Feral Folks and Fake Faces. (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (DVD))

Member Name: peel.rebekah

Product:	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (DVD)
Date:	27/11/01 (348 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Depends on whether or not you like chainsaws, really.

Disadvantages: See above.

I have a big soft spot for horror films that start something that they have absolutely no prior knowledge of - that find a point so vulnerable in our social psyche that they just scare the crap out of us, create modern myths and spawn followings of cult proportions. Most horror movies run wild with blood, screaming teenagers and mad axe wielding murderers without finding society's Achilles Heel - maybe something to do with the director looking in the other direction when the scenes are being shot - yet there is one film containing all of the above basic schlock horror fodder that remains as effective today as it did 27 years ago...except that the mad axe wielding murderer has selected a slightly updated and rowdier piece of equipment to perform his dirty work with.

*The Film.

A four strong group of flowered up teenagers and a wheelchair bound brother venture forth into the American countryside; the reason for their trip is to establish whether or not the tombs of Grandpa and Grandma have been vandalised - a TV report claims that two bodies from the same cemetery have been disinterred and downright messed with (all this is proclaimed as the opening title sequence of the movie).

That bit of the story is dealt with rather rapidly as the kids turn up, check with the local authorities and give the graveyard the once over...so rather than immediately traipse all the way back home, the happy little troop decide to do a little sightseeing; take in the the local cuisine, the native folks and traditions...as well as pop in to see where Grandma and Gramps used to live and to catch up with the neighbours.

On the way to the old family house they pick up a young male hitcher: The fact that he's splattered with blood seems not to deter them, and is explained away when he tells them that he works in the local abbatoir. His behavior becomes a little erratic, his conversation a wee bit twisted, at which point the kids get slightly wary, an
d after cutting himself deeply, laughing hysterically and basically being downright weird, he gets thrown out of the happy campers' Camper.

Oh shucks, the only problem now is that they're running low on gas, and the local garagist is waiting for the delivery tomorrow. Would you kids like to stick around for a barbecue? Or will you continue on your merry way to the old homestead and see what fate has in store for you?

*The Acting.

Ha Ha. I don't know if I actually need a separate category to say this, but hey, what the heck:

Some of the actors get to scream hysterically for several minutes (in one case, a hell of a lot longer); some of the others don't even get the chance to vent their lungs before evil deeds are done to them. The victims' acting skills are rather by the by - they are there, happy, playful and vivant one minute...and then cold and blue (and drippingly red) the next. Sorry, but even in comparison to the Evil Dead outfit, these guys don't get no second chances at proving their acting prowess.

The tyrants behind this buckets of bloodfest are rather more interesting characters to dissect (so to speak), especially as one of them, the male lead if you will, never actually shows his face and prefers to sport this seasons 'must have' mask made of human flesh. Nice.

Leatherface (the aforementioned character) throws up all sorts of quandaries: Here we have an obviously mentally handicapped gentleman (pairing with the physically handicapped victim) who, had he been reared in a warm and loving environment, may well have lived a live other than mad, chainsaw wielding hobbyist in search of the latest in taxidermy furniture design...but that's just one of those little titbits of desperately dark humour that Tobe Hooper is trying to put our way.

Leatherface appears to be the youngest of these three demented brothers, all in service of their sickeningly crumpled Grandf
ather, and he also appears to be the most sensitive (possible the most sane, as well). In one scene, just after a bloody encounter with another one of them damn kids, Leatherface awaits his brothers homecoming nervously at the window. He licks his malformed teeth in apprehension...has he done right or wrong? Will he be told off by Big Brother for getting blood on the carpet...AGAIN?

Nope, can't talk about the acting in this one seriously: There are people supposedly acting - I'd call it running around and screaming a lot - and then there's some other folks just being damn strange and inbred.

*The Direction.

Ahh, now this is much more interesting: Hooper spent a long, long time formulating this movie in his head (rather his than mine), an elongated period of piecing together just the right elements to make Texas Chainsaw Massacre the movie that it is.

Strange how that urban myth thing keeps coming around and feeding into the horror genre - as well as everyday society, of course - I've just watched Ring (as well as the dire Urban Legend) and realised that horror movies (especially American ones) without a tint of a hint of modern myth are few and far between. T.C.M. is no different: As well as helping to spawn a new age of scared hitchhikers and morbid playground parables, it was ACTUALLY based on the same idea.

Hooper admits that the 'True Story' intro to his movie was purely for promotional purposes (aka Blair Witch), but that in his head the story had SOME factual bases: There had been a case of some Hillbilly type living in the locality of his family digging up a couple of corpses and having a munch...there was also the student stories of his Doctor; a man that admitted to sewing himself a mask of human flesh for a Halloween party. And even I remember tales of some dark inbred family living in 'dem 'dere hills, picking off weary travelers...and then picking off their bones.

So Ho
oper took the myths and made them stronger.

But other than that, what makes this film any different to a thousand others?

Perhaps part of the answer to that is in Hooper's choice of weapon - I mean, axes, hammers, knifes and later, drills aside, how many ways are there to graphically dismember a body convincingly? Oh, yes, a chainsaw, and doesn't it make such a relaxing noise? We hear the drone of a chainsaw and something in us is immediately alerted to danger.

Maybe it was Hooper's disturbing attention to detail in the decor: I do find the embellishment of the set strangely bourgeois (with dining room red walls and the latest dead dear acquisition), yet upon closer inspection we see the dirtiness of it all; the rotting stench that must be emanating from every orifice; the moulding flesh still hanging from the lampshade; the floors awash with the detritus of a hundred murders.

Or perhaps it all works because we don't actually get to see that much...we just think we do. There are very few scenes where we truly see blood, yet our mind plays out the horror that Hooper fails to show us; we see it dripping everywhere in our minds eye, and our imagination is a hell of a lot scarier than the silver screen.

It could be Hopper's identification of hysteria and insanity - in both the perpetrator and the victim. He spends rather too long (in my point of view) depicting the victim's absolute trip into madness with scary eye close ups and large screaming mouths (something very reminiscent of Blair Witch here), when I feel he should have left the emphasis concentrated on her hysterical laughing towards the end of the film.

Hmmn, or maybe, dare I say it, the reality of the characters? But again we're back to the urban myth syndrome, and if you want to go with that one, then the strength and believability of the characters seems to be of little importance...see Candyman/Scream etc. for proof.


*Conclusion.

For me, the film works because Hooper paid attention to all of these details. He added just enough of one ingredient, and not much of another. He rolled the whole storyline around long enough for it to come out covered in enough crud for it to be believable: Just take a look at the quality of the film; the Seventiesness of it all just reeks inbred Hillbilly home made movie alone. He also injected that deep dark humour that makes us uneasy viewers...did he really mean to make us laugh during that scene? Of course he did. Somewhere in there, so I believe, is Hooper's real political message, but just as in Night of the Living Dead, we'll have to scamper around in the rotting darkness to find it.

And somehow Tobe Hooper made us a classic...I wonder, did the sales on chainsaws go up or down after the release of the film?

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