I remember when I saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in theaters. The idea that a community or an entire family could be so unified over something as horrific as murdering and eating people seemed unspeakably evil. It felt like a traditional horror movie with the victims being punished for using drugs, going in unfamiliar areas and interacting with strangers without any level of caution or concern, but if it was a punishment, it was disproportionate. You should be able to enter a community without fear of being murdered and consumed. I left the theater shook hoping that the movie was not really based on a true story because if it was, you would have no choice but to nuke the entire area. If even the women in that community are indifferent to the depravity, there is no hope. Oh….did you think that I meant the original? No, the original is called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre! I saw the remake in the theater starring Jessica Biel in 2003. After I did research to reassure myself of what I already knew, that it was not based on a true story, I discovered that it was a remake, resolved to see the original one day, but was in no particular hurry.
I am watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at a disadvantage. It is the Martin Scorsese problem. By the time I get around to watching the original, the original feels like the copy, not the pioneer. It is not fair. I am expectedly waiting for what shocked other people. Still like most original movies, it has more layers of meaning than the subsequent remakes. While it is no Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, which feels like a trenchant horror commentary on American life, Tobe Hooper’s creation may lack the laser focus of Craven’s work, which was released after Hooper’s, Hooper was definitely looking to do more than terrify his viewers. Hooper’s efforts probably inspired Craven.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre explicitly announces to its audience that it is a new kind of vampire story, not set in dark, snowy mountainous Transylvania, but scorching hot, dry and flat Texas. Daytime horror is not new, just underutilized. Vampires are human beings. Some are obviously demented, but others seem normal. It is also seems to be a disease that could afflict anyone, and there is not a clear line between the murderers and the victims except in terms of explicit behavior. It reminded me of the Polish horror film, Demon, in which the victims return to their origins and have to confront the horrors of the past, which their beloved ancestors may or may not have played a role in causing. After a macabre series of grave robbing incident, a group of young people, two couples and one of the girlfriend’s the disabled brother decide to make sure that their grandfather’s grave was not disturbed. After being reassured, they decide to visit grandpa’s house, which they still own, unaware that they are in worse danger than their grandfather’s grave.
If I could ask Hooper questions about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I would love to know if the psycho family always lived in that neighborhood, if the grandfather had a relationship with them, and if so, what was it. The psycho family did not seem like newcomers, and they also have a grandfather, but he is alive, and the film seems to suggest that the psycho grandfather was an enthusiastic killer. When did the families begin to diverge in sensibilities? Hooper seems to suggest that the differences between the two are not as huge as we would like to believe. The disabled brother is obsessed with his knife, killing livestock and barbeque. When you realize a twist that occurs later in the film, which I anticipated, you retroactively wonder whether he should rethink the latter. They share a heritage, a neighborhood and maybe a livelihood.
Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre seems to be saying that human beings that delight and feast on flesh eventually escalate from cruelty to animals to human beings. They are monsters like Dracula, but instead of trying to make us empathize with animals, he anthropomorphizes them. We also see that the unintentional cruelty of the able-bodied victims to the disabled victim tracks in an exaggerated way in the psycho family. Even though the patriarch is not a murderer, he is able to dominate with the murderers with the threat of violence. It is an abusive household, which duh, they are a family of cannibals, but I do think that it is important to not just skip over that fact. Under a different set of circumstances, would the murderers be killers or get help since they are clearly mentally disabled. Cruelty does not start with cannibalism.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre seems to also critique American entitlement and living in the past. The psycho family is stuck in the past-the glory days of the slaughterhouse, having skills that are no longer needed, unable to move forward in any measurable way. I also think that this film was released during the oil crisis, and the victims have no compunction about going on someone else’s property, entering another person’s house and possibly taking their gas. The hunger is not just to consume food. Hooper definitely borrowed the aesthetic of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho then exaggerated it. From the outside, the psycho house looks inviting, but once an unsuspecting visitor goes deeper inside, Norman Bates clearly committed to his inspiration. They are white sepulchres. There is a point when a person tries to help the last victim, then has to run away himself. While I totally understand why the final survivor would just escape, I was also disturbed that the family had a new victim. What happens to him
To hedge his bets, Hooper also uses the pseudo science of astrology and the implication of unexpected side effects of pollution as an explanation for an outbreak of violence, which is the backdrop of the radio broadcasts. I also could not miss the theme of photography as soul theft. Is Hooper criticizing himself for being as obsessed with death, bodies and gore as one member of the psycho family? On some level, Hooper wants us to feel as if we are watching reality unfold. Hooper seems to equate or at least seem consequential the act of taking (moving) pictures art with the violence.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did not scare me as much as the remake. The famous hook scene was much freakier in the latter. The original is more thoughtful. Even though I am a completist, I do not feel compelled to watch the sequels, prequels and remakes. I am a Halloween girl. Leatherface is terrifying, but pitiful. Superficially it feels like the natural result of Deliverance for a filmmaker looking to take things to the next level except the psychos are a result, not in opposition, to civilization.