Despite being a horror fan, I’ve seen disappointingly few of the classic genre greats. So, with the release of Netflix’s new Texas Chainsaw Massacre I took a trip back to almost fifty years ago for the genre spawning classic that was Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre! Does the iconic film truly live up to the legacy it went on to spawn, and is the film as terrifying now as it was five decades ago?
Whilst on a road trip a group of friends stop off at a house formerly owned by some of the party’s grandparents. However, they soon discover that they are being hunted by a chainsaw wielding cannibal that wears the faces of his victims.
That’s really all there is to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it’s simple to summarise, straight to the point, and despite having a fair bit of subtext pertaining to the meat industry, doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not which is a gratuitous kill spree designed to scare the hell out of you.
Whilst on a road trip a group of friends stop off at a house formerly owned by some of the party’s grandparents. However, they soon discover that they are being hunted by a chainsaw wielding cannibal that wears the faces of his victims.
That’s really all there is to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, it’s simple to summarise, straight to the point, and despite having a fair bit of subtext pertaining to the meat industry, doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not which is a gratuitous kill spree designed to scare the hell out of you.
There’s not an awful lot I can say about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that hasn’t already been said in the decades since the film released, but what I was most surprised by is how well the film holds up today. Made on a tiny budget of somewhere around $100,000, for the most part The Texas Chain Saw Massacre manages to eschew many of the problems that faced low budget horror films of the time. Sure, the dialogue is a bit ropey here and there, and there’s definitely a lot of overacting in some scenes, but I was drawn into the world right off the bat and rarely did I find myself taken out of the experience for much of the film’s runtime, allowing the scares to really land.
I found it funny to discover that Hooper wanted the film to achieve a PG rating with the MPAA which is why there’s very little blood, and from what I can remember no bad language at all in the entire film. But censors flat out refused to give the film any less than their highest ratings (if even passing it for classification at all) based on just how terrifying the entire ordeal is.
With five decades worth of evolution in the horror genre I must point out that I was never screaming and hiding behind the furniture when watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find the whole experience nerve-wracking and disturbing. I honestly expected to walk away from this the same way I did with John Carpenter’s Halloween where I found it funny rather than frightening, but there was something so authentic about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that left me slightly on edge once the credits started to roll.
I found it funny to discover that Hooper wanted the film to achieve a PG rating with the MPAA which is why there’s very little blood, and from what I can remember no bad language at all in the entire film. But censors flat out refused to give the film any less than their highest ratings (if even passing it for classification at all) based on just how terrifying the entire ordeal is.
With five decades worth of evolution in the horror genre I must point out that I was never screaming and hiding behind the furniture when watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find the whole experience nerve-wracking and disturbing. I honestly expected to walk away from this the same way I did with John Carpenter’s Halloween where I found it funny rather than frightening, but there was something so authentic about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that left me slightly on edge once the credits started to roll.
I did feel like it was a little on the long side, which is surprising considering it’s only eighty minutes in length. Once Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) whittles his teenage victims down to final girl Sally Hardesty (Marylin Burns) the film still has roughly thirty minutes left which can be boiled down to an extended torture sequence as Sally is chased around the farmhouse a few times, then tied up and beaten, before eventually escaping to live another day. This could have been trimmed back by around five to ten minutes and I feel that it would have had the same impact, if anything by the time the sequence was over I was relieved that I didn’t have to listen to any more screaming and chainsaw noises than anything else.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a pioneer of the slasher genre, a true trendsetter that would go on to inspire the likes of Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Nightmare on Elm Street, and countless others. Whilst the film certainly won’t be quite as shocking to modern audiences who will have absolutely been desensitised by over the top gore and jump scares (something even the Texas Chainsaw sequels leaned into heavily), there’s no denying that the terror that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is capable of instilling is just as potent all these years later.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a pioneer of the slasher genre, a true trendsetter that would go on to inspire the likes of Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Nightmare on Elm Street, and countless others. Whilst the film certainly won’t be quite as shocking to modern audiences who will have absolutely been desensitised by over the top gore and jump scares (something even the Texas Chainsaw sequels leaned into heavily), there’s no denying that the terror that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is capable of instilling is just as potent all these years later.