Produced/Directed/Additional Photography by Tobe Hooper
Story/Screenplay by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper
Cinematography by Daniel Pearl
Lighting by Lynn Lochwood
Art Direction by Robert A. Burns
Grandfather's Makeup by W.E. Barnes
Music by Toby Hooper and Wayne Bell
Edited by Sallye Richardson and J. Larry Carroll
Starring
Marilyn Burns as Sally
Paul A. Partain as Franklin
Allen Danziger as Jerry
William Vail as Kirk
Teri McMinn as Pam
Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface
Jim Siedow as BBQ Old Man
Edwin Neal as Self-Mutilating Hitchiker
John Dugan as Grandpa (Non-Munster)
Ed Guinn as Helpful Trucker
John Larroquette as Narrator
. . .
"A whole family of Draculas . . ."
. . .
"If I have anymore fun today, I don't think I'm gonna be able to take it!"
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
We begin with scrolling text onscreen. No Star Wars in sight, babe. Text scroll tells us that what we're about to see is all true, but we know it's a movie, so we know this is bullshit. But it's a nice text scroll. Logical. Step by step. Clause by clause. We are promised horror. John Larroquette nicely overplays the bogus moralistic tone. Real cute. He should narrate one of them thar true crime podgrifts. That would be the cutest. This logical, moralistic text doesn't exactly lie to us in any meaningful way, but I think it also exists to be cut to pieces by all that follows.
Following boring, respectable text we get gristly corpses staged as studio art installations and images of solar flares-I flash on Michael Ironside telling Ronny Cox that he's got sunspots in Total Recall-and I'm put in mind of the nonsensical outer space explanations offered up for why the dead are up and roaming around on flesh patrol in the background of Night of the Living Dead. We get photographic flashes on gruesome meats-I flash on the swinging photographer from Blow-Up, like this is a sequel, where the guy ended up after fucking around with tennis mimes-and we wonder what kind of people dig up corpses for art school projects.
We've got a group of young people travelling in a van to see someone's grandparent's grave. They also plan on checking out the deceased's property. Unknown actors. Perhaps we can better project onto people that look normal, that don't look like movie stars-
You wander off the beaten path, find the house behind the house, get killed by people who have also wandered off the beaten path. But they wandered off awhile ago, and they don't want company. Not in the usual sense. Let me put it this way: they have a use for you, just not a social one. In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre these people who wandered off so long ago-it's like they've become living traps. They lie in wait, you blunder into their area, and then they spring on you. Not for survival reasons. Yes, they will torture, butcher, eat you, and wear you-but it's kinda more for entertainment than for essential nutrition. They could just buy their food at the grocery store and go clothes shopping at a department store like everybody else. But they have to be extra, I guess. It's a bit of a paradox: they want to be left alone, but once you're in their clutches they have so much fun with you that you're easily the highlight of their week. You have become their playmates, their products, their breakfast/lunch/dinner, their snack-I flash on the strange dark goo running down Rudy Giuliani's head as he blubbers incoherently to the press-their furniture, their art, their sport, their fashion-
Redneck cannibal hipster fucks who just cannot settle for storebought. They just gotta craft like a motherfucker from locally sourced materials-I flash on a crossover between Portlandia and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-
Imagine you're walking through the woods at night. Maybe you're a regular for night walks in the woods. You might be a true outdoorsperson. Or maybe it took a lotta psyching yourself up to get out into nature. Perhaps you're freaked out by the dark, by unknowable shadows, by bears that are stronger than you, by large spiders, by venomous snakes, by sinkholes that twist your ankles, by allergens that puff up your face and choke off your oxygen, by phantom serial killers 'cause you spend too much time listening to dumbass true crime podgrifts produced/hosted by talentless hacks-and what's with all the phony moralizing they thread into the true crime podgrifts? You know very well rape and torture and murder are atrocities. It's not like you're a conservative Supreme Court Justice-
Imagine you're walking through the woods at night. You become aware of heavy steps and heavy breathing. You look towards the noise. You see a hulking man hustling towards you with a chainsaw in his hands. You run. The chainsaw wielding man mountain chases you. You run forever. The hulking chainsaw dude chases you forever. Maybe you get used to it over time. Maybe this situation becomes your New Fake Normal. Maybe the chainsaw guy is just kidding around, y'know, maybe this is just his version of horseplay and/or grabass. You never know if you can never trust, Dear Reader.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a frightful sequence of a woman being chased for what feels like forever through woods at night by a man with a chainsaw. It's pretty simple, really. An implacable killer chases a potential victim. The potential victim screams for help-no help is coming-and she runs and runs and runs. And her would-be killer runs and runs and runs after her squealing and gasping with orgasmic delight. We know this guy means business 'cause we've already seen him kill. Time stretches in my mind as I watch. I'm sure if I timed the chase, it wouldn't be that long. Objectively. The movie's total running time is under ninety minutes. It'll all be over soon enough. What's the big damn fuss about, eh?
Later, this woman is tied to a chair and tormented by the chainsaw guy and his family. We get a series of extreme close-ups of the woman's eyes bugging, and we hear her nonstop screaming. Absolute terror induces absolute attention, a widening of the victim's awareness. Earlier, we see her crashing through a window, and we'll see her do it again. Absolute terror propels the victim to bust through artificial barriers in pursuit of survival and safety. Is this a hint about the true origins of the brickwall shattering Kool Aid Man? What hounds the Kool Aid Man through that wall? Will we ever know?
Earlier, we're told through an audio collage of radio news about all kinds of things going wrong. We hear about corpses getting dug up out of graves. Some parts of these corpses are missing, presumed stolen. Some corpses are posed and propped up like pranks and/or art installations inside of cemetaries. An exploded oil rig burns out of control. Inexplicable murders, suicides, and murder/suicides. A sheriff insists that this rash of depravities are no doubt caused by out-of-state elements. Not our people, no-sirree-Robert. Artificial borders and boundaries don't do shit except give authoritarians bogus talking points to rhetorically jerk off the Nixonian Silent Majority. It's fine.
Randomness is a big deal in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Chance. Luck goes one way, and then it goes another. Normal people blunder into a den of killers, but then the killers turn out to be equal parts stupid and creative. The killers have home field advantage. They know the terrain. They know what they want, which can get you pretty far in this life. But the killers don't have any flexibility. Which usually isn't a problem. But then this inflexibility collides with a victim's ferocious will to survive. Note that Right and Wrong have no major and/or supporting roles in this cast. Note that cops do not save anyone from anything, nor do they bother to show up, even though we get such certain pronouncements from a sheriff over the radio. Observe the flayed face that serves as a pleasantly glowing lamp shade. Give the killers their due: they use every last part.
