The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

This month we at Retro-Review celebrate Halloween all month long. 31 days of movies featuring ghosts, goblins, slashers and monsters. So turn down the lights, hide under the blanket, and grab some candy. And our first offering for your viewing pleasure....

Starring: Edwin Neal, Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Gunner Hansen
Written by: Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel

Director: Tobe Hooper
Year: 1974

Rating: * * * 1/2   Stars       +       (Fan Bonus *  )  Total: * * * * 1/2

Five teenagers travelling through Texas encounter the most macabre and horrifying event of their lives.

Sally and her invalid Brother Franklin, along with three friends, travel to the cemetery to visit their Grandparents grave. Reports of a graveyard vandalism and desecration are in the newspapers, and they want to be sure their grandparents' grave is ok. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker who exhibits strange behavior. He claims to be an out of work slaughterhouse employee and speaks with delight about the techniques used in killing. After the stranger cuts his own hand with Franklin's knife, they boot him out of the van.

Running low on gas, they stop at a filling station where a strange old man tells them they're out of gas and he's still waiting for the gas truck to show up. The teenagers take off to an old house they think is abandoned after a dip in a swimming hole, only to find its inhabited by the old man, the hitchhiker, and a large, retarded transvestite who dresses in women's clothes, and skin, known as Leatherface. This is a family of cannibals who kill and slaughter the teens one by one. 

From the opening credits, we're treated to sickening and bizarre photos of bodies, desecrated at a cemetery, and situated in various bizarre poses. The narrator (voiced by John Larroquette) tells us that these events that we're about to see is an account of what befell a group of teenagers travelling through a rural Texas town, quickly establishing this film as "real." Did this really happen? Urban myths have been told, but Tobe Hooper, the director, has us believing right from the get go, this is based on a true story. The low budget production and an unknown cast made the film feel more documentary than mere horror entertainment. 

Once things get going, the horror is unrelenting. Isolated miles from anyone, captured and tormented by a family of degenerate psychopaths, it seems hope has vanished hours ago. In a final desperate act, Sally, the sole survivor, desperately hurls herself through the living room window and runs as fast as she can trying to flag down help on the road, all the while Leatherface gives chase. Unlike traditional horror movies where the final female hero vanquishes the villain, here the only thing to do is run. The narrator closes the film, informing us police found horrifying evidence, but no trace of the family. They are still out there, and at large.

SEE THE TRAILER: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre