"The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives they could not have expected, nor could they have wished to see as much of the mad or macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of the day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
-John Larroquette speaking the prologue for the film in boldface.

"The Blair Witch Project" may be the most successful independent horror film in history, but it isn’t the scariest. That honor still belongs to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 grandfather of slasher films The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (R, 83 minutes, Vortex Films), a movie that depicted the first and most intense example of the body count film, or Dead Teenager Movie to cop a term from Roger Ebert. But to call this movie simply the granddad of all horror films would be likening it to 50% of all the horror films you've ever seen, and they all seem in many ways to rip this movie off like only the most devoted genre purist would notice. This is scarier than all the films at the Best Buy DVD horror movie section combined.

It was a new kind of American horror movie that came about post-Vietnam, when the ugly side of the country became inescapably real. The protest, the attitude, the politics, the slaughter and the aftershock became the fuel that drove some of the best horror films in history, beginning with 1968's "Night Of The Living Dead," a Pittsburgh indie release shot in b&w by George A. Romero, which depicted a catastrophic world event as the basis for the reviving of stiff, dead human bodies, who came alive to cannibalize the living, focusing mostly on the seven people who remained trapped indoors at a farmhouse and each doing their hardest to find the power to make it out alive. The truth is: NO ONE DID! Everybody died, the final moment where the only survivor is killed in cold blood by trigger-happy rednecks having a zombie bonfire certifies that the living as are as good as dead as...the dead! It depicted the turmoil on American soil as the conduit for shock, and the movie’s color-free presentation didn’t take away from the gruesome sight of dead bodies gorging on the flesh and innards of any unlucky soul.

Alfred Hitchcock's suspense standard "Psycho" was loosely based on the real life Ed Gein, a demented taxidermist in Wisconsin. After the classic 1972 drive-in tribute "Deranged," Tobe Hooper decided to take it the next level by merging it with the skewered American values of Watergate-era society (human labor replaced by machinery, the dysfunctional family structure, the threat of power tools, and the vegan "Meat is Murder" lifestyle) as well as some surprisingly effective old-time humor of black and white to create a movie so imaginative and grisly that it surprised even Hooper to learn that the MPAA rated this film R. The intent was a PG because of the subdued amount of gore and mild profanity, but the latter half of the movie becomes a genuinely arresting snapshot of fear, hysteria, madness and sadism. This is not for kids to watch alone, but if you want to show them how a horror movie can be done right, this is the one to show them when they reach the age of reason.

John Larroquette was told to do his best Orson Welles impersonation for the film’s prologue, which insists that what happened on August 18, 1973 (which was actually just another day of production for the cast and crew) is true. When Marcus Nispel and Michael Bay unforgiving remade this film nearly two decades later, they clumsily tried to play up the "Inspired by a true story" myth by presenting the kind of "newsreel" footage that looks obviously phony when compared to the look of something like "The Blair Witch Project." But after the scrolling text and voiceover, we see the sound of a creaky shuddering and bright flashes of camera light revealing the sight of a decaying corpse, the stolen body of an old man which is used as a brutal foreboding hint at terror to come.

And unlike the 2003 remake from Nispel & Bay, these five kids are innocent kids (if also quite shrill) out on a drive through the Texas rural roads on a sunny, peaceful Sunday afternoon following news of corpse robbing. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her handicapped brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) have decided to check on their grandfather’s site, bringing along their friends Jerry (Allan Danziger), Kirk (William Veil) and Pam (Teri McMinn) for the ride.

They notice a stranger on the road and decide to pick him up, and the hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) turns out to be a serious headcase who talks in detail of the gruesome methods of butchering cattle (including where you can find "head cheese") before slicing open his own hand. Taking a picture of Franklin, he sprinkles gunpowder on the photograph and lights it on fire, then lunging at Franklin’s arm with a straight razor. The group promptly kick him out of the van.

With their fuel supply low, they stop off at a gas station which, as the owner insists is out of gas for the moment. Jerry decides to go out and find some help, and encounters what looks like a deserted country home. When he goes inside, he trips and falls by the hulking Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), who smacks his head with a sledgehammer. Kirk and Pam then encounter the same property and get butchered as well. By the time dark night comes, only Sally and Franklin remain, but being in a wheelchair is the kiss of death that leaves Franklin s.o.l. when the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface comes calling. Sally escapes and meets with the old gas station attendant (Jim Siedow), but he ties her up and sticks her in a potato sack on the way back home to the slaughterhouse, where the hitchhiker and Leatherface are waiting.

