![]() The Texas Chain Saw Massacre preys on the same paranoid terror which keep audiences glued to their radios or televisions, listening to provocative news programs, which only reinforces the sense that the world is going to hell. Framing the violence in this way plays to the terrible idea that this killing spree is something which could plausibly occur to some real-life unfortunate traveler who took a wrong turn in Texas-this "true story" convention has been borrowed by films like Fargo for a similar effect. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also presents this shocking episode of brutal violence as though it were a "true event", borrowing details of Leatherface's killings from the infamous serial killer, Ed Gein. This effect leaves the audience with the unsavory task of assembling the ghastly crimes in their own imaginations, which in turn creates an even deeper level of revulsion. Surprisingly, most instances of extreme violence occur off screen, although they are heavily suggested by the direction of Tobe Hooper and the reactions on the traumatized faces of the surviving victims. Originally an independent film on a comparably smaller budget, the "lo fi" quality of the cinematography augments the snuff-like aesthetic, where the cinéma vérité feel gives the film a nauseating level of verisimilitude, with ichor-coated meat hooks and Leatherface's chainsaw spewing gasoline fumes you can almost smell. ![]() These terrifying set pieces make it more than understandable why Sally spends virtually the entire final act of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre perpetually screaming at the top of her lungs. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is replete with multitudes of grisly tableau, from the erected corpse on a spire in the graveyard to the entirety of Leatherface's home, where bones of various sorts make up the decor, and the skin from human faces are repurposed as lampshades. His stay with the party is brief, after he decides it would be a good idea to slice up his hand with Franklin's knife, and then to return the favor to Franklin with his own straight razor, cackling like a madman all the while. Franklin is still a decent young man, unlike the wily, skittish, and even crazy hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) they pick up, who carries on about his fascination with the slaughterhouse, carrying creepy photographs of carcasses in his roadkill-inspired pouch. Perhaps only Franklin possesses the kind of earthy, Texan mentality that fits best in these parts, familiar enough with the practices of the slaughterhouse to comment on it when the van drives past, while the rest of them go on about horoscopes. Scenes such as those at the graveyard have old drunks muttering to themselves, and these are the least of the terrors in these rustic badlands, where new age hippie kids like these five unsuspecting souls are far removed from their element. Moments where the camera is focused on the sun or the moon suggests that it casts a spell over the denizens in this corner of the Deep South, warping the sanity of those under its light, reducing people to a more bestial state of mind. A narrator giving a newscast talks of assorted ghastly crimes-like the graveyard vandalism-as well as other moments of madness, suggesting a kind of sweeping, all-consuming hysteria. The opening montage evokes a primal and instinctive terror, with its chilling juxtaposition of flash bulbs taking crime scene photos of corpses with the two-tone profiles of solar flares. He just preferred to use knives instead of power saws.The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is unequivocally a horror film, and the title is no hyperbole. Gein liked to carve up bodies, displaying the corpse of one victim naked, decapitated, and disemboweled in his barn. Interestingly, it wasn't as completely gratuitous an addition as it sounds. Thankfully, Hooper was a guy who made films about maniac killers rather than being a maniac killer himself, so instead of revving one of those suckers up, he simply added the idea to the upcoming Ed Gein-inspired flick he'd been working on. ![]() For the briefest moment, he had a daydream about grabbing one and slicing his way through the heaving crowds. As director Hooper once explained (quoted here via a Snopes article on the factual nature of the movie), he was visiting a hardware store during the holidays when he found himself in front of a display full of chainsaws. So where did the chainsaw part of Texas Chain Saw come from? Luckily, the internet already has the answer. ![]() The total number of crimes Ed Gein committed with a chainsaw? Zero. This is still a far higher chainsaw kill count than in real life.
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