by A.J.
This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas.
Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long
celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies
out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream
critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few
quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and
subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some
recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 2: Tobe Hooper Memorial Night
Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them?
Is there a better title in the annals of horror movie
history, or non-horror movie history? Comedian Patton Oswalt even has a bitabout how The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the perfect movie title because it
lets you imagine a mini movie in your head that makes you want to see the actual movie. He’s right. If you know nothing about
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know whether or not this is the kind of movie
for you just from the title.
After director Tobe Hooper’s death earlier this year, news websites
and mainstream media outlets called him the director of the “cult” horror film,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you don’t watch horror movies regularly I can
understand classifying The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a “cult” film, but, if you
are a horror movie fan The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a classic, highly influential horror film. It’s the kind of film that you certainly know about, have heard
other people talk about, and can recognize scenes even from even if you’ve never seen the
movie. It’s usually one of the first serious horror movies people see, perhaps
as a teenager at a sleepover. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains a highly sought-after
movie every Shocktober at Vulcan Video.
The plot follows Sally, her handicapped brother, Franklin,
and their friends who become the victims of a family of psychopathic cannibals
in rural Texas. The group of friends first pick up a hitchhiker who behaves
strangely and cuts himself and then cuts one of the teens. The hitchhiker is a
portent of the horrific things about to befall them. As they search for Sally
and Franklin’s ancestral homestead they encounter the family of cannibals,
including Leatherface, at a dilapidated house. Leatherface, who wears the faces
of his victims, makes one of the most memorable first appearances in any horror
movie franchise. One of the teens goes into the old, seemingly deserted house. Then in a flash, a steel door slides open, Leatherface appears, bashes him with a
hammer, drags him into the other room, and slides the door shut. It all happens
in just a few seconds and is jarring upon every viewing. Hooper wanted to keep the amount of blood in the film to a minimum, hoping for a PG rating. Though there is not much blood and practically no gore in the film, it is loaded with gruesome, unsettling imagery. It initially received an X rating, but was later rated R.
Despite the movie’s own claims, it is not based on a true story. Tobe Hooper got the idea for the movie while
waiting in a long line at Sears. He noticed the chainsaws close by and thought grabbing
one would be a quick way to make the line shorter. Certain aspects of Leatherface and
his cannibal family, however, are loosely based on serial killer Ed Gein.
The slasher movie as we know it had not taken shape in 1974
when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released, but traces of slasher movie
elements can be found in this movie: a group of teens are stranded in an
isolated area, pursued one by one, the villain is a masked killer, and there is
even a “Final Girl.” Like Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre is a low budget exploitation film that elevates itself from
similar films of the era because of the skill and efforts of the filmmaker.
Though you may not expect it, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a thick layer of
subtext commenting on the state of American society in the early 1970’s. When
the teens are told that the gas station is out of gas, this is not solely a
plot device. Audiences at the time would have been reminded of the gas crisis of 1973, in which there was quite literally not enough gasoline for everybody.
Leatherface’s family of psycho cannibals used to run the slaughterhouse, which
satisfied their bloodlust, but industrialization put them out of work and they moved on to killing people.
Enhancing these themes, and of course the horror, is the quasi-documentary look
of film, a fortunate side effect of the low budget. This movie spawned numerous
sequels and remakes of diminishing quality, but the original still packs a
punch and is a landmark of modern horror.
