Product: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Original Uncut) [Region 2] (1974)
Rating: 4.0
A trip into insanity.
This gritty little movie is truly the landmark of 70s horror everybody says it is. Working with a next to no budget, director Tobe Hooper, co-writer Kim Henkel, and photographer Daniel Pearl manage to capture on film true insanity at its most blood curdling. Sally Hardesty, her invalid brother Franklin, and a group friends travel to the small town of Newt, Texas to see if a relative's grave was the victim of a desecration (some one had dug up and played with the bodies - ala Ed Gein). Low on gas, they stop at a small filling station, which is out of gas. The group decide to wait at the ruins of an old family home...but the neighbors are hiding a horrifying secret and one by one Sally's friends discover and fall victim to it, until only Sally remains. Will she survive, and what will be left of her? Considering what little they had to work with, the movie is a technical marvel. One that still packs a punch today...despite being sequelized and ripped off almost as many times as John Carpenter's Halloween has been. While the movie is not for everybody (and I'm in a very small minority that thinks the first sequel is in some ways better than this), I do think that it is an essential for genre fans. Highly recommended.