Product: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original Uncut) [Region 2] (1974)
Rating: 4.0
Literally A Cutting-Edge Horror Movie
Despite its reputation for being an exploitational film with severed body parts and gallons of blood, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is the horror classic that it is because it in fact leaves everything up to the viewer's vivid imagination. It just seems a great deal gorier than it really is.Without a doubt, however, it is an intense, grim, claustrophobic, and darkly comic shocker in which unwitting teenagers stuck in the Texas hinterland go into a deserted house looking for gasoline to put in their van. In that house, however, there is a notorious family of ghoulish cannibals, including the thoroughly deranged Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), whose weapon of choice is not a hatchet or a knife, but a loud and whirring McCulloch chainsaw. Of the teens, only Sally (Marilyn Burns) will survive her horrific ordeal, and even then not with much of her sanity left.Based on the Ed Geinn story that also provided the inspiration for Hitchcock's PSYCHO, and perhaps even THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is quite obviously a low-budget outing, made for something less than $300,000. But what he lacks in fiscal funding, director Tobe Hooper, who later went on to helm the 1982 thriller POLTERGEIST, more than makes up in sheer energy and almost unbearable, nightmarish suspense and tension. Often classified as a "meat movie" along the lines of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, CHAINSAW actually seems like a much more ghoulish version of the equally brilliant 1972 shocker DELIVERANCE. Hooper's vivid camera work and the use of plastic props in place of severed arms and blood gives CHAINSAW its weird and throughly unsettling feel. The only really gory scene in this whole film involves Leatherface attaching one of the dead teens to a meathook. And except for the obvious amateurish acting of the teens, CHAINSAW distinguishes itself from most of the low budget horrors to come in its wake, including the much-debated 1999 flick THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.A "monstrous" hit when originally released in October 1974, thanks to all the attendant controversy it spawned, CHAINSAW is one of the most intense horror films around. The 'R' rating is there for a reason; the film is extremely disturbing and has explicit adult themes, so viewer discretion is strongly advised. But for those willing to take the chance, CHAINSAW is still literally a "cutting edge" horror classic.