Fright Flashback: They're Here

It's that time of year again! While you're getting out the sunblock and your big floppy hat, please give a warm summer welcome to Fright Flashback! Every week I will be reviewing an old horror movie that shares a theme, cast/crew member, or genre with the week's big release: a sort of spiritual predecessor. Again, very special thanks to Tim Brayton at Antagony and Ecstasy for the idea I more or less shamelessly ripped off and modified. I stand on the shoulders of giants, what can I say? It's comfortable there.

This week's new release is the long-delayed remake of just about the only horror classic left on the chopping block: Poltergeist. In celebration, we are heading back to 1982 to appraise the original property.

Year: 1982

Director: Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Cast: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Heather O'Rourke

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

I haven't seen the original Poltergeist since I was a child, and there is perhaps no better condition in which to view it. As one grows older, one gains a more mature appreciation for the deeper themes present in what is a truly remarkable movie, but the level on which Poltergeist works best is in its pure spectacle, and the childlike wonder and appreciation for the terrors that lurk in the dark shadows of the suburban idyll.

Also, frankly, children have a higher tolerance for chintzy 80's special effects.

There has long been contention about the directorial authorship of Poltergeist, and I would be remiss by not at least nodding toward the controversy. Though the credited director is Tobe Hooper of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, one year previously, The Funhouse, reportedly the bulk of his work was performed by producer Steven Spielberg during a break on his own film, E. T. (both films came out within a week of each other - what a time to be alive, am I right?). 

Honestly, my money is on heavy Spielberg involvement, but it's rather beside the point. We'll never know the true answer, and the fact is that both of them were there, resulting in an indisputable classic of the genre. What more is there to say?

Just let sleeping clowns lie.

Poltergeist's plot is a simple one, albeit dressed up with some rather detailed theological accoutrements. The Freelings are a middle class family who live in one of the identical houses of the Cuesta Verde suburb of an unnamed California town. Father Steve (Craig T. Nelson) is a realtor responsible for selling a good half of the properties in the district, mother Diane (JoBeth Williams) is young and loving, but softly frustrated with her responsibilities as a parent.

Having had her first daughter, Dana (Dominique Dunne), at the tender age of 16, her youth has been compromised. Robbie (Oilver Robins), the only boy, and Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), the youngest, don't exactly subtract from her strain. The conflict of Poltergeist reflects the conflict inside Diane: despite making every effort at achieving the trappings of domestic bliss, something is insidiously, indelibly wrong with the whole affair.

The very nooks and crannies of the Freelings' familiar abode become a hotbed of paranormal activity when a ghostly presence asserts itself through the static on the television (Remember when TV actually ended? I don't.). At first, the disturbances are harmless, almost playful, but they quickly crescendo into a nightmarish conglomeration of terrors, culminating in Carol Anne's being spirited away into another realm. With the help of the paranormal crack team of Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight) and her associates, as well as a third act showstopper appearance by the advanced medium Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), the family attempts to reclaim their lost child from the unknowable menace.

The housing market was really rough in the early 80's.

First and foremost, Poltergeist is a rapturous showcase for MGM's state-of-the-art special effects. Second, it is a lovingly detailed character drama about the American family. Third, it is a down-home shocker chockablock with instantly iconic moments.

Let's begin with the first, especially because that most cherished element is perhaps the weakest of the film. I don't mean to say that the ample special effects are anything but spectacular. They are, but if we're going to be completely honest, most of them have aged about as well as the Flock of Seagulls haircut. 

It's easy enough to still find tension in these moments thanks to the emotional heft of the characters and storyline, but the film devotes a great deal of time to curdled milk visual effects that remain charmingly cheesy but dangerously challenge the truth and reality at the core of its narrative.

Sometimes it feels a little like an Eldritch Horror-themed high school prom.

