Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) review

I have seen most of the films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, including all of the sequels in the 21st century without ever having seen the original. This made it a unique experience to watch the beginning of a franchise after seeing all of its sequels first. This did not make for a better viewing experience but I can understand why this film was so depraved and unsettling at the time of its release. Even nearly 50 years later, the film is disturbing without being ultra-violent.

My first takeaway is that the film gets going pretty quickly and in classic 70’s fashion, doesn’t get bogged down with a lot of backstory or character building. The intro reel does the explaining and the creepiness of it still stands today. This film is definitely plot focused and even the villains aren’t fleshed out. The purpose of this film is to scare, disturb, and gross you out; everything else is largely irrelevant. It’s interesting because like Halloween, the mythos of the villain is more fleshed out over its many sequels. Not much backstory is given in either franchise original. I’m curious on if either creator envisioned a franchise being spawned or if these were meant to be lone entries.

Even in 2023 there aren’t many depictions of special-needs individuals. 1985’s Silver Bullet is one movie off the top of my head featuring another person in a wheelchair. 2016’s Don’t Breathe featured a blind villain & 2015’s Hush had a deaf lead. The later two films, however, were plot-dependent on their main characters having their disability. That was less about diversity and more about the plot and story being focused on their impairments. Regardless of the reasoning, this is still great to have this type of diversity. The original TCM, however, stands out as the plot is not dependent on Franklin being confined to a wheelchair.

Speaking on Franklin – this is an extraordinarily annoying character. He’s very whiny and seems a bit dense on social cues. He makes everyone uncomfortable early on in the film with his soliloquy on how cattle are slaughtered and can’t seem to grasp that he should change the subject because he’s grossing the group out. I think this is representative of pre-21st century films failing to depict disabled individuals as socially and intellectually well-rounded characters. Franklin is depicted as if he is on the spectrum which is an unfair assertion of disabled people but which is consistent with how they likely were viewed in the 70s.

The car ride after the group picks up the hitchhiker is more bizarre than scary. I think the remake does a better job of creating a haunting encounter. This dude was just a weirdo who should have gotten kicked out much sooner than what he did. This was an odd encounter but doesn’t serve as the bad omen like the remake reimagined it as. The original does gross me out, though, and establishes the family as physically disgusting people.

This car ride would have been an excellent opportunity to learn about the leads or to get insight on their personality but neither happens. All that is established is the motivation for the trip: the Hardesty siblings are checking on their grandfather’s grave after robbers have stolen and desecrated multiple corpses, an act described in the introduction to the film. The siblings are making this trip to ensure that their grandfather’s isn’t one of them.

Sally Hardesty has a long-lasting legacy as one of the very first Final Girls in slasher horror films but we don’t learn much about her. I think her influence is less about the character herself and more about what she represents. Sally is arguably the first Final Girl of a slasher, kickstarting a legendary trend but she doesn’t say or do a lot in the actual film.

Even in her escape, she does so more out of negligence on the Sawyer’s part than any heroics on her own. One thing that stood out to me is that she did A LOT of screaming. It was incessant. Sally isn’t particularly heroic per se, especially in comparison to the prominent ladies who came after her such as Laurie Strode, Ellen Ripley and Sidney Prescott. Even if Sally isn’t heroic, she does lay the groundwork for her aforementioned predecessors so the icon status is warranted.

Back to the film itself – the introduction reel is spooky but outside of that, I wouldn’t consider the film scary but there are some highly tense moments. The two scenes in particular are when Sally is first kidnapped and then when she is bound and held captive. Both of these scenes are anxiety-inducing. This worked very well as it created a sense of dread and doom on how, and when, Sally would escape. This is the climax of the film and subsequently its strongest moment.

The violence of TCM is consistent with the time-period. More blood doesn’t equate to a better film, so I’m cool with it being prude by today’s standards. TCM alongside with Black Christmas are the parents of modern slasher films. TCM gave us a Final Girl, two great chase scenes and introduced pure evil for one of the first times onto the screen.

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre deserves its longstanding accolades. I do believe that the original is superior, though, which is probably controversial but I think it nails the premise better and is much scarier. This doesn’t negate the original’s extraordinary and long-lasting influence. TCM lays the groundwork for Halloween, which opened the door for Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, and later Scream. TCM is a depraved film which influenced other filmmakers to delve into depravity too. Both Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left and TCM deserve credit for their immense influence on horror slashers that depict evil and immense depravity.

I really enjoyed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This film re-affirms my belief that horror films were better made in the 70s than they were in the 80s. I believe that directors approached this as art and it was the 80s in which this approach was deviated from. I can definitely see how filmmakers were not only afraid watching this film but disturbed, which can have a longer lasting effect. This is a gross movie that makes you want to clean your home and take a shower. It also makes you never want to pull over to a house in the middle of nowhere in Texas, which is what horror is all about – to make you look twice over your shoulder even when you’re long gone from the theatre.

- 8.3/10