Massacre à la tronçonneuse

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre can, and will, be reinterpreted by critics and theorists for decades to come. It was shot in the summer of 1973, during the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Munich Olympics massacre, at the height of the Watergate scandal and the legal investigation into the shootings at Kent State. It was an era of plane hijackings, government oppression and dishonesty, racial conflict, terrorism and revolution. As a mirror of a dark period in American history, Chain Saw remains one of the best evocations yet of the era, as a group of young individuals, returning to the nostalgic home of their childhood, stumble into the raw and irrational cruelty of the modern world.

The movie has a weak, though functional storyline, one that has since became the staple for slasher movies; a group of teenagers get lost, stumble across evil and get stalked and killed. But Chain Saw isn't about storyline and plot; it's about creating an experience, a sensory overload. The cast and crew work tirelessly to create scenes and images that are raw and powerful and ultimately, against all expectations, beautiful. Leatherface's travesty of motherly domesticity as he prepares dinner, his child-like dance in the dawn light, the open door at the gas station, the van making it's slow turn off the road towards the derelict and ivy clad Hardesty residence are all images that burn themselves into your consciousness after just a single viewing.

The cinematography is exceptional. Watching the Special Edition, you'd never know that this was shot on 16mm in poor light. The picture quality is outstanding, the colors rich and vibrant, the blacks inky and menacing. The brilliant azure skies, the jade green of the grass, the bright red generator, the searing sunlight and stifling shadows. Every frame seems saturated in nicotine gold. Beautiful.

Though not always likable, the actors are always believable. Performances are universally startling, but special mention has to go to Marilyn Burns. Though she has little more to work with than the clichéd screaming heroine, she works it with remarkable conviction. It was a traumatic shoot, and it shows. Few actresses have so effectively conveyed mind-numbing terror.

The soundtrack is exceptional and deserves more recognition. It is a great testimony to the experimentation and risk taking attitude of the era that all melody is destroyed under an industrial ambient soundscape of metallic clangs, scrapes and screams, evoking the atmosphere of the local slaughterhouse and the Family's state of mind. Terrifying.

Despite the complete lack of gore or extreme physical violence, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre continues to horrify and holds up the countless, shot-on-video, slasher clones of subsequent years for the puerile crap that they truly are. Whether by accident or design, this one is a classic.

9 out of 10

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tells the story of five friends that are driving across Texas on a road trip. When they stop to visit an old house where two of them, a girl and her brother, grew up, their day goes horribly wrong. All of them are quickly dispatched by a chainsaw wielding maniac, and the last survivor is taken hostage by the maniac's family of cannibals. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a the "classic" that started the slasher genre, but it is overrated.

I have infinite respect for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because it is a cheesy low budget film that director Tobe Hooper had to struggle to make, dealing with the hot Texas sun and his low budget, and yet he was able to churn out a cult classic that is still loved today. What I like about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is that it paints a very disturbing picture. It's not the bubblegum horror movie you'd see nowadays. It's psychologically disturbing. It blasts your senses with sights and sounds you'll find very disturbing a graphic. The chilling score is made up of various sounds you'll hear in a slaughter house. The whole movie is very claustrophobic, with the camera getting super close-ups of the victim's eye, and the camera cutting to random, disturbing images in the middle of a scene. The movie is very disturbing that way.

What I don't like is the way the plot pans out. It is far too simplistic. The people who are killed die too soon into the film, and it all happens too fast. The last half hour or so of the movie is the last survivor screaming non-stop, and it gets annoying. I also didn't like how certain scenes are so dark you can't even see them. This may have been done for effect, but it only ruined the experience for me. Obviously the acting isn't even close to good, but what can you expect from a low budget 70's horror.

Overall, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an okay movie to watch, and it deserves respect, but I just don't think it's the cinematic masterpiece everyone says it is.

6.5/10

With the recent box-office success achieved by the latest remake of 1974's `The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' it's worth looking back at Tobe Hooper's original horror classic.

The movie tells a fairly simple tale at heart. A group of five teenagers driving through rural Texas happen upon a deranged, cannibalistic family. Psychological terror and chainsaws ensue.

Yet despite this simplicity, what is it about `The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' that continues to succeed so with its audience? Outside of one memorial scene involving a meet hook; the movie is not particularly gory by today's standards. The film's characters and actual scares are not that remarkable.

The power of `The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' lies in its atmosphere and in what H.P. Lovecraft called `the oldest and strongest kind of fear': the fear of the unknown. The later of these two staples of great horror is often cast aside in modern horror movies-especially in those churned out by the great Hollywood engine. Instead, every mystery must be explained away, every mask ultimately pulled from a monster's face, and not a moment of exposition is spared. It is interesting to note that the filmmakers behind the latest `Chainsaw' film chose to implement all three of these stylistic vices in their remake.

