The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Plot synopsis:
The film opens on the date of August 18, 1973 by revealing that a cemetery in rural Texas has been vandalized; several gravesites have been desecrated, the bodies dug up and arranged into bizarre "sculptures". Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her invalid, wheelchair-bound brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), are concerned that their grandfather's grave may have been vandalized, so they travel to the site with three of their friends, Sally's boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger), her best friend Pam (Teri McMinn), and Pam's boyfriend Kirk (William Vail). When they discover that the grave is intact, they decide to visit the old family homestead which is now abandoned.Along the way, they pass a slaughterhouse and Franklin describes how cattle used to be killed with a sledgehammer, and now they use an air gun. Shortly afterwards, they pick up a skinny, strange-looking hitch hiker (Edwin Neal) who exhibits bizarre behavior. After inviting the group back to his house for dinner, an invitation they all decline, the hitchhiker takes a photo of Franklin with an instant polarid camara, and demands a two-dollar payment for it. When Franklin refuses, the man angrily crumples the photo, sets it on fire, and cuts his own hand with Franklin's pocket knife. The guys manage to throw him out of the van, but not before he cuts Franklin with the knife, too. Before they can drive away, he smears blood on their van.Running low on fuel, they stop at a rural Gulf filling station, only to have the strange-looking old man who runs it (Jim Siedow) tell them that the tanks are empty and that he's waiting for the gas tanker to show up. When the old man learns that their destination is the old Hardesty home, he advises the young people against going there by saying that the people who live around that area are not receptive to strangers. They buy some barbeque sandwiches from the old man and depart for the family home which they finaly arrive a short while later.While Sally and Pam go off to look through the abandoned house, Franklin finds it hard to get around the old place due to his wheelchair, and he is frustrated by the fun that the two couples seem to be having.Franklin gives Pam and Kirk directions to an old swimming hole that used to be nearby, but they find it completely dried up. Kirk hears the sound of a gas generator nearby and gets the idea to find out where it is and barter for some gasoline. Following the sound, they discover a large farm house surrounded by numerous abandonded vehicles, partially hidden by a large tarp. Kirk finds a human tooth on the front porch and frightens Pam with it. He gets no answer to a knock at the door, and he is lured inside by strange animal sounds. He goes into the house and in the space of a few moments, an enormous heavyset man in a weird mask (Gunnar Hansen) appears and murders him with a blow to the head via sledgehammer. The man, known as "Leatherface" due to his mask made out of a human face, drags the body into a back room.Pam becomes restless when Kirk does not return, and she goes into the house to look for him. She stumbles into a room that is filled with human and animal bones. A live chicken dangles in a small bird cage. Weird sculptures made out of human skulls hang from the ceiling. Furniture is adorned with human bones and skulls. The floor is covered with bits of bones and feathers. Pam begins to retch and starts screaming, when Leatherface appears and lunges for her. She runs out onto the porch but he catches her, carrying her kicking and screaming back into the house, where he savagely hangs her on a meat hook through her back. While she hangs there, she can see Leatherface dismembering the dead body of Kirk with a chainsaw.Back at the Hardesty house, Sally and the others start to wonder why Pam and Kirk have not returned. As the sun begins to set, Jerry sets out in the general direction and also comes upon the house after he is lured to the area by the sound of the house's gas generator. He is alerted by the blanket that Kirk left hanging on the front porch, and he goes into the house. After Jerry walks into the kitchen, he discovers Pam locked inside a large freezer, still alive but convulsing and near death. She lunges out of the freezer just as Leatherface appears and kills Jerry with the sledgehammer. He forces Pam's body back into the freezer and locks it again. Leatherface is clearly distraught, apparently upset because strangers keep coming to his house.At nightfall, Sally and Franklin are forced to go after Jerry when he does not return; Jerry took the keys to the van with him when he left. Franklin refuses to wait at the van and insists that Sally push his wheelchair along the unpaved path through the woods. Before they get to the house, they are attacked by Leatherface, who murders Franklin by ramming him in the chest with a chainsaw. Sally flees in terror with Leatherface directly behind her. She gets cut on the thorny brush as she runs, eventually reaching the house; she is unaware that the house belongs to her pursuer. Sally runs upstairs as Leatherface saws through the front door to get at her. In an upstairs bedroom, she