Friday, October 11, 2024

Franchises: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

I've said before that, when you grow up a fan of the horror genre, there are some movies that you know of long before you actually see them, either because they're almost mythic in stature or simply because their titles are so lurid; in the case of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was both where I was concerned. Like The Exorcist, it was one of those movies I heard so much about when, in my early adolescence, I started exploring what the genre had to offer beyond the 1960's. My mom, of all people, had actually seen it at the drive-in with a big group of friends when she was a teenager, as she had The Exorcist, and I remember her saying it was one of the most horrific movies she'd ever seen. (Incidentally, Mom, at the time, anyway, really didn't like horror films, and she says she can't remember whom exactly she was with when she saw those two in particular. It couldn't have been my dad, either, as he feels the same way. But it really seems like somebody was trying to give Mom a heart attack when she was a teenager!) That was often what I heard from other people like her, that it was one of the most disgusting, gruesome, hideous movies ever made, along with a general sentiment of, "This is something you shouldn't see. This is absolutely vile." And it wasn't hard to believe what they were telling me. With a title like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was imagining the most horrifying stuff that I could: bodies being sliced to pieces, the cannibal family munching on the chunks of meat and drinking the blood, the sheer gruesomeness of the bone and skin sculptures I'd read were in the film, etc. It sounded like this movie was the epitome of total madness on film and, like The Exorcist, I actually felt like I would be committing a sin if I watched it. Not to mention that I honestly thought it would mentally scar me! That notion seemed justified one day when I was at an FYE that used to be in Chattanooga and, out of curiosity, scanned a DVD on one of these little monitors they used to have that would play a movie's trailer. What it played was the original Bryanston trailer, and, good God, did that freak me out! I remember being really disturbed by the scene of Pam running away from Leatherface in the house, only for him to catch her just as she got out the door and drag her back inside, and by Jerry getting whacked in the head with the mallet after he discovers Pam's body in the freezer. It was Leatherface's freakish screams that especially chilled me to the bone, along with just how relentless the trailer was in general. I can remember thinking to myself, "This looks like the most insane movie ever made!", as well as, "Okay, this isn't for me. I will never see this." 

Even so, I still couldn't contain my curiosity and researched the film further. As I did, I gradually learned that, while undoubtedly disturbing, it apparently wasn't quite the insane, grotesque horror show that I'd pictured. Above all else, I found out it actually wasn't very bloody at all, and that it was more about sheer terror than full-on gruesomeness, although it had quite a bit of that as well. I also learned that there were a number of high-profile people who truly admired it, including Ridley Scott, who praised it as a major inspiration for when he made Alien, and Steven Spielberg, which led to Tobe Hooper directing Poltergeist. And then, in October of 2004, I saw more of the movie itself, as well as heard more kudos for it, thanks to a number of documentaries and specials that premiered around that time. Most notably, I saw the iconic clubbing scene on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, where the film was lauded by the likes of Rob Zombie and Peter Jackson, and I thought, "Wow, that was genuinely and effectively unnerving." That, as well as learning more on the Masters of Horror documentary that premiered on Sci-Fi Channel on Halloween night, was the clincher for me, that this might be my cup of tea after all, rather than something disgusting that would just make me feel dirty for having watched it. Plus, I saw quite a bit of the 2003 remake on cable around that time and thought that was pretty good, so I decided it was time to give the original a shot. I actually got the newest DVD of the original, along with a big special edition of the remake, for Christmas, and finally saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time just a few days later.

And my initial thoughts were, "Interesting. Dated and at times a little too weird, but interesting." Yeah, I can't lie; I had mixed feelings about it that first time. There were a couple of reasons, one undoubtedly being that I'd now seen the remake several times beforehand. I guess since that film is much faster paced and was a bit more in line with what I was expecting the original to be in terms of its gruesomeness, it really hurt my first impressions. What also didn't help was that DVD, the 2003 Pioneer release (the one whose cover you see pictured here), which had a rather crappy transfer. I'd heard many people talk about how the film felt more like a documentary, but I think I was expecting that in terms of its atmosphere rather than its actual look; more to the point, I didn't expect such a lauded film to look like some public domain movie that hadn't been remastered. That print was also so dark that, half of the time I couldn't tell what was going on. Upon subsequent viewings, I did have to admit that the way it looked added something (especially when I turned my TV's brightness up a little bit so I could see), but I was still expecting a much better transfer to begin with. And third and foremost, all of the stuff I'd read and heard about it no doubt created expectations it couldn't meet. Watching that Bryanston trailer probably wasn't a good idea, since it spoils a lot of the scares, as did the 100 Scariest Movie Moments, but, on top of that, I'd repeatedly heard the film described as the most intense, white-knuckle horror film ever. While I did think it had some creepy and disturbing moments, I was never absolutely scared out of my wits and I thought some parts actually dragged (though that, again, could've simply been due to not being able to see half of what was going on). In short, I unintentionally screwed up my first viewing in so many ways. But I've always felt that you should see something at least twice before making a final judgement on it, so I gave it another shot. That second time, I was a little more into it, now that I knew what to expect. The third time, I got even deeper into it, and it went on from there until, finally, I got to a point where I could safely call it an awesome horror film and put it very high on the list of my 101 Favorites. 

(In regards to the title, while I know it's officially spelled as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I've always been used to writing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and will do so for the entire review.)

On the morning of August 18th, 1973, the Muerto Country Sheriff's Department is informed of a grisly discovery in a cemetery near the small town of Newt, Texas: a rotting corpse tied to a small monument, the latest in a series of grave-robberies and similar instances of desecration. Later that day, while on a road-trip through the area, five youths, Sally Hardesty, her disabled brother Franklin, Kirk, his girlfriend Pam, and Jerry, arrive at the cemetery so Sally can see if the grave belonging to her and Franklin's grandfather has been disturbed. Afterward, while passing by a slaughterhouse where their grandfather used to sell his cattle, the group picks up a strange and clearly unstable hitchhiker, who talks about how his family has a history of working there. The man proceeds to horrify them by taking Franklin's pocketknife and cutting his hand open, then later attacking Franklin with a straight razor when they refuse to pay him for a random picture he took. They kick him out of the van, but he smears some sort of symbol in his blood on its side before they can pull away. They next stop at a gas station, only for the owner to break it to them that he has no gas available at the moment. He also tries to dissuade them from heading up to an old, abandoned house owned by the Hardesty family, instead offering them some barbecue while they wait for the fuel transport to arrive. The group drives on to the house, regardless, and while the others explore it, Franklin is left alone outside, angry about his exclusion and also becoming increasingly paranoid when he sees the mark the hitchhiker left on the van. Kirk and Pam decide to go swimming in a nearby creek, only to find it's dried up in the extreme heat. Hearing a gas-powered motor at a farmhouse across the way, the two of them head over there, planning on bartering for some gas. But upon arriving and entering the house, Kirk is promptly killed by an enormous man wearing a mask of human skin, who then grabs and hangs Pam on a meat-hook after she discovers the house's macabre secrets. As she watches, he dismembers Kirk's body with a chainsaw. Unaware of the horrible danger nearby, Sally, Franklin, and Jerry soon fall prey to the man, who's actually one member of a deranged, cannibalistic family. And even if one of them survives, what will be left?

Because of the trailers and posters, with their lurid taglines of, "What happened was true. The most bizarre and brutal series of crimes in America," and, "The story is true. Now the motion picture that is just as real" (as well as the unforgettable, "Who will survive and what will be left of them?"), many were convinced at the time of the film's release in 1974 and for many years afterward that it was based on a true story. Even to this day, where it's now common knowledge that the filmmakers may have taken elements from the real-life case of 1950's serial killer Ed Gein, with everything else being a work of pure fiction, there are likely still those who think it's real. This conceit was mostly the work of the shady people behind Bryanston Pictures, basically doing what Artisan did with The Blair Witch Project over two decades before, whereas Tobe Hooper specifically had something else in mind with the opening crawl that proclaims the story to be true, as we'll get into later (in the book, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion, Kim Henkel says that he thinks some people at Bryanston actually believed the movie was a fictional account of a real event, a misconception bolstered further by that crawl).

At the time of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper wasn't well-known outside of the Austin film community, having mostly done short films, commercials, and documentaries, as well as his first feature as director, 1969's Eggshells. For the longest time, Eggshells wasn't available to buy or even see, and while it is a bit more accessible now, it's not a movie I've ever seen, nor does it sound like something I'd enjoy watching, regardless. Still, while it wasn't seen by that many people even at the time, it did prove significant, as it's where Hooper first worked with Kim Henkel, whom he would co-write Chainsaw with. The stories about what fed into and influenced Hooper's conception of the film are now legendary, from it coming to him when he was stuck in the Christmas holiday rush and considered grabbing a chainsaw from the hardware display and using it to make everybody get out of his way, to his love for the EC horror comics, what he knew about Ed Gein, the violence he was seeing on the local news at the time, and so on. It all kind of gelled together into something that ended up shooting Hooper to fame, although for a number of people, it was an early promise he never lived up to.

