Why Chain still reigns

Released 50 years ago this month, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper and co-written by Hooper and Kim Henkel, remains a fright film masterwork that dozens of movies have attempted to imitate but can never duplicate. The setup is brilliantly simple: We follow Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), and friends Pam (Teri McMinn), Jerry (Allen Danziger), and Kirk (William Vail) as they travel to rural Texas to visit the Hardesty family homestead. There, they encounter a family of cannibalistic killers, including the infamous chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen). As the friends explore the area, they become prey to Leatherface and his deranged family, leading to a series of chilling and brutal encounters that have made the film one of the most influential in horror history.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of this film, conducted last week, click here. To hear the October episode of the Cineversary podcast celebrating The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's 50th anniversary, click here. 

Why is Chain Saw worthy of serious celebration 50 years later? For starters, this film accomplishes so much with so little. Despite minuscule production values, a paltry $140,000 budget, a cast of unknowns, eyeball-rolling dialogue and subpar acting from most of the performers, a relatively inexperienced director, and extremely low expectations, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre instantly became one of the most terrifying movies in history, raking in over $30 million at the box office (adjusted for inflation, that would be more than $199 million today), and, over the years, increasingly garnered positive critical attention from many reviewers. (Currently, tit earns an 83% Rotten Tomatoes fresh score and an average critical rating of 7.6 out of 10; Metacritic, meanwhile, gives it a 91 out of 100 Metascore.)

But drilling down further reveals three key factors responsible for its success and timeless effectiveness: approach, circumstance, and reputation. Regarding the former, consider this evaluation from critic Richard Scheib: “Like Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre redefined horror by stripping it of all classical motive. The assaults in the film come without rhyme or reason. Leatherface is not a monster of science or a demonic conjuration, he is even bereft of the cursory psychological explanations that the killers had in psycho-thrillers of the last decade such as Psycho or What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and their numerous imitators.”

Then, give thought to the circumstances during production. Hampered by a barebones budget and limited resources, director Tobe Hooper was forced to shoot for long stretches in a condensed time frame over 32 days in extreme heat and humidity, with on-set temperatures reaching 110°F. Consequently, the actors look extra stressed—obviously out of exhaustion and discomfort—and the atmosphere and vibe seem all the more strained.

Next, give credence to the film’s early and enduring reputation: Chain Saw was banned in numerous countries, including the UK, where you couldn’t see the film until 1999. This work became a word-of-mouth sensation across the world—the fear-inducing title alone aided that momentum—and was long talked about as one of the most disturbing and frightening horror films of all time.

This month, Variety published a 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time feature and slotted Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the very top. In its writeup, the Variety critics wrote: “There’s a reason “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” has cast such a shadow over the last half-century of horror films. As much as “Psycho” or “The Exorcist,” it created a mythology of horror, one that feels even more resonant today than it did 50 years ago. The film channeled the descent of the American spirit that we can now feel all around us. In the end, what “Chain Saw” revels in with such disturbing majesty, and what makes it more indelible and haunting than any other horror film, is its image of madness as the driving energy of the world: Leatherface, swinging his chainsaw around in front of the rising sun, his crazed dance of death not just a ritual but a warning — that the center will not hold.”

The plaudits, of course, hardly end there. Time Out recently named the film as the third-best horror movie ever made, Entertainment Weekly voted it the second scariest movie of all time in 2022, it came in at #19 on Empire Magazine’s 2024 list of the 50 best horror movies and #199 on Empire’s 2008 ranking of the 500 greatest movies of all time, it currently sits at #94 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 200 best horror movies of all time and #5 on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the scariest horror movies, and this film even places at #118 among 250 on the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films. Additionally, a 2022 YouGov survey of Americans found that Chain Saw was the sixth most loved horror movie by people who have seen it.

To fully appreciate how groundbreaking Chain Saw was in 1974, consider that it wasn’t a classically constructed horror picture. For its time, it lacked many of the normal tropes, stereotypes, and expectations of earlier terror fare and thrillers. There is no brooding music to warn us of what’s to come. Sex and nudity are absent. The victims aren’t deserving of punishment due to promiscuity, drug use, or criminal acts. There are no heroes or noble sacrifices—only a single survivor— and the monsters aren’t vanquished or killed by the conclusion. There is also no comic relief or “winking at the audience.” And the violence often occurs in bright daylight.

Furthermore, this horror is remorseless and lacks any kind of message about morality or redemption. The violence is sudden, random, and without warning. Surprisingly, there is very little blood or gore. Except for the opening shots, the camera doesn’t linger on dead bodies or severed body parts. Most of the killing happens quickly and occurs within the first half of the movie.

