The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – Review

A low budget horror film that rocked the world and set genre standards for madness, is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre still a worthy time? Immediately opening with disconcerting images, we are in a hot August cemetery in 1973. Someone has stolen corpses and compiled them into a grisly visage of death only to be discovered by a horrified local.

Heading ominously towards this area is a van packed full of five young road-tripping assholes. Maybe that’s an issue with this movie, as it’s kind of hard to give any shits about these kids, despite their age giving them some free passes to be asshats.

In the van lies Sally Hardesty (Burns) her man Jerry (Danziger), her fucking awful brother Franklin (Partain), who happens to be in a wheelchair also, and then lovebirds Kirk (Vail) and Pam (McMinn). The Hardesty siblings are headed with their friends back to family land since they are from this area. They hit up the cemetery, but find that their grandfather’s grave is just fine. Everything is clear! No body piles here!

Back to the van, and then a man hitchhiking along the road flags them down. Things go from bizarre to uncomfortably disastrous relatively immediately. The group has to kick this guy the hell out of their van before additional blood starts flying. Once free of the crazed hitchhiker, the crew of friends heads to an old abandoned home that Sally’s family once owned.

Rundown houses, large fields, dilapidated barns, abandoned cars, slaughterhouses, and small-town cooking secrets set the stage for this maniacal tale of murder and mayhem. Come forth if you can handle tension, terror and bloodshed, as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is still a pretty horrific and creepy time. The 70s styles of film making do not really hold this one back, as its creep factor and oddness propels it along in its brisk runtime. The acting may not blow your socks off, but I guess that’s not really the point of this one. It may alleviate some of the tension however, as it’s hard to care about characters that whine a lot at each other.

There are some direct sequels to this, and many remakes. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is slightly acceptable because it turns the schlock into a zany and almost darkly humorous / totally over the top affair. It doesn’t make it all a better time, but it’s interesting, I guess. I wouldn’t bother with any other sequel, or any of the remakes, outside of the 2003 version.