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| Tobe Hooper 1943 -2017 |
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) Director: TOBE HOOPER
The first time I saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I was 15 years old. I hadn’t seen a TON of really dark horror films at that point; I had seen A Nightmare on Elm Street as well as most of the Universal Monsters stuff (which I was obsessed with at the time). I had no idea what to expect. To be honest, I thought it was going to be a campy B movie.
I was wrong. To put it mildly.
By now, most people who would really call themselves horror “fans” have seen the original ‘TCM’, and are aware of how visceral and realistic it feels. Simply put, it accomplishes that rare feat that very few horror films have. It almost seems like a documentary, like we as viewers are just flies on the wall, uncomfortably observing this maddeningly matter of fact group of cannibal hillbillies chasing a group of lost young people around their “farm”.
Because so many are WELL aware of the Texas Chain Saw mythology at this point, I will not spend too much time talking about how little blood or gore are actually shown in the film, but its notable that the movie is remembered as being so brutal decades later. The most disturbing things captured by the eye of the camera are the bizarre moments that the family is engaged in, such as having to help their seemingly decaying grandfather hold a hammer so that he can try to hit a victim with it. Bizarre stuff that stays with you.
Even with A Nightmare on Elm Street pretty fresh in my young mind, I really was NOT prepared for the aural onslaught that is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Context is needed. My uncle and I had been renting films that were generally highly regarded but that neither of us had seen. This was pretty much our only criteria when we walked into the video store for the week’s selection. Our first few viewings consisted of such eye opening cinema as The Godfather, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Close Encounters. To be sure, it was a priceless education for a teen who was pretty much a card carrying member of the church of Star Wars. I had seen plenty of good films, the early Karloff Frankenstein films for instance, but they weren’t super challenging in the most emotional ways like some of these films were.
I feel like something changed inside me when the opening reel of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre flickered across my Uncle Tony’s TV screen. Don’t worry, it was in a good way.
I sat in enrapt silence and with a more than a few sideways glances to see how Uncle Tony was faring with his own viewing experience. He seemed to be just as engrossed as I was watching Leatherface and his family act like maniacs to this unsuspecting group of city kids.
Made for just over $80,000 in 1974, TCM marked the first time that I looked at a film and really realized, hey, someone MADE this. They wrote their simple story, got some people to play the parts, went out into a big house and just made their movie. I remember feeling like there was no way it should be as “good” as it was. Clearly, these were not seasoned actors with super expensive equipment and a big studio budget.
It was the first time I thought, “I want to make a movie. And I CAN.”
I’m sure that same realization happened to countless hordes of other TCM viewers over the years. The movie is a standing testament to the creativity and drive of its filmmakers and the actors and actresses who braved what was by all accounts a truly dreadful shoot.
Heck, the shoot itself may have contributed to the grimy realism of the film. By now, the legendary stories of the smells, fatigue and the heat surrounding those folks while they were making the movie have made their rounds umpteen times via interviews and special features on the many home video releases. Suffice to say that some of the craziness we see captured on film was about as close to real as it gets without actually being real.
Director Tobe Hooper has often recounted stories of how much the cast and crew resented him during the shoot. The movie they came out with suggests that their efforts were not in vain.
To call The Texas Chain Saw Massacre influential is almost an insult to the word “influential”. For dozens of horror filmmakers to come, TCM is less a film than it is a template for a certain type of aesthetic that has come to be associated with the movie and others like it.
One so obviously influenced dude is Rob Zombie, who has seemingly made a cinematic career out of letting the TCM philosophy guide his work. The results have been mixed, but Zombie’s films have an undeniable grit that they largely owe to the TCM influence.
It’s also fair to point out some of the TCM acting performances, which vary in terms of thespian quality, but which are absolutely indispensable to the film’s memorable imagery. In particular, the late Marilyn Burns is effective as Sally Hardesty, screaming and crying her way through the film’s seemingly prolonged climax in an excruciatingly realistic and primal state of fear and hysteria. Theories again abound that part of the realism of her performance was due to the conditions on set.