“Rather than Alfred Hitchcock's delicate, suspenseful manipulation, Hooper follows the lead of fellow independents George A. Romero and Wes Craven and feeds the audience through a mangle of unrelenting horror and violence. Once his film starts, it doesn't let up until the fade-out: other horror films are as frightening, but few are so utterly exhausting,” wrote critic Kim Newman.

Also, this work has a raw, documentary-like ragged quality to it, as demonstrated by the shaky camera, gritty film stock, use of actual decomposing animal remains and bones, and voiceover opening that claims the events are based on truth.

Influential predecessors include hixploitation, backwoods brutality, and primal folk horror films like Straw Dogs (1971), Deliverance (1972), and The Last House on the Left (1972), along with movies wherein the violence and attacks are unprovoked, sudden, indiscriminate, and random, as in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), The Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Duel (1971).

Some critics and scholars credit The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as helping to pave the path forward for renowned horror franchises like Halloween, Evil Dead, and The Blair Witch. It certainly inspired later horror icons like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees with its depiction of a large, silent, faceless killer with no discernible personality, and it introduced the notion of power tools used as murderous devices.

Leatherface has proved to be a popular horror character, as evidenced by the fact that, to date, there have been nine films in which he’s featured, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986); Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990); Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (a 1994 quasi-reboot starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey); the 2003 remake sharing the original title; the prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006); Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), a direct sequel to the 1974 film that disregards other installments in the series; Leatherface (2017), a further prequel; and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), another direct sequel to the original. By comparison, Freddy Kreuger also has nine films, Jason has 12, and Michael Myers has 13.

Wes Craven paid homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with his 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, and Ridley Scott credited it as an influence on his 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien. French filmmaker Alexandre Aja also cited the film as a key early inspiration in his career. Horror director and musician Rob Zombie has also named it as a significant stimulus for his films House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and The Devil's Rejects (2005).

Other subsequent films that may owe a nod to Chain Saw include The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Death Weekend (1976), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), The Evictors (1979), Mother’s Day (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Southern Comfort (1981), Pieces (1982), Children of the Corn (1984), The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990), House of 1000 Corpses (2003), Wrong Turn (2003), Wolf Creek (2005), Hostel (2005), Hatchet (2006), The Flesh Keeper (2007), Slasher (2007), Backwoods (2008), and Ty West’s X (2022).

Hooper and company do an admirable job of creating unease right from the start. We begin with the “true story” screen crawl voiced by John Larroquette, creating false expectations that this will be a true crime recreation. We see the August 18, 1973 dateline to firmly anchor this narrative in a particular period, and then there’s a montage of shovel-digging noises and flashbulb-illuminated peeks at dead bodies before these unearthed corpses are revealed in full, dementedly draped around a tall tombstone as we hear a radio news report about graverobbing. Then there’s a jump cut to oversaturated imagery of sunspots and solar flares, and continued radio news reporting of an oil refinery fire, a suicide, and other disquieting mentions of violence and destruction. We observe armadillo roadkill in the foreground as a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine-like green van drives off in the background, soon to introduce us to our young adult protagonists.

Hooper effectively peppers the picture with portentous bad omen visuals and dialogue, as we listen to repeated horoscope warnings, see Franklin’s photo burned, witness the smeared blood on the van’s exterior, are shown a nest of undulating spiders, and catch glimpses of animal bones strewn about the decrepit cabin.

The filmmakers demonstrate unexpected cinematic savvy, despite the low budget and grindhouse aesthetics. Recall how Hooper sometimes employs a succession of quick cuts to ratchet up a scene, or the famous low-angle shot that tracks Pam from under the swing across the lawn to the front porch.

The director should be applauded, too, for not indulging in cheap titillation tactics. Again, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre contains no nudity or scenes of sexual assault (the latter would have made this film totally unpalatable to many), and the picture only uses mild profanity.

DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson wrote: “Although constructed to bring out audiences looking for transgressive, gut-wrenching horror, it demonstrates considerable restraint, generating almost an hour of creeping dread without resorting to a single cliché…The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has good filmic architecture in the sense that form follows function. There are no extraneous scenes, filler or sidebar diversions; the camera hones in on the events without a let-up.”

Ponder, too, how Hooper creates surprising sympathy for Leatherface by inserting the shots of this character appearing severely distressed after dispatching with Kirk, Pam, and Jerry, as if he’s thinking, “Why have three strangers invaded my home, and are there any more coming?” We also see Leatherface bullied by his father (listed, simply, as “Old Man” in the credits).

“The feat of “Chain Saw” is to make us empathize with its scariest figure without diminishing the disorienting, teeth-chattering horror. Few movies pull this off,” wrote Jason Zinoman of the New York Times.

One reading of the film is the death of the American dream. Per DVD Savant critic Glenn Erickson: “With the closing of the frontier, the pioneers had no place to exercise their skills in conquering nature. Killing and eviscerating animals to survive had satisfied man's feral needs. Modern life deprives 'atavistic frontiersmen' of basic savagery… when corporate consolidation took away hundreds of thousands of jobs, Middle Americans had to take their dreams elsewhere. The days of a paycheck and a new car every five years were over, and some of the dispossessed turned to the Bible or to survivalist anti-government movements. Chain Saw shows one feral family that has regressed to practicing the pioneer skills it knows best: living off the land.”

Or, perhaps the film is a treatise on predetermined cosmic fate: Consider the solar flare footage shown at the opening, the close-ups of the full moon, the group discussing cautionary astrological predictions, and the ominous radio broadcasts, which relay nothing but bad news and disturbing events.

Hooper and collaborators certainly seem to underscore the consequences of living in violent, pessimistic, disillusioning times. Remember that this picture was made near the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The idealism of the 1960s was long dead. The public distrusted politicians, and the nation felt like a more violent, unkind place. Chain Saw examines the hidden savagery within man and the dangers of tapping into primal instincts—well-trodden subtexts in 1970s cinema.

Surprising to many, this film could actually have a vegetarian political agenda—a “meat is murder” message, if you will. After all, killing cows, pigs and other livestock for mass production of food is a cruel business that none of us want to learn the gruesome details about. While animals suffer and die in a commercialized industry of slaughter, we look the other way. Hooper was quoted as saying of this work: “It’s a film about meat.”

Many also believe The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is also about the usurping of the traditional nuclear family. Makes sense when you ruminate on how Leatherface and his clan represent an affront to our image of a loving and functional clan. Newman posited: “The nameless degenerates (they become the Sawyers in the sequel) are a parody of the sitcom family, with the bread-winning, long-suffering garage proprietor as Pop, the bewigged, apron-wearing Leatherface as Mom, and the rebellious, birthmarked, long-haired hitchhiker as teenage son. The house is a similarly overdone, a degraded mirror of the ideal home.”

Recurrence and déjà vu persist as crucial motifs. “Circularity and repetition are important structural components throughout The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” according to Slant Magazine reviewer Budd Wilkins. “The fierce red sun that dominates the opening credits is visually matched late in the film by repeated close-ups of red-veined eyeballs. At the level of the plotline, Sally circles back to the Last Chance gas station where she beseeches the Old Man for help, only to have him turn out to be one of the cannibal clan. Later, she runs circles around their rural farmhouse. And the film isn’t afraid to reduce its repetitiveness to absurdity either, as when Sally twice jumps through a window in an effort to elude Leatherface.”

This movie’s greatest gift is arguably the last act. That’s when Sally is chased throughout the woods and the house of horrors by a chainsaw-wielding maniac for what feels like hours, takes refuge in the arms of the gas station attendant who shockingly abducts her and returns Sally to the same dreadful domicile, is held captive, and ultimately evades her tormenters—an unapologetically harrowing series of episodes strung together that form a bravura sequence of sheer terror.

Hooper best demonstrates his skill for scares during the nightmarish 11-minute stretch near the conclusion when Sally is tied to the chair in the dining room and tormented mercilessly by the Sawyer family. Here is where the increasingly distressing shots, blended with an unnervingly shrill sound design and actress Marilyn Burns’ psychologically stabbing screams, create an insufferable sensory experience for the viewer that cements Chain Saw’s deserved reputation for pure, unrelenting horror. Using vertiginously canted angles, extreme close-ups of Sally’s face (particularly her bulging bloodshot eyeballs), POV shots of the three men torturously teasing her, as well as the repugnant mini-segment when she’s bent over a bucket as the cadaverous grandpa attempts to sledge her skull in, the director and his collaborators create a hellscape sequence for the ages. It proves—as does the earlier scene where Leatherface hangs Pam on a meat hook and dices up Kirk with his preferred power tool without showing any actual body penetration or viscera—that you can accomplish a lot more with suggestion a la careful camera placement and clever editing than graphic gore and geek show special effects.

Two other unbelievably startling scenes still rattle viewers with every rewatch. First, there’s the unforgettable earlier sequence where Leatherface suddenly materializes in the doorway and pummels Kirk with a sledgehammer, after which we see Kirk flail about in a death twitch on the floor before his assailant quickly bashes him again and slams the metal door shut. The suddenness of this appearance and the lethal brute force conveyed by actor Gunnar Hansen in this character still steal our breath away. And the second example is the quite effective jump scare of Leatherface suddenly emerging from the darkness and popping out of the bushes with the chainsaw, which he uses to quickly attack Franklin: imagery powerful enough to give us Richter-scale nightmares.