It's that angle that makes this film so difficult to watch. You're watching a group of kids be dehumanized by sub-humans. If that makes it sound unpleasant, then I'm failing, because it's so far beyond that. Watching it today--and I've watched this movie a lot--I was still stunned by how barbarically savage and disgusting it is. As many critics have noted, what disturbs us isn't gore, since there's very little actual gore on display. Rather, it's the unremitting cruelty of it, a cruelty devoid of style, slickness, and attractiveness. The movie looks and feels like a snuff film, or perhaps an animal-rights activist's hidden-camera footage of a slaughterhouse, seen on a copy of a copy of a copy. It begins with grainy, underexposed flashes of a dead body, segues into a long, lingering shot on a monument made of corpses to a soundtrack of news-report atrocities. Then you're treated to the constant spiteful whining of the lonely, unlikeable crippled brother; the addle-brained self-abuse of the greasy-haired, facially disfigured hitchhiker; and from there, total madness that does not let up until the final frame. In there somewhere--you'll want to forget exactly where--is the debut of the sledge, Pam's discovery of the bone room and subsequent placement for later disposal, Sally's discovery of Grandpa and Grandma, the cook's sadistic and cackling use of his broomstick, Grandpa's snack, and of course the dinner sequence, possibly the most excruciatingly awful scene I've ever seen. It's just awfulness from beginning to end. That it ends with laughter and dancing is the cruelest part of all.
If you insist, I'll come up with a film to compare this one to: John Boorman's Deliverance. They're both fables of a sick frontier, one that was never the heroic homestead of free men it was made out to be. Everything's twisted inward and collapsed on itself: the cars are rusted and stand where they stopped, the children are inbred and idiot, the adults are depraved and pointlessly murderous, modernity passed through only to destroy the small remaining possiblity of normal life, graves are upended and emptied, and nature is mute and hostile. Back in school I wrote a paper comparing the two films, and even though I had the idea to begin with I was amazed how similar they really are. You can download the essay here. Next to my senior essay, it's the academic writing I'm most proud of--it's concrete close-reading where this little post is kind of vague in an attempt to capture the ineffable, blah blah blah. You're welcome to view these two brilliant horror films as a double feature, if you think you stand a chance of stomaching them. It's difficult even for me.
Article comments
1 - Toby
I'm glad to see this film is getting the respect it deserves. It truly improves with each viewing. To watch it now is to despair at how poorly made films are today. The contrast was made clear to me when the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was rereleased maybe four years ago in the U.K.. Reading the reviews of film critics at the time, it was evident that many, now living on a diet of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, had forgotten the viciousness and brutality of this film, had forgotten what true horror was. But to classify the TCM simply as a horror film is to do it a disservice, in the same way as labelling Apocalypse Now as merely a war film.