The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (

1974

)

We start with one of the most ominous openings in the history of the genre. A voice-over narrator and accompanying text crawl tells us that the events of the film we are about to watch are all true (they are most certainly not, but hey this was a trend in the early 70s as The Last House on the Left (1972) demonstrates) and we are treated to a singular noise. The closed captions on my version of the film helpful inform us that it's a “camera whining” but it sure as hell doesn't sound like any camera I've ever heard! I'm a words and pictures guy, and I'll confess that I lack much of the vocabulary needed to describe sounds in an effective or informative fashion. It suffices to say that it's a deeply unsettling noise, just listen to it for yourself. From there we are treated to a ghastly sight to match the unsettling noise: a grotesque objet d'art fashioned from some freshly exhumed human corpses. The light of a blood-red sunset fills the background and makes the whole shot look like a vision of hell. The disturbing imagery won't stop there, as the opening credits play the background imagery is a swirling chaos of red and black that reminds me of nothing so much as the final boss fight in Earthbound [1994]. The audio overlaying the credits sequence is a litany of horrors onto itself. Stories of fires plagues, political corruption (possibly Watergate, though Hooper is wise enough to refrain from letting any specifics slip in) are read out casually by a disinterested newscaster. Just another day in the USA.

The impression given by these credits is one of a world in the midst of ending. Writer/director Tobe Hooper, while he was working on the script with his collaborator Kim Henkel, was always talking about how it was “a political allegory. It was all about the gas shortage, the food shortage, and the shortages that were going to be coming about.” Yet there is much more present in this opening sequence than just a few passing political trends. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not simply about the gas crisis, nor the Watergate scandal, nor the Vietnam war, though all these doubtlessly contributed in some way to the nasty film that was eventually made its way to the screen. Rather it's about a climate of fear, cynicism, uncertainty, chaos, and violence that these events were symptomatic of; and the sinister future that awaits mankind should we continue down such a dark path. In such a world Leatherface and his cannibal clan are not deviations from the norm. All of mankind is descending into madness and savagery, the cannibals are just a bit ahead of the curve. The opening reminds me of nothing so much as the atmosphere of the original Mad Max (1979), where the world and the titular hero are teetering on the brink of madness.

The film proper begins with a dead armadillo, silently decaying on the side of the road. It's real no doubt, given the film's low budget. At least I can be reasonably confident that unlike the turtle in Cannibal Holocaust (1980) or the snakes in Calamity of Snakes (1982) that the poor animal wasn't killed for the sake of the film. Roadkill in rural Texas is not exactly hard to come by. I've read the originally it was supposed to be a dead dog, if this is true it's one of only a very few punches that Texas Chainsaw Massacre pulls; thank god for small mercies. With the gruesome establishing shot out of the way we're introduced to our protagonists, a group of young adults consisting of Sally, her boyfriend Jerry, her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin, and her friends Pam and Kirk. The group is heading into the countryside to visit Sally and Franklin's childhood home which has since been abandoned. The characters in the van, are sketchily drawn figures, though the improvisations of the actors help them feel more authentic and genuine if somewhat humdrum. The one exception here is Franklin, who is just such an annoying, petulant little shit that you just want to grab his wheelchair and roll him down a hill (as if by magic, this very action will happen shortly). I can't get too frustrated with Franklin though, it's obvious that he's a bit touched in the head and more than a bit fed up with being a literal fifth wheel on the trip. The strange mixture of pity and revulsion that one feels for Franklin will be mirrored in the grotesque cannibal clan that the group encounters later in the film.

When the van is passing by a slaughterhouse they happen upon a strange-looking hitchhiker, with a peculiar port-wine stain birthmark on his face. Against the better judgment of a few members of the gang, they stop and pick this extremely odd man up. Right from the start, it is obvious that there is something wrong with the Hitchhiker. His strange speech and mannerisms, combined with his genuinely bizarre appearance give you the faint impression that he is either inbred or outright deformed. His whole family worked in the slaughterhouse for generations, serving as the men that killed the cows with sledgehammers. They worked there right up until the advent of the pneumatic gun put them out of a job. The Hitchhiker at least initially seems friendly enough, as he invites the kids in the van back to his family's house for a bit of headcheese (those reading who don't know what this particular delicacy is had best avoid looking it up, it's gross even for me and I eat SPAM by the tin and sausage by the chain). However, things take a turn for the worse when he borrows Franklin's pocketknife and slashes his own palm with it. He then takes a picture of the kids in the van and tries to sell it to them for a dollar, when the gang says they don't want the photo the Hitchhiker sets it on fire with a bit of gunpowder. At this point, the kids have had enough so they pull over on the side of the road and toss out the Hitchhiker. As they drive away, the Hitchhiker curses at them, and then like some sort of evil wizard or primitive shaman, he smears his bloody hand on the van, leaving a lurid streak of red. The stain plays no role in the events that happen later in the movie, but it is an ill omen indeed.