That's all well and good, but if you dig a little deeper under the topsoil of shiny chrome ghoulies, Poltergeist has an impenetrably solid thematic bedrock. The entire first act serves to deliver the ultimate experience in suburban bliss, only to tear it down time and time again for the remainder of the film. In its ineffably phantasmagorical way, it peels back the facade of the American Dream to reveal that, in fact, all is not good in the neighborhood.

The trappings of suburban bliss become conduits for hellish monstrosities: chairs, dolls, closets, televisions, and even the very landscape surrounding the house. And yet the family unit remains strong. No, Speilberg and Co. are not warring against the nuclear family - his many many films during this era would disprove that immediately - but rather the Reagan-era greed and materialism that led them to this moment in this place surrounded by these suburban trappings (obtained to the detriment of the graveyard that once stood on that very ground, forcibly evicted by a mercenary realty company*).

Behold: The Suburban Nightmare!

Not only is this fascinating, it's downright terrifying. As I said before, the special effects have long since lost their luster as anything other than a sideshow amusement, but the film so firmly believes in its world that its easy to get caught up in the undertow. 

JoBeth Williams especially sells the hell out of even the most Novelty Barn-looking effects, dragging the film into raw, unadulterated reality with an unfiltered performance of pure strength. Craig T. Nelson can't quite match her (his eyes are remarkably uninvolved in whatever he seems to be doing or saying), but as the useless patriarchal figure he does the trick.

And don't even get me started on Zelda Rubinstein, whose exorbitant weirdness sets the film ablaze with a new inferno after its pace starts to flag a bit in the third act, during which we must sit through an alarming amount of philosobabble. It is in this quadrant of the film where it hits the peak of its strangeness, but her unrestrained performance breathes life into a scene that, when you think about it, is literally just a small woman throwing tennis balls at a strobe light. 

Honestly, the simplicity of the finale ignites the imagination rather than exhausting the eyes, providing the perfect backdrop for the film's emotional climax.

But I digress. I was speaking about acting, and I would be remiss if I neglected to mention Heather O'Rourke. Although her untimely death at age 11 casts an eerie pall over the entire performance, she deserves immense credit for what she was able to deliver without the shadow of tragedy. Simultaneously angelic and uncanny, her performance crystallizes the tension of the film with a thoroughly engaging, disturbing, immensely adorable charm. It's hard to explain rationally, and it may just be a credit to whatever director happened to be coaching her, but it's a performance that you feel in your gut, not your brain.

I'm a little in awe of how mystifyingly unsettling she is, and what happened to her is a damn shame.

But for all that Poltergeist is genuinely frightening, it also packs a keen sense of fun. Another tally mark in the "Spielberg" column, the film is like an amusement park adventure ride, with an unflagging levity weaved throughout the horror. Jerry Goldsmith's score compounds this tone tremendously, with a leeringly creepy spin on childhood nursery rhymes that tilts unexpectedly into open-faced childlike wonder.

I have some personal qualms about the overlong ending, which plays off like a laundry list of VFX sequences that were conceived in the brainstorming process but were forgotten until the end of production and haphazardly shoved in one after the other like shiny playthings in a toddler's toy box. 

It also doesn't help that nearly every single one of these effects are by far the best (and most credible) of the entire film (a personal favorite being the elongating hallway). And all of them take place after the conclusion of the film's climactic sequence.

But honestly, any faults with Poltergeist, no matter how large, are mere nitpicks. There are enough that I hesitate to instantly proclaim its masterpiece status, but as a whole the film is an unutterable classic of the form, and I would scarcely dare to impeach that.

*Side Note: It is explicitly noted in the film that the house is not built on an ancient Indian burial ground. That little tidbit seems to have slipped away on the wind.

TL;DR: Poltergeist is a lavish, effects-filled thrill ride, but its most important value is as a treatise on the hazards and fears behind American suburbia.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1568
Reviews In This Series
Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (Gibson, 1986)
Poltergeist III (Sherman, 1988)
Poltergeist (Kenan, 2015)

Census Bloodbath: Texas Battle Land

Year: 1986

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

Is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, coming out 12 years after the original film, one of the longest sequel gaps in recorded history? Actually, yes. It comes in at around number 21, beaten out by none other than the 46 year gap preceding Return to Oz, among a few additional elder statesmen of film franchises. But although it's not the most impressive hiatus in cinema history, I'd like to argue that it's one of the most impactful.

1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre saw Tobe Hooper as a hungry young filmmaker, eager to rattle the walls of the nihilistic and beaten-down 1970's with the oppressive heat of Texas. But as the years passed, the times drastically changed. Hooper failed to recapture the grubby magic of Texas Chain Saw in Salem's Lot and The Funhouse, saw creative control of Poltergeist wrested away from him by producer Steven Spielberg (exactly how much control he ceded is still the topic of furious debate and a topic far too complex for a mere frail parenthetical), and hit rock bottom with his high budget space vampire flop Lifeforce.

As Hooper's life-force (so to speak) was draining, the country itself was beginning to perk up. The economic downturn that permeated the previous decade had begun to reverse itself and the populace began to turn to rampant consumerism once more. Nuclear fears, Reagan's presidency, and the AIDS crisis were still occupying people's minds, but the nation had taken an upward tack that would spring them forth into the blissful 90's.

Even more significant to the film we are discussing today is the massive face-lift the horror genre had received since the original Chain Saw. The slasher boom had come and gone, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter with the advent of the supernatural, heralded by A Nightmare on Elm Street and its soon-to-be comic superstar Freddy Krueger. The enduring popularity of the slasher formula ruled the silver screen, seeping into films to the point of exhaustion; by the mid-80's even ghost and exorcism stories had to have a supple teen cast picked off one by one and even movies completely outside the genre fell victim to this insidious disease.

The genre ushered into being by Texas Chain Saw soon found no use for its brutal, unappealing, nihilism and squalor, so Tobe Hooper was faced with a tough decision. A sequel to his immensely popular film could reboot his career, but there was just no space in the market for something so grim and intense. This post is getting a little long in the tooth and I haven't even mentioned a single character yet, so I'll cut to the chase. Let me direct your attention to the poster at the top of this post, then to the image below. Seem familiar?

Unless you have the attention span of a Drew Barrymore character, it should.

I hope it has become immediately obvious that Hooper decided to adopt a comedic tone with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. It's by no means an outright comedy, but it is light years more lighthearted than its predecessor. Filled to the brim with pop culture references (among other mentions, we get Rambo 3, the censored Beatles baby massacre cover, and enough rock and roll bands to fuel the cocaine market for a small country), silly props, and even - I kid you not - a couple puns. That's 100% more wordplay than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

It's an interesting decision but by no means a bad one. Trying to recreate the original film's mood would be like Will Smith having a kid - it wouldn't turn out as good and nobody would want to see it. Especially with the amount of story beats that are copied from the original, it's a definite bonus to have a new tone to chew on - it keeps things lively and entertaining.

But for all the repetition this film has (including an almost word for word recreation of the dinner party scene), there is a heaping helping of brand new elements that keep the films firmly planted in its new wacky atmosphere. Our new Final Girl (if any Chain Saw chick could truly be considered one) is Stretch (Caroline Williams - a genre veteran with appearances in Stepfather 2, Halloween II, and Hatchet III to name just a few), an Oklahoma rock 'n roll DJ with a passion for just about anything other than being stuck in a rinky dink booth surrounded by old records.

After a pair of prank callers (Who are two of the most poisonously douchey characters in the history of cinema. Never have I wanted a set of opening scene characters to die more and I lived through the anthropomorphic nuclear waste that is Harold and Edna of Friday the 13th Part 3.) are chainsaw massacred while phoning into the station from North Texas, Stretch teams up with Lieutenant "Lefty" Enright (Dennis Hopper), the uncle of Sally and Franklin from the first film (Though later he acts like an older brother, so who can be sure? Not Hooper, if the amount of pot he smoked in the 80's has anything to say about it.).

