feeding your family comes first

August 14, 2024 4:57 AM

"If any -ology helps us understand these people, it’s sociology: assembly-line slaughter makes the underclasses deranged; technology makes them irrelevant; unemployment makes them hungry. Scarcity underlies almost everything the characters do, whether they’re killers or not—like that other stagflation classic, 'Mad Max,' this is a story about precious fuel and the lengths some people will go to get it." Jackson Arn, on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in The New Yorker.
posted by mittens (13 comments total)

This is so extremely my shit. Thank you very much.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:44 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

Cormac McCarthy and Mad Max are probably the two best reference points; there is a cruel poetry to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that is akin to both. Occasionally someone will dismiss Hooper has a guy who lucked into making a better movie than he expected, as though the planets had simply aligned right and he just happened to be there with a camera. I doubt that a lot, as his later films tend to be good to excellent (with the occasional misstep you'll find in the filmography of any director for hire), and more to the point because I just can't believe this could happen by accident. My gut tells me a strong intelligence guided this film, but one modest enough to get out of the way of what transpired naturally.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:50 AM on August 14 [9 favorites]

There was a nice list making the rounds recently about horror movies set in broad daylight, and not for nothing a lot of them were in the 70s.

We expect nasties and ghoulies and the long-leggedy beasties to come creeping neafariously out of the shadows. That is what night is for in most horror movies anyway, but when the shit hits the fan when the sun is out? It really changes the safety levels. You're supposed to be safe when it's daylight and classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remind you that that is not always the case.
posted by Kitteh at 6:15 AM on August 14 [6 favorites]

Much like DOT this is also extremely my shit, great find and post.

I love this film with all my bloody organ of a heart. I had the pleasure of seeing it projected at a BBFC screening. Even though I'd seen the film probably a dozen times at that point, seeing it projected was an experience. This film creates such a sense of texture and tactile feel beyond the visual and audio. Watching Mad Max you can smell the gasoline, while here you can feel the oppressive heat.

Highlighting the line "Everything means something, I guess" is such a perfect observation that I'd not picked up on before. It's a either a wry meta nod to anyone questioning the meaning of the film itself and/or an ironic statement of the meaninglessness of it all.
posted by slimepuppy at 6:55 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

My favorite moment in the film is when Leatherface goes into the parlor and sits with his head in his hands, apparently full of anxiety over the problems caused by his family and these dumb kids who keep forcing their way into his space. Is a very economical, very human moment.

On the other hand, I liked the recent remake well enough (another good, if less nuanced, portrayal of Leatherface), which might make you doubt anything I have to say.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:30 AM on August 14 [3 favorites]

one of the cannibals takes care to switch off all the lights in his store—power bills being enough to “drive a man outta business”

Ah, what a 1970s moment!
posted by doctornemo at 7:35 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

Good catch, mittens. This is such a powerful, well done film.

For me, one of the scariest moments is when Leatherface simply, brutally hauls a victim onto a hook. It's shot at a distance, making the viewer have to work to see it - then a door slams. A glimpse into a hell.
posted by doctornemo at 7:36 AM on August 14 [4 favorites]

I've seen in once, a while ago, at a party, and that scene is all I remember.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:37 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

The 2 things that struck me when I first watched TCM, which I always thought were the film's great strengths, was the lack of back story and its sound design. The absence of that back story adds to weirdness, banality and maybe even some kind of primordialness. You never really understand what's going on - it is unsettling. I think the movie sounds like few other films and it is what gets me everytime.

Tobe Hooper, like George Romero, always struck me as being fairly politically aware or, at least, engaged with the psychological horror of being alive. In their best works both Romero and Hopper use genre to explore and comment on the divisons in their society and I think that helps their best works to transcend their genre ghetto. It is both funny and telling that Stanley Kubrick was a "super fan" (which was something I didn't know).
posted by Ashwagandha at 9:00 AM on August 14 [3 favorites]

Agreed on the sound design, Ashwagandha. So crucial for horror film.
posted by doctornemo at 9:41 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

I also like the way that Franklin, initially presented as a miserable ass, gets a few scenes that show why he’s as angry as he is — the way the group dragged him on a trip he didn’t want to take, repeatedly strand him places, show no regard for his mobility issues, and ignore his sensible conclusion that flight is their only option.

He does get the distinction of being the only confirmed chainsaw death, but I suspect Franklin would have preferred something nicer.

posted by GenjiandProust at 10:01 AM on August 14 [2 favorites]

I heard somewhere that the sound of the chickens in their coops was stolen from the soundtrack of The Exorcist, where it was used for Regan's bed springs. But I'm not sure whether that's something Hooper said at some point, or if it's urban legend. (I don't know how he would easily have obtained the sound in 1974 -- it's not like he would have had The Exorcist streaming on Max at home, or even on videocassette -- but if it was a commonly found sound effect in a lot of movies, I guess it could've been possible.)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:07 AM on August 14

A decade after Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper directed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part Two (1986), which was a very different horror movie. The production is slicker, the approach is more like Grand Guignol dark humour, and Dennis Hopper appears and does some scenery sawing. At the time I thought it was under-rated and kinda funny in an ironic disturbing way, partly because it wasn't what I was expecting. Not for the squeamish, of course.

After that, Hooper no longer contributed to subsequent TCM franchise projects, which turned into generic extruded slasher product.
posted by ovvl at 11:35 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]