After the bizarre encounter the kids drive a while before stopping for gas, the only problem is the gas station attendant has no gas to sell them. One has to wonder if this is where the gas shortage angle of the script that Hooper was pushing comes into play. The gas station attendant, he has no name but generally, he's referred to as “cook” for reasons that will later become apparent, asks the kids to hang around a while and have some of his BBQ (pointedly he doesn't mention what animal it's made from). The tanker will be around eventually and besides, “you boys don't want to go messin' around in some old house.” The kids ignore him and continue onto the old house where they promptly separate and get massacred one by one until only Sally and Franklin are left. The first to go is Kirk, who discovers a neighboring house running a gas generator and steps inside to ask if they can spare him a gallon or two. He's killed almost immediately by a psycho clad in a leather apron and wearing a mask made from a man's flayed face. A blow with a sledgehammer sends him spiraling to the floor, twitching like a fish out of water, a second blow finishes him off. When Pam comes in to investigate the psycho snatches her up and impales her on a meat hook. After a while when the pair doesn't come back, Jerry goes to investigate only to be dispatched by the same killer once again with a blow to the head from a sledgehammer. Each murder is not carried out with frenzied glee, or even irrepressible rage, but rather with a cold professionalism that suggests a long practice and familiarity with the act.

The killer here, old Leatherface himself, warrants some further consideration as he is not only one of the iconic monsters of horror cinema but also one of the most compelling figures in this movie. He does not speak but he is not mute, as he's able to make grotesque sequels of excitement, howls of rage, and pitiful whining. Rather it seems like he is mentally deficient in some way, able to understand certain concepts but incapable of turning these impressions into words. We never see his face, only his monstrous teeth and the masks made from human skin that he swaps out. Interestingly, there is some correlation between the masks he wears and the role he tries to fill in his family. When working in the butcher room, he wears a male mask, when he is preparing dinner he puts on the face of an old woman, and in the final dinner sequence, he wears the face of a “pretty woman” to play hostess. Leatherface is kept in the shadows for much of the film, with little chance to develop his personality, but after killing Jerry we are given a brief window into what makes this masked horror tick. With Jerry out of the way, Leatherface has a minor freak out, portraying real fear and frustration with what is going on. He whines and stamps his feet and rushes to the window as if to say “who are these people and why do they keep coming into my house?” It becomes apparent that Leatherface views himself as the aggrieved party in this whole affair, the victim of a constant barrage of trespassers. In this brief scene where Leatherface is alone we see him put aside his misgivings, pick up his chainsaw and go on the hunt. If these intruders won't go away on their own, then Leatherface is determined to remove them himself.

Leatherface is not acting alone, of course. He has a whole family consisting of himself, The Cook from the gas station (who is most normal one of the bunch and the only one incapable of killing), the Hitchhiker the kids picked up earlier, and Grandpa a corpse-like creature that lives in the attic who has gone so senile that he has regressed back to an infantile or even embryonic state. The clan has been existing in this state for some time, ever since they lost their meager connection to society when the slaughterhouse switched over to pneumatic rifles instead of sledgehammers. The family draws on tropes that have existed in horror films for decades, ever since the Old Dark House (1932) pioneered the sub-genre of “House full of Crazies.” Yet no film that came before, by my reckoning anyway, has surpassed the sheer variety and oddity of the cannibal clan here. Indeed, only Spider Baby (1968) can boast of coming anywhere close. Each member of this monstrous family is revolting in different ways. From grandpa's withered form to the Hitchhiker's hideous birthmark. The Cook is the only one who looks normal, but the perverse glee with which he torments Sally once she's in his clutches shows that looks can be deceiving. They all have vastly different personalities, yet nonetheless, the family makes sense as a unit.

The cannibal clan resembles a grotesque parody of the family from a popular mid-century sitcom. The Cook presents himself as the head of the household, beating both the Hitchhiker and Leatherface when they get out of line and whining about the damage Leatherface does to the door when he saws through it. Yet he is, by the family's own reckoning, impotent. He's unable to kill, and therefore incapable of practicing the traditional trade of the family's breadwinners. Indeed, when confronted with this fact by the Hitchiker, the Cook's brash and domineering personality melts away and he grows bashful and ashamed. Grandpa is treated with reverence and respect by the family, as elders should in traditional families. He is regarded as a source of wisdom and a wellspring of tradition. But he is so feeble that he cannot hold a hammer let alone move. Moreover, his mind has decayed to such an extent that he is closer intellectually to an infant or a fetus than a sage. Leatherface tries desperately to be the dutiful son, doing everything he can for his family but the demands of his family are such that preclude him from being just a son. He also must perversely take on the role of both wife and mother transforming himself into a bizarre amalgamation of gender and social roles in the process.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would not have been nearly as convincing were it not for the efforts of art director Robert A. Burns. Most of the film's most iconic sets and props were products of his macabre imagination. From Leatherface's masks to the bizarre bone artworks that litter the cannibal's house, Burns was instrumental in their design. His penchant for using genuine animal parts (and even human parts as is the case with Leatherface's prosthetic teeth) makes them only more disturbing and more impressive. That this was his first time serving as an art director makes his accomplishments all the more impressive. It's unsurprising that Burns, having displayed his talents in such a remarkable fashion would go on to work on such classics as Re-Animator (1985), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and The Howling (1981).