finds two dessicated figures, an old man and old woman. The woman is long dead, but the old man is still barely alive, hideously withered. Leatherface corners her on the second floor, so she leaps out a window and runs from the house again with him right behind her.Sally reaches the gas station and Leatherface disappears. The old man says he's going to take Sally to get help, and while he's gone Sally notices the smoke pit where the barbeque is made. She stares at it in fascination. The old man returns and suddenly attacks Sally, who tries to defend herself with a kitchen knife. But the old man knocks the knife out of Sally's hand with a broom. The old man beats Sally unconcious with the broom, uses the knife to cut some twine to tie her up, he then puts a gunny sack over her head and forcing her into his pickup truck. He drives her back to the dreaded house, and along the way picks up the hitch hiker from earlier in the day. They all live there, along with Leatherface. They tie Sally to a chair inside the house and remove the bag from her
head. She and the hitch hiker recognize one another and Sally screams in horror.The family torments her for the rest of the night, forcing her to sit at their table while they eat a meal that is obviously made up of human flesh. They bring "Grandpa" down from upstairs, the dessicated old man, and slice Sally's finger open, sticking it in the old man's mouth while he sucks her blood. They tell Sally that "Grandpa" used to work in the
slaughterhouse and was the best with a sledgehammer there was. They decide to let Grandpa kill Sally and untie her, forcing her onto her knees and holding her head over a bucket while Grandpa makes several feeble attempts to hit her head with a hammer. The hitch hiker gets frustrated and makes a grab for the hammer to finish her off, and suddenly Sally breaks free. She hurls herself out a window again and lands outside just as dawn begins to break.The hitchhiker and Leatherface emerge from the house and chase Sally up to the road, the hitch hiker brandishing a knife and Leatherface waving the chainsaw. The hitchhiker very nearly catches her, grabbing for her and catching her hair over and over. A large semi drives by and the hitch hiker is caught off guard; the truck drives over him, killing him. The truck driver slows down and gets out of the rig to see what happened, only to be confronted by a screaming, bloodied Sally with Leatherface close behind, the chainsaw buzzing. He chases Sally and the truck driver to the other side of the cab, when the driver hurls a wrench at him and hits him in the side of the head. Leatherface drops the saw and falls, wounded in the leg by the saw blade. The truck driver flees down the road, but the wounded Sally cannot catch up. Then a pickup truck drives by and Sally abandons the scene by jumping in the back of the truck. Leatherface still gives chase, but the pickup driver pulls away. Sally laughs crazily at Leatherface as she escapes, giggling at him as he swings his chainsaw around in frustration and rage in the middle of the road in the full light of dawn.

Tags: dark, avant garde, grindhouse film, gothic, murder, comedy, violence, cult, horror, atmospheric, insanity, tragedy, suspenseful, sadist

Review:
With the recent box-office success achieved by the latest remake of 1974's `The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' it's worth looking back at Tobe Hooper's original horror classic.
Tobe Hopper's 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' is a landmark low budget horror movie which must be considered a modern classic.
In this day and age of cynically conceived and marketed MTV-friendly teen slashers it's a revelation to see old school horror classics like this, Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead' and Craven's 'Last House On The Left'.
Terrifying.Despite the complete lack of gore or extreme physical violence, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre continues to horrify and holds up the countless, shot-on-video, slasher clones of subsequent years for the puerile crap that they truly are.
The scares come from the absolutely brutal and bizarre scenarios that befall poor Sally Hardesty.In closing, I'd also like to go out on a limb and make the following grandiose statement:  TCM is the greatest horror film of all time!
The chase scene where Leatherface hunts down Marilyn Burns, scared out of her wits and howling like a wounded animal, is shot through branches of trees, as if the landscape is conspiring to ensnare the victim and so hunter and hunted run in the fields and inside a house and then back outside while the titular chainsaw is buzzing away in a constant reminder of gruesome death.
The (original) Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is without a doubt in my mind, the most impressive horror film to date.
The locations are macabre beyond belief, in particular a room with hanging animal bones and bone constructed furniture, and the whole film has a hot, musty orange glow about it that almost makes you smell the dead human meat in the cannibal house.The performances are relatively functionary from the cast, although Marilyn Burns puts in a good turn as the tortured 'final girl', making us feel that her life is truly at risk.
The family holds her over a bucket as the old man raises the hammer to strike her, but he is barely able to hold it, let alone hit her with it.Chain Saw is full of images that will horrify and disturb, but unlike many other films that do the same, Chain Saw will leave you breathless with its unrelenting assault on the senses; from the images on display to the ear-shattering sound design that allows Leatherface's saw to intrude your living room and slice at your nerves.
In fact, you never really have time to think about what you are seeing until after the film has ended, which leaves an indelible image of a skin-masked madman waving a chain saw around his head in anger.So, if you watched Chain Saw a good few years ago and remember it being a standard slasher flick with lots of gore, revisit it and see just how effective suggestion can be.
His performance is so unbelievably believable that I wonder: was he even acting?Another great thing about THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is how it captures the feel and attitude of its time.
Sally running away from the Sawyer house is like the cow that got away from the slaughterhouse.All in all, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is so good that it's one of those rare gems that can be truly appreciated as a straight horror movie, as a black comedy and even as an art film.
OK, so this is one of the most talked about movies that i missed all these years as a horror movie fan, i finally saw it by DVD rental, i am not going into detail about the film because it has already been reviewed countless times, i have already watched many recent slasher, horror, films with blood and gore but this one was the master of them all, why ?
The motion picture was well directed by Tobe Hooper.The film is based on real events about the secluded farmhouse of Plainfield (Wisconsin)handyman Ed Gein ,( Leatherface character) who admitted today he disembowelled and butchered the body of old widow, authorities found the decapitated boy hanging in Gein's woodshed, gutted out and strung up by the heels.
Intelectuals or pseudo-intelectuals will probably tend to regard it as a low budget groundbreaking, avant-garde movie, although deep down inside, it's unlikely that there is any part in them capable of feeling something other than disgust by its essence.I could go on for hours.Then, there are others, whose irrational morbid fascination for the ORIGINAL Texas Chainsaw Massacre lacks a proper explanation.
At six-years-old, I watched "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and I'm still allured back into watching this film every once in a while.Sally with three of her friends, and her wheelchair bound brother Franklin, travel to her grandfather's grave, but along the way they meet an insane hitchhiker.
Leatherface running through the woods with the chainsaw over his head while Sally screamed and screamed and ran, and went on way too long (much like the action films that would come 30 years later)  all of went to prove that without a doorway to pop out of, Leatherface is a pansy who can't shut up one girl.
I still feel that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is living breathing proof that shock-fest exploitation films lose their power to truly and rightly be considered classics.
This is the first(and maybe last)movie that invites you to join in there,be a part of the movie,feel the intensity,be a part of the massacre.Words are meaningless here,but at least I can try making some comments on this masterpiece.First of all,it's a movie made on the 80's(i.e. 1974), and that means that it was made before Halloween, The Exorcist, Silence of the Lambs and most of the 'known' horror-thrillers out there.Tobe Hopper's originality is majestic!The guy really introduces some really original ideas here:the chainsaw(as a weapon), the raw and merciless murders, the sick introduction of the 'family' and their house(chicken feathers and bones decorating the house),the family portrait(sick brothers and 'Grandpa'),the creepy paranoid music sounds,the moody and freaky atmosphere and the way they murder their victims-plain and simple..just as that..nothing more-nothing less.No special cgi-effects-everything here is original and true as hell!The killers here are really hunters..you will not see any of the victims trying to hurt-or attack the killer(in comparison to all these Halloween and Friday the 13th crap-where the killer is slashed-hacked-drowned-electrified...BUT STILL ALIVE!)No..no...forget about that..the victims just run for their lives..
On the other hands, me and a bunch of friends had a GREAT time watching this movie, laughing at the ridiculous acting and pointing out the never-ending list of completely stupid behaviour by the main characters.
Much like Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre changed the horror genre and inspired many slasher films thereafter.
Don't mean you have to like it."In proper context, that quote is much more sinister than it may appear......and that's because this "proper context" I speak of happens to be one of the most grotesque sequences from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", a nightmarish thrill ride that is often considered to be one of the scariest films ever made.
And, speaking about "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" - I certainly can't imagine how anyone (in their right mind) could actually make it a steady diet of watching films from this one's horrific sub-genre.
I really can't.Sick, twisted, deranged, cruel and sadistic - Even though this 1974 horror film (which is now 42 years old) still manages to pack quite a wallop when it comes to delivering plenty of heart-pounding terror - I understand that (by today's standards of brutal slasher films) "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is actually fairly tame by comparison.
If you feel like taking a break from the modern gore-dependent slasher horror films being spat out by Hollywood then take a trip back to the early dawn of the low-budget slasher genre with Texas Chainsaw Massacre..
I now see it as a truly great horror film with a sense of humor, rather than a spoof.I had intended to rent this movie again for the past few months, before the new The Texas Chain Saw Massacre came out, and I am so glad I was able to get the DVD this time.The remastered DVD --especially the soundtrack-- was so good that I will probably buy a copy for myself.10 out of 10..
From the fallacy of it being based on actual events (though it may loosely be based on Ed Gein, Gein never used a chainsaw and worked alone) to the terrible acting (the jolting closeups of Sally screaming towards the end...which lasted way too long, mind you); it wasn't scary at all.I'm not particularly fond of horror movies.
Print out my picture, fire up that old chainsaw and go to town, but it's just my honest opinion.I have seen a lot of the horror classics, it's not like I only watch new movies.
Highly intense, feverish low budget horror classic is simply one of the most nightmarish films of American cinema!!Young travelers in rural Texas keep having run-ins with weirdos that have a very strange taste for certain kinds of barbecue.Director Tobe Hooper is one of the best horror filmmakers of all time and it was this scary, influential masterpiece that brought him to horror fame.
I saw this film for the very first time recently after having been too scared to watch it for years.While the film did not scare me as much as i was expecting there is no doubt it is a truly remarkable piece of horror cinema.The story is pretty much the run of the mill stalk n slash movie so there isn't really any need to go into it.
The lack of over the top music leaves you with the terrified screams of the main characters as they confront their antagonists, as does the grainy looking film which makes it appear to be more of a home-movie gone wrong than a film at all.The appearance of Leatherface for the first time, for example is handled as casually as the appearance of any other lead character, but then of course we know the result of his appearance and cannot help but be shocked by what follows within the space of about 20 seconds afterwards.Make no mistake this film is a test in psychological strength and questions us what we would do in the situations as poor Marilyn Burns.While the film may look dated in this age of extreme gore and "jump scares" their is no denying the craft that has gone into this.
It almost makes me sick to see comments such as "more funny than anything" for a horror classic like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Just because nowadays we have stupid blood soaked THRILLERS/comedies such as "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" doesn't lessen the power of this all-time great.Ok, so the movie isn't as controversial as it was in the 70s (you couldn't possibly expect it to be!!) It is however, one of the most influencial horror films ever made.10 out of 10 on this onePS: Stop making fun of true classic horror, kids and throw away your entire Friday The 13th series.
Tobe Hooper created one of the most terrifying,disturbing and realistic films in horror genre history.There's a very little visible violence in this film,but the atmosphere of sheer dread and terror is simply overwhelming."The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is loosely based on activities of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein.Gein,a necrophiliac serial killer and devotee of the wartime Nazi concentration camp medical experimentalists is thought to have inspired the Alfred Hitchcock thriller "Psycho"(1960)and two low-budget horror movies "Deranged"(1974)and "Three on a Meathook"(1972)by his macabre deeds in the late 50's.On one occasion he plundered a Wisconsin graveyard by night for edible body parts,and flayed one corpse to fashion a waistcoat souvenir.Some time later,when police called at his house to question Gein about a missing elderly woman,they discovered the gutted torso of one of his earlier female victims hanging from the beams.In the basement of his house parts of human bodies hung from hooks on the walls,in the kitchen the refrigerator contained frozen body parts.Oh,and there was an armchair...with real arms.So it's really obvious that Leatherface brilliantly played by Gunnar Hansen was influenced by Ed Gein.The cinematography is grainy,even ugly-looking at times,the music composed by Tobe Hooper is genuinely creepy and the acting is brilliant."The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is a REAL horror,and also an overwhelming assault on the viewer's senses.10 out of 10-surely they don't make them like this anymore.Along with "Last House on the Left"(1972)and "Cannibal Holocaust"(1979)this is one of my favourite horror movies from the 70's..
None of it's sequels can compare to the First tcm and, i heard there making a remake it will be nothing like the original.This was a very good movie and, i recommend it to anyone who's in for a real scare.