The first time we truly see the interior of the slaughterhouse is when Pam ends up surround by feathers and animal bones, and the shots of the various skeletal remnants formed into furniture and upholestry is just one of the many intense moments of serious dread which give the film its long-lasting impact. The movie was shot in grainy 16mm which made the film look genuinely real and like a nightmarish reenacting of events, which makes the whole "based on a true story" ploy all the more insistent. The look of Texas is rendered vivid and accurate, encapsulating the stifling warm weather, the woodsy death traps, and even the road kill in their visceral glory.

Cinematographer Daniel Pearl would work on the remake of his own earlier project, but here he reveals a gift for intense lighting and ability to capture some of the most effective camera shots in the history of horror. The tracking shot which follows the character of Pam as she leaves a swinging bench to approach the front of the house effectively focuses on her bare back and hot pants-clad lower half so that the moment we see Leatherface steal her into the cutting room and throw her on top of a meat hook gives you the willies. Teri McMinn also does a seriously believable job conveying intense pain, which like some other terrifying moments was actually inspired by real physical agony (in her instance, a nylon cord which ran between her legs).

And the movie’s immortal "dinner scene" also effectively leers at the other female character, Marilyn Burns’ traumatized Sally, but focuses on her face, engaged in the act of screaming bloody murder and racked by the kind of natural terror which equates to a lifetime of therapy and psychiatric assistance. Hooper and Pearl focus on her eyes in some shots, green and bloodshot, and the expressions she conveys tap into that same paranoid and alarming cry of terror.

The movie is a sonic nightmare without being loud and bombastic. The throwaway country music adds a sense of homeliness beaten down with a sadistic lunacy by Wayne Bell & Hooper’s harsh and cold musical score, which is rumbling metal machine music made with the intent to disturb, and it does it with aplomb. Also, you can hear the various sounds of squealing, bleating farm animals everywhere, from the sights of the animal bones to the death scenes and the incomprehensible sounds of Leatherface. Also, Marilyn Burns is the ORIGINAL scream queen, her ear-splitting shrieks and at times cackling survivalist pride (the ending) make her the poster child for frail sanity permanently damaged. And most movies after this like to use those loud musical screech sounds to perfunctorily signal false jumps, whereas the ones you hear in this film only amplify the gritty veracity of the granular, murky look and the soul-stripping editing.

As a film made about the brutal carnage inflicted by carnivorous, man-eating backwoods sadist maniacs, we don’t see that much gruesomeness. In fact, taking an educated guess at the amount of blood used, I’m supposing that there are 32 ounces of the fake stuff and the rest is just cuts and bruises. People insist that this is an extremely bloody movie, "a blood-bucket extravaganza" or "gory tale" as many will call it (that's reserved for recent Michael Bay films), but this isn’t so. Although characters die in violent manners, we never get gratuitous splatter shots. You have to remember that when Teri McMinn gets thrown on the meat hook, we never see her impaled bodily wound. In fact, perhaps the only moments I can recall having mild gore is the hitchhiker's two knife attacks in the van and the moment Franklin meets Leatherface in the woods.

In fact, the cannibalism is used as a satirical metaphor for capitalism, just like “Dawn Of The Dead” used a shopping mall to mock the clueless American consumer, at least before teenagers turned it into the place to be. "It's a dog-eat-dog world, and from where I'm sitting at, there just ain't enough damn dog!" said the old man (later known as Drayton Sawyer) in Hooper’s 1986 sequel, which in a way basically sums the family’s attitude about why they kill for food.

Tobe Hooper shot this in about a month for the low price of $140,000, venturing to Round Rock, Bastrop and Austin to shoot this movie. With a collective crew of less than 50 people, including one lone stuntwoman and many of the crew people doing double duties, Hooper has made that one movie whose D.I.Y. execution raises the stakes even further. A lot of movies that followed in this film’s footsteps could hardly accomplish with over $1 million what this movie could do with less than half. Seriously, the original "Halloween" ($325,000) and "Friday The 13th" ($700,000) had more money to their advantage. But Tobe Hooper, just like Carpenter and Craven, had undoubtedly brilliant visions of horror which are the stuff of both legends and future cash cows (it took over a decade for an official TCM sequel, though).

