It is plainly and simply one of the most powerful, impactful, haunting movies ever made. It is so much less violent than its reputation, but *feels* twice as violent as it is. My wife who loves horror does not love this one at all, partly because it is a hot and “sticky” movie, to quote her. The other reason is that after we saw it, her nerves were completely shot. She saw it for the first time in theaters in 2022, almost 50 years after its original release. That’s the power this movie still has.
This is a film in which, essentially, humans are subjected to the treatment of a slaughterhouse. JAWS made people afraid to go in the water. CHAIN SAW made people vegetarians. It's extremely modern to the time, a horror you're subjected to in your own backyard, and yet in its structure it's the same as a classic Hammer or Universal gothic horror. It's still about unsuspecting people going somewhere they shouldn't, an old isolated house that sits like a castle, and instead of fortune telling, we have astrology. There's a fascinating contradiction in that it's almost overwhelmingly realistic in the harrowing way it unfolds and the way it's shot, and yet from the strange omens to the weirdness of a blood drinking grandpa, it feels vaguely supernatural. It's the perfect transition point from the Gothic horror of the past to the slasher boom that would follow.
The 30 seconds or so between the horrific reveal of Leatherface, the reverberating sound of that slamming door, and Pam walking up to the house is not only one of the most iconic shots in horror, it is also possibly the scariest 30 seconds in all of film history.
Just like the classic Gothic fare of Universal and Hammer, this features people in a land they consider a little backward, going off the beaten path, receiving omens that seem to be warning them to turn back and yet nudging them forward to a grisly doom at the same time. One of my favorite moments in horror history is just a small scene you wouldn’t expect after being so monstrous during the first two kills is a bit in which Leatherface runs around the house, frantically and nervously checking all of the windows after a third person has broken into his home. He’s overwhelmed, he’s scared, it completely challenges the audience’s perception of this character for just a moment before the horror resumes and he’s belligerently terrifying again. THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is a hot, sweaty, nasty movie. It feels like you're seeing something you shouldn't, it feels like a movie you survive as much as you watch. It is purely one of the best to ever do it.