Anybody who's been reading this blog for a long time knows that, in the past, I've been quite hard on Hooper. That's mostly because, by the time I started doing this, I'd seen some truly awful films of his in rapid succession, specifically Eaten Alive, Spontaneous Combustion, and Toolbox Murders. Also, when I reviewed those first two (at this point, I still haven't done Toolbox Murders), I was still kind of trying to find my own personal voice and was influenced by other people I was watching and listening to, so I tended to be very hyperbolic when talking about how much I hated them. I still do really dislike those movies, and I often said at the time that Hooper was running out of chances to get off my shit list, but since then, I've seen many more of his movies and can say that there are a fair amount I do enjoy, either because they're genuinely good or because they're fun guilty pleasures. And after reading books like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion and Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper, I can say that I understand him more and that, for all of his flaws, he was talented. One thing I used to wonder, though, is why, save for maybe Poltergeist (to which Hooper's contributions will be forever overshadowed by the controversy of who actually directed it), even his other really good films paled in comparison to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I used to think he was actually just a talentless hack who got really lucky early on, but I don't think that's the case anymore. So, did he just put so much time, thought, and energy into this film that, as a result, everything else that followed was nowhere near its level? Or was it the result of an especially fruitful collaboration that he never quite had again? Now, after a lot of careful thinking, I think it's a combination of his crazy, surreal style never gelling with mainstream sensibilities and the vast amounts of interference he ran into in his later, bigger-budgeted films, especially in his three-picture deal with Cannon. But, despite the ups and downs he had throughout his career, I think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre alone does grant Hooper a place in the pantheon of great horror directors like Tod Browning, James Whale, George Romero, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven. Even if he'd been like Herk Harvey, the director of Carnival of Souls, and never made another feature film after Chainsaw, he'd still be up there, as most directors would kill to have a film that mythic on their resumes.

I will say that, in doing my research, it's kind of hard to separate fact from fiction when it comes to Hooper. For example, according to the chapter in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion about his career outside of the franchise, Hooper did not actually go the University of Texas in Austin, as is often reported in biographies, with many people who knew him from his early life insisting he taught himself about filmmaking. A major discrepancy I've discovered is Hooper's oft repeated claims about his Wisconsin relatives frightening him with tales of Ed Gein when he was just a young kid. In the documentary, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth, he says he was like three or four years old when they first told him the story... except Hooper, by all accounts, was born in 1943, Gein didn't even begin committing his grisly crimes until the late 40's, and was caught in 1957. Going back to that book, art director Bob Burns said, "Tobe creates his own believable reality, and thereby he can tell it to other people and they'll believe it because he's not lying to them!" Also, Burns said Hooper had himself convinced that he could make the film for $60,000, while it likely cost around $125,000 or so. Similarly, Kim Henkel dismissed Hooper's other repeated notion that he attempted to get a PG-rating for the film, although others insisted it was true (when Mick Garris interviewed Hooper on his Post Mortem web series, Hooper, probably through a slip of the tongue, said he tried to get a G-rating!). And when they discussed the shooting of the dinner scene in the documentary, which is notorious for having gone over a whole day, boom operator and co-composer Wayne Bell comments about the amount of time they shot, "I'm sure Tobe's got it up past forty by now," (to his credit, Hooper himself sticks with the generally accepted 27 hours there). So, it does seem like Hooper had a penchant for exaggerating and bending reality to whatever he wanted it to be. Maybe his infamous drug issues in the 80's fried his brain to the point where he couldn't suss out what the truth was anymore.

While hardly the deepest of characters, and a couple of them come off as downright dumb, the five youths are all portrayed as fairly likable, decent kids who are just out for a summer road-trip, with two of them even having a fairly noble reason for going. Case in point, our final girl, Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns). Not much to her character-wise, yes, but, besides being quite pretty, she comes across as a sweet, bubbly young woman, along on the trip to make sure her grandfather's grave hasn't been disturbed, as well as to show her friends an old homestead that belongs to her family, which she clearly has a lot of affection for her. Also, while it ends up being a very bad idea, she's one of the group who suggests picking up the hitchhiker when they see him, telling Franklin to give the guy a break when he says he'll smell like the nearby slaughterhouse. Really, the only time she gets angry or snippy is when dealing with Franklin, which is understandable, since he can be annoying. Also, while I understand her concern about Jerry and the others when they go missing, I don't condone her planning to go off by herself to look for them, leaving Franklin alone in the dark. However, that doesn't at all keep me from sympathizing with her when she's put through sheer hell during the entire third act, be it relentlessly chased by Leatherface, abducted and tortured by the Old Man, tied up at the family's macabre dinner table, as they likely eat what used to be her friends, and forced to endure a long, protracted beating by Grandpa. And even though she escapes at the end, it's clear from her hysterical laughing that she has completely lost her mind. In that respect, she's kind of akin to Barbra in Night of the Living Dead, although I like her a lot more, one, because you get to know her more before becomes she traumatized, and two, unlike Barbra, she still has enough gumption and wits about her to fight back when she gets the chance, leading to her escape.

A lot of people find Franklin (Paul Partain) to be really annoying and virtually unbearable (in his entry on the film in his book, Profoundly Disturbing: The Shocking Movies That Changed History, Joe Bob Briggs describes him as, "One of the most despicable handicapped people in film history,") but, while there are points where I do wish he would shut up, I feel sorry for him more than anything else. Everyone who criticizes him acts as if he curses and screams at the other characters throughout the film, but he's actually just rather whiny, for the most part. And even then, I often feel he has a reason to complain. If you were stuck on a road-trip on a hot, summer day, spending most of your time in a van with no ventilation, you'd probably be whining too (and later, he says something that suggests he didn't even want to go but was talked into it). More to the point, being confined to a wheelchair your entire life has to be frustrating and, after a while, you likely get tired of having to be pushed and carried around by everyone else (I know my late aunt felt that way when she was dying of breast cancer, and I've also felt like that whenever I've had foot problems). The part that exemplifies this for me is the first scene, where he has to stop on the side of the road and pee in a can. That has to be so embarrassing and unpleasant, which is probably why he roughly snatches the can out of Kirk's hand. Moreover, when they get to the old house, everybody goes and leaves him outside, and he has a really hard time getting around, causing him to throw an angry, over-the-top, but fairly justified tantrum. Also remember, by that point, they've had their freaky encounter with the Hitchhiker, who specifically targeted Franklin, cut into his arm, then smeared some kind of symbol in blood on the side of the van, so I don't blame him for being paranoid about the guy possibly following them and not wanting to be left alone, on top of just feeling excluded and ignored. And then, he finds some creepy bone ornaments and configurations around the house, making him feel all the more unsafe.  

When you think about it, Franklin is often right in what he says. When they pick up the Hitchhiker and he comments, "I think we just picked up Dracula," I'd be thinking the same thing. He's also very right when, after the Hitchhiker starts talking about his family and their history in "meat," he comments, "A whole family of Draculas!" And, when the others have disappeared, he makes a very sensible suggestion that he and Sally shouldn't go down into the woods in the dark and their best course of action would be to go get help (it's rendered a moot point when he discovers
that Jerry took the keys, as well as by what we later learn about the nearby gas station, but it's a sensible idea, regardless). Now, that said, Franklin does have his annoying moments. How many times does he have to tell them exactly how that air-gun in the slaughterhouse works? ("It's just, 'Boom, shuck!' It goes,  'Boom, and then, shuck!' 'Boom, shuck!') He also gets overly snippy when he can't find his knife and takes it out on Sally, who was the last one to use it. And the fight they have over the flashlight and 
such when they're waiting for Jerry is just ridiculous. I know he wants to leave and doesn't want to be left alone in the dark but, God, is he irritating when Sally tries to take the flashlight and he argues with her, as well as when he repeatedly honks the van's horn when he finds that the keys are gone. He also makes it harder on Sally by forcing her to push him down the hill and through the woods, which, in the end, leads to him getting killed. Regardless, though, I think his death surmises why I felt so bad for him, as he was completely helpless, with no way to defend himself or get away from Leatherface.

Pam (Teri McMinn) is the member of the group who feels the most like a hippy to me, with her clothing (which is very sexy, I might add), the jingling bracelet she wears on her wrist, her hairstyle, her preoccupation with astrological signs and horoscopes, and her aversion to eating meat and killing animals for food. Putting all of that aside, I also feel that she's the one who has the most common sense and knows when something isn't right. She strongly advises the others not to pick up the hitchhiker because of how bizarre he looks, which does turn out to be a very bad idea. When she and Kirk are walking to the farmhouse and Kirk tells her his plans to barter for some gas, Pam tells him they're probably not going to be interested and that they should just go back. And finally, she knows that any place that has human teeth randomly lying around is not somewhere you want to be; when Kirk freaks her out with the one he finds on the porch, she disgustedly yells, "Let's go!", and again tries to get him to come on when he keeps knocking on the door and calling inside. All that said, though, after Kirk wanders inside and doesn't come out, her first instinct is to walk inside, calling for him, rather than realize something isn't right, especially with how sinister the place looks. I get that she's concerned for her boyfriend but still. And the minute she comes across that room full of human and animal bones, as well as furniture made out of them, she really should've gotten out of there instead of staring at everything for such a long time. Still, her death, as I said, particularly disturbed me when I first saw it in the trailer. Not only did the sight of her running down the hall with a screaming Leatherface chasing after her freak me out but, also, the idea that she almost gets away, only for him to catch her just as she gets out the door and drag her screaming back into the kitchen. Plus, she has probably the most drawn out, torturous death of any of them, whereas everyone else is almost instantly killed.

