This film may be forever associated in the popular imagination with the sound of a humming chainsaw, but far more pervasive, and far more distressing, are the piercing, near constant screams of Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) - arguably cinema's first 'final girl' – as she is repeatedly subjected to bludgeoning psychological and physical trauma by her hungry captors, gathered round a dining table in the film's unbearably protracted final third. All these elements set the stage for some of the most prolonged scenes of sustained panic ever captured by cinema, as Hooper infects characters and viewers alike with the thrill of a madness from which there can be no real escape. Then there is the film's palpable sense of claustrophobic dread, achieved through the perfect storm of Daniel Pearl's eerie mobile camerawork, Bob Burns' surreal sets and props (all skin, bone and feathers), and the unnerving concrète score composed by Hooper and Wayne Bell. However, Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel's mad family of cannabalistic Texan ex-slaughtermen is entirely their own invention, while the expressly stated date of the film's events, 18 August 1973, is linked to "the annals of American history" only in being a few days AFTER the film's production shoot ended. True, one or two background details (the grave-robbing, the furniture and costumes fashioned out of human remains) have been borrowed from the real-life story of Wisconsin killer Ed Gein (who also loosely inspired Hitchcock's Psycho and 'Buffalo Bill' from The Silence of the Lambs). This is to be "an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her disabled brother, Franklin", who "could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day", when "an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare", leading to "the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history." Yet if the terrifying misadventures of young co-eds in collision with a group of insane and murderous rednecks sounds like an overfamiliar premise, that is only because of the many, mostly inferior horror films that have subsequently picked every last vestige of flesh off TCM's bones – and in any case, with Hooper's original the devil is all in the details.įor a start, there is that introductory voice-over, claiming authenticity for events that never actually took place, and convincing many a gullible viewer, like any good campfire tale, that Leatherface and his kin might still be out there. In its skeletal outline, the plot is incredibly simple, and in fact clearly forecast in the po-faced voice-over by John Larroquette with which the film opens. Of course, in terms of horror, there can be no higher praise for Hooper's art. Rather, what caused Ferman such concern was something irreducibly, indefinably disturbing about the film's totality. When James Ferman, then director of the BBFC, announced that he was going to ban the film (indeed, it would remain unavailable legally in the UK, apart from brief screenings within the Greater London Council, until Ferman's departure in 1999), he also made it clear that he would not be dissuaded from his decision by the filmmaker's removal of any particular scene or scenes. So successful, however, was Hooper in prodding and pounding the imagination that viewers would take away from the film far more than they had ever actually witnessed. The result is a movie where unspeakably unpleasant acts tend to take place out of shot, and are conjured more by atmosphere and suggestion than by any voyeuristic explicitness. It might seem unimaginable now, but when Hooper was making his ultra-low-budget film, commercial considerations led him to consult closely with the MPAA, his intention being to produce a horror film that would meet all the criteria for a PG rating in the US. It is a status perhaps best summarised by the film's long and unhappy history with ratings boards and censors. Even before it spawned sequels, remakes and a thousand imitators, Hooper's original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was already three distinct films at once: the expected shocker evoked by the title and by the film's near-instant notoriety the masterwork of visual restraint (coupled with unhinged tension) that Hooper actually made and the no-holds-barred gorefest that Hooper magically gets viewers to imagine that they have seen. It may sound blandly reassuring, but there have been few utterances more misleading than this one at the very centre of Tobe Hooper's classic of southern discomfort.
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