Psycho x 4! (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (DVD))

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (DVD)
Date:	12/08/00 (252 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a seemingly casual attitude to violence which only serves to make it all the more horrific; not one but a whole group of memorable villains; contains some of the seminal moments of horror cinema.

Disadvantages: randomness of the plot; the way the film just stops mid-flow and fails to end properly.

In the past, this was one of those films which everyone seemed to have heard of but relatively few had actually seen. Recently given a screening on Channel Four as part of their Film Fear weekend, the film was opened up to a far wider audience than its usual band of cult followers, and had a chance to show everyone that it is still, even today, a classic of the horror genre.

The film starts with a grim and highly effective narration by John Larroquette which states the background of the story, and implies that this film is based upon true events, before moving on to an unusual opening in which unclear but nevertheless unpleasant imagery is alternated with total blackness, and accompanied by the sound of a spade digging into the ground and some weirdly distorted electronic pulsing sounds. Then the actual story begins…

It seems that someone has been tampering with the graves in a particular graveyard, digging up remains, or in some cases parts of remains, and arranging them in a bizarre artwork in the cemetery for all to see. When this is reported on the radio news a group of student-like young people travel to the cemetery and ask to see one particular grave, since one of the youngsters’ grandparents was buried in the graveyard and they wish to know if it is one of the ones which has been tampered with. After finding nothing, the group drive off in their van, picking up a hitch hiker shortly afterwards. The man is unnerving, to say the least: he slices his hand open with a knife and burns a photo he has just taken of the wheelchair-bound Franklin. Unsurprisingly, the hitch hiker is ejected from the group’s van and the bizarre events are seemingly over.

Later, after failing to obtain petrol from the local service station, the group visits a ramshackle old house owned by Franklin’s uncle. After two of the group wander off to go for a swim, they come across and old house which, it would seem, may be able to provide them
with some petrol. After entering the house, the young man of the pair is attacked and killed with a hammer, and the terror begins, as one after another of the group is ruthlessly killed in a series of increasingly bizarre ways by the insane family of hillbillies, especially the demented Leatherface.

With a distinctive bleached visual look, probably caused by poor lighting as a result of the film’s very limited budget, combined with some truly unnerving performances from the actors playing the family of killers and a strange detachment — an almost casual attitude which only serves to make the events seem more menacing — during the actual scenes of violence, this is one horror film which will live in the memory long after one has seen it. But is the film actually based upon true events or not?

The answer to this is not really a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The events as portrayed in the film did not actually occur per se, and so in that sense the film is a work of fiction. However, like many other horror films of this era and later, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre owes much to the true happenings surrounding a rather nasty individual called Ed Gein. Gein — now the subject of an eponymously titled biopic directed by Chuck Parello which follows more closely the true life events — was a farmer residing in Wisconsin, USA in the 1950s who was discovered to have been digging up the bodies of women for many years and taking the remains back to his house, where he created bizarre artistic displays, ornaments and furniture, including chairs upholstered with flesh and soup bowls made from skulls. He was eventually also found to be responsible for cannibalism and various other extremely unsavoury activities. When writing this film, Tobe Hooper apparently wished to create a family whose members would each take on one aspect of the personality of Ed Gein, so that when they were considered as a whole they would stand o
ut as a body of true evil of the sort already known and reviled by the American public. Whether Americans consciously responded to this or not is difficult to say, since the fact that the plot of the film does not, in any real sense, follow the series of events in the Ed Gein case, would have made it difficult for an average moviegoer to draw any obvious comparisons between the real events which occurred and the fictional actions being portrayed on the screen. Unconsciously, however, the ploy was an obvious success: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a low-budget, low-key affair with surprisingly little blood actually shown and no box-office stars, became a massive cult hit and was one of the key films responsible for the massive horror-film craze which engulfed the English-speaking world in the early 1980s.

The film certainly has its flaws, including a plot stripped to bare minimum, the occasional shoddy piece of camerawork (especially when extreme close-ups are attempted), and the abrupt and somewhat anticlimactic ending, but these will probably be ignored by those people — who will probably comprise the large majority of those who actually bother to sit down and watch this film — who simply want to see some people carved up, and to see Leatherface running around with a chainsaw and screaming at the top of his voice in the fashion that has since become a cultural archetype.

The recent Region 2 DVD release of the film is well worth checking out, including the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio (although it is, unfortunately, not an anamorphic transfer) and a choice of digitally remastered stereo and original mono soundtrack as well as an audio commentary with Director Tobe Hooper, DP Daniel Pearl and ‘Leatherface’ himself, Gunnar Hansen. Other Extras include a Blooper Reel, Deleted Scenes and Alternative Footage, a collection of trailers for both this film and its sequels, and a whole host of other stuff which come together
to make this an attractive package to any fan of horror films. One can only hope that the sequels will be released soon, and treated with the same amount of care and attention.

Buzz off and buy it!

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