There have been many gratuitously cruel movies, of course--slick little productions where the girls get blood on their tits and the men behind the camera gaze greedily at the bottom line. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a necessarily cruel movie, which is a very different animal indeed. I think there's a value in seeing the worst, the absolute worst, and that's what Hooper shows us--as clearly and as unrelentingly as if his life depended on it. There's no exit, no escape hatch, no levity or joy or beauty in this world at all. It's a total vision; indeed, a totalitarian vision. Watching this film is like being inocculated against some nightmare virus. It really is like a car crash; the closing credits may be an airbag, but you'll never forget what you've been through.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
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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.