There's not much to say about the other two guys in the group. Kirk (William Vail) is the one who would typically be the hero in this type of movie, since he's the most handsome one, but he doesn't have that much of a personality. He usually comes off as a nice and sensible guy, feeling they should pick up the Hitchhiker because he'll die out in the heat, and also knows they should've stopped for gas sooner when they had the chance. But, as iconic as his death scene is, it's his own fault, as he doesn't take the hint when he keeps knocking and calling without getting a
response, and then stupidly runs into this creepy-looking house to investigate an eerie, pig-like noise he hears inside. As for Jerry (Allen Danziger), the van driver. I'm not quite sure if he's supposed to be Sally's boyfriend or what, but she seems more concerned about him when he goes off into the woods to look for Kirk and Pam and doesn't come back. Regardless, there's not much to say about him either, other than he loves to tease Franklin, telling him that the Hitchhiker is coming to get him, and is kind of the jokester of the group in general, asking the ladies if they think the gas station has room service and, when he sees the odd symbol the Hitchhiker smeared in blood on the side of the van, remarking, "It's the mark of Zorro. He's gonna get ya." But he makes the same dumb mistake as Kirk, which is walking into this creepy house uninvited to investigate an unsettling noise. Even though he has more of a reason to do so, as he thinks Kirk and Pam are messing with him, and Pam's towel on the porch seems to confirm this for him, at what point do you realize this may not be a simple joke?

In getting to the family, or the Sawyers, as they would later be named, what makes their depiction here much more effective than in most of the other movies is how disturbingly believable they are. In many of the sequels and reboots, they tend to be so over-the-top (sometimes by design) that they're cartoonish but here, as freakish as some of them are, like Leatherface and Grandpa, you could believe that there are insane people like this out there in the backwoods, possibly even where you live. The fact that they're never named here, only given vague monikers like "the Hitchhiker" and "the Old Man," also allows them an eerie veil of ambiguity, making them feel all the more like some random crazed bunch that Sally and her friends had the bad luck of running into. (Even Leatherface, the one who gets a definitive name, aside from Grandpa, is clearly some sort of macabre nickname, as would be confirmed in the other films.) That feeling of randomness also comes down to how they meet the members of the family one at a time and under vastly different circumstances. And if you had no prior knowledge about the film, except for maybe about Leatherface, you would think these kids are having the worst luck imaginable, running across one insane person after another. Then, during the third act, it starts to come together that all of these characters are parts of an insane group operating individually throughout this general area.

The one who feels the most uncomfortably real to me is the Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal). I can understand why so many were really freaked out by the scene between him and the kids in the van, as this guy does not look or feel like an actor. He feels more like a random crazy guy that Tobe Hooper and company found on the side of the road and put him in the movie, with his gangling physique, greasy hair, dirty clothes, and little furry bag where he keeps stuff like gunpowder and pictures of the cows he killed while working at the slaughterhouse. (And what in the hell is that stuff on the right side of his face? Is that blood or a weird birthmark? He also appears to have ugly, dark moles here and there on various parts of his arms and other parts of his body.) On top of his appearance, Neal is absolutely amazing in his ability to comes across as an honest-to-God schizo, with his twitchy movements, bizarre way of speaking, and inexplicable mood changes. One minute he's talking and laughing with Franklin about headcheese, then suddenly takes Franklin's knife and cuts the crap out of his own hand, pulls out a camera and takes an unwanted picture of Franklin, invites everyone to have dinner with his family, and actually looks hurt when they decline the aforementioned invitation. Then he randomly demands money for the picture and, when he's turned down, angrily blows the picture up with gunpowder and slashes Franklin's arm before being thrown out of the van. And before they pull away, he smears a symbol in blood on their van and blows raspberries at them, while doing a little dance out in the weeds on the side of the road. 

During the third act, we see that the Hitchhiker is rather wild even amongst the family. He mocks and pushes his older brother's buttons, talks back to him, is not at all fazed by how physically abusive he is, and even declares that he has no control over him and Leatherface, that they do all the work and, "He's just a cook." He also comes off as the cruelest member of the family for me. While the Old Man beats Sally up with a broom and stuffs her in a sack before bringing her back to the house, during the last quarter at the house itself, the Hitchhiker seems to take real
pleasure in tormenting her. He repeatedly pokes her when she's tied up in the chair, holds a knife to her throat while Grandpa sucks on her bleeding finger and even forces her to watch, gets right in her face and taunts her when she's tied up at the dinner table and, worst of all, mocks her crying, screaming, and begging for her life. And when she escapes, he comes peeling out of the house after her, chasing her up the driveway and slashing repeatedly at her back, and is only stopped when he gets run over by the cattle truck.

The one who seems to be somewhat conflicted about what he's doing is the Old Man (Jim Siedow) who runs the gas station. When the kids first meet him there, he comes across as rather kindly, even warning them that it's best not to go messing around other people's property, especially in this particular area. He also tries to get them to stay at the station and wait for the transport to come by so they can fill their van's gas tank up, as if he's trying to save them from being butchered by the other members of his family. From his hesitation when he's asked about the "old Franklin place," he clearly knows what they're talking about, and we later learn that the family has marked it, as Franklin finds some of their handiwork there. So the Old Man undoubtedly knows that if they go there, they'll be within grasp of his family and, again, seems like he's trying to prevent it. It could be that he just doesn't want to have to deal with them and risk them escaping and warning the police, given how, late in the film, he tells the Hitchhiker, "Hope that your brother didn't let any of those kids get away. We'll have the whole county out here!" That's clearly why he takes Sally prisoner when she bursts into his gas station after escaping Leatherface, as he now has no choice. Or another way to look at it is that he recognizes the Hitchhiker's mark on the van's side and tries to get them stick around so he can kill them himself, feeling he won't get a chance if they go up to the old Franklin place, especially since he has no way of alerting Leatherface to their presence. If that's the case, he should be glad that they're really nosy!

The Old Man, or Drayton, as he's named in the sequel, seems to suffer from a severe split personality. One minute, he's acting very kindly and reassuring towards the hysterical Sally, and then, before she knows it, he beats the hell out of her with a broom, gags her, ties her up in a sack, and shoves her into his pickup truck. The whole way to the house, he switches back and forth from telling her that she has nothing to worry about to poking her with the broom handle, which he sadistically enjoys. This switching continues when they get to the house. One minute,
he's comforting her again, saying they'll fix her some supper, and the next, he watches as the Hitchhiker and Leatherface feed Grandpa some of her blood. During the dinner scene, he's cackling and going on with the others' torturing her, and then, he suddenly gives them crap and says there no sense in it. Sally actually tries to appeal to this obvious trace of humanity within him, begging him to make Leatherface and the Hitchhiker let her go, but his response just serves as more proof of his schizophrenia. He says it just can't 
be helped and that he can't take any pleasure in killing, despite his having clearly enjoyed causing Sally pain, and he not only randomly laughs at their continuing to torture her, before suddenly saying there's no need to do so, but gleefully cheers Grandpa's botched attempts at clubbing her, yelling, "Get her, Grandpa! Hit the bitch!" He sure doesn't seem to have any qualms with killing right there.

One thing's definitely for sure: the Old Man is relentlessly abusive to his younger brothers, both verbally and physically. He's especially rough on the Hitchhiker, constantly frustrated by his disobedience and rebellious nature. The first thing he does when he sees him in the driveway while coming home with Sally is to snarl, "Half-wit. Little coon shit." Then, getting out of the truck and calling him a, "Nap-haired idiot," he chases him down and beats on him with the broom handle he used on Sally, admonishing him for going to the graveyard, as well as for leaving
Leatherface by himself all day long. Though he's no gentler with Leatherface, as when they get into the house, he chases after him with the broom handle, angrily asking if he's sure none of the others got away, and then hits him anyway because he sawed up the front door. He also roughly yells at him to stay in the kitchen until he's done making supper, and when Sally wakes up at the table and starts screaming, the Old Man initially joins the Hitchhiker and Leatherface in screaming along with her, only to then yell at the top of his lungs for them to shut up,
remarking, "You act like a pack of hounds." But what especially enrages him is when the Hitchhiker tells Sally, when she's begging him to make them stop, that the Old Man, "Can't do nothin'. He's just a cook... Me and Leatherface do all the work." He growls at the Hitchhiker, "Shut up, you bitch hog," and when he won't back down, he, again, yells at him to shut up, saying he doesn't understand anything. Much to his frustration, the Hitchhiker doesn't listen to him when he threatens him with more abuse if he doesn't go
ahead and kill Sally, but when he then suggests letting Grandpa kill her, the Old Man is more than willing to go along with that. Finally, the Old Man is the source of some of the surprising humor you have in the film, like with how exasperated he is when he sees how Leatherface tore up the front door, yelling at the Hitchhiker, "Look what your brother did to the door! Ain't he got no, no pride in his home?!", and when he brags about how Grandpa was the best killer ever, telling Sally, "Why, it never took more than one lick, they say. Why, he did sixty in five minutes, once. They say he could've done more if the hook and pull gang could've gotten the beeves out of the way faster."