Lefty has been searching for the mysterious cannibal family for over a decade and uses Stretch as bait to draw them out into the open.

A brilliant plan - that sequined jacket is visible from space.

One thing leads to another and Stretch is trapped underground with the villainous Sawyers in their new abode - an abandoned theme park. Returning by popular demand are a rather svelte looking Leatherface (Bill Johnson), his even more withered grandfather (Ken Evert), and his father the Cook (Jim Siedow, the only returning cast member). And although Leatherface's brother the Hitchhiker found himself on the wrong end of a Mack truck last go-around, he finds a surrogate in Chop-Top (Bill Moseley, another genre veteran also in Texas Chainsaw 3D, Halloween 2007, Army of Darkness, Silent Night, Deadly Night III, and perhaps most notably, Evil Bong), an equally crazy Sawyer brother newly returned from his stint in Vietnam.

Despite the immense shift in tone which, despite not being an outright laugh riot, is quietly successful in its own way, Hooper is up to his old tricks but with a little more stylistic panache. That is to say, this film is more overtly styled than Texas Chain Saw, not that the aesthetic is any better. Although comparing the visual schema of that film and its sequel is like comparing apples and ball gags - they're both highly effective but serve entirely different functions.

In this film, Hooper indulges in a color scheme beyond brown and grey, splashing vivid reds, blues, and greens across the frame in broad swaths. Especially in the terrifically manic nightmare theme park set that contains the third act, this creates a sense of carnival thrills and spills, rather making up for everything that 1981's The Funhouse isn't.

The Funhouse could have definitely used more chainsaws. Or more Dennis Hopper. Or more... anything that isn't me crying tears of boredom.

And in spite of everything, there are moments when Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is actually scary. Because the franchise is so palpably deranged and twisted, these moments rely more on character dynamics than jump scares so it's a tremendous boon that the replacement actors are almost entirely top notch. Johnson obviously can't do quite as much with Leatherface as Hansen could, but his performance darn near cuts it close, adding an extra dimension to the character in what could have been a tremendously clumsy love subplot using naught but his eyes and tongue.

Likewise, Bill Moseley is an excellent addition to the family, revamping Edwin Neal's frenzied Hitchhiker for the modern age and seamlessly straddling the twin tones of comedy and horror, milking each one for everything they're worth. And the gore (of course there's gore now, it's 1986 for crying out loud) is spruced up by maestro of the macabre Tom Savini. It's perhaps not his best work, but Savini on autopilot is still Savini, which means that the effects could still run circles around the dime store VFX artists of whatever the hell else came out in 1986 (which includes Sorority House Massacre and Killer Party - not exactly firm competition. Supple, maybe. But not firm.)

On the other hand, we have Dennis Hopper. Though nobody who's ever seen a single work of cinema would consider his performance "great" (unless, that is, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is that single work of cinema), he brings a focused lunacy to the role that is captivating. This is a character that exists in quite a different universe than the rest of the film, brandishing chainsaws and screaming epithets at nobody in particular, oftentimes while standing alone in locations quite far from the action. He throws himself into the role headfirst, shaking up every idea one might have about the craft of filmmaking for better or for worse.

It's a legitimately tough call on that one.

So really, there's a lot to like about the film. However, it loses major points for its frequent reverting to tried and true story beats and the slower moments are a mite too slow, dragging the film like a half-open parachute. And although there's plenty to chew on about the effects of Vietnam and long-term poverty, the political fire isn't in Hooper's eyes as much as it was when he was 12 years younger.

But in spite of all that, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a rousing success, plying the audience with legitimately great performances of iconic characters, legitimately ludicrous performances from a well-known actor, and enough Savini-honed nightmare fuel to keep the whole thing going down smoothly.

