As time goes on, movies are going to end up looking better and better. It's an inevitable side-effect of technological progress and, while such progress may sound like an objectively positive thing, I can't help but feel that some things may be lost as our films become cleaner, brighter, and all-around better looking. Take for example one of the granddaddies of the slasher genre, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Inspired loosely by the real-life story of serial killer Ed Gein, the story follows a van full of twenty-somethings as they drive across Texas to visit a family grave. There have been mysterious reports of vandalism and grave-robbing, so Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her crippled brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), and three of their friends (Allen Danzinger, William Vail, and Teri McMinn) decide to take the ride to investigate the scene and make sure their grandfather is still in the family plot. After a tense encounter with a disturbed hitchhiker, the group decides to visit the old Hardesty family homestead; they poke around and trespass like the meddling kids they are, attracting the attention of a disturbed family of cannibals. As one might expect from a classic slasher flick, the kids are picked off one by one until the lone survivor is left to make a tense and daring escape.
The first thing that struck me about this movie is the overall look of it. Visual style is a tremendous aspect of what makes this movie work so well; it was made on a budget of only $300,000 (just under $1.5 million by today's standards), utilizing relatively unknown actors who were local to the area in which it was shot. There's not a lot of spectacular special effects or gore, the music is mostly ambient, and everything from the props to the film itself has this grainy, gritty feel to it. It's a very low-key kind of horror movie (compared to more bombastic fare that would follow, your Nightmare on Elm Street or your Friday the 13th), and that really helps to establish a strong sense of tone and atmosphere. Much like Alien, this is a horror film that succeeds mostly because of how it is able to immerse the viewer in the events that are playing out on screen. However, unlike Alien, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so scary because it feels like a story you could very well see on the news tonight. This movie is for roadtrips what Jaws was to summertime trips to the beach.
This is also due (in no small part) to the wonderful performances of Gunnar Hansen, Jim Siedow, and Edwin Neal as Leatherface, Old Man, and Hitchhiker. These aren't your usual scenery-chewing loonies you often see in the psycho-hillbilly genre; they come off like actual disturbed individuals, taking sadistic glee in the atrocities they commit. They manage to display the requisite amount of crazed energy you might expect, but they stay just reserved enough to come off as starkly believable. It's this delicate bit of nuance and reservation that makes the whole thing that much more real; they remain a lot more coherent and "in control" than the usual on-screen psychopath, and that extra touch makes their actions all the more disquieting.
By the same token, the film comes off very much like a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked industrial growth. As Hitchhiker explains, new advances in technology led to large-scale layoffs at the local slaughterhouse. As a result, the lower, working class is forced to (literally and figuratively) eat each other to survive; industry has abandoned them and now they are forced to survive by doing the only thing they know how to do. Once our gang of youthful yuppies trespass on the family's property, their fate is sealed. The oppressed become oppressors in their own right, reducing those whom they deem more fortunate to nothing more than meat in a similar (albeit more visceral) way that they themselves were taken advantage of by big business. Horror films have a wonderful way of discussing serious issues of manmade society and human nature by way of copious bloodshed and horrendous acts of violence, and that is specifically why I adore this genre the way I do.
Despite the grainy look of the film and the thoroughly 70's wardrobe of the cast, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is very much a timeless classic of the horror genre. It's a shining example of how restrictions and reservations can help elevate a film to unseen heights. A slasher film in which the main killer uses a chainsaw doesn't exactly come off like the most low-key concept, but it's this subversion of audience expectations that helps sell the unsettling realism that makes this movie work. Even the brilliant, climactic chase doesn't play out as you'd expect; everyone's limping along, it's framed in a long shot, and yet you're able to cut the tension in the air with a steak knife. It's a horror film that isn't afraid to slow down and linger on itself, rather than attempting to create a synthetically scary situation. It simply lays its cards on the table and invites you to be terrified, and that works surprisingly well.
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