Product: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original Uncut) [Region 2] (1974)
Rating: 4.0
not hooper's best, that's BS, but a must see and scary
Let's clear something up. TCM is not Hooper's best movie. He is an amazingly talented horror director, but a lot of this is just shock value and dated gore. It has a certain sickening atmosphere and something hard to name about it that both repulss and yet attracts in a bizarre way while preventing it from being another stupid slasher movie, but I think "Salem's Lot" is still Hooper's best. It has substance, suspense, tension like a demon from hell, and pays off for the viewer's patience. TCM, on the other hand, is too obvious and what we see from the beginning is what we get till the end. it is without doubt a fascinating, sickening, weird study of madness and maybe even a philosophical tale about man's illusions of superiority to the animalistic and the primal when the reality is that his primitive side is quite real and perhaps predominating (i may be reading too much into it, but i don't think so). and it IS a horror classic and a must own, but the popular misconception of it being the landmark of hooper's career is simply bogus.