific with each passing second.
Words fail me as I try to come up with a way to describe the absolute insanity of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film shows us that evil is real, and is closer and more vile than we could ever anticipate. Leatherface is what people remember, and rightly so. He’s a work of deranged genius, and his pig-like wails are so visceral, so disgusting and wrong on a fundamental level that his hulking frame and freakish speed are made all the more unsettling. His mask, though, is the key to it all, and is realized perfectly, as is the rest of the Sawyer home, which I’d easily call a masterpiece in production design. The (real) blood splatter on the walls, the stacked dirt, dust, and broken skeletons that line the floor, the furniture made of human bones, the half-rotted animals, and that doorway leading to the red room… before any chainsaws are revealed, we’re already terrified of what may lurk inside this house. We’ve been conditioned due to the narration, insert shots of dead animals, and absolutely oppressive sense of dread, to expect death.
Still, what’s truly unsettling is the outrageous, grotesque behavior of the other Sawyers. Without venturing into spoilers, the other members of Leatherface’s family are absolutely evil, and their depraved ramblings work in tandem with an atmosphere of inescapable dread to create a truly frightening third act, one filled with nightmarish imagery, piercing screams, and breathtaking boldness, both on the part of Tobe Hooper and the work of his cast. The bright light of day offers no comfort, and while we strain for rationalization, it’s impossible to explain some elements of this film. It’s visceral, grotesque, and uncomfortable, and shot almost like a twisted documentary. The brutality of this film is more in its tone, characters, and cutthroat editing than in the actual violence.
Watching this film, I could almost feel the scorching heat, smell the grotesque mix of barbecue and rotting flesh, and feel the exhaustion of the characters. They can’t fathom why this torturous experience is happening to them, and I can’t fully explain it, either. The events of this film are fictionalized, but the evil behind them is real, and it exists everywhere, not just in old farmhouses in rural Texas. Leatherface doesn’t exist, but people like his family do, and terror like that visited upon the unfortunate cast of this film could happen to anyone. That’s the lasting horror of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, that we could be very close to a Sawyer farmhouse without even knowing it. The unflinching brutality (which is more implied than explicitly shown) is horrific in its suddenness and emotionless execution, but that’s how it would happen in real life. Everything feels oddly and terrifyingly inconsequential, as if this has happened before, and it will also happen again.
So yeah, maybe the dialogue in the first act can feel hokey, the zooms feel a little home movie-ish, and you might not make the same choices as the characters. The voyeuristic filmmaking style, fresh in 1974, can feel off-putting and maybe even campy. But if you can look past your own expectations, you’ll enter a waking nightmare of insanity and brutality that is completely unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. This may not be the most intellectual or original film ever made, but Tobe Hooper changed the genre and industry at large by excelling at one thing: making something scary.