Marilyn Burns was about 17 when she made this film, and she had never appeared in a film before. Her youth and amateur status works to her advantage, as she is a completely sympathetic and involving character throughout. She’s a real person caught in a crazy situation, and she gives 100% plus some more. Also, the fact that this is a low budget movie from the seventies means that she had to do most of her own stunts, and that means that she become one abused actress. From the moment she runs through the branches to escape Leatherface to the moment she is almost touched by a live chainsaw when in the back of a pick-up truck, she is a bloodied, grimy, tattered mess of a human being, all skinned knees, sliced finger, abrasions all over her body. To call her a trooper would be too basic, because she gives feverishly high amounts of blood, sweat and tears to the point where you’re convinced she’ll breakdown for good on film. Never in cinematic history has one person conveyed such a descent into delirium as hair-raising as Marilyn Burns.

And Gunnar Hansen solidified his status as the best actor ever to become a flesh-wearing murderer with a chainsaw. Just like Burns, nothing would have prepared him for the performance of a lifetime, as well as the grueling physical demands of his character. Already a corpulent presence, he wore these cleats that made him taller than doors he walked through, and one strange bit of humor shows him making one of those brake-and-turn motions straight out of the Keystone Kops’ oeuvre. The mannerisms and physical power of Leatherface have been duplicated only somewhat successfully in the first two sequels, but with both 1994's "Return Of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and 2003’s "Hollywood Chainsaw Massacre," Leatherface lost his power. Hansen is so deliciously monstrous in his portrayal of the chainsaw king that he'd never live down his debut performance throughout his remaining B-movie career.

Although I thought that the rest of the younger actors playing the victims acquitted themselves well to the legacy of the film (especially the immortal Teri McMinn as the unlucky chick on the hook), the remaining cast of killers are in the same irreplaceable league as Burns and Hansen. Jim Siedow (R.I.P.) is perfect as the most humane of the maniacs, a blend of gentile elderly goodness and sinister inner ugliness that outlines the film’s complex moral ambiguities. And can nobody forget his classic lines such as "You damned fool! You ruined the door!"? Perhaps the best line he gives is this: "I just can't take no pleasure in killing. There's just some things you gotta do. Don't mean you have to like it." Edwin Neal has a field day as the disturbed human pervert with a knife fetish and the chuckle of a weasel. And John Dugan (Grandpa) manages to personify the most convincing 110-year-old killer ever seen!

The conclusion leaves you with perhaps one of the all-time greatest final images in the existence horror flick. The night has finally ended, and the sun is rising on a new day. Sally finds freedom by racing towards a truck, and as she drives off with what spouts off what seems like an amalgam of panicked yelping and cackling victory, Leatherface is alone and throwing around his chainsaw with one hand, sort of like a power tool pirouette which later has him spinning around with his hands raising his chainsaw in the air. I still love that scene even today. Long live Gunnar Hansen.

In conclusion, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains one of the most frightening films ever. "Who will survive and what will be left of them?" posed the tagline of the original film’s poster, which also popped up in a White Zombie song from "Astro Creep 2000" in 1995 (called "Real Solution #9"). This is the movie that Joe Bob Briggs worships most of all, the rare drive-in horror treat that holds up even today, no matter how many sequels or reduxes come out the butcher shop. It’s a claustrophobic, compelling, and cutting (pun not intended) little movie that holds its rightful niche alongside the big boys. And besides, Leatherface can eat Freddy and Jason for breakfast, and probably would too.

Pioneer Entertainment previously released a great special edition DVD of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sometime in the 1990s, and I suppose that same version has been released in the brand new black plastic shell version from Pioneer’s new distribution name, Geneon Entertainment. A widescreen transfer (about 1.85:1) was supervised by Tobe Hooper to create the best possible version of the film from its age-old 16 mm source elements, and the dated presentation thanks to spats of grain and dirt should not be seen as faults seeing as how they did such a good job restoring the color levels to natural palettes and tightening up the sharpness several notches without risking a lot of edge enhancement or artifacts.

The audio tracks are the respective original monaural soundtrack from the original release, which sounds respectively like a product of its time and manages to be quite a fine track nonetheless, and the Dolby 2.0 Surround Sound mix which adds some well needed clarity, directional effects, and some tiny bass. The dialogue on both tracks are serviceable, perhaps because the original mixes somehow couldn’t fix so much overlapping, rough sound. Regrettably, there were no subtitle options or closed captions.

The extras platter remains the same. I really wished Geneon would finally get the rights to Brad Shellady’s timeless hour-long interview piece "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait," but it ended up being a