Product: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original Uncut) [Region 2] (1974)
Rating: 5.0
ol' grandpa's the best.....it won't hurt a bit!
Before horror filmmakers felt the need to poke fun atthemselves and highlight beautiful young stars rather than actualterror, this film does what horror films have long since forgotten how to do: scare the living hell out of you. Before there was a Blair Witch Project, there was a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And similarities between the two are fairly numerous: the documentary style (although Witch went a lot further with this concept), the shunning of explicit gore in order to overdrive the imagination, and so forth. One of the things I particularly like about this film is that it's almost two movies in one. The first half focuses on the victims, which is something this film's sequels forgot to do. If you want to effectively scare people, you have to allow them to muster sympathy for those about to die.him die.)But once Leatherface comes roaring out of the woods with his weapon of choice (actually, despite the title only one person in this film is killed by a chainsaw) the film takes a sharp turn and drags us kicking and screaming into the world of the villains. This is where the film's strength lies: in the fact that the family isn't actually all together until the last twenty minutes or so. Therefore we haven't been given ample time to identify with them or laugh at them, and so we are just as mortified at the dinner scene as poor Sally Hardesty. Truly one of the greatest horror films ever created. However as far as the sequels go, here's a brief rundown: TCM2 is worthwhile for two reasons only; Tom Savini's gut-wrenching effects and the almost-unbearably over the top performance of Dennis Hopper ("TEAR IT ALL DOWN! "). If you can find an uncut version of TCM3 I'd say give it a shot. Otherwise don't bother (unless you'd like to see an early performance from Psycho's Viggo Mortensen). And I urge everyone on the planet to avoid Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation at all costs. There is nothing even remotely worthwhile about this film and will leave you nauseous for the rest of your life.