There's a significant chance that you don't remember The Texas Chainsaw Massacre correctly. Countless viewers have walked away from the movie recalling all manner of blood-soaked gore and over-the-top violence. Indeed after my first viewing, I was certain I had just seen a film full of all manner of brutal special effects, the sort of twisted violence that eclipsed later and tamer films like Friday the 13th (1980). I was wrong, there's almost no gore whatsoever in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The most gruesome death scene in the whole film is the one where Leatherface buries his chainsaw in Franklin's body and is splattered with a drizzle of blood. In terms of both inventiveness and gruesomeness, the special effects here are far inferior to much earlier films like Blood Feast (1963). We remember the killing as being much more graphic than it is for a few reasons, part of which no doubt is the skill with which the actors portray these deaths. When Kirk is killed by a hammer he doesn't just topple over, but instead spasms out and flops helplessly on the floor for a moment before Leatherface delivers the coup de grace. Likewise, when Pam is impaled on a meat-hook, she does not just go limp and die but instead whines and screams pitifully while trying desperately to pull herself up, even as her arms lose all strength. The fantastic portrayal of death puts the audience in the right mood to assume that they are seeing something genuinely gruesome. From there, the film's superb editing shows just enough to let the viewer's minds run wild leaving plenty of space for them to invent all manner of horrific effects. As it turns out, most viewers have quite the imagination when it comes to these things.

The audience is so willing to make these leaps of faith and imagination in no small part because of the film surrounding each murder. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a rough and grainy quality to it which evokes documentary and newsreel footage rather than the theatrical features of the time. The opening text crawl's instance that the film is “based on a true story” further blurs the line between reality and fantasy. The overall effect on viewers makes them wonder: 'Is this a real movie? Or is it one of those snuff films I've heard about? Just how much of this is really true?' The answer is, not much. There was no real killing spree that inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A few superficial traits were lifted from Ed Gein, the Wisconsin serial killer, but crucially he was a loner rather than a member of a clan of killers. Like The Hills Have Eyes (1977), the inbred cannibal family here bears a certain resemblance to the real-life extended family of Sawney Bean but again there is a big difference between 16th century Scotland and 20th century America. A clan of murderous cannibals simply could not survive undetected for long even in the most blighted of American wastelands. The cinéma vérité style and the “based on a true story” opening crawl are just old-fashioned film hucksterism in the spirit of William Castle and nothing more. That they succeeded in fooling so many people (to this day adherents swear that there is a real Latherface out there in the annals of Texas history) is a testament to the skill of the filmmakers.

Of course, that's not say that everything in the film is fake. Indeed, after reading about the making of this movie, I realized that it was a small miracle that nobody on the production was seriously hurt during filming. The chainsaw they were using was real and in certain sequences, it was used recklessly and dangerously. At one point, Gunnar Hansen, the actor playing Leatherface, took a nasty fall while running in the woods and the chainsaw went flying, fortunately, it didn't hit anyone. In another scene, Hansen sawed into a table next to an actor whose character had already been killed. The intention was to create the illusion that he was sawing into the dead man's flesh. The effect works wonderfully. The only problem is that there was a very real chance that the chainsaw could have bucked and gone right into the poor fellow playing dead! Hansen's mishaps with the chainsaw were brushes with death but fortunately, nobody was hurt by them. The same could not be said for poor Marilyn Burns, the actress playing Sally, who got the shit kicked out of her throughout filming in a variety of ways. She had two stunt jumps that ended with her landing unprotected on the grass which fucked up her knees. In the scene where Cook clubs her into submission, to make the violence look convincing a real broom-handle had to be used, which left Burns with a black eye. Finally, in the scene where Leatherface slashes her finger and feeds Grandpa with the fresh blood, the prop knife they were using kept malfunctioning. After growing increasingly frustrated with the proceedings, Hansen sabotaged the knife, removing the protective wrapping on the edge, and slashed Burn's finger. None of the other actors knew what was going on at first, not even the actor playing Grandpa who was genuinely surprised when he realized he was drinking Burn's real blood.

This last instance was a result of the generally unpleasant conditions on set. The heat in the Texas summer was maddening, easily 100 outside and when everyone was packed into the poorly ventilated Van or the houses, it probably was a lot closer to 110. The hours on the shoot were long and arduous as a general rule and only got worse as filming dragged on. Filming the final sequence where Sally is held captive by the Chainsaw family involved one massive session that stretched on for 26 to 36 hours (different members of the cast and crew dispute the real length, which is not hard to believe given how long and disorienting that day/days must have been). To me, it seems amazing that the cast and crew were all willing to subject themselves to this ordeal, all for a movie that they expected would only make a bit of money on the local drive-thru rotation. Indeed, it's hard to imagine that the film would ever have gotten made were it not for this set of singularly talented and dedicated nobodies that congregated together in Texas for a few weeks one fateful Summer. Hats off to them though, they made something truly special: A horror film for the ages.