Burns (decades old SPOILER ALERT, for pete’s sake) helped to establish an eventual major slasher film trope with her character surviving the film as a “final girl”, though she is definitely kind of just more lucky than Nancy or Laurie or Sidney, who are all kind of proactive in their survival. But give Sally credit…she keeps movin’ and keeps screamin’ until the very moment she laughs in relieved maniac manner, climbing into a random escape vehicle while Leatherface swings his chainsaw around like a frustrated dancer in a doomed ballet.
Of course, Leatherface is another solid “pro” when keeping tabs on the TCM legacy. Gunnar Hansen helped to bring life to an enduring horror icon, playing Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel’s hulking “Ed Gein” inspired madman. Hansen is a big reason why the film is so memorable, truth be told. He hits the right notes with his body language and the way he inhabits the face(s) mask(s). And he really is asked to do quite a bit in terms of selling the terror.
One of the most jarring and sinister scenes occurs when Leatherface appears behind some poor fool, bops him on the head, drags him into a room and abruptly slams the door. That is a moment where we as an audience think, “Ok. I kind of don’t want to know what is going to happen behind that door. But I have to.”
Wes Craven often cited The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as one of the best examples of watching a film that may have been directed by a madman. Craven knew of which he spoke; his own Last House on the Left still stands as one of the most controversial films ever made. It was the type of ’dangerous’ filmmaking that got both films immediately banned upon release.
In multiple countries.
For years.
As is the case with so many immortal horror films, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre could also be held up as a reflection of the time of its release. Hooper claims that so much of the nature of the film is due to the government scandals and multiple wars of the era, where brutality and a lack of empathy were becoming the social norm. Leatherface and his loving family were characterized responses to that growing displeasure.
One aspect of this movie which can’t be downplayed is the “score”, as it were. It is EXTREMELY important, though perhaps not in the way that the scores of films like Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street are. That’s because TCM features a slew of ghoulish and freaky sounds, drenched in echo and delay, often piled each atop the other like a sonic wall of brick and mortar. It is used to highly disconcerting effect. There is no escape from it within the confines of a given scene.
Again, Roger Ebert heaped praise upon a horror film even while damning it. He grouped it with Night of the Living Dead because of its technical success, while also commenting on the negative content. He said that both films were “better than they had to be.” Which is true in the context of what he saw as B horror films created by fledgling filmmakers with no other outlets aside from horror to make movies. But it is decidedly NOT true for the millions of people who still consistently turn to those films for a good, roller coaster-like scare on a dark night. They do have to be that good.
Which brings us to another important point…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is scary.
As with any and all horror films, the scare factor is a matter of opinion and specific to each viewer. A seasoned horror fan is just not going to be easy to scare. But when someone who is not a veteran of horror watches TCM, to this day, they are likely to be disturbed. Often, even terrified.
This is because TCM gets SO much right in terms of setting everything up. This might be due to director Hooper’s background as a documentary cameraman. Camera placement is extremely important to the success of the film’s realism, and the decisions Hooper makes put us in situations that feel claustrophobic and tense. As with Carpenter’s Halloween, an unusual number of daytime shots are initially used to set a mood, as well as adding to the desperation of being stranded with the psychotic family when night falls.
There is really no way to overstate the importance of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to the horror genre. Fans as varied as Ridley Scott (who claims the movie as an influence on his own amazing film Alien) and horror writing legend Stephen King defend the film as an important cultural phenomenon, and contemporaries like Carpenter and Craven (the latter of which humorously compared Hooper to Manson after seeing the film) have routinely named it as one of the most effective horror films they have ever seen.
There is a film made before TCM that was also inspired by the Ed Gein story. It is director Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal grandfather of the slasher movie, Psycho. John McCarty, author of several excellent books covering horror directors and films, once remarked that TCM made the hotel in Psycho seem “pleasant” in comparison.
Simply put, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a full on nightmare, worthy of its legendary status, and a legit contender for the title of the greatest horror film of all time.
Leatherface, "A frustrated dancer in a doomed ballet."
You can read the rest of Paul Counelis' book THE GREATEST HORROR MOVIE EVER MADE, available now at Lulu.com, Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble
