Zachary FenellSunday Classics: Texas Chainsaw Massacre
February 1st 2009 18:16
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974
You may recall that I have something of an issue with Tobe Hooper. I've often wondered how he managed to become the iconic director that most people consider him, and the fact is, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the culprit.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that this classic film is actually good - it's that it broke certain taboos and presented movie-goers with such a completely different view of what horror movies could be that it changed the entire topography of the genre. Sometimes, quality takes a back seat to innovation.
Remember that "classic" does not mean "awesome" - it means "meaningful". At least, that's how I look at it.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre recounts the tale of a bunch of obnoxious hormone-pumped teenagers who make one stupid error of judgment after another until they are rounded up by a family of inbred murder-junkies with a penchant for bone art, and then the kids are slaughtered like whiny, irritating little lambs. If you rent this at home, please, remember that you have a volume control because after about the first three hours of screaming, it gets a little grating. (And, yes, I know that the movie's actual run-time is only 83 minutes.)
So, if it's technically "bad", why is it a classic? What gets it on the Sunday List? Frankly, it's cojones. For the time, the story and inescapable nature of the dangers were really terrifying. If you saw Behind the Mask, you have the rough outline of what makes a movie (or urban legend, for that matter) really scary - the archetypical tale of the innocent transforming through a trial of true life-threatening danger into a strong hero-like form that takes responsibility for his or her own survival. The more dangerous and inevitable the threat, the more significant the transformation.
Tobe Hooper's first big splash gets onto the must-see list because it's always good to have a base line against which all other films are assessed. Compared to more modern movies, it's clumsy and not terribly engaging. We don't really care about the characters or even whether they live or die. (This is a notorious problem for Tobe Hooper, so we're not surprised.) The special effects, though... again, not terribly sophisticated, but still disturbing.
I give it three stars, and it gets the extra two stars only because it was so mind-blowingly ground-breaking.
3 Stars
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Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
And as flawed and deranged as the sequel is, I have a soft (fleshy) spot for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ... Curious to see what the remake of the sequel will be like.