THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
US, 1974, 79 minutes, Colour.
Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger.
Directed by Tope Hooper.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has become something of a cult macabre horror film. Made in the mid-'70s and based on an alleged true story, it was an example of small-budget local Texas film-making. With its focus on multiple murders and a band of young people being terrified, it heralded a new genre which was exploited in the late '70s and early 180s. The most significant examples of the genre were John Carpenter's Halloween and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th. While there were many derivatives and imitations, the tendency was to more and more explicit violence and an exploitation of situations and visual presentation of blood and gore.
The film was produced, co-written and directed by Tobe Hooper. He also contributed to the musical score. He made an impact with this film and was invited to Hollywood where he made another stylish horror film, The Funhouse, and directed the two-part telemovie of Stephen King's Salem’s Lot. Stephen Spielberg produced Poltergeist in 1981 and invited Hooper to direct it.
While the film is macabre and often exploitive, it has some credibility about it. There is a names-and-dates prologue, there is presented a situation about body-stealing in Texas and the emphasis on the youngsters visiting the cemetery and looking at their old home is plausible enough. The film delineates the characters of the youngsters well enough for the genre, introduces the madman early and indicates his propensity for violence and its effect on the youngsters - and then is able to create Gothic madness and violence in the middle of outback Texas.
While the characters are in many ways stereotyped, they are presented with sufficient character style and interest to engage audience sympathy for them and their plight. The first deaths are presented more moderately - there is an escalating violence and visual horror? This is combined with mad characters, three brothers who illustrate violent mania: the garage attendant who seems sane but whose smile becomes more manic, the expected madman with the glint in his eye who cuts himself for the mere pleasure of it etc., and then the masked butcher. Touches of cannibalism are presented with an odd and visually repulsive grandfather who lives upstairs in the attic. The final focus of the film on the character of Sally and her continued screaming and fear becomes almost too much.
The special effects are very clever, tending at times to the sensational and exploitive.
The film is an example of American Gothic - a style followed in a number of films about madness and, even, the occult in remote communities e.g. Halloween and Deadly Blessing. (Deadly Blessing was directed by Wes Craven whose horror films resemble The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in tone: The House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and even his comic strip adventure Swamp Thing).
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was banned for many years in several countries, including Australia. On its release it seemed, despite its violence, less gruesome and sensationalistic than many other similar films of the late '70s and early '80s.