Killer: Leatherface (Bill Johnson) & Co. Pretty much everybody kills everybody else.

Final Girl: Stretch (Caroline Williams)

Best Kill: Buzz proves that his name is appropriate by getting his skull cap sawed off.

Sign of the Times: A picture can say a thousand words. Two pictures can prove my point.

Scariest Moment: Leatherface lunges at Stretch from the station's record vault.

Weirdest Moment: Leatherface puts L.G.'s face on Stretch and ballroom dances with her in a meat locker.

Champion Dialogue: "Oh great grandma in chainsaw heaven, please don't hoodoo the boy."

Body Count: 8; Although y'all know several of them ain't gonna stick.

1. Buzz gets the top of his head sliced off with a chainsaw.
2. Rick "The Prick" is killed in a car crash.
3. L. G. is bashed in the head with a hammer and has his skin removed.
4. Drayton gets his butt chainsawed and blows himself up with a grenade offscreen.
5. Leatherface is chainsawed in the stomach and blown up with a grenade offscreen.
6. Lefty is blown up with a grenade offscreen.
7. Grandpa is blown up with a grenade offscreen.
8. Chop-Top is sliced in the torso with a chainsaw and falls into a turbine.

TL;DR: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is perhaps even more insane than the first film, though absolutely not as effective.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1861

Reviews In This Series
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Burr, 1990)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Henkel, 1994)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Liebesman, 2006)
Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)
Leatherface (Bustillo & Maury, 2017)

Census Bloodbath: Freak Show

Year: 1981

Director: Tobe Hooper
Cast: Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, Kevin Conway
Run Time: 1 hour 36 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

It's October, man! I'm quite excited to get into the swing of things with my Texas Chainsaw retrospective and a special crossover with my friend Hunter over at Kinemalogue (also expect reviews of Chocolat and Fiddler on the Roof because my friends/boyfriend are strange), but in this central month for horror, it wouldn't be good to skimp on my most terror-centric feature: Census Bloodbath!

Skipping ahead a little bit in 1981, today we're visiting another film by Chainsaw auteur Tobe Hooper, his pea soup movie The Funhouse. I call it this because while some people seem to love it, others despise it with a burning, fiery passion. I'm more in the latter camp, though it's a good sight better than some of the crap I've forced myself to watch this September, so you won't catch me complaining.

This one frame cost more than the entirety of The Outing.

The man who had a major hand in ushering in the slasher era with his 1974 masterpiece returns with this far more straightforward teen fright flick in the second year of the subgenre's boom. So straightforward, in fact, that the opening scene combines the three most prominent elements of the genre as it stood in the 80's - Halloween rip-offs, Psycho rip-offs, and dumbass fake scares. This is certainly not promising, but later on the film does lift itself up slightly from its slasher roots with a more involved B-plot than its uncouth peers.

Unfortunately, the A-plot is what we're stuck with, and a slate of Meat too undercooked to even be served as tartare. There's Amy (Elizabeth Berridge), the virginal and prudish girl who hates fun; Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), the annoying layabout who tries to impress Amy with his machismo; Liz (Largo Woodruff), Amy's best friend; and Richie (Miles Chapin of Pandemonium), her stoner boyfriend. The foursome decides to double date at the local carnival and spend the night in the funhouse against the objections of Amy for reasons of being annoying.

Although she does have a point, considering that once inside they witness the murder of the carnival's fortune teller at the hands of a Monster (Wayne Doba), the deformed son of the carnival Barker (Kevin Conway). When they get trapped inside, they must dare to face this twisted duo and yadda yadda, bad things, it's a slasher, you get it.

Just to make sure we knew that, they slipped in a shower scene in the opening because there's an unfortunate lack of bathrooms in carnival rides.

Although the film boasts a clever premise and a killer villain (pun intended), The Funhouse is an utterly flavorless genre picture. The first act stretches on into eternity as the bland kids wander around the carnival being douches, which slams into a dull second act with some admittedly grotesque special effects. The film doesn't truly pick up until the final showdown in the third act, at which point it is far too watered down to even come close to the kinetic finale of Chain Saw. It might as well be called "The House" because there certainly isn't any fun to be had here.

Perhaps it's not fair to constantly compare Tobe Hooper's later output with his magnum opus film, but the longer his career stretches, the more the film seems like a cosmic joke we haven't been told the punchline to. And truth be told, Hooper's twisted Texan influence can be felt throughout The Funhouse, but it shoots off in all directions rather than joining together in a focused, heaving mass of depravity.

Some choice picks from a sea of examples include a man who offers a young boy a ride in his truck, then points a shotgun at him, hooting up a storm, a mysterious Bag Lady (Sonia Zomina of Eyes of a Stranger) whose sole purpose in life seems to be covering herself in dirt and shouting at people, and the carnies, all of whom are alcohol-swilling degenerates with no qualms about the exploitation of themselves or others.

Each isolated person or event is creepy, but the aimless tone of the movie prevents them from ever forming a coherent whole. It's just a series of scenes, some creepier than others, that drift along until the halfway point, when the kids finally enter the funhouse and relieve that relentless itching that occurs while waiting for something - anything - to happen.

Step right up and witness the most horrifyingly uninteresting protagonist of cinema history!

OK, it's not all bad. The makeup on the killer is unforgettable. (I shan't spoil it here, but if you wish to take a peek, click this.) There's some interesting stuff buried beneath the surface about generational discord (if you're willing to dig a bit and maybe own an industrial drill), especially with the juxtaposition of Amy's relationship with her dad and the bond between the Barker and the Monster.

And Doba's performance as The Monster is quite thrilling, though coming so soon after the tonally similar Leatherface is a huge hurdle to jump. And once Hooper's style kicks into hyperdrive in the finale, throwing Amy into a hellstorm of rapid-fire editing and jarring color compositions, the shroud of tedium lifts for several sustained minutes.

But all in all, The Funhouse is a dull carnival ride with lifeless scares popping out on springs, but not enough heart to really sell them. The Final Girl is a useless mop who'd scream at her own shoelaces and the story resolves itself almost entirely by accident. There's a pointless subplot about her little brother Joey (Shawn Carson) that steals so much screentime that you're convinced something exciting or game-changing will happen with him. It doesn't.

Its production values keep the whole thing flowing together smoothly, but The Funhouse is far too drab for me to ever want to visit again.

Killer: The Monster (Wayne Doba)

Final Girl: Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge)
Best Kill: When Richie is hung by a noose, stolen money spills from his pockets, making it rain on his unwitting friends.
Sign of the Times: Amy uses a pay phone to call her mom. Can you believe people used to need an entire box to make a phone call? How demanding.
Scariest Moment: The Bag Lady emerges from her position crouching in the dirt to shriek at Joey.
Weirdest Moment: Joey apparently decorates his room with medieval weaponry.
Champion Dialogue: "I hate people who preach. Especially in bathrooms."
Body Count: 6

1. Madame Zena is strangled.
2. Richie is hung by a noose.
3. Liz is punched and/or clawed to death.
4. The Barker is impaled on a sword and shot four times.
5. Buzz is killed offscreen.
6. The Monster is electrocuted, hung on a hook, and crushed between two gears. 

TL;DR: The Funhouse is a tremendous concept with utterly dull execution.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1152

All My Exes Die In Texas

For our podcast episode about this very film, click here.

Year: 1974

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Marilyn Burns, Teri McMinn, Gunnar Hansen

Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I would like to make a small request, if I may. Look at your phone/computer's calendar. Or, if you're reading this through a small rectangular wormhole from the year 1975, look at the calendar on your wall. If it doesn't read October 1st, you forgot to flip the page. Because it's October 1st! The month of Halloween has begun, a momentous occasion in the horror community.

To celebrate the month leading up to horror's yearly zenith, I have decided to take a look at one of the few slasher franchises almost completely unmined by yours truly, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, of which I have only seen the first and the last. Out of 7 entire films. It's a right shame is what it is. Today is the 40th anniversary of the original film and it's due time to celebrate.

Especially considering how convoluted and bizarre the chronology of the films has become (two sequels, a remake, a prequel, then a re-sequel), the implacable call of weird horror history is drawing me and my neurotic, completist soul to this new terrain. By the end of the month, we will have explored a key thread in the tapestry of slasher history, beginning today with the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a magnificent proto-slasher that laid the groundwork for the genre along with Hitchcock's Psycho and that same year's Black Christmas.

And this guy's chest hair.

"The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

This is the narration that opens Texas Chain Saw, utilizing what is now a hoary gimmick - namely, a false claim to reality. Rest assured, the events of this film hold no truth, save for a broad inspiration from the macabre antics of Ed Gein. This method of storytelling has since been beaten to the ground, but combined with the grubby documentary realism of the cinematography, this opening propels the viewer into full suspension of disbelief, opening them up to the full scope of the atrocities committed onscreen.

The overall feeling of "I shouldn't be watching this" never goes away, setting in from the very opening shot (a series of close-up photographs of a grisly display in a cemetery) and never letting up until the credits roll, displayed in yellowing, dirty, scratched print the entire way through. But what of these five youths in question, you ask? I'm glad you asked. Although 1974 is perhaps too soon to be calling the buxom young characters Meat, Texas Chain Saw practically never looks at them in any other way, so neither shall we.

Our Meat for the evening is a group of college-aged kids taking a leisurely drive through Texas - there's Kirk (William Vail), a strapping lad with a neckline that plunges into the depths of Hell itself; his girlfriend Pam (Teri McMinn), an astrology obsessed girl about town; and Jerry (Allen Danziger), a living museum of 70's fashion. They are here to accompany Sally (Marilyn Burns) and her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) on their journey to a recently defaced rural cemetery to ensure the sanctity of their grandfather's grave. 

The Meat couldn't really care less about this journey - they're just along for the ride to snooze in the deceased man's old farm house and take a dip in his swimmin' hole. And any other swimmin' holes they can find, if you catch my drift.

Jerry gets it.

Much like The Evil Dead would do in 1981, Texas Chain Saw specifically avoids fleshing out its characters too much, turning the film into a sort of urban legend tale - something one might have heard from a friend of a friend, but it's totally true, they swear. This is the final nail in the coffin as far as realism is concerned, sweeping you up in its heady embrace when the true terror begins to occur.

This doesn't take long, as the teens pick up and quickly kick out a mad hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), then arrive at the decrepit farmhouse, which is now filled with spiders and gloom. One by one the youngsters wander off into a nearby home and are picked off in swift, brutal fashion by one Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a massive, cerebrally stunted man wearing a mask made of human skin.

Maybe he's born with it. Maybe it's homicide.

In about as short a time as it takes to say "I love your chainsaw, it really matches your complexion," the kids are whittled down until only Sally remains, forced to endure the torments of Leatherface and his unspeakable family, insane laid off slaughterhouse workers who have turned to eating human flesh for sustenance.

I mean, it's either that or spinach so there's no contest.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in a nutshell, is a brutal, nihilistic, dirty, angry, repellently tactile film. It is an unscrubbed, grubby, decrepit, immoral piece of work that emanates oppressive Texas heat. And it's a masterpiece of 70's horror, no two ways about it.

Although it's taut and tense from frame one, once the killing begins and Sally is captured, the film relentlessly sledgehammers the viewer, WHAM WHAM WHAM whether it be with brutal, senseless violence, rapid, jarring editing, or a soundscape that erupts from the depths of hell itself. In fact, the toneless, half-diegetic non-music that comprises the "score" of Texas Chain Saw is meant to emulate the sounds an animal might hear inside a slaughterhouse.

Talk about a DEAD and breakfast, amirite?

The cinematography is rough, smudged, gritty, and jagged, sometimes abruptly slamming into hauntingly beautiful wide shots of the open terrain or captivating, kinetic close-ups from off-kilter angles that just beg you to feel the weight of the world. Perhaps the only semblance of true professionalism in the film (the entire thing from top to bottom feels like it was created by neophytes, but it bristles with frenzied energy that defies classical cinematic criticism) is the acting, none of which is as amateurish as one would expect from this kind of operation - the film was largely funded by mob money in the hyper-independent terrain of the South.

I mean, it's not like Allen Danziger or Paul Partain were huge Oscar snubs, but the heroine and especially the villainous family at the core of the film bring a deranged energy the likes of which are utterly singular, never to be repeated in the annals of film history. Chief among these performances is that of Gunnar Hansen, Leatherface himself. A man with his massive size (he positively eats up the frame) could let his bulk do the bulk of the acting for him, to coin a nifty phrase.

But Hansen throws his all into Leatherface. Much like Kane Hodder after him, his physical performance along with the grunts and squeals that accompany his presence aren't just tossed off. He is acting underneath that stiff mask of flesh. It's no small achievement that the most sympathetic character in the entire film is the one chainsawing paraplegics to death, but his frenzied vocalics and eager body language conjure up images of a clueless child at play, flawlessly hammering home one of the movie's core themes: nobody is purely, inherently good or evil, and that makes the world infinitely more terrifying.

My thoughts exactly, man.

All this but not a word about the gore. That's for a good reason. Truth be told, there's not much gore at all to be beheld in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Ask literally anyone who's seen the movie in a theater and they'd disagree. But the fact of the matter is that just about every single painful, traumatic, or flesh-piercing event in the film is offscreen, relying entirely on implication and almost never showing the blood actually being shed.

The other elements of the movie work so well in tandem with one another that they inspire feelings of disgust and shock in the viewer without resorting to actually showing them anything, something which most horror films from 1980 on seem to have forgotten how to do. But the magic of Texas Chain Saw is that - though it is equally goreless as other classics like Psycho or Hallowen - it still retains every ounce of power it had during its opening weekend, never allowing the passage of time to weather its effectiveness.

The film is so experiential and jarring that it shakes you out of your Hanes no matter how many years have passed, even though the complex political climate that fueled the film's subplots has largely dissipated. But that's the genius of the thing. Even without the many political avenues that channel the story (including the economic crisis in Texas, anti-slaughterhouse themes, and the plight of the working man, each of which could be the subject of an entire essay on their own - and not to undercut my own endeavors here, but Tim Brayton's discussion of the film and its place in 70's culture is top notch), it is still pure and brutal, providing an unforgettable jump start to the nascent slasher genre.

So many times I have tried to convince myself this film isn't a work of art. It's too repetitive, the kids are too dumb, the look of the film is too unpolished. But every second you spend in this gruesome hellscape drags you deeper and deeper inside its world, smashing you over the head with its infectious power and rendering you incapable of feeling anything other than the stinging, bitter, open nerve that is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

If exposing the ugliness of the world and shattering perceptions of what cinema can be is not what the horror genre is about, then I don't want to be a part of it.

TL;DR: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a gritty, grimy masterpiece of horror that drags you through the mud with its brutality and sharp wit.

Rating: 10/10

Body Count: 5

1. Kirk is hit in the head with a hammer.
2. Pam is impaled on a meathook.
3. Jerry is smashed with a hammer.
4. Franklin is chainsawed in the gut.
5. The Hitchhiker is run over by a truck. 

Word Count: 1799

Reviews In This Series
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Burr, 1990)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Henkel, 1994)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Liebesman, 2006)
Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)
Leatherface (Bustillo & Maury, 2017)