Funny enough, I actually knew the name "Leatherface" and had a vague sense of what he looked like before I even knew the movie's title. When I was around eight years old, I'd seen an action figure of him in some magazine, along with figures of Freddy and Jason (and possibly Michael Myers, but I can't be certain). I couldn't tell you why that was in my third-grade classroom or even what zine it was specifically, but I think it was around Halloween that year. It wasn't until I was in middle school that I learned what franchise Leatherface was from (in a Halloween advertisement for our cable provider's monthly programming guide) and his character specifics in the Horror Movie Survival Guide, which I bought when I was fourteen. It was in the latter that I also learned some of the gruesome details of the film itself: that the family were cannibals who also made furniture and such out of human bones and skin, that Leatherface himself wore a mask of human skin, and that, while he can't talk, he screams a lot, just adding onto everything else I'd heard about the film and making it sound all the more hideous. And going back to that original Bryanston trailer, since it was mostly Leatherface's scenes, he was the reason why it totally creeped me out. As I said earlier, the sight of this hulking man wearing a butcher's apron and skin-mask, chasing after Pam while screaming crazily, disturbed me to my core, as did him coming in and bashing Jerry in the head and charging out of the darkness to take his chainsaw to Franklin (that closeup of his masked face as he does so is truly the stuff of nightmares). So, I was already scared to death of Leatherface long before I saw the movie and, to this day, I find him to be one of the most truly frightening slasher icons, especially in this film. As creepy as Michael Myers is due to his almost total silence and somewhat undead presence, and as sadistic as Freddy Krueger and Chucky are (when they're not making you laugh), I would much rather be forced to face or hide from them than I would a huge, completely insane, remorseless, chainsaw-wielding man-child who screams like an enraged animal. And I don't think he's ever been as terrifying, both in his actual portrayal and appearance, than he is here. Other versions have certainly been physically imposing and intimidating, but there's something uniquely unsettling about Gunnar Hansen's original performance that has never been matched.

The chainsaw itself is a major reason why I find Leatherface to be so scary. Chainsaws scare me in general, as they're just so dangerous, and were destined to become a staple of horror films from the moment they were invented. I can deal with somebody trying to stab me with a knife or some other blade, as you can likely survive getting grazed by something like that, but the sheer amount of damage a chainsaw can do, even if it barely touches you, is on a whole other level. And here, we have a huge guy who not only knows how to work and wield
one, but is able to both run with it and go fast enough to keep pace with his intended victims. Even if only one person actually dies by the saw here, it's still horrific just to think about. Then, there's the sound, which is completely unnerving and makes your skin crawl, and the idea that, when he's not chasing people with it, he's cutting them up for barbecue. Yeah, no thank you.

One thing that truly surprised me is how Leatherface is a more complex character than you may initially think. Despite his huge size, he not only has the mindset of a child but a rather frightened one at that. Hansen himself said that he's completely under the control of his family and does whatever they say because he's afraid of them. He's definitely afraid of the Old Man due to his physical and verbal abuse, but seems to just go along with whatever the Hitchhiker does, like when he helps him get Grandpa down the stairs or when he joins him in tormenting Sally at the
dinner table. Also, according to both Hansen and Tobe Hooper, when Leatherface kills Kirk, Pam, and Jerry, he's actually doing it out of fear, as he's been left alone all day long and is freaked out when these strange people keep showing up in his house. After he kills Jerry and puts Pam's body back in the freezer, he's clearly distraught by what's going and runs around the living room, looking for anyone else who might be hiding in the house, and then sits down at the window, briefly putting his forehead on his hand, then frantically touching the sides of his head,
possibly thinking, "What is going on? Oh, God, are there going to be more?" Thus, he takes the initiative and goes out into the woods, waiting for any more strangers to come along and when they do, he attacks. As frightened as he is, though, whenever he catches or kills someone, he knows what to do and gets right to work, either preparing them for barbecue, like when he dismembers Kirk's body with his chainsaw, or saves them for later, in how he hangs Pam up and puts her in the freezer. And he doesn't take it very 
well when somebody gets away from him, as we see at the end of the movie when he throws an angry tantrum, swinging his chainsaw everywhere and running around in place, as if doing a crazy dance (an intended payoff to a deleted moment where he throws a smaller fit when Sally gets away from him after the chase through the woods). 

In the other movies, Leatherface's masks, while sometimes cool-looking in design, are often too overdone and clearly latex creations by the film's makeup effects artist. Here, they're not only more subtle but natural in their look and feel, coming off like dried, skinned faces that Leatherface has stitched and sewn into masks. He also takes on a different personality depending on which one he's wearing (though a lot of casual viewers seem to not realize he has more than one). My favorite mask in the whole franchise is the one he wears throughout the majority
of the film, called the "kill mask." That thing has such a creepy quality about it, kind of looking like Michael Myers' mask, only more nightmarish, and when combined with that butcher's apron, makes him look absolutely terrifying. Not only is that closeup of it when Leatherface attacks Franklin scary as crap, thanks to Hansen's crazed, wide-eyed expression behind it, but, when he sits down after having killed Jerry, and the camera slowly pans towards him, you can see a lot of detail, including the hair, the dried-up skin, and wires around the corners of the mouth (plus,
you can also see a bit of his real face, as well as that he has some serious dental problems). The "old lady" mask, which he wears when the Old Man and the Hitchhiker come home with Sally, is meant to signify that he's being domestic now and is preparing supper. You don't get a good look at it, due to the rather dark lighting in that scene, and he doesn't wear it that long, but it does have an eerie quality all its own. And, finally, there's the "pretty woman" mask, which he wears from the dinner scene on, symbolizing he's all 
dressed up for dinner. It's pretty surreal and freaky-looking, with the makeup and lipstick, combined with the fairly nice, manly suit he wears with it. There's also a deleted scene of him actually putting the lipstick and makeup on, which is just a bizarre and, honestly, kind of funny sight, made even more so by the footage being completely silent (Kim Henkel would take both that scene and the whole concept to ridiculous extremes in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, as we'll get to). When Leatherface helps the Hitchhiker chase Sally after she escapes, you'd think he would've put the kill mask back on, since what he's doing doesn't fit with the personality of the pretty lady one, but I guess he didn't have time to do it (then again, he had no problem freaking Sally out at the dinner table while wearing that mask, so it's all relative, I guess). 

As unsettling as Leatherface's screams and yells are, he makes other sounds that I find to be equally freaky, like the pig noises he uses to lure Kirk into the house (the first few times I saw the movie, I thought he actually had a pig back there that he was about to butcher). The shot of the doorway leading to the kitchen with those sounds coming from it, while everything else is dead silent, is so creepy. Also, right before Leatherface puts Pam on the meat hook, it sounds like he lets out an evil laugh, and he later makes these bizarre moans to lure Jerry into the
house, while also jingling Pam's bracelet to make him think it's her. He makes some more moans when he and the Hitchhiker are torturing Sally at the dinner table, and the sight of this big man wearing that "pretty lady" mask with dark eye-holes, getting right up to the camera while making those sounds, is another freakish moment. Finally, when the Old Man questions him about what became of the other kids, Leatherface babbles an explanation in gibberish, along with some hand movements to emphasize and

clarify what he's trying to say (I'm pretty sure this is the only time in the series that Leatherface actually attempts to converse with another person). Hansen even said he wrote down notes detailing what he was supposed to be saying, which were listed in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion. In the rest of the films, the only sounds he makes are his usual yelling and such, and he also never again makes any of those other sounds that he does here, which is a shame, given how much they added to his creep factor.

When Sally first comes across Grandpa (John Dugan) in the top floor of the house when she's trying to get away from Leatherface, you'd likely assume he's just a corpse, given how he looks and that he doesn't move or react to her at all. But, as you eventually find out when they bring him down for dinner, Grandpa, though ancient, is still alive. Moreover, he has almost vampire-like properties about him, as drinking the blood oozing out of Sally's sliced open fingertip seems to give him some energy, as he starts sucking on it as soon as it's put in his mouth, and even makes some delighted, childlike gestures. That's one of two memorable things about him, aside from his look; the other is when the family insists he kill Sally by clubbing her, which is actually darkly funny. It's because, right before that, the Old Man talked him up as being the best killer ever, but he's now so old and weak that he can barely hold onto the mallet and keeps dropping it. And it happens over and over again, with him dropping it on the floor and then into the tub they're holding Sally's head over, finally hitting her only by accident. Even funnier is how the Hitchhiker, after spurring Grandpa on, gets sick of the whole thing and tells Leatherface, "Gimme the hammer! I'll kill her!" If it wasn't for Sally's piercing screams through the entire thing, I think more people would realize how it's about as funny as it is macabre.

