The Texas Chainsaw Masacre is one of those movies you probably grew up hearing about. Too young to view it, you'd proudly proclaim to friends that you had seen it and make up all kinds of little white lies. Eventually, you'd finally have the pleasure of viewing Tobe Hoopers horror flick. Well, that time never actually came for me.....at least up until this week anyway. Thanks to the big budget theatrical remake, we get a DVD release to coincide and take advantage of the name.
The story revolves around the usual group of teenagers, brought together due to a string of grave robbings. They decide to head out to a small Texas town and make sure a recently deceased member is still where they should be. What follows is a supposed retelling of semi-serial killer Ed Gein's story. Though loosely grounded in facts, the story is hardly true. It's a slasher flick that would set the ground rules for all those to follow and use the killers name to raw some more interest.
Now, I'm well aware this movie was shot dirt cheap, somewhere in the $150,000 range. I'm well aware that this was pretty much the "first." I'm also well aware that countless other movies would go on to blatantly copy this one. Simply put, I don't care. It's terrible. It's poorly paced, the kid in the wheel chair couldn't be more annoying, that freakin' girl won't stop screaming, and the killings are the furthest thing from gruesome I've ever seen. The only pluses are the semi-documentary like film style and the dinner sequence near the finale. It's hardly been worth a 23 year wait for me.
This DVD release doesn't help any either. The video is presented in a supposedly (and I quote) "painstakingly restored widescreen print." If this has been restored at all, it's a small miracle. Colors bleed, nightime sequences can hardly be made out, and grain dominates the print. The sound suffers a fate along the same lines. The new surround mix is hardly immersive as the packaging states. The rear speakers are used all of 5 times throughout the entire running time. The only other option is the original mono track.
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Article comments
1 - Chris Kent
Matt,
I can see why you would have been disappointed by the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is extremely low budget and obsessively irritating at times. But I think all of the reasons you mention for disliking this film is exactly why one should like it. The low-budget quality enhances its realism. Actors were actually suffering on screen due to the poor conditions of the set (100-plus degrees, filmed during a hot Texas summer outside of Austin), etc.....I look at TCM as being one endless nightmare, and a great example of what talented filmmakers can do when forced to be resourceful due to a zero budget. I also see it as being a combination of Let's Scare Jessica to Death (made a few years before) and Deliverance. Unlucky people are isolated, encountering a horrifying circumstance forcing them to literally fight for their lives. It's a nightmare come to life and what we all fear when lost on that lonely dirt road. It is so unrelenting, and eventually unforgettable. It would NOT make my top-10 horror film list of all time, but it is one of the most harrowing horror films ever made. The remake? Well, it just further proves the greatness of the original......
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Matt, i seriously implore you to rethink your stance. The problems you mention within TCM are in many cases superficial, and at other times completely missing the point. The girl screaming is intentionally maddening, adding to the disturbing sound of the film in general. The film is a Vietnam Allegory, the fact that groups of teenagers are wandering to their death without having a clue about why they're doing it or who they're doing it for. The cattle in the slaughter house is an omen of things to come - cattle to the slaughter is how the film sees American involvemnt in Vietnam. The documentary style of the film is incredible, and it's also incredibly funny. As a satire of good ol' fashioned American Family Values, it could hardly be sharper, and outdoes even Psycho in this regard. The film is a masterpiece, and if later films have traded falshy gimmicks and MTV editing for their effect, thats hardly the fault of Hooper. See it as it is - A devestatling acute satire, and ignore the slasher films that have traded on tis infamy ever since.
3 - Chris Kent
Duke,
While we agree on the greatness of TCM, I feel your attempts at including Vietnam allegory misguided. Frankly, every film made since the Vietnam war could have a similar allegory and I think it's just crap. I'm convinced TCM was a mistake in many ways. Everything fell into place, including the right actors, the right budget, the right weather, the right filmmaker creating a fluke of a film that became a classic - the Casablanca of horror films if you will.
If Tobe Hooper has pontificated on Vietnam allegory after the TCM fact, then he is just full of Central Texas cowshit. Kind of like John Carpenter later trying to create an allegory for sexually active women being killed in Halloween long after the film became this huge, surprise hit. The filmmakers of TCM got lucky, but the film has the creative depth of a long, endless nightmare. To say it symbolizes something more (and many horror films do indeed symbolize something more, The Haunting for example) is reading more into the film then it actually deserves.....
4 - Matt Paprocki
If there's something about Vietnam in this movie, whether it be in meaning or right in front of me, I missed it completely. I can assure you that even if I did watch it with that idea in mind, I still would've hated it. It's boring, plain and simple. It's most likely due to the expectations I had since, as I mentioned, I grew up constantly hearing about it. It's not fun, it's hardly amusing, and it's certainly not horrifying. I love B movies to the fullest extent and can appreciate what a filmaker is trying to do even under the most insane circumstances, but I still stand strong on my opinion here.
5 - Chris Kent
Matt,
I felt the same way about The Exorcist, and after watching it for the first time, was a bit disappointed. After repeated viewings, I began to realize it was one of the 2-3 best horror films of all time. Now I don't think TCM ranks that high, but after repeated viewings, I began to appreciate it for what it was. I think what we imagine and what we actually see are two different things.......
6 - Debbo
It's an indisputable fact that all texts are a product of their context and I think that viewing TCM as an allegory to the Vietnam War is perfectly valid. Post-Vietnam thinking involved a lot of questioning of the purpose of death and the whole notion of senseless killing would have been fresh in the audience's mind while watching this film. Sure, it may not have been expressing a political statement like "hey, death sucks let's get out of this war" but it was surely an issue that was relevant to its particular audience.
It's difficult to determine what makes a good horror film. However my belief is that this film has the ability to evoke strong emotions in its audience whether it be fear, disgust or a connection to the Vietnam war and that is what has made this film so effective and topical today.
7 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Debbo,
Please spare us the social commentary and analyses - unless you can remember how much the word "anal" features in "analysis". Vietnam had absolutely nothing to do with this sick flick.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a nasty film about events that sorta took place in Wisconsin, but were sent south to Texas for the sake of keeping the lawyers off the screenwriters' butts. It was sick and gross. But from it I learned an important lesson about how people can grow used to "sick and gross" as an everyday occurrence.
I was a movie usher about the time this film came out, and had to watch it while checking to make sure that customers weren't abusing the property of the cinema theatre by putting their legs up on the chairs and such.
Every time the theatre had nothing else to play (which was pretty often), they hauled this piece of shit out of the can for screening. I took my lunch break in the middle of the film.
Burger King was still a real new experience in mid-town Manhattan in those days and the lines were really long. Ten cashiers were really not enough, and neither were the three or four broilers pumping out meat for sandwiches. So I spent most of my break on line waiting for some kid to take my whopper or double hamburger order.
I got back to the theatre, lunch still in the bag, hungry - and there was this toothless piece of crap shoving his shovel handle into a girl caught in a bag in his truck on screen.
So I just sat down in the back to eat dinner - I was hungry - while they dismembered the girl for dinner at their house of horrors in
WisconsinTexas....8 - Craig
I couldn't agree more with Matt's comments. I first saw TCM when I was 16, about 20 years ago now. After hearing all the usual "it's the goriest thing i've ever seen" and "it'll give you nightmares" blather, I hadn't been more disappointed in a horror film. And I still haven't. I watched it again recently hoping my opinion might have changed after all these years but sadly not. It's poorly acted, poorly edited, the film quality is terrible and if this film is an assault on any of your senses it's your hearing. There are dozens of 70's horror films that are far better than this. I've seen a lot of horror films in my life, but none much worse than this. If this is Tobe Hooper's "greatest" movie, it's no wonder his career died not 10 years later.