The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

cineast78 11/12/2024 1:15:51AM 8.4

**One of the best and most fascinating horror movies ever made.** Just as the title says it, it is wihout any doubt one of the best and most influential horror films ever made. Its production history is also quite fascinating. If you are into horror or slasher movies, you simply have to have seen and experienced it. Nuff said.

FolknHell 8/25/2026 10:10:36PM 8.4

*The Texas Chain Saw Massacre* is often remembered as a film about a man with a chainsaw. Oddly, the chainsaw may be one of the least interesting things about it. What still makes Tobe Hooper’s film so horrible is the sense that its victims have accidentally wandered into somebody else’s perfectly functioning system. The first hammer killing is astonishingly abrupt. There is no theatrical wind-up, no villain enjoying his entrance. A young man walks down a corridor, Leatherface appears, and suddenly he is meat. The family used to work in slaughterhouses and, in practical terms, they have simply carried on with the family business. That is also where the film begins looking suspiciously like folk horror. The Texas landscape is not decorative. The heat, empty roads, scrub and choking vegetation progressively close around the outsiders. Even escape becomes circular: Sally fights through brambles, reaches what ought to be civilisation and discovers that the garage is simply another part of the same world. The family’s house then supplies the belief system. Bones are not discarded but arranged. Human remains become furniture, ornaments and strange feathered constructions whose precise purpose is never explained. They clearly mean something to the people living there, which is considerably worse. And then there is Leatherface himself. Gunnar Hansen somehow gives considerable pathos to a man wearing somebody else’s face. After the intruders start appearing, Leatherface sits with his head in his hands like a blood-spattered Rodin’s *Thinker*, apparently wondering why the working day has gone so badly wrong. He is monstrous, certainly, but also frightened, subordinate and trapped inside the family hierarchy. That makes him stranger than a straightforward killer. The dinner sequence finally turns slaughter into ceremony, with the barely living grandfather handed the hammer because he was once the family’s finest practitioner. Tradition has become ritual, and ritual has become grotesque entertainment. This is not an enjoyable film in any sensible meaning of the word. It is abrasive, nasty and exhausting. More than fifty years later, though, it remains alarmingly immediate. *The Texas Chain Saw Massacre* does not feel like a legend being retold. It feels like somebody found the place, pointed a camera at it and was extremely lucky to get the film back. --- Reviewed by FolknHell, the folk horror film podcast · folknhell com Hear the full FolknHell podcast discussion of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: folknhell com/the-texas-chain-saw-massacre-review along with our other reviews, transcripts and episodes.

Wuchak 6/23/2021 3:58:29PM 8.4

***Disturbing iconic slasher about a demented family in rural Texas*** After a van of young people picks up a psycho hitchhiker in east Texas they stumble upon a farm house of crazies, including a burly mute man with a mask made of human-skin. Tobe Hooper’s "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) is a seminal, iconic slasher that’s genuinely disturbing and horrific because it plays out in a gritty, realistic manner. While some viewers might find a couple of scenes amusing, like Franklin in his wheelchair accidently rolling down the hill and, later, having a hammy fit in the dilapidated building, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a serious, unsettling horror flick. By contrast, Rob Zombie’s homage (or rip-off), “House of 1000 Corpses” (2003), wasn’t disturbing or horrific at all because he opted for an over-the-top, cartoony approach. It was colorful and amusing, yes, but not unsettling or horrifying. Other positives include the rural locations, cool nighttime sequences, e.g. the thorn bush, and the effectively photographed women with no raunch: Teri McMinn (Pam) and Marilyn Burns (Sally). They’re girl-next-door types, but alluring enough. So this is a standout film as far as serious slasher horror goes and I can understand those who give it a high rating, but horror movies are about more than just scaring & troubling the viewer. For me, the last act is overly one-dimensional, focusing too much on the eye-rolling demonic dirtbag family and a girl fleeing & screaming. It’s thoroughly manic, indeed, but also vacuous and uninspiring. The film runs 1 hour, 23 minutes; there’s also an 88 minute unrated version. It was shot in east Texas as follows: Round Rock (house), Bastrop (gas station/BBQ shack), Leander (cemetery) and Watterson (slaughterhouse). The house has since been moved to Kingsland and refurbished as a restaurant. GRADE: B-/C+