While I have sympathy for a lot of people who were involved with this movie, knowing how torturous its production was, I especially feel bad for John Dugan. He doesn't have any lines, is covered underneath gobs of makeup, has to wear an old-fashioned black suit and tie, and given how hot it's said to have been in that house when they filmed (Gunnar Hansen said that it could've been, at least, 120 degrees), he must have been completely miserable and wanted to die. I know would have. Normally, I would kind of rag on him since he doesn't give much of a performance but,
not only do I think this character didn't really call for one but, given the conditions, I think it was trying for him to simply be there, so I can forgive him for not doing that much (though, it didn't stop him from returning as Grandpa for Texas Chainsaw 3-D nearly forty years later). The makeup was really good, though, and was the work of a plastic surgeon who was friends with Marilyn Burn, although it was also one of the reasons why they shot for over 24 hours straight during the dinner scene, due to how long it took to put on and the limited number of prosthetics they had.

There are also some memorable minor characters here and there. One, simply listed as the "Drunk" (Joe Bill Hogan) in the closing credits, is laying down in the grass with a bottle of beer when the group stops at the cemetery to check on the grave of Sally and Frankin's grandfather and gives a possible warning of bad things to come: "Things happen here about, they don't tell about. I see things. You see, they say that it's just an old man talking. You laugh at an old man. There's them that laughs and knows better." I also can't help but smile at the kindly older man who tells Sally to go
tell the sheriff to let her in to see her grandfather's grave, as I've known some nice old folks like that in my lifetime; I think he's the "Storyteller" (John Henry Faulk) listed in the credits. One guy whom I've always been curious about is the window washer (Robert Courtin) at the gas station, this weird, short, bald, bearded man with a big forehead, who never says a word and begins washing the van's windshield, hood, and grill as soon as the Old Man walks up to it. If you keep your eye on him, you notice that he takes his cues from whatever the Old Man does: when he 
walks away, the window washer stops and follows him, but when the Old Man comes back, he follows him back to the van and starts washing again! Otherwise, he just sits around and stares up at the sky. The question is, who is this guy? He doesn't seem to be part of the family, as he never shows up at the house, and yet, he doesn't seem to be all there, either. And since he's not a family member, that makes me wonder if he ever ended up on their menu. As for the actor, according to IMDB, he died in 1985 at the age
of 36 and spent the last six years of his life working at a camera rental firm. (He didn't seem to be all there in real life, either, as he's said to have flung soap suds onto Jim Siedow, along with some other weird things while they were filming.) And finally, there's the cattle truck driver (Ed Guinn), this big, burly black guy who gets caught up in the mayhem during the movie's final minutes. After accidentally running over the Hitchhiker, he proves to be a true good Samaritan, as when he sees Sally being chased by Leatherface, he helps her by pulling her into the truck's cab, gets her out the other side, and as they're both running, throws a wrench and hits Leatherface right in the head, causing him to fall and accidentally cut into his leg with the chainsaw. And he doesn't stick around at all, as he just books it down the road and you don't see where he went.

The very look of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is something I've heard everyone mention ad nauseam since I first started getting into the film, specifically that, since it was shot on 16mm, it looks less like a typical feature film and instead has a gritty, raw, realistic feel to it. It's one of several horror movies made during this period to be shot like this, with the other most notable examples being The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes (though, for my money, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is better than
both of them), and it always boils down to people saying it has the look and feel of a cinema verite documentary. This approach was symptomatic of what was going on at the time, with news footage of both violent crimes on the home-front and what was happening over in Vietnam, and clearly had an influence on burgeoning young filmmakers like Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, the former of whom had actually shot some documentaries before going into feature film. Besides being something he was familiar
with, the approach is also what inspired Hooper to add in that opening crawl, with John Larroquette's narration, about how this is an account of what happened to these young adults. But, putting all that aside, I have a small confession to make: as much as I'd heard that term "cinema verite," until I did some research for the initial version of this review, I wasn't sure how that documentary feel was supposed to work in the context of what was going on. While there's no doubt that the film does look and feel very real, I kept asking myself, "If this is supposed to be a
documentary, wouldn't Leatherface and the family attack the person holding the camera?" You get what I mean? So, not wanting to go into this review looking like an idiot, I decided to look up the definition of cinema verite and found that it's meant to be a sort of "fly on the wall" style, with the characters, and the audience, completely unaware of the camera. At the time, I said understood it, and I guess I still kind of do now, but I also don't know how any of this could be filmed without the characters, especially the family, not knowing they're there. Maybe it's something

you're not supposed to think about that hard, and is only an aesthetic meant to enhance the atmosphere and visual impact rather than something literal, but since I wasn't around when all of the film's influences were prevalent, it kind of flies over my head.

Regardless, there's no denying that the film, for the most part, is well-shot. While most of the initial home media releases, from the VHS and laserdisc age, all the way up to when DVD had become the dominant format, looked pretty crappy (according to Kim Henkel, it was a result of Bryanston not doing a great job at striking their 35mm prints), the film got a major upgrade in its transfer when Dark Sky Films released it in 2006 and it's continued to look awesome in further Blu-Ray and 4K releases. As a result, you
can see that the movie is surprisingly colorful, with rich blues in the sky and greens in the surrounding countryside, and certain characters' clothes actually popping really nicely, and not only are the mid-afternoon daytime exteriors quite bright from the ever-present sun, but the section that takes place at sunset has a really lovely orange glow to it, accented by lots of shadows and darkness inside the farmhouse, and the same goes for the ending scene at dawn. Speaking of which, there's also a real drabness 
to other environments, like the dimly lit interiors of the old Franklin place and many of the farmhouse's interiors, like the living room filled with all of the bones, the kitchen, and the attic space upstairs where Grandpa lives. Moreover, because of the nature of the camera, Hooper and cinematographer Daniel Pearl could really get in tight on certain shots, like when Pam looks at the tooth that Kirk puts in her hand, the headlight on the Old Man's pickup truck when he pulls up to the house, and especially during the dinner scene, where there are relentless close-ups on just
about everything, most notably Sally's terrified eye. By contrast, there are also some interesting shots done from a distance, like a very far off one of the van traveling across the road and stopping to pick up the Hitchhiker; similar ones for when the van pulls up to the old Franklin place, which makes it look as if we're seeing someone's POV; some shots of Kirk's death, including the blow with the mallet and when Leatherface drags him through the doorway and slams the door; when Leatherface, after killing Jerry, runs off into the living room, searching for other intruders; and distant shots during both the initial chase with Sally and the climactic one. There are even memorable shots of both the sun and the moon up in the sky.

Because of the film's handheld nature, you do get a number of effective POV shots or, at the very least, pseudo-POVs, like the slow track towards the farmhouse when Pam and Kirk head towards it, the first glimpses inside the house from the front door and when Kirk sees Leatherface, the shot of Pam's POV when she wanders around inside the house and then when she sees what's in the living room, and those shots from Sally when she's tied up at the dinner table, having to endure the Hitchhiker and
Leatherface getting right up in her face, and from the back of the pickup truck, looking at Leatherface trying to get at her, as she finally escapes. There are also instances of camerawork that are just plain interesting, like this low angle shot of Pam approaching the house after, unbeknownst to her, Kirk has just been killed, which goes under the swing she was on and has the house grow in the frame in front of her; a silhouette of the Old Man beating on the Hitchhiker in front of the pickup truck's headlights;
and some tilted angles that get in close on Sally when she's first tied up in the house's literal armchair. Even the editing sometimes gets rather creative, with interesting dissolves, like at the very beginning, when a shot of the sun transitions a dead armadillo on the road that's initially out of focus and then sharpens, staying on it as the van pulls up in the background; another shot of the sun that appears to zoom in and then dissolve to Jerry walking into the horizon, looking for Pam and Kirk; and, after Sally passes out while Grandpa is sucking her blood, a shot of the
house's exterior that quickly pulls back and transitions to a shot of the moon. Also, when Kirk hears Leatherface making the pig noises from the kitchen, it starts on a far shot of the doorway from the front door, then cuts to a closer shot of it, and then to another, even closer, one. And during the dinner scene, it's like you're being assaulted, with numerous, crazy cuts to and push-ins on Sally as she starts freaking out and screaming at the top of her lungs.

If there's one problem with the film's cinematography, it's that, even when you watch it in the really best transfers, it's sometimes so dark that you can barely see what's going on. This darkness issue is first seen early on, with some of the shots inside the van, and when they're exploring the old Franklin place, but during the long chase sequence that takes place outside at night, and when the Old Man brings Sally back to the house, it's almost pitch black in spots, and continues during the scenes inside the house before

the dinner scene. Sometimes, it kind of works, helping with the atmosphere, and a lot of the nighttime scenes have that blue moonlight effect that would become famous when used in Halloween, but more often than not, it can make it hard to enjoy the film, unless you know how to brighten up your TV in a way that doesn't wash out the image. I don't want to be too hard on the filmmakers, as they were inexperienced and working with limited means, and I do have to applaud them for actually shooting at night, rather than going for the day-for-night approach, but I don't think anyone would argue this is one of the film's major technical faults.

