‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ Review: 50 Years On, The Horror Trailblazer Still Cuts Deep (2024)

How can a lifelong horror fan have never seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? It's paradoxical, I know — especially since I count John Carpenter's Halloween and Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street among my all-time favorite (and most formative) movies. Released four years before the former and a decade before the latter, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is often credited as fathering everything we associate with the slasher sub-genre. At the least, director Tobe Hooper's controversial venture helped popularize the style, tropes, and concept (beautiful teens meeting gruesome ends at the hands of hulking serial killers) enough for later imitators to saturate the market.

With Texas Chain Saw celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, I decided there wasn't a more fitting time to correct my glaring knowledge gap than now. Naturally, I had groundwork going in: I was spoiled for the big twist, I'd seen key clips, and its reputation as one of the most disturbing things ever made (despite showing minimal gore) preceded it. But could this slice of pop culture history not only measure up to the considerable hype but impress me after I've spent three decades loving its descendants? The answer is an absolute yes.

What Is 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' About?

For anyone who needs a refresher, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre follows five teenagers — Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), her boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger), and their friends Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn) — as they road trip their way through the Newt, Texas area. Anonymous locals have been robbing graves (sometimes fusing different skeletons piecemeal style), and Sally and Franklin want to check the condition of their grandfather's gravesite.

Afterward, the teens pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) whose erratic behavior makes them uneasy — especially when he slashes Franklin's arm open with a straight razor and wipes a symbol onto the van with his own blood. Shaken but dismissing the hitchhiker as no threat, the group relaxes at one of the Hardestys' older, empty homes. Unbeknownst to the teens, a nearby property happens to house a serial killer family. Sooner than later, Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a man wearing a mask made out of human skin and wielding a chainsaw as his weapon of choice, picks off the defenseless friends one by one.

'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' Builds Tension Through Mood

True to its independent roots, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a mood piece through and through, one that unfolds with ice-down-the-spine dread and an experimental style more akin to a modern A24 horror than Halloween's Hitchcockian suspense. Hooper immediately sets a disorienting tone by opening with a black screen interrupted by periodic shots of decaying corpses illuminated by a camera flash. The credits' perplexing imagery plays over a news report about local crimes; the radio announcer's voice clashes with Hooper's simple, hostile score in a cacophony of noise. Once the blaring music has made its point, Hooper only deploys his score as an ambiance enhancer, letting most scenes unfold in a naturalistic silence that's unsettling for its hollowness.

His minimal composing was all part of the plan: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was initially marketed as based on true events. (Serial killer Ed Gein did partially inspire Leatherface, but everything else is fictional.) Daniel Pearl's cinematography creates an authentic home video feel by varying between wobbly handheld shots, and steady takes that let both the characters' dialogue and Leatherface's violence stretch without giving audiences the relief of cutting to a different shot. The film's grainy cast and low saturation suggest an amateur project shot in someone's backyard.

In a twist on traditional film language, Pearl often positions his camera low to the ground and angled up. This framing usually makes characters feel imposing; applying it to the victims has the opposite effect, turning them into vulnerable figures swallowed by their surroundings — not to mention upsetting our equilibrium as viewers. Combined with the barren Texas fields, empty highways, and abandoned buildings overrun by nature, it's a familiar but distinctly apocalyptic landscape.

'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' Swaps Out Gore for Psychological Violence

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre runs for a surprisingly trim 83 minutes. Once it wraps up its establishing act, the violence occurs as succinctly as a row of knocked-over dominoes. Leatherface's first kill qualifies as a jump scare, but it happens as unceremoniously as a professional butcher massacring cattle — which is fitting, given the script's earlier foreshadowing about meat production and humane versus inhumane animal slaughter.

Even knowing that the film's R-rating isn't because of high gore, there's even less blood and guts than I expected. Instead, Texas Chain Saw truly thrives on the power of suggestion. Leatherface's dispassionate approach to murder doesn't need explicit carnage to be chilling, nor do his victims' deaths. He stabs one teenager onto a meat hook, but the camera slowly zooming into her petrified face as she hangs off the hook and screams her lungs raw does the psychologically violent heavy lifting. It's enough just to know that a strange masked killer is hiding behind an open door or to hear a roaring chainsaw as Leatherface pursues his fleeing prey.

Once Sally is the only character left standing (that's not really a spoiler if you're familiar with slasher mechanics), I felt like I was watching a nightmare while still conscious. After the slow-moving likes of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, it's startling to see Leatherface darting around in a shrieking frenzy. But his chasing Sally through the forest isn't nearly as frightening as how long the act takes. Sally doesn't so much evade and defeat her captors like other Final Girls as she does weather seemingly endless emotional — not physical — torture. Hooper fixates on her terror long enough that the tension becomes intentionally exhausting; who needs gore when her bloodshot eyes consume the entire frame? Once Sally does escape, her screaming laughter blurs the lines between triumph and tragedy. Even though we exhale a relieved breath when the credits roll, in this context, her survival barely feels like a win.

'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' Brings Lasting Scares

One of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's only downsides is its characters. Horror villains become entertainment icons because they're recurring figures taking out disposable bodies. Still, this group of teenage victims are flimsier than usual. The script does afford enough brief glimpses of interpersonal conflict that they aren't cardboard cut-outs. However, being a mere step above cardboard makes caring about anyone's fate difficult. With no one to root for until the final act, this movie has no way forward except to sustain a mood. The fact it succeeds is a testament to the entire production.

The story also preys upon the innate fear of being at the mercy of random strangers. As a microcosm, it's an antiquated view of rural American life (speaking from lived experience) that reduces the less financially fortunate into sadistic, repulsive aberrations. Nonetheless, the overall concept remains thoroughly legitimate and pervasively disturbing in its simplicity. Do we truly know our neighbors? What if the hitchhiker you helped was a portent of things to come? And how does the serial killer version of a nuclear family even work? (Here, it's with surprise bouts of twisted domestic humor.)

Although I was impressed by its craft, watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in the moment didn't take my breath away. But when I lay in bed that night, in the stillness and the dark, I couldn't shake the grimy feeling it left me with — like a viscous layer clouding my thoughts. I wasn't frightened about people cannibalizing me; I was upended by the barrage of sensory overload. Even if the scares aren't new, their wretched aftermath lingers — and for a nearly perfect masterpiece like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, that's a compliment.

910

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a haunting and unflinching horror masterpiece worthy of its critical and cultural acclaim.

Pros

• The documentary-style camerawork, minimal score, and production design create a haunting and realistic mood.
• The film leaves a lasting impression by highlighting atmosphere instead of explicit gore.
• Marilyn Burns as Sally and Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface deliver uniquely intense performances.

Cons

• Even though the teenage victims show flashes of personality, their characterizations are weaker and less compelling than other horror films of the same era.
• The Sawyer family, while entertaining and frightening, play into outdated stereotypes about rural American life.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Amazon Prime