This a raw film-making brilliance, Tobe Hopers seminal horror work that was a part of the 1970's horror revolution that was being waged by horror greats George Romero, David Cronenberg, Wes Craven (somewhat), and John Carpenter.I saw another post that said this film has no meaning or message, it's tasteless was the sum of their review, I however disagree with all my heart.This is a movie that puts a mirror to the post-Vietnam era and challenges the status of our society in terms of its social and family values.
Let me list a few reasons:1) The gritty documentary feel the film has.2) The excellent performances by Edwin Neil (the Hitch-Hiker), Jim Seidow (The Old Man), and Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) as the psychos (in a film this low budget and grainy, performances this real feel all the more scary) and Marilyn Burns (Sally) and Paul A.
Let me list a few reasons:1) The gritty documentary feel the film has.2) The excellent performances by Edwin Neil (the Hitch-Hiker), Jim Seidow (The Old Man), and Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface) as the psychos (in a film this low budget and grainy, performances this real feel all the more scary) and Marilyn Burns (Sally) and Paul A.
even the way the sun sets in this film is spooky along with the sound of the farmhouse generator).4)Relentless Horror (Leatherface RUNS not speedwalks after his victims with a live chainsaw...
even the way the sun sets in this film is spooky along with the sound of the farmhouse generator).4)Relentless Horror (Leatherface RUNS not speedwalks after his victims with a live chainsaw...
I beg to differ, in my opinion this movie is just awful, everything about it was bad, people need to start thinking with their own head, not only shout - ''wow', that's a classic, way better than new horror movies'' etc.The whole setup is bad, five incredibly annoying hipster kids you hate from minute 1, an incredibly predictable plot, irrational actions and the list goes on and on.
Like Friedkin's Exorcist, Tobe Hooper's gift and intelligence with his film, and what elevates it as grungy, awfully brutal art, is that he doesn't back away from showing us these 'things' – the house where Leatherface and his meat-eating freak-show of a family live at under the guise of a dad that serves BBQ a town over, is filled with decay and rot and weird skeletons.There's one sequence in fact that just has a girl falling into a room in this house where she and a boy wander to – cause it's one of 'those' horror films after all, with supposedly dumb kids wandering where they shouldn't, only these are at least moderately smarter and nicer, if no less fatalistic, than the kids in 80's slashers – and Hooper just shows us this room, almost for a good five minutes of screen time.
He trusts that his audience won't like everything they see, and that's the kicker: this is the perpetually "feel-bad" horror film, yet unlike a latter-day movie like Saw, this is one where we do care about what will happen to this girl, her wheelchair-bound brother (annoying as he may be), and there's even a sliver, just a hint, at some social satire with this van of Texas hippies coming upon the backwoods: the deep-fried Texas cannibal holocaust version of Deliverance..
Director Tobe Hooper deconstructs a road movie into a non stopping horror thriller and an absolutely must-see classic, taking the film experience to the next level.
His craft makes TCM (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) one of the most brilliant and atmospheric films of any genre, never mind horror.The title pretty much sums up what to expect in the ensuing 80 minutes.
TCM(short for Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is without a doubt one of the greatest and (together with "The LastHouse on the left" and "Halloween") influential horror films of all time.
Watching it now I can honestly say its one of the best movies ever made, and as such deserves to be a cult classic as long as movies play a part of our lives.From start to finish I was gripping my seat, near misses and everything else you could want in a horror film, and not that bad of a story line either.10 out of 10..
This guy could have existed, could exist NOW, that's what makes it so d*mn freaky!Horror films these days (as with other genres) rely way too heavily on CGI to enhance the effects or "scariness" factor...but CGI effects date VERY quickly and VERY poorly...so there's NO WAY they'll ever stand the test of time the way TCM has...what i mean is, Tobe Hooper et al could never have taken a "soft option" and chosen CGI effects...they had to come up with ways to scare the beejesus out of people with just camera effects, performances and make up...hard to do...John Carpenter did it with Halloween, Hooper did it here.Thoroughly freaky movie...not "omg thats gross" but "omg that's the creepiest damn thing I ever saw!".
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in my book is a film that is a total classic, the movie will scare you all to death,,lol, no pun intended.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" uses your imagination like no other film.
You may have felt self disgust for doing so but that`s the whole point about TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE - It`s not a horror film , it`s a black comedy.