In the original, the feeling of dread and mounting paranoia creeps over the viewer in slow but steady waves. The first scene in the film depicts a desecrated grave with a voiceover of radio newscast, immediately followed by an opening credits sequence set against a backdrop of roaring solar flares. This, along with some idle astrological chatter on the part of one of the teenagers early on, leads to a feeling of cosmic disarray in the lonely Texas hills they traverse.

Questions about the villain's mask or the field of cars under camouflage netting are left for the viewer to answer on his or her own. At worst, in the loss of any acceptable answer, they are forced to ponder that terrible and limitless gulf of the imagination: the unknown.

In it's later stages, the film becomes a cacophonous world of throat-peeling screaming, blood-shot eyes, laughter, and grinding machinery. One is forced to recall the solar flares in the film's opening credits. In the climax of famous dinner scene, there is a feeling of cosmic forces pressing in on reality and warping it into some crude mockery of order, as if the world were but a TV or radio signal distorted into madness by flares on the surface of the sun.

In the 29 years since `The Texas chainsaw Massacre' hit theaters, there have been countless imitators and four additional films in the franchise, three of them remakes. Yet as loved and influential as the original classic has been, many who would seek to emulate its vision seem to overlook its true strengths.

Tobe Hopper's 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' is a landmark low budget horror movie which must be considered a modern classic. Hooper's subsequent career has ben extremely uneven, and frequently disappointing, but even if he never made another movie he would still be a legendary figure. As would Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and his twisted family played by Edwin Neal and Jim Siedow, and immortal scream queen Marilyn Burns. These actors never have to set in front of a camera again, they'll never be forgotten by horror buffs worldwide! In this day and age of cynically conceived and marketed MTV-friendly teen slashers it's a revelation to see old school horror classics like this, Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead' and Craven's 'Last House On The Left'. Uncompromising movies, pure horror that makes no attempt to water themselves down and court a mainstream audience. This movie was one of the most controversial of the 1970s, censored or banned here in Australia, and in Britain, and despite the hundreds of horror movies released since, it is still powerful and fresh. There is an undercurrent of bizarre black humour underneath the film, a lot subtler than the sequel and other more obvious "horror comedies". The terror isn't compromised, the uneasy giggles make the extreme images even more difficult to dismiss. The cast, all unknowns at the time, and from what we know know paid diddley squat, are all pretty good, especially Marilyn Burns (who Hooper used in his underrated 'Eaten Alive' and who also appeared in the Charles Manson TV biopic 'Helter Skelter'), and whiny paraplegic Paul A. Partain (who went on to bit parts in 70s Drive-In faves 'Race With The Devil' and 'Rolling Thunder' and very little else). One would have thought both would have went on to bigger things watching their performances in this movie but sadly it wasn't meant to be. Gunnar Hansen is absolutely extraordinary as Leatherface. An amazing performance with his features obscured and no real dialogue to speak of. I don't think it's an exaggeration to compare it to Boris Karloff in the original 'Frankenstein'. Leatherface is a horror icon, and 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' is a landmark movie that remains essential viewing for every horror buff. It's a sensational movie that still has the power to confront, disturb and terrify audiences worldwide!

Those who have posted here comparing Tobe Hooper's (one and only) masterpiece with the dreadful remake are presumably young children with no real understanding of cinema. The 1974 film is the antithesis of the slick, MTV-influenced, cynical cash-in mentality that informed the later remake. The fact that the remake's target teen audience (well, at least some of them) appeared to lap it up is just a sad reflection of how far standards have fallen since the heyday of the horror film in the 70's.

But Hooper's CHAINSAW is more than just a classic horror film. With its print in the permanent collection at the NY Museum of Modern Art, it truly is a classic of cinema. I've shown this to Bergman fans, Tarkovsky fans and, yes, horror fans too - none of them have been prepared for its power, its inventiveness, its willingness to push the envelope of what cinema can do. And, with its simple story and powerhouse, unstoppable delivery, it is as open to interpretation as any piece of "modern art" - whether it be from the "vegetarian treatise" angle, or the post-Vietnam traumatised America school of thought. But, as I was on my first (of several) viewings, those I have introduced to this movie have been bowled over by the quality of the film-making, and the filmic techniques (soundtrack, editing, startling images) used by Hooper to capture his "waking nightmare" on screen. It is something I really don't think any other film has quite achieved, though many have tried.

Now, of course, there is a fluke element at work here. Hooper never came close to achieving anything like this again, and many, though not all, of the film's fascinating resonances are a product of the era and the filmmaker's unconscious sensibilities. What he obviously had as a director was the kind of daring to take the visceral power that cinema can deliver so well to the limit, to the the edge of acceptability, skirting on exploitation. That the film is so unrelentingly dark and so unbelievably sadistic in its second half, and yet fascinates even as it traumatises, is a definite testimony to the skill of its director. What could have been sleaze is instead a horrible nightmare experience, sure enough, but one that borders on the transcendental. Should be seen by ALL students of cinema at least once in their lifetime.