My confusion about the nature of the documentary approach aside, I have always understood what people mean when they say this movie feels authentic, as all of the settings, besides being actual locations, feel either grungy and dirty or, at they very least, have an old, lived in quality, with a bunch of clutter everywhere. That includes the inside of the van, which you can tell is cramped and just barely able to contain all five of them, especially with all of their belongings in the back, Franklin's wheelchair,
and the planks they have to use so he can roll out of it (the van itself actually looks kind of brand new, and I think that's because sound-man Ted Nicolau had just bought it). On the way, they pass by a slaughterhouse, filled with hundreds of cows who are just standing out there in the heat, each one waiting for its turn, which Franklin describes in gruesome detail, and acts as foreshadowing for the human slaughter we'll see later. The Old Man's gas station is that quintessential type of remote, out of the way place that you can tell
probably doesn't get much business even at the best of times, and consists of a small building where he cooks his barbecue, some gas tanks that are currently bone dry, and even a Coca-Cola machine that doesn't appear to have any Coke (that would personally upset me more than the lack of gas)! My personal favorite location, however, is not actually the farmhouse but, rather, the old, rundown house owned by the Hardesty family. For some reason, I've always had an affection for long abandoned places like that, and this place has a special ambience about it, with its darkly lit
interiors, torn up, peeling wallpaper, broken windows, hanging strips of insulation, and its overall rundown, overgrown exterior, with a big field of weeds right out in front and nearby slope leading down to a creek-bed. The one moment that always comes to mind when I think about this location is when Kirk is walking around by himself, exploring, and when he enters one room, he spots a big clump of daddy longlegs skittering all over each other up in a corner near the ceiling. It's just one quick moment, but it's always stuck in my mind, probably because it was a group of real daddy longlegs they just stumbled across and filmed, adding to that feeling of authenticity.

When Kirk first sees it in the distance, the farmhouse looks absolutely innocuous, with an abandoned barn, a batch of flowers, and a constantly humming generator in the back, but as he and Pam walk towards it, they pass by a strange bit of scenery: a small tree with pots, cups, watches with spikes driven through them, and similar things, as well as what looks like a tent canopy, hanging from the branches. They also come upon a spot where a large amount of netting covers a bunch of vehicles, which, like the
objects on that tree, probably belonged to people who fell victim to the family in the past and are being used as a kind of decoration. (There's also a deleted scene that I kind of wish was still in the film, which had Kirk and Pam finding a long abandoned campsite, another sign of people who fell prey to the family. I know it was cut because it was deemed unimportant to the overall plot, but I think it's eerie just from looking at that silent footage, and would've added even more to this scene if it had been kept in.) Once
they get around to the house's front, it, again, looks fairly normal and even kind of nice, with a charming porch swing in the yard and some little trees providing shade. But, when they walk up and knock, Kirk inexplicably knocks a human tooth out of the floorboards when he backs up, and when he looks through the front door, what he sees is especially shady, with what looks like animal pelts lining the walls and a doorway with a ramp leading to a spot with a red wall covered in animal skulls and trophies, and a rusted metal drain on the floor That, as it turns
out, leads to the kitchen, and has a steel, sliding door from a slaughterhouse that Leatherface slams shut after killing Kirk. The kitchen itself is a real horror show in and of itself, with the meat hook where Pam is impaled, the chopping block where Leatherface cuts up Kirk's body, and the big freezer where Jerry later finds Pam right before he gets it. 

But the real nightmare is the living/dining room, which is filled to the brim with furniture and decorations made from the remains of past victims, like a sofa decorated with human bones, a table that seems to be propped up by shin bones, what looks like a spinal column made into a lamp, an old radio with bones attached to its front and four skulls and spine on its top, and various bones hanging from the ceiling, like a hand, a skull with feathers glued to it and a steer's horn rammed through its jaws, and, most
horrifically, a very tiny rib-cage. Later on, when Sally is brought home by the Old Man, she gets tied to an armchair that has literal, mummified arms, and when she awakens at the dinner table, we see it's decorated with stuff like a little display made from a chicken's head and legs, a dead armadillo, and a skull with its top sawed off, and there's a light hanging above it that seems to have a human face as a shade. Besides all of those macabre decorations, there are just human and animal parts strewn everywhere, mostly skulls and
bones, as well as random oddities like a turtle shell hanging from the ceiling, a chicken in a hanging cage, and feathers almost completely covering the floor. There's so much stuff in there that it's impossible to spot everything, and it's clear that's where art director Bob Burns really got a chance to show off what he could do, using lots of real animal parts, as well as actual human bones (something that was a bit of a trend with Tobe Hooper). Not much time is spent upstairs, though when Sally runs up there while being chased by Leatherface, she heads around the railing

and runs through an open door, into a large, mostly bare room, which is where she finds Grandpa in a rocking chair, along with the petrified remains of Grandma, some skeleton furniture, and even a little, half-decomposed dog that seems to have been embalmed.

Something else that feels authentic about the film is the way in which the violence is utilized. As has been said many times, despite the title, this isn't the splatterfest you may think it is. It's certainly more overtly bloody than something like Halloween or even The Exorcist, and has a handful of grisly close-ups, but blood isn't flying all over the place and soaking the walls. In fact, there's so little blood that, when some does show up, it's more impactful and feels more real, as it's not over-the-top. Some of the
bloodier moments include the Hitchhiker cutting open the palm of his hand, then slicing into Franklin's arm, the blood splattered on Kirk's convulsing body and pooled next to his head after he gets hit with the sledgehammer (it's so dark there that you might not see all that blood the first time around), Sally's finger getting sliced open and the blood fed to Grandpa (which is especially unsettling when you realize that was real), Sally being covered in blood by the end of the movie, and Leatherface sawing into his own leg after the truck driver gets him with the wrench. But
the moments you would expect to be extremely grisly, like Pam being hung on the meat-hook, Leatherface cutting up Kirk's body and him later sawing into Franklin, and the Hitchhiker getting run over by the cattle truck, are surprisingly light on gore, save for some blood splattering on Leatherface during the latter scene. However, the implications of what's happening, coupled with the tone and intensity, not only make it all the more disturbing than it would've been had there been a lot of gore, but when it comes together with the film's feeling of realism, it can make you think you've seen a gore fest when you haven't.

Just as subtle as the amount of actual gore is the notion that the family are cannibals. While most of the other movies would put the cannibalism front and center, and get disgustingly graphic with it, in this original, it's much more implied. It's most obvious in what Leatherface does to Kirk and Pam, and when Grandpa feeds on Sally's blood, but whether or not the "barbecue" that the Old Man sells at his gas station and what they're eating at the dinner table is human is left up to the viewer to decide. However,
just the thought that the kids are munching on what's left of the family's past victims is pretty damn revolting. I'm not trying to be overly disgusting, but I've personally never liked the shape of that piece of "sausage" Franklin munches on and has in his mouth for a little bit when they arrive at the old house. And similarly, that meat that Sally sees cooking in the Old Man's shack after escaping from Leatherface looks a tad suggestive.

Whether you're purely a city person, or from the suburbs, or even like me and live in a pretty rural, rustic area as it is, there's no denying that, when you get really deep into the backwoods of any U.S. state, where you don't know anybody, and no one there knows or cares who you are or where you come from, it can get really scary and isolating, and that's something this movie captures all too well. While we don't know exactly where the kids in the van are from, they're clearly out of their element this deep
into the countryside, even if Sally and Franklin used to visit family at the abandoned house they stop at. Not only do their nice clothes suggest they're likely from families of means, but their sort of hippie-like attitudes, where they're dismissive of the Old Man's warnings about not messing around private property and saunter up to and enter the farmhouse without being invited, don't gel with this place at all. And by the time they realize it, it's too late, and Sally finds herself completely alone out in the middle of nowhere, where it seems as though the nearest people are also members of the family.

The film sets its mood right from its opening, with a totally black screen and the sounds of someone (likely the Hitchhiker, given what the Old Man yells at him about later) rummaging around, making lots of snapping and sawing sounds, interspersed with brief flashes of a strobe light that illuminate a decomposing corpse's various body parts, and that iconic, screeching sound that's now become a mainstay of this franchise. Those shots were sprinkled throughout the Bryanston trailer, and I actually thought they were
meant to be someone from the police department taking photos of the victims, i.e. the kids, after the film's events. Even when I first saw it and it began with that sequence, I still thought that's what it was and that the story was going to loop around back to it at the end, with the reveal of the corpse attached to the monument being the film's true opening and something completely separate from those sounds and images. It wasn't until I watched the movie again, as well as when I read up on it, that I realized what this
was all supposed to mean. But that aside, not only is this opening creepily effective, but I thought and still think that corpse looks uncomfortably real, like an actual dead body that's been decomposing for a long time. (While I would've assumed it was another one of Bob Burns' creations, according to many who were interviewed in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion, it was actually made by Warren Skaaren, the Executive Director of the Texas Film Commission who played a major role in the movie's distribution, and is even credited with having come up with the title.) It's also one of the few parts of the movie that you can say really is viscerally gruesome, and akin to something you would see in other movies that are full-on gore fests.

