“TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE” (1974)

Starring: Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Gunnar Hansen & Jim Siedow
Written by Kim Henkel & Tobe Hooper
Directed by Tobe Hooper

Polly Staffle Rating: ****

People love a screwed up family. There’s not much that is more entertaining. If you don’t believe me, just look at the messed up families we grew up loving on television. There’s “The Simpsons,” “The Addams Family,” “The Munsters,” the Bundys on “Married with Children” and the Tanners on “Full House” to name a few. And when you think about it, that’s what is at the core of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Yes, it is full of horrifying sites and sounds, but the fact it is so believable is what truly makes it an American classic. Made in 1974, this tale of a group of teenagers getting lost and running into trouble still holds up today. It helped create the “backwoods madman chasing teens” horror movie formula as well as the slasher subgenre.

It is extremely suspenseful and we are set up time and time again, expecting something bad to happen. But director Tobe Hooper holds off until thirty minutes in before having anyone killed. Nowadays most directors open with a murder to hook the audience. Hooper didn’t need one. He uses a grave yard, an old house, a creepy hitch hiker and a hillbilly gas station (complete with an old man who washes their van even when the place is out of gas) to get you ready for the main event.

And then Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) makes his entrance. Hooper does it again and again, waiting for the perfect time to rear the chainsaw maniac’s human-mask-wearing head. This movie shows us scenes that we can’t quite make out and it starts to build on our fears. When Leatherface shows up we start seeing a clearer picture and it’s even stranger than we imagined. The movie watcher is a lot like the wheel-chair bound character Franklin. His anxiety builds and builds and when something finally does happened, he is completely helpless and unable to do anything about the situation.

This is one of those movies that you never forget the first time you watched it. It is so bizarre it is more than a movie. It’s an experience. So much so that it’s been ripped off over and over again so many times that you can hardly find a Halloween haunted house or a horror movie that wasn’t in some way inspired by it.

One of the reasons is Hooper knows the importance of not showing us things. There are people who will argue and say this movie is graphic and full of gore. But it isn’t at all. There’s the infamous meat hook scene which is brutal, but not because of what we see. It’s brutal because of the unknown and brilliant editing and acting.

At the heart of this movie is an extremely dysfunctional family. They’re a broken home with a father who abuses and neglects his children. Even though Leatherface is the epitome of evil, he is extremely scared of his dad. In one scene, the father screams at Leatherface, chases him around and smacks him with a broom handle. Sure Leatherface damaged the front door of the house with his chainsaw, but the rest of the place is a rundown mess with chickens and human bones scattered about. This element of the movie helps you feel a little compassion for the big guy. Leatherface is environmentally retarded. He probably wasn’t born with a handicap, but instead he had screwed up parents that never taught him anything and essentially raised him in a barn.

Wes Craven once said “The Last House on the Left” was a product of the country’s mindset at the time. Craven said he was full of so much anger and hostility over the Vietnam War that it came out in his movie. Just two years later, Hooper made this film. I think the same can be said about it. Looking at it that way, Leatherface and his brother can be interpreted as the youth of America that joined the military and their elders are the government. The siblings do what they have been taught and told to do. So here they are, killing the innocent without knowing why. (World War II brought us film noir. Vietnam helped elevate the horror genre. Now our country is at war again and they want to know why movies keep getting more filthy and disgusting as the years go by).

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” has such an effect on people that even today there are those that believe it is a true story. Since I’m from Texas originally, people have actually asked if I knew where the real massacres happened. The film is inspired by a true story, but it’s mostly fiction. However, the house in the movie is still standing. It’s not in its original location of Quick Hill in Austin, Texas. It was moved, completely restored and turned into an upscale place named The Four Bears Restaurant in Kingsland, Texas.

Hooper supposedly got the whole chainsaw idea from being frustrated over waiting in a long line in a department store. He glances over and sees a chainsaw and the thought of grabbing it and cutting his way to the front of the line pops in his head. Hooper was also inspired by the real life serial killer Ed Gein, who also helped influence “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs.” Gein too was a victim of a dysfunctional family before growing into the mad man he became. But simply placing blame on a messed up family is no excuse for the real Leatherfaces of the world. We all have screwy families and those that don’t, just can’t admit it. As a neighbor, who wasn’t really a friend so much as one of those neighbors that just wont go away, once said, “My family is crazy. They psychos. My family’s messed up real bad, but whose isn’t.”

- CCF, January 2006