![]() Since Tobe Hooper terrified us back in 1974 with, what is still, one of the greatest and most terrifying, raw and sadistic horror films ever made, there have been numerous attempts to match this landmark original. Not, however, that you’d necessarily enjoy seeing it.In the grand old splattered hallways of slasher horror movies, few franchises are as up and down and all around as that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” belongs in a select company (with “ Night of the Living Dead” and “ Last House on the Left”) of films that are really a lot better than the genre requires. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can’t get more conventional projects off the ground. Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they’re brought in at the right price. What we’re left with, though, is an effective production in the service of an unnecessary movie. There are bizarrely effective performances by the demented family (one of them, of course, turns out to be the hitchhiker, and Grandfather looks like Dustin Hoffman in “ Little Big Man”). There is, for example, an effective montage of quick cuts of the last girl’s screaming face and popping eyeballs. #Texas chain saw massacre graves movie#But the movie is good technically and with its special effects, and we have to give it grudging admiration on that level, despite all the waving of the chain saw. All of this material, as you can imagine, is scary and unpalatable. One way or another, all the kids get killed by the maniac waving the chain saw - except one girl, who undergoes a night of panic and torture, who escapes not once but twice, who leaps through no fewer than two windows, and who screams endlessly. What they do with the bodies is a little obscure, but, uh, they run a barbecue stand down by the road. When they get fresh victims, they carve them up with great delight. And gradually we realize that the house is inhabited by a demented family of retarded murderers and grave robbers. #Texas chain saw massacre graves full#We see rooms full of strange altars made from human bones, and rooms filled with chicken feathers and charms and weird relics. We see the innocent victims being clubbed on the hand, hung from meat hooks, and gone after with the chain saw. A lot of people are going to be disappearing into this house, and its insides are a masterpiece of set decoration and the creation of mood. His girl gets tired of waiting for him, knocks on the door, and disappears inside, too. The guy goes to ask about borrowing some gasoline and disappears inside. He and his girlfriend set off for the old swimming hole, find it dried up, and then see a farmhouse nearby. The two girls laugh as they clamber through the litter on the floor, but one of the guys notices some strange totems and charms which should give him warning. They get rid of him, so they think.īut then they take a side trip to a haunted-looking old house, which some of them had been raised in. They pick up a weirdo hitchhiker who carries his charms and magic potions around his neck and who giggles insanely while he cuts himself on the hand and then slices at the paraplegic. It takes place in an isolated area of Texas, which five young people (one of them in a wheelchair) are driving through in their camper van. No motivation, no background, no speculation on causes is evident anywhere in the film. But “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” could have been made up from whole cloth without any apparent difference. A true crime movie like Richard Brooks’ “ In Cold Blood,” which studies the personalities and compulsions of two killers, dealt directly with documented material and was all the more effective for that. For all I know, that’s true, although I can’t recall having heard of these particular crimes, and the distributor provides no documentation. The movie’s based on factual material, according to the narration that opens it. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective. And yet in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. It’s also without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises - a real Grand Guignol of a movie. ![]()
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