Also right from the beginning, and sprinkled throughout throughout the film, are suggestions that there's something bigger going on than just these kids having the bad luck of running afoul of a maniacal family in the Texas backwoods. As the opening credits play out, over images of sunspots that the filmmakers bought from NASA, the news on the radio, which started out with a report on the grave-robbing going on, goes on to list a number of bad and often violent things happening across the country: oil
storage units at a refinery that exploded during the night and now have firefighters battling forty-foot flames, a suspected cholera epidemic in San Francisco, a sudden outbreak of violence in Houston touched off by a suicide, and a building in Atlanta that collapsed while under construction. Not long after that is when Pam is talking about how Saturn, which is said to be a bad influence anyway, is particularly bad now that it's in retrograde, suggesting that could have something to do with it. In addition, 
after the Hitchhiker is thrown out of the van, Pam reads both Franklin and Sally's horoscopes, with Franklin's saying, "Travel in the country, long-range plans, and upsetting persons around you, could make this a disturbing and unpredictable day. The events in the world are not doing much either to cheer one up,"; meanwhile, Sally's, whose astrological sign is ruled by Saturn, is, "There are moments when we cannot believe that what is happening is really true. Pinch yourself and you may find out that it is." And when Sally and Franklin are left alone, they briefly talk about whether or not there's any meaning to it. Thus, there could be something to what Tobe Hooper said about this being the story of a very bad day in the cosmic sense.

One factor that definitely contributes to the atmosphere is how you can just feel the blistering Texas summer the movie was shot in, with temperatures topping well over 100 degrees each day and with extreme humidity. The actors really look miserable at points and you can see how sweaty they are when in closeup. Also, except for Pam, they're all dressed in long pants, and Jerry actually wears a long-sleeved shirt, so I just can't imagine how awful they must have felt (I actually wonder why anyone would
dress that way when it's that hot out in the first place. I always wear shorts and such when it's hot and even then, it's sometimes still unbearable for me). The shots of the sun high up in the sky, sometimes bearing down on them, the heat haze on the road in some shots, and just how bright the exterior cinematography is all further add to the feeling that it's hot as crap, as does the notion that, except for what little blood you see, there are almost no fluids of any kind here. Everything is dry and
desiccated, a feeling accentuated by the constant presence of bones and feathers, and there's no water to be found at all, as we see when Kirk and Pam discover that the creek they were going to go swimming in is bone-dry. When Franklin and the Hitchhiker blow raspberries, you don't see anything in the way of spit, except when Franklin spits out that piece of meat (or at least I don't), and even the gas station doesn't even have anything in its tanks. For the most part, the only bits of moisture you see, besides the blood, is the booze the one guy is drinking at the
cemetery and the sweat on the actors' face (no joke, I'm actually getting thirsty as I'm writing this). Even at night, there's no respite from the heat, with a weather report on the radio in the gas station, which you hear after Sally bursts in to get away from Leatherface, saying that the current temperature is 96 or so. And, as has been documented many, many times, the brutal heat inside the farmhouse really contributed to the notorious dinner scene's feeling of insanity, as everybody really was about half out of their minds.

Like many horror films made around that time, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre took a lot of influence from the less than perfect state of the world. For one, Hooper said that the opening crawl which proclaims the story to be true was meant as a response to how, by that point, the American government was deemed untrustworthy due to Watergate and Vietnam; thus, the advertising campaign's expounding on this helped fool the general public in the same way that it was felt the government had fooled the whole country. For 
another, while it's not really something you would think about now, Hooper makes an allusion to the fuel crisis that was prevalent at the time, with the gas station being empty and the transport not expected to arrive until late that afternoon or even the next morning (or possibly not at all). Nowadays, though, you'd probably just think it's a case of this being a little out of the way hick town that doesn't get visited by major suppliers in general. Hooper also cited the graphic violence that was prevalent in all the news
coverage he saw at the time, which gave him the notion that the real monsters in the world are men, but men who, in this case, were simply wearing different faces. So, he made it literal and had the monster actually wear the faces of others. There's a bit of the counter-culture movement in here, too, with the idea of the young no longer trusting the old. You can see a bit of that distrust when the guys are listening to the Old Man tell them that it's best not to go to the old Hardesty homestead, specifically in the expressions of Kirk and Franklin's faces and how Kirk suggests to
Jerry that he should ask him if there are any other gas stations nearby. Jerry asks, "Don't you think he would've told us if there was?", and Kirk answers, "Man, it wouldn't hurt to ask, you know?", which itself has a double meaning to it that suggests he feels the Old Man have deliberately failed to mention it.

There are also more timeless influences to be found here, with the film, at its core, being a variation on the story of Hansel and Gretel: kids go into the woods and come across a house inhabited by a monstrous person (or, in this case, persons) who intend to eat them. But while Hansel and Gretel ultimately managed to escape from the witch, all but one of the kids here die and even the one who manages to get away has clearly lost her mind. Sally may not have needed a woodsman to save her, as one critic
observed, but she's still paid a heavy price for her freedom. Another theme is that of the tension between the city and the countryside, which was a popular idea for horror and thriller films around that time, with stuff like Deliverance and Straw Dogs as other examples, with the kids gradually learning that the countryside isn't as meek or pure of a place as they might have originally thought. Joe Bob Briggs has commented on this a few times, stating that, in the past, the countryside was believed to be a safe place and the city was evil, but this and those similarly-
themed movies turned that notion on its head. Another example of this theme is how the family used to work in the slaughterhouse but new techniques brought over by the city, such as the air-gun that Franklin mentions, have put them out of a job and now, in order to eat, they've turned to cannibalism and are also quite possibly selling their human barbecue to unsuspecting visitors.

The family itself can be seen as a satire of the image of the American family. Even though the Old Man is meant to be Leatherface and the Hitchhiker's older brother, he acts more like an angry, abusive father, yelling at and beating on the Hitchhiker for messing around graveyards, and Leatherface for destroying the house's front door and possibly letting some of the kids get away. Weirdly enough, since Leatherface is wearing his old lady mask by this point and is about to start fixing dinner, he could be seen as a housewife
and the Old Man as an abusive husband, while the Hitchhiker is the rebellious son, with his long, unruly hair and sloppy way of dressing. A couple of the family members can even be seen as warped versions of the kids themselves. When Leatherface is in his kill mask and butcher's apron, he's very masculine, like how Kirk is with his jock-like physique and constantly open button shirt, and yet, when he's wearing the woman faces during the film's last quarter, you can take him as a hideous version of 
Sally and Pam (remember, he's even wearing Pam's bracelet around his wrist later on). And it's a strange coincidence that the Hitchhiker targeted Franklin when he was in the van with them, as the two of them have a lot in common. Both have interests in the nearby slaughterhouse and, while everyone else is disgusted, Franklin is very interested in the Hitchhiker's story about how the old way of killing cattle with a sledgehammer was better and how headcheese is made, since he himself knows of it (although who can be sure if he's telling the truth
when he's said that he's had it before?). In addition, both of them blow raspberries a lot during the film and, despite his initial horror and disbelief at the Hitchhiker slicing open the palm of his hand, Franklin later wonders aloud how anyone could do that to themselves. Kirk even compounds this idea by telling Franklin, "You're crazier than he was." You half expect Franklin's worries about the Hitchhiker following them and killing him to come true when you realize how intertwined they are, making it all the more shocking when Leatherface kills him.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's major legacy within the history of horror is that it's one of the films that laid the groundwork for the slasher genre, specifically in establishing the idea of the "final girl," the lone young woman who manages to escape the killer(s). Black Christmas that same year was also similar in that respect, and both films end with their villains being alive and well, like how Norman Bates is still very much alive by the end of Psycho, albeit locked away for the time being. It was also among the
first in general to feature young adults as both protagonists and victims for the monsters. There were certainly horror films that involved teenagers and college kids before, like The Blob, but in films like that, they would be trying to warn adults about the monster while it's picking off other people; Chainsaw, along with The Last House on the Left, was one of the first to flip that around, with no adults or authority figures nearby to help. But, despite its contributions to the slasher genre, I, personally, don't think of it as a
slasher film in and of itself. To me, a slasher movie is something like Friday the 13th and all of the films that ripped it off, which involved all or some of the ingredients that everyone thinks of: kids drinking, doing drugs, and having sex while the killer is lurking around, looking for victims; the kids here don't do any of that. The only bit of booze is at the beginning with the drunk at the graveyard, there are, surprisingly, no drugs to be found, and neither of the film's women get naked or have sex with their significant other. Also, Leatherface isn't stalking around and picking them off
one by one in the dark; instead, the kids just stumble across the villains, with three of them getting killed simply because they wander into the house and run into Leatherface, and the only reason he attacks Sally and Franklin in the woods is probably because he'd decided to head off any more intruders before they got to the house. It's the same thing with the Hitchhiker. He didn't attack them the minute he saw them but, rather, was just some weird guy they decided to give a lift to and it turned out to be a bad call. 

However, is the film, as some have suggested, a precursor to the so-called "torture porn" subgenre? I'd say a little bit, with Pam's suffering while being hung on the meat-hook and all of the physical abuse Sally takes. But, when I think of the movies that are typically described as torture porn, I picture the victims being almost repeatedly beaten on, sliced up, disemboweled, and such. Most of the victims here are killed off quickly, while Pam is hung on the meat-hook to be killed later on, rather than for any sadistic 
pleasure on Leatherface's part. As for Sally, I would argue that the only reason the Old Man beats her up with a broomstick was to knock her out and take her captive. But, at the same time, he does clearly get sick pleasure out of poking her with the stick while she's in the truck, and the Hitchhiker sadistically slashes at her back while chasing her during the climax. Otherwise, the only reason her finger is cut open is to feed Grandpa and, while she's tied up at the dinner table, they torment her mentally rather than physically. I guess you could also say she's being
tortured while Grandpa is trying to club her but, again, the only reason that goes on for so long is because he can't grip the mallet. All in all, I think of The Last House on the Left as more in line with torture porn, due to what Krug and his gang sadistically do to the two women.

