The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974
For a movie with very little blood in it, it’s pretty brutal. And I’m not just talking about the behind the scene horror’s going on. What we get on screen is brutal enough. Who would have thought a movie made in 1974 could have such a long lasting effect on horror.
PLOT
Five friends go on a road trip to visit the grandfather’s grave of one of their friends. They find what appears to be a deserted house. Instead they find something so horrifying.
Photo Credit: Vortex
Released: Oct 11, 1974
Runtime: 83 mins
Director: Tobe Hooper
Writer: Kim Henkel, Tobe Hooper
Actors: Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danziger
MY THOUGHTS
We only get 5 kills, and only 1 is a chainsaw kill! The kills are primarily sledgehammers to head to the head. Kirk’s death is very iconic. He walks in and Leatherface hits him in the head and he convulses on the floor. Also add in Pam’s death with her put on the hook and then thrown in the freezer. Even with the chainsaw kill, there’s not a lot of blood at all in this movie. You would think the kills would be bloody but no.
Oh the acting. Let's start with Marilyn Burns, our original Final Girl. And in this case a scream queen as well. Man can that woman scream! I mean, she was constantly screaming at the end for a good ten minutes or more. I think she played Sally really well. I felt her annoyance with her brother, but I also got annoyed with her for not listening to common sense. She looks like she went through hell and survived. And knowing all the crap behind the scenes, makes that final scene when she is laughing and crying even more scary.
This was Gunnar Hanson’s first foray into horror. I think he did a great job as Leatherface. Even though he doesn’t speak a word he is frightening.
Five friends, two who are brother and sister, travel to a small town to their grandfather’s grave. Running out of gas, they stop at their old family home. One couple goes off to explore and see a house that possibly has gas. Instead, they find gruesome deaths. Another friend leaves and only the brother and sister are left. He wants to leave but she refuses to leave her friends. So they go off to find them and they meet up with Leatherface.
It’s become well known just how bad the conditions were while filming this movie. I highly recommend watching the various documentaries on it. It was horrible for the cast and crew, between the heat (over 100 degrees most days) and Tobe Hooper’s strict and severe shooting style. For me, knowing all of this, makes the movie even more horrifying.
If you can’t tell, I do like this movie. I would venture to say in my top 10, maybe even top 5 horror movies of all time. Even though there’s not much blood or gore, the movie is tense and scary. Definitely watch this if you haven’t already.
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Did you know…:
According to John Larroquette, his payment for doing the opening narration was a marijuana joint.
The film's original distributor was Bryanston Distribution Company, which turned out to be a Mafia front operated by Louis Peraino ("Butchie"), who used the movie to launder profits he made from Deep Throat (1972). In return, the production received only enough money to reimburse the investors and pay the cast and crew $405 apiece. The producers eventually discovered that Peraino had lied to them about the film's profits. After he was arrested on obscenity charges when his role in "Deep Throat" was revealed, the cast and crew filed suit against him and were awarded $25,000 each. New Line Cinema, which obtained the rights to the film from the now-bankrupt Bryanston, paid off the cast and crew as part of the purchase agreement.
Due to the low budget, Gunnar Hansen had only one shirt to wear as Leatherface. The shirt had been dyed, so it could not be washed. Hansen had to wear it for four straight weeks of filming in the hot and humid Texas summer. By the end of the shoot, no one wanted to stand near Hansen or sit next to him during breaks to eat lunch because his clothing smelled so bad.
Gunnar Hansen wore three-inch heels so that he was taller than the rest of the cast, but it meant that he had to duck to get through the doorways in the slaughterhouse.
His role as Leatherface marked the first and only time that Gunnar Hansen shaved off his beard. He never shaved it again.
Marilyn Burns, whose character was chased by Leatherface through the undergrowth, actually cut herself on the branches quite badly, so a lot of the blood on her body and clothes is real.
When it was first released, the film was so terrifying that people actually walked out on sneak previews for it.
According to Edwin Neal (Nubbins/Hitchhiker), Texas State Troopers actually shook his hand and thanked him for causing crime to drop 18%. Apparently the message audiences took away from the movie was "Don't pick up hitchhikers".
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was on the list of Video Nasties.
The worst part of all with the climactic dinner scene was the 110 degree Texas heat, plus the filming lights meant all the food on the table quickly rotted, and the room's poor ventilation made the reek even worse, raising it to genuinely health-threatening levels.
Edwin Neal, who played the Hitchhiker, said that making the film was more miserable than his service in Vietnam and said that he might kill director Tobe Hooper if he ever saw him again.
Have you seen the other The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movies? Check out my other reviews here: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Franchise.
Let’s get into the rankings:
Kills/Blood/Gore: 4/5
Scare factor: 4/5
Enjoyment factor: 5/5
My Rank: 4.3/5
IMDB: 7.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes: critics: 8.9/10 audience: 8.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.9/5
