The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Film: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Stars: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Edwin Neal, Gunnar Hansen

Director: Tobe Hooper

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

We talked a few days ago about how Night of the Living Dead is in a lot of ways one of the founding fathers of modern horror.  Not only did it create the zombie (arguably the most important "new" monster creature of the past sixty years for pop culture since vampires & werewolves have been around for centuries), but it also set the prototype for things like violence, sex, & politics making its way into a horror movie.  But in terms of much of what we thought of as horror throughout the period we're covering this month (up until the late 1990's), you'd be hard-pressed to find a film that had a bigger affect on the horror film industry that Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a movie featuring no big-name stars, made for almost no money, but was able to translate into becoming one of the most successful films ever made, grossing over $30 million at the box office in 1974 (about $150 million today) while being made for less than $200k.  In many ways it would become the prototype for the "slasher" film and spawned a franchise in the same way many future pictures of this nature would do in the coming decades.

(Spoilers Ahead) Texas Chain Saw Massacre is definitely a film with some occasional twists, but honestly, the spoiler alert feels a bit indulgent given a modern horror fan will know pretty much everything that is about to happen in this picture.  A group of young, free-loving hippies pickup a hitchhiker (Neal), in the middle of nowhere, and quickly regret it when he starts to mangle his thumb with a knife, and then attacks one of them.  They throw him on the side of the road, but when they stop at the next gas station, they find it is out of gas, and instead of (smartly) going to the next place to try & find gas, they instead go to an abandoned house & wander around...until one goes to the neighbors and they are, well, torn asunder.  We get slowly more-and-more deaths, each deeply disturbing (at one point a girl is hung up by a meathook like in a butcher shop, and then is frozen alive), as we learn that this figure that we know as Leatherface (Hansen) as well as the gas station proprietor & the hitchhiker are all related, and are a group of serial killer cannibals.  Only one of the five, Sally (Burns) survives in the end, escaping onto a passing truck, though inevitably emotionally scarred beyond recognition.

One of my great fears in doing this project this month was that I would struggle mightily in terms of enjoying the films themselves.  I don't love watching a lot of violence onscreen, particularly if it isn't pertinent to the story (or used for some movie-serving device), and honestly my great fear was that many of these films would veer into torture porn, like that used in the Saw movies, which would not be something I'd enjoy at all.  With just two movies left to see (these are published chronologically but I didn't watch them in that order), I lucked out-virtually none of these films are ones where the violence felt gratuitous or like it wasn't aiding the story in some capacity...

...except The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  I loathed the movie, I'm not going to lie.  I understand that it is formative, and I respect that.  The concepts of a serial killer monster (Leatherface) surely influenced figures like Freddy Krueger, Jason, & Michael Myers, and of course Sally would fulfill the new trope of a quintessential "final girl" in this movie, but it was so gross.  The movie doesn't so much scare us with bumps or frights or "what will happen next's" but instead it's all about showing us mutilated bodies that have no personality or character behind them.  Even Sally, whom we're with for almost the entire movie, you know nothing about; you want her to survive because of human instinct, but not because you know her or care about her as a person.  That this would spawn genuinely great movies is proof that there are no bad ideas...but there are definitely bad movies.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead, The Wicker Man