The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Horror's Most Intense Film?

**BE ADVISED THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE BELOW**

Five young people fall victims to a deranged family of cannibals, one of whom wears a mask and uses a chain saw...

When horror fans talk about the best horror film, the usual suspects rear their head; The Exorcist, The Shining, Psycho, Halloween The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are often cited. Now all of these films are great, classics indeed. Personally, I think The Shining is the best one. 

But, here's the thing. By the time I got into film seriously, all of the above, with the exception perhaps of Psycho were not available for home viewing. For one reason or another none were in video stores, or at least my local one didn't have them.

I eventually tracked down a VHS copy of The Exorcist to watch and found it a very effective horror film, but it wasn't until I saw it later at the cinema I realised just how good the film is. The Shining I didn't see until a long time after, on a DVD and thought it not bad. However, having seen it several times at the cinema, it's gone from not bad to brilliant. As for Psycho and Halloween I first saw them on TV, I believe, and loved them both. But on first viewing I couldn't fully understand why they were so great, with maybe Psycho being the exception.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (I hate how it's often people use the word 'chainsaw.' Look at the credits, it's two words!) was different. I first saw it in the late 90's at a late night screening. Like those other films, its reputation had grown over the years. It was, according to those who had seen it, brutal, bloody and violent as hell. Going in I had no idea what I was going to get.

To begin with, the signs weren't good, the main characters are a bit annoying, Franklin, the brother of Sally and disabled is the worst culprit. When they pick up the hitchhiker, Ed Neal's performance is, well all over the place in the role. 

For the first part of the film, you wonder where this film is going. Early on we get images of what appear to be corpses, culminating in a macabre statue of sorts of corpses in a graveyard. But even then, you still don't know where the film is going.

That is until two of the friends Pam and Kirk find a house...and the horror kicks in. 

Because you realise The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is playing by its own rules.

Take Kirk's death. Normally there is a build up of sorts to it happening, tension growing until the killer strikes. Not here. Kirk trips going through the door and a monster of a man bashes his head in. You are still reeling from that when Leatherface as he is known slams the steel door closed after dragging Kirk in. It's also worth noting at this point that probably under normal horror rules Kirk may have been the hero.

What's great about this scene, is that it's been foreshadowed earlier with Franklin and the hitchiker both talking about how animals are killed in a slaughterhouse, which is how Kirk is treated by Leatherface.

Pam goes looking for Kirk and enters a true house of horrors, that results in Leatherface putting Pam on a meathook while still alive. We hear and see her suffering, while we also hear Leatherface take a chain saw to Kirk's body.

Jerry, Sally's boyfriend I imagine, is the next to enter the house of horrors, and is dispatched, like Kirk by a blow with a hammer. Again there is none of the usual build up you would get in a normal film like this. But then this film isn't your normal film.

Franklin is next to go, butchered in his wheelchair when he and Sally go looking for their friends. What's brilliant about this scene and something that plays into all the deaths is that you don't see that much blood onscreen. However, due to the screams of the victims, the, brutal way they are killed, you think there is a lot of blood on display. Other films have managed to do this too, but The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the best to make you imagine you saw more than you did.

But even now, you can make a case of 'and, it's just a teens being killed film, what makes it special?'

When Sally runs as Franklin is killed, Leatherface with his chain saw runs after her.

And keeps running.

And keeps running.

I don't know if this is the longest foot chase in a film, but you think it is as Leatherface, much like The Terminator chasing Sarah Connor, keeps after Sally and won't stop. 

The chase leads to the house, where, while not finding out what happened to her friends, finds what is upstairs, Grandpa, and has to get out. Eventually she arrives back at the gas station from earlier in the film where she is bound by it's owner and driving back to the house.

And it's here where I think The power of the film lies. The ordeal Sally goes through, bound helpless as the family, torment and terrify her goes on and on. It really isn't easy to watch, even if most of what we see is threats rather than actual violence. The focus on Sally's eyes as her mind crumbles as the ordeal goes on, is truly a powerful.

In the end, Sally escapes, not by fighting and killing the family, like most 'final girls' do but rather more through luck as the family want Grandpa to kill her, but he is so old he can barely hold the hammer and only gets in one glancing blow.

Sally escapes through a window running of chased by the hitchhiker, who is hit by a truck and Leatherface himself. In the end via a passing truck, Sally escapes, broken, bloodied and in pieces as Leatherface swings his chain saw in frustration.

Tobe Hooper, who directed the film and co-wrote it with Kim Henkel, really puts the audience through the ringer with this film. As I said, it's not, onscreen wise, a very bloody film, but due to the brilliant use of sound and reactions and the way Hooper shots the film, you think it is. Hooper, also, in some ways a relief, in others not so much, plays up the humour in the latter stages as the family bicker among themselves. But all the while the tension is there of what will happen to Sally.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was made in 1974. I was 5/6 at the time. I would have been around 30 when I eventually saw the film. It completely bowled me over. I've seen it a couple of more times over the years since and every time  I see it, that last half of Sally being terrorised is among the most powerful and disturbing and intense scenes I've seen on film. It's utterly relentless. Marilyn Burns who plays Sally deserved tremendous credit for her performance of sheer terror. But it's Hooper's skill that keeps a grip of you. Once Sally is on her own, the film never lets you go not until the credits roll and I'm not even sure then. 

In the tagline for this post, I mention how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre may be horror's most powerful film. Why do I think that? For all it's flaws, all in the opening act of the film, few films can grip the way this film does. I hate the phrase 'torture porn' but in some ways this film is, but only for the audience. You want Sally's ordeal to end, you are stunned at the almost casual way the film, in quick succession kills her friends. You want the film to end so you can breathe, you think scenes are going to end, but the scene doesn't and scenes won't.

I write this having been at a screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the Dundead festival at Dundee Contemporary Arts. While there were some in the audience who had seen it before, most I think had not. The person sitting next to me said afterwards, 'that was intense.'

He's not wrong.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn't go for jump scares, or ghost's saying 'Boo.' It's horror's are raw and more real in some ways.

It's still a terrifying watch, up there with the best horror can offer.

In some ways, it may even be better.