I really thought this movie was made by crazy people - Wes Craven
Author: Bartłomiej Krawczyk
In October 2024, 50 years have passed since the American and then world premiere of one of the most famous horror films in the history of cinematography. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is one of the most analyzed and reinterpreted horror films of all time. In the case of Tobe Hooper's only masterpiece, reviewers and cinema theorists have a lot of room to express their opinions. It should be remembered that this film was shot at a time when the guerilla method of filmmaking was still possible. You borrowed, sometimes even stole, a camera, gathered a group of friends willing to cooperate, acquired a 16 mm tape, and then, with a bit of luck and determination, the project started in full swing.
These were the times when it was possible to redefine suspense and terror by entering unexplored territory of horror. These were times of social unrest in the USA related to the Vietnam War, the massacre of athletes in Munich and the Watergate scandal. Times of plane hijackings, government oppression, racial conflicts, revolutionary uprisings and terrorist bloodshed. "The Texas Massacre..." perfectly reflects this gloomy period, depicting five young people heading towards their family nest and encountering irrational evil on their way in the literal vestibule of hell.
Hooper claims that the idea of making "Texas..." came to him while Christmas shopping. The pushy crowd of consumers gathered in the store pushed the future director towards the stand selling chainsaws. Then Tobe imagined himself grabbing one of the saws and using it to annihilate the human population. This was the beginning of one of the most famous attempts to break the boundaries of what is acceptable in the history of cinema.
Yes, two years earlier, the very young Wes Craven made the scandalous "The Last House on the Left" (1972), in which he also touched on the subject of brutality and primal animal instincts of man, but Craven's debut does not have half the brutal impact of "Texas... ".
Hooper's horror should be classified as a survival film along with "Deliverance" John Boorman and "Straw Dogs" by Sam Peckinpah. The survival horror genre revolves around a group of ordinary people who are forced to defend themselves against a sudden and brutal attack without any purpose or reason; then the merciless fight for survival begins. There is a clear boundary between the civilization that comes from cities and the people from the forest backwoods or isolated rural farms, who are often the fruit of incestuous relationships, have the appearance and features of beasts, and harbor hatred towards nosy townsfolk.
These threads appear in many outstanding horror and thriller films, including "The Last House on the Left" , " Death Weekend" , "Rituals" , "Fight for Your Life" , "The Hills Have Eyes'77" , "I "Spit on Your Grave" , "Southern Comfort" , "Bridge to Nowhere" , "Wrong Turn" , "Calvaire" and "Severance" - just to name a few.
Sally Hardesty ( Marilyn Burns ), her disabled brother Franklin ( Paul A. Partain ), her boyfriend Jerry and another couple ( Kirk and Pam ) travel in a van across Texas to reach the siblings' childhood home. Along the way, near an old abandoned slaughterhouse, they pick up a strange hitchhiker (the psychotic Edwin Neal ), whom Franklin refers to as Dracula.
The boy first entertains the company with stories about killing cows with a hammer and an air gun, then grabs Franklin's pocket knife and cuts his hand deeply. When the group refuses to pay two bucks for a photo of the invalid, the unnamed hitchhiker goes berserk, attacks Sally's brother, and then is thrown from the van, on which he draws something resembling a runic symbol in his own blood. Using reserves of fuel, the youth reach the Hardesty house - a cluster of cobwebs and faded memories.
Kirk and Pam break away from the others to take a dip in a nearby body of water. The tank is dry, but Kirk can hear the hum of a generator in the distance. Where there is a generator, there must be fuel, which causes the pair to head towards a decaying, sun-baked and, at first glance, abandoned farm. The generator works flawlessly, there are old and new cars on the property camouflaged with netting, the entrance to the farm is decorated with animal skins, and inside they both find...
… hell.
The bone-piercing whir of a chainsaw. A slowly woven atmosphere of throat-choking, incomprehensible horror. Absolute madness and terror.
Parts of corpses illuminated by camera flashes. The film opens with a view of a dug up grave and a macabre display of two decomposed bodies emanating the stench of putrefaction. A dead armadillo lying across the road, hit by a car. A line of cows salivating in the heat and waiting obediently in line to be slaughtered. An ominous shot of a tent in tatters. Leafless branches near the farm are decorated with garlands of bowls, coffee dishes, and a single watch with a nail stuck in the dial. A burning ball in the daytime sky, a silent witness to terrifying events.
The title of Hooper's horror film seems to promise a sea of macabre, but it is deceptive. During the screening of "Texas...", is forced to imagine the worst, because the shocking murders are not shown in detail. The only gore scene in the movie is actually when a careless Leatherface cuts his leg open with a chainsaw and bleeds. Additionally, Hooper breaks with conventional techniques of creating horror - he does not play in snail-like building of suspense, the horror comes unexpectedly, attacks violently, e.g. when Leatherface appears behind Kirk's back in the steel door of the home slaughterhouse and hits the boy with a hammer, and the unfortunate man begins to kick his legs convulsively. Putting his girlfriend on a meat hook hanging from the ceiling is another unforgettable scene of total terror that gives subsequent generations of horror cinema fans chills and nightmares.
Unlike hundreds of slasher films, the characters in "Texas..." are flesh and blood people. They do not die immediately, falling to the ground like grotesque mannequins. They fight fiercely, trying to survive at all costs. And here we come to the point, i.e. Sally Hardesty . Marilyn Burns – an authentic scream queen. Taken to the verge of hysteria in the film; her face, covered in blood and dirt, shows primal fear and desperation. An amazing actress - in Hooper's later rural horror "Eaten Alive" (1976), inspired by Joe Ball's series of murders, she also showed how much she was capable of. When she is stubbornly chased through the bushes by Leatherface, when she is clumsily hit with a hammer by her grandfather, when she jumps out the window and runs frantically to safety - during these nearly 30 minutes of unimaginable torment, her mental state collapses.
Ed Gein. Serial killer and necrophile from Wisconsin. "The Texas Massacre" was loosely based on his story . Furniture made of human bones, a floor covered with feathers and crossbones, a chicken in a cage, decorations made of skulls, a mask made of human skin worn by Leatherface - all this clearly reminds me of Gein. It is worth mentioning that Robert A. Burns, the director of the dog horror film "Mongrel" (1982) and the portrayer of the serial killer in the moderately successful "Confessions of a Serial Killer" (1985) by Mark Blair,
A word about the soundtrack by Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell: it is an industrial-ambient cacophony of metallic clangs, scrapes and screams, imitating the atmosphere of a local slaughterhouse and illustrating the mental state of the members of a cannibal family. And it's just amazing!
I love this incredibly evocative horror film. I love its incredibly dark mood, simmering with sadism and madness, its unbearably gruesome locations, and that musty orange heat that almost makes me smell the intense smell of dead human flesh. "Texańska..." does not promise strong impressions, it provides them in excess. It is an uncompromising attack on human senses, dirty and hateful!
Leatherface dancing like a child in the morning light with a saw whirring above his head. Furious. Unsatisfied. Icon. What a beautiful scene!
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", 1974, USA
directed by : Tobe Hooper
screenplay : Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel
cast : Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, Allen Danziger
time : 84 minutes.
