“Come on, Franklin, it’s going to be a fun trip! If I have any more fun today I don’t think I’m going to be able to take it anymore!”
Franklin (Paul A. Partain)
To say that Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is a classic is an understatement: it is iconic. For years, this film was not only off limits when I was a kid; it was downright a crime to almost mention it to any adults. When video rental service came to my local drug store and grocery store, you had to pretend you were looking at the video box behind it. When no one was around, you quickly scanned the back again. When I was fourteen, a friend told me he had secretly taped the movie from a cable station and that he would make a copy for me. I remember asking him, “What would happen if your parents found it?” He replied, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s stashed away with my porn. They’ll never find it.” Strangely, that was the last time I ever saw the guy.
When I finally saw it, it had a profound effect on me, just as much as Hellraiser, Psycho, or the movie that brought me down that terrible spiral of that horror category, Hammer’s The Horror of Dracula.
The film begins with five young people riding the Texas highways in a van. Funny, when I first saw this film, seeing that van and somewhat knowing what happens, I thought this was a perverse episode of Scooby-doo (the gang in the mystery van meet leatherface?).
There’s annoying Franklin (Paul A. Partain ), his sister Sally (the late great Marilyn Burns), Jerry (Allen Danziger) who is driving the van and Kirk (William Vail), and Pam (Teri McMinn).
They drive to a gravesite to see if wheelchair-bound Franklin and his sister Sally’s grandfather was one of the victims of a mass grave robbing. They then encounter a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) and decide to pick him up. Now from this point on, the film gets even stranger, as if it wasn’t already weird. After a sickening discussion between Franklin and the hitchhiker about slaughterhouses and making head cheese, the giggling hitchhiker takes a pocket knife away from Franklin and slashes himself in the palm of his hand. The gang is appalled, but the hitchhiker enjoys himself and maybe in his head, it’s a form of performance art. He shows them his knife and takes Franklin’s picture with what was, back then, a state of the art Polaroid camera. He demands money for the picture and they refuse. The hitchhiker spreads gunpowder on the picture, sets fire to it and puts it out before it could explode. During the commotion, he pulls his knife out and slashes Franklin’s wrists. The nervous gang decides to put the hitchhiker out on the side of the road.
They stop at a gas station with the most unfriendly owner in all of Texas, who tells them there is no gas. At the same time as trying to persuade them from going to see Sally and Franklin’s grandfather’s house, he sells them BBQ, and tells them, “You don’t wanna go messin’ with other folk’s property.” Unfortunately for the gang, the next gas station is in the same town that those weird grave robbing crimes had been committed.
They arrive at grandpa’s house to find it had been pretty much abandoned, with grass overtaking the place and living conditions less than idyllic. Kirk and Pam decide to splinter off to find a pond down an old path. Instead they see a house on top of a hill. Kirk wants to ask for gasoline, maybe leave his guitar and a few dollars, come back through pay the residents a few more dollars, get his guitar back. Instead they see no one outside but an electric generator, some strange bones hanging on a clothesline. Kirk knocks, no one answers. Then he hears a pig whining. He decides to go inside the house. No one answers his call, but there’s still that pig crying out. A door to a pantry opens and Leatherface appears, holding a mallet in his hands and imitating a pig. He hits kirk hard on top of the head with the mallet. Kirk falls to the floor, goes into shock. Just the way Franklin described the way they kill cattle.
So Pam decides to look for Kirk inside the house. She trips into a room where the floor is covered in feathers, a chicken in cage hanging from the ceiling and bones scattered everywhere; both animal/human and bizarre sculptures made of more bones. Pam immediately vomits. She runs out of the room calling for Kirk, when one of the most chilling scenes in the movie occurs. The pantry door slides open and Leatherface comes toward her, snorting and whining like a pig. She makes it outside to the porch, but it’s too late, Leatherface has caught her, and drags her back inside, where he promptly places Pam on a meat hook. Here’s the scene that everyone swears they see blood. Only blood that is shown is what is smeared on the walls. What is indelibly planted in everyone’s head is not true. What helps the mind to make that conclusion is the brilliant dubbing of the squishy sound effect Pam hangs from the hook, the camera pulls back and there is Kirk on the slab. Leatherface starts up his chainsaw and goes to work on Kirk.
The scene is chilling because all of this is happening in the daytime. Then there’s the insanely, disturbing dinner scene. That’s all I have to say on that. Yes, this is a very disturbing film, but it’s also a very funny film, the two counter-acts and complements each other.
Hooper limited the amount of gore on screen hoping to get a PG rating, ultimately gaining an R. He also had a hard time finding a distributor for the film. Produced for the low amount of 300,000 dollars, he was forced to shoot long hours seven days a week.
There were two sequels, the uproariously Texas Chainsaw part II, in 1986, that starred Dennis Hopper and Texas Chainsaw III in 1990 and Chainsaw: Next Generation in 1995, which starred Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger. There are also the remakes and their sequels, in 2003, 2006, and 2013.
I bought a great DVD version from Dark Sky Films released in a metal container in 2006 and with loads of special features. I especially recommend the documentary Texas chainsaw: the shocking truth.
Mark Slade, HMS
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