Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The (1974)
The first time I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was at a friend’s birthday party. I was in ninth or tenth grade. There were girls at the party so when the movie started only half of my attention was on the film. By the time the movie ended, 100% of my attention was on the film. I don’t even remember who else was at the party. But I sure remember that film.
A common theme from this month’s list of films has been that supernatural films don’t scare me as much as realistic ones. There’s nothing supernatural about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and yet it’s the worst kind of evil I can think of — people hurting other people for no reason. Revenge, no matter how brutal or violent, I can understand: that’s hurting someone else for a reason. But in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there’s no rhyme or reason or motive to the brutality. There’s just a family of deranged maniacs who simply attack people when the opportunity arises.
And one of them has a chainsaw.
Opportunity arises in this film with a van load of teenagers who happen to pick up the wrong hitchhiker. I wouldn’t be surprised if this film single-handedly had an effect on hitchhiking. Our teens end up stopping at the wrong gas station and end up at the wrong house and pretty soon they start ending up on the wrong side of a chainsaw. I think one of the scariest things about this film is how few choices lie between us and a horrible death on any given day.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a gruesome, timeless classic. There’s a reason it became the archetype for these types of films. Many of the tropes still appearing in horror films today can be traced back to this very film. Classic, classic, classic.
And still scary as hell.
(This review is a part of my month-long October 2014 A-Z Horror Reviews.)