The first major scene is the one between the kids and the Hitchhiker and the reason why it's so effective is, one, because of Ed Neal's believable performance as some crazy person you could meet out in the middle of nowhere, and two, because of the awkward tone set by that upbeat, country song playing on the van's radio and the long moments of silence where nobody is saying anything, with the kids just staring at the Hitchhiker, wondering what kind of a freak they've picked up and terrified at what he'll do next. It also escalates, with the Hitchhiker going from already
being kind of weird to downright unsettling when he takes Franklin's knife, cuts his hand open, shows that he has a knife all its own, and then randomly takes Franklin's picture and demands to be paid for it. It culminates in a literal explosion, when he blows up the picture with gunpowder, then slices open Franklin's arm, and is thrown out of the van. Jumping forward to the scene at the old Hardesty place, there's an eerie moment where Franklin finds a weird bundle of feathers and a bone object akin to a wind-chime 
hanging in a doorway, proof that at least one member of the family has been there before and marked it in their own macabre way. This also suggests that those who remained at the house while the others were getting picked off may not have been as safe as they seemed, as at least one member of the family seemingly goes up there from time to time.

The film ramps up big time when Kirk is killed, and what makes that moment work is how there's no obvious buildup to it and it happens very matter-of-factly. It's completely silent, with no music, save for the pig noises that Kirk hears, and when he runs inside and trips on the plank in the doorway, Leatherface rather casually walks into view, bludgeons him, and then drags his body in and slams the door. The hideous, smooshy crack sound you hear when Kirk gets it is bad enough, but his convulsing body afterward is skin-crawling and makes you
wince. I've already talked too much about how disturbing the following sequence is, when Pam walks in, stumbles into the nightmarish living room, and is then chased and caught by Leatherface and hung on the meat-hook, but it's still amazing how little you actually see in the latter part and yet, it's utterly horrific and nightmarish. You don't see the hook pierce into Pam's back, but the implication of it, as well as the little jerk when Leatherface sets her down on it and her gasping and grabbing at it, is more than enough, as is the partially obscured visual of Leatherface cutting up Kirk's body.

Though it doesn't get talked about nearly as much as the previous scene, I think Jerry's death is equally unsettling. Not only is it creepy to think that the sounds he hears when he's outside the house's door are Leatherface luring him in, but when he walks inside and enters the kitchen, you hear what sounds like banging on the inside of the freezer. He opens it up and finds Pam stuffed in there, seemingly dead, when she suddenly convulses and lunges out at him. The idea that she was still alive after that ordeal she was put through, sporadically convulsing inside that
freezer, and then made one last break for freedom before finally dying, given how limp she is when Leatherface pushes her back in after killing Jerry, is just "ugh." The scene also gives you an immediate double-whammy, as Leatherface then comes roaring in and whacks Jerry, and after he pushes Pam back in, he runs around, looking to see if there are any more intruders. Just a few minutes later, there's the moment where he attacks Franklin and Sally in the woods (right before he comes charging out, I think you can
hear the sound of the chainsaw nearby, when Franklin says he hears something), and as I said before, like with the meat-hook scene, you don't see anything graphic but the impression of what's happening, with the camera being positioned behind Franklin, the passes that Leatherface makes with the saw, and the bits of blood splattering onto him each time, is very effective regardless. 

Though the whole film is a nightmare in the worst possible way, the entire third act, from when Leatherface kills Franklin on, is where it truly feels like one. No matter where Sally flees to, she runs right back into her pursuers' clutches: when she runs from Leatherface, she ends up at his house, and when she escapes from there, she runs to the gas station, where the Old Man takes her prisoner and brings her back to the house. The chase in and of itself is akin to bad dreams you may have had as a kid about being chased by a monster, as so much of it consists of Sally
basically running through a black void, and there are moments where shots seem to repeat, making it feel all the more surreal. And then, she's brought back to the house, where she's tied to an armchair with real arms, has the man who kidnapped her suddenly reassure her that everything will be okay and that they'll fix her something to eat, and her blood is fed to what, at first, appears to be a corpse, only for it to come to life and move while sucking on her bleeding finger. (This would be the moment that Pam described where Sally might pinch herself to see if this is all
really happening). The dinner scene really is the epitome of nightmare fuel here. Whatever initial misgivings I had about the film during that first viewing, I can assure you that, during this scene, I was thinking, "My God, this is crazy!" From Sally's constant, piercing screaming, the Hitchhiker mocking her tears, him and Leatherface getting right up into her face several times, the insane sound effects of the music, and the looping shots of Sally's screaming face that culminate with that extreme closeup of her eye,
to just the sheer spectacle of this cannibal family having dinner in such a macabre room, the entire scene is just nuts. And finally, the film's ending is like waking up from a nightmare, as it just stops. One minute, Leatherface is running around the road and swinging his chainsaw in a rage, and then, it suddenly cuts to black and you're watching the ending credits. That threw me when I first saw the film and for a while, I wasn't sure why Hooper decided to end it that way. But it was a comment on YouTube, funny

enough, that gave me some nice insight into it: you always wake up from a nightmare when it's at its most chaotic, insane peak. Personally, going with that logic, I would've expected the movie to end in the middle of the dinner scene but, nevertheless, that's a useful way to interpret the ending, which I'm sure has thrown others besides myself off.

Contrary to popular belief, I think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre does have a score; it's just not a typical one. Instead of normal instrumentation, Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell create a score of pure sound design, with bizarre, metal clanging and rumbles that add a palpable sense of uneasiness to many of the most unsettling scenes, like Kirk's clubbing. There's no music during the act itself, but when Leatherface slams the door shut, you hear this percussive rumble that not only punctuates what just happened but adds extra menace to Pam subsequently approaching the house. A similar rumble is heard when she walks around the stairs towards the metal door, expounding on how we know what has happened and what's going on behind that door, while she doesn't. The clanging and slowly building bit that you hear while Pam looks around the bone room, and continues as she's chased, grabbed, and hung on the meat-hook, perfectly compliments these horrifying visuals. The creepy main theme that plays over the opening credits, and the faster, more chaotic and threatening version that you hear over the ending credits, both highlight the film's nightmarish quality and I've heard many say are meant to simulate what it's like to be an animal in a slaughterhouse; the similar-sounding music during the chase also helps that scene's bad dream quality. The dinner scene has a suitably crazy sound to it as well, with twirling noises, insane notes, and a very unpleasant, swirling bit near the end, and there's a low rumble that you hear as the kids drive up to the old Hardesty homestead, forewarning of the horror that will soon befall them. And when Jerry is walking around, looking for Kirk and Pam, the music starts out kind of mellow, with occasional loud clangs, like a metal pot getting whacked, and it then turns sinister again when he arrives at the house. I also like this odd, echoing sound you hear when Leatherface pushes Pam back into the freezer after he's killed Jerry, akin to the sound of the slamming lid. Besides the actual "music," sound design itself plays a big part here too, specifically that now iconic, screeching camera sound you hear during the opening and throughout the film. It's a sound that makes you go, "What the hell was that?" when you first hear it (I know I did), and it's now become as synonymous with the series as Leatherface himself.

Finally, there are all of those country songs you hear playing on the radio throughout the movie, which are those types of local songs that feel as if they're never going to end (especially Fool for a Blonde, by Roger Bartlett, goes on for over five full minutes). While some of them are meant to offset the horror, sometimes they end up adding to it, like that aforementioned song, which you hear during the Hitchhiker scene in the van, making it all the more awkward, and Daddy's Sick Again, by Arkey Blue, which you hear at the gas station twice, and which plays in the background when the Old Man has knocked Sally out and is tying her up.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is truly a classic of 1970's horror, with its authentic look and feel, likable characters (for the most part), iconic and disturbing villains, palpable atmosphere and tone, nightmare-like structure, feeling of slaughter that's powerfully suggested more than actually shown, and freakish score all coming together to make it one of the most legitimately unsettling films ever. All of its cultural and historical significance and influences aside, it is, at its core, simply the type of scary story you'd be told while sitting around a campfire. If you've only seen the sequels and the various remakes and reboots, it's imperative that you go to the source. Just don't do what I did and go into it after you've watched a bunch of trailers and specials on it, as it's best to have as little prior knowledge as possible. And if you do make the same mistake I did, trust me when I say that the movie will, more than likely, get better with every viewing, as you slowly but surely come realize just how creepy and brilliant of a flick it is.

2 comments:

  1. Have you seen leatherface 2017 as well as the texas chainsaw massacre 2022? If so, what did you think of them and are you going to review them as well as texas chainsaw 3d?

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    1. I have seen those. Didn't really care for either of them. And the answer to your other question is tied to what I said about the Halloween and Chucky movies I haven't done yet.

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