THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

Thanks in no small part to Tarantino and Rodriguez, people often refer to certain kinds of films as "grindhouse" films, as if "grindhouse" were some kind of genre. It's not - and anyone who knows anything about genre cinema knows it's not - but if there was one film that epitomizes everything these supposed "grindhouse" films were, it's Tobe Hooper's immortal THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. This is one of the all time great American horror films, a go-for-broke, infuriating, mind-warping, utterly nauseating tale of madness, mutilation and murder that has helped define low budget genre filmmaking ever since it's release in 1974. Simple and horrifying, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE has remained one of the most powerful horror films ever made.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This film hates you. It is designed to make you squirm and it is designed to make you tear your hair out. This is the closest I've ever seen to madness on celluloid. The opening prologue talks of madness but this film presents it, up close and personal. It's enough to make a grown man whimper and cry. Watching THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE again recently, I realized that it has lost none of it's power. It can still make me cringe in my seat. That is due, in no small part, to it's unnerving realism and unsettling design.


A plot summary is probably not necessary. If you haven't seen this film, you need to do so immediately.


Tobe Hooper Texas Chainsaw Massacre

From it's opening scene of graveyard desecration, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE puts the viewer on high alert. It doesn't take long for things to start going down hill. Once our band of protagonists picks up the insanely creepy Hitchhiker, we're firmly in the land of madness. We receive a brief reprieve from all the weirdness once the van arrives at the old family home but Hooper doesn't allow us a very long stay. A swarm of spiders, a dead bird and a strange bone ornament are all present, poisoning the homecoming. As if he can no longer stand the quiet, Hooper sends two characters off in search of a swimming hole. Finding it completely dried up, the two characters, Pam and Kirk, walk off and hear the sound of a generator. They come across a bevy of abandoned cars - never a good sign - and an old house. While Pam sits idly on a swing in the front lawn, Kirk tries to get the attention of anyone who may be at home in the house. What he finds is Leatherface.


Leatherface

The ensuing five minutes of film are among the most notorious in horror film history. Kirk hears squealing coming from a back room. He runs towards the sound, only to slip on a ramp in the doorway. As he - and we - look up, Leatherface emerges, mallet in hand. He brings the mallet down full bore on Kirk's cranium, knocking him to the floor. Kirk begins to spasm. Leatherface hits him again and yanks the body out of the doorway before - in a move that gave me nightmares as a kid - slamming shut a metal door. When Kirk doesn't answer her calls, Pam decides to enter the home. She walks into one of the side rooms only to trip and fall into a mass of bones. She sees strange bone ornaments hanging everywhere. She retches and bolts for the door. Leatherface emerges, chases her down and carries her into the back room. He hangs her on a meathook and, as Pam watches, begins to carve up Kirk with a chainsaw.


Marilyn Burns

What is most impressive about these five minutes is the total lack of any actual on-screen bloodletting. When people talk about THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, they invariably talk about how gruesome a picture it is. But, as this five minute scene demonstrates, the amount of actual presented violence is remarkably low. There are no money shots of chainsaws hitting flesh - interestingly enough, the only time we see that occur is at the film's end and the victim is Leatherface himself - or hooks entering backs, only sound effects and quick edits. Our minds fill in the blanks. "Less is more" usually isn't a phrase you hear in the discussion of horror films and I always have a hard time reconciling the popularity of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE among the bloodthirsty Gorehound crowd and the film's lack of any explicit violence. If anything, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is proof that the less y ou show and the more you suggest, the stronger your picture becomes and that is not something Gorehounds tend to agree with. Most people who haven't seen the film in quite some time remember it being terribly violent, the result of Hooper's well-thought out plan.


While not as over-the-top as Hooper's sequel, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is darkly comedic. The entire cannibal clan is a parody of the nice, normal suburban family of the sitcom, with Jim Siedow's Old Man as the burdened bread-winner, Leatherface as the housewife slaving over a hot stove, the Hitchhiker as the rebellious teen and Grandpa as the wise, old figure of family respect. The dinner table scenes - though layered with madness - speak more about the true state of most American families than anything you would ever find on prime time television. Hooper's use of black comedy doesn't quite work though. Instead of offering a few uncomfortable laughs, it makes the whole thing feel more perverse and unsettling. In THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, we feel fine about laughing at the proceedings. Here, we feel distinctly uncomfortable doing so. Laughing would mean that we are sharing in the madness and that is a slippery slope I'm not comfortable in traversing.


The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

You will not find a more emotionally draining film than THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE - though Lars von Trier's ANTI CHRIST and Gasper Noe's IRREVERSIBLE come close. The chase sequences, in particular, are remarkable in their simplicity and are downright nerve wracking. They feel like they go on forever, like a nightmare you can't wake up from. And when you do finally wake up, you haven't escaped at all. You're now in the possession of the very thing you were trying to escape from. By the time Sally climbs into the back of the truck and they speed away from the horror house, she is a blood-soaked, insane mess. Hooper's decision to simply cut to black without any sort of resolution is a nasty, brilliant trick. We have no time to come down from our adrenaline high, no releasing image to calm our nerves. We have no choice but to work through it ourselves, to find some way to ease or erase the memory of the film.


And that is not an easy task.


Essential viewing.