The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (USA: Tobe Hooper, 1974)

 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (USA: Tobe Hooper, 1974: 83 mins)

Tobe Hooper’s influential feature is three distinct films: the shocker promised by the title; the near bloodless (and mostly chainsaw-free) restraint of the actual film; and the gorefest that we imagine we have seen. As young travellers encounter a family of retrenched, cannibalistic slaughtermen, unexpected domestic comedy offsets the grisly horror. But from the outset a pervasive atmosphere of dirty, doom-laden wrongness gets right under the skin, and once Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) starts screaming (and does not stop), viewers are treated to one of the most sustained and harrowing nightmares of unhinged madness ever caught on film. – Anton Bitel

Acolytes of Horror. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Soundscape of Sally's Screams." (Posted on Youtube: November 2, 2019)

Barbé-Brown, Isabel. "Bloody Perfect: Ride, Sally, Ride." Bloody Women (January 6, 2021)

Barbé-Brown, Isabel and Anna Bogutskaya. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)." The Final Girls 4.1 (September 10, 2021)  ["Joining us this week is writer/actor Isaura Barbé-Brown. We dive deep into Isaura's love of this film, where it stands culturally, how it influenced horror films, and show a little sympathy for overwhelmed Leatherface."]

Bradley, S.A. "Mr. Bad Example: The Legend of Tobe Hooper." Hell Bent for Horror #52 (September 5, 2017)

Cribbs, John, et al. "Geeking Out About Tobe Hooper." Wrong Reel #247 (March 2017)

Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Tex-Mess, Pt. 1 — The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)." The Next Picture Show (March 29, 2022) ["Ti West’s new horror film X is very openly inspired by THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, carrying through the spirit of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 shocker more capably than most of the subsequent films in what would become a nine-film franchise (in particular this year’s dreadful remake). Before getting into how it does that next week, this week we’re revisiting Hooper’s film with the help of film critic and series expert Katie Rife, to consider what made this film hit the way it did at the time, why it so often gets lumped in with the slasher genre it preceded, and whether it's a film that gets more brutal — or, perhaps, more comforting — with time."]

---. "Tex-Mess, Pt. 2 — X (2022)." The Next Picture Show (April 5, 2022) ["Ti West’s new X is very much inspired by Tobe Hooper’s 1974 shocker THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (and to an extent, Hooper’s lesser-known EATEN ALIVE), following another bunch of ill-fated van passengers, this one a group filming a low-budget porno, who wind up on the wrong side of the owners of a remote Texas farmhouse. The film’s late-’70s setting invites all sorts of analysis and interpretation about sex, death, and their intersection with cultural and religious conservatism at the dawn of the 1980s, which we dig into, once again with the help of film writer and horror aficionado Katie Rife, before turning our focus to some of the specific echoes between X and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE."]

Long, Ericca and Cole Roulain. "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." The Magic Lantern #6 (October 12, 2015) ["The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) ripped into my life on Thanksgiving 1984 and I have, gratefully, never fully recovered. It was spawned from the belly of a country that was sick and sad during my earliest formative years. As a nation, we were burdened with post-Watergate paranoia, the exhaustion of the waning days of the Vietnam War and the insecurity of the energy crisis. Cobbled together from all that bad news came this truly American nightmare that was equal parts disillusionment and dismemberment. It defines true horror for me and has yet to be surpassed, in my estimation. I doubt it will ever yield the claim it has staked on my imagination. The saw is family. What you’ll find in this episode: family dinners, crematorium reminiscences, how much I hate Franklin, asking pigs for gasoline and Ericca’s repulsive protein shakes."]

"Marxist Film Analysis: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Revolutionary Left Radio (October 30, 2017)

Merritt, Naomi. "Cannibalistic Capitalism and other American Delicacies: A Bataillean Taste of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Film-Philosophy 14.1 (2010)

Saperstein, Pat. "Tobe Hooper, Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist Director, Dies at 74." Variety (August 27, 2017)

Sharrett, Christopher. "Tobe Hooper and the American Twilight." Film International (August 7, 2021)

Williams, Evan Calder. "Sunset with Chainsaw: A New Way of Reading Horror Film Politically." Film Quarterly 64.4 (Summer 2011): 28-33. [I have a copy for students]