Results

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974): Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, and Gunnar Hansen. Directed by Tobe Hooper, Screenplay by Kim Henke and Tobe Hooper.

Like “Night of the Living Dead”, the fact that it was made on a shoestring budget (with an Eclair NPR 16mm news camera) adds to what makes this film one of the best horror flicks ever made. When I first heard that Michael Bay was producing a remake of “Texas Chain Saw Massacre”, I knew that this was one element that would definitely be lacking. When I was a kid, and first saw this film as one of the first home video titles released, I knew that it was a low budget film and knew that it had the reputation of being one of the scariest films ever made. The thing about mainstream films is that you know they’re going to draw the line somewhere and not cross over into your zone of discomfort because - even though studios accepted the success of films like “The Exorcist” and “Jaws” - you don’t want to upset the audience. Independent low budget films like the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (and several others that I will mention in these 31 posts) don’t come with that unspoken guarantee. So, as a young horror fan, watching the original late one night, and seeing the crazed hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) pull one frightening thing after another out of his bag of tricks during the opening, I was on the edge of my seat.

What director Tobe Hooper understood, like George A. Romero before him, that the most frightening thing in the world wasn’t monsters from outer space, but man himself, in very familiar settings. After the hitchhiker incident, Hooper draws out the next banal section of the film with relish, as long as he can, before launching into one of the longest stretches of sustained horror in the history of film, most of which you will be unable to erase from your brain once you see it.

Positioning itself as a docu-drama from the start is another terrific horror film trick that was resurrected in 1999’s “Blair Witch Project”, but really pales in comparison. Hooper takes the docu-drama as a starting point and stretches the horror further into the realm of madness, that few films (apart from some of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ gore efforts) had even hinted at up to this point.

Believe it or not, having the notorious reputation it has, Hooper originally intended the film to have a PG rating to reach a wider audience, by leaving a lot of the blood and brutality off-screen. However, the final result, with the viewer using their imagination, is far worse than it would have been to show everything. Despite several cuts of the film, Hooper was unable to get away with anything lower than an R rating, with the film actually being banned outright in several countries (the UK and Australia notably).

Get it at Amazon.com:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2-Disc Ultimate Edition)

Related posts:

1. “Dawn of the Dead” (1978)
   What may go down in history as the first film to be originally based on a shopping mall, this first...
2. “The Shining”
   Is there a human being on the face of the planet who hasn't seen or at least heard of "The...
3. NoOoOooooo!!
   The day will come when I no longer have to embarrass myself constantly bitching and complaining about remakes, but that...
4. “Halloween” (1978)
   Of the month's worth of posts in 31 Days of Horror, just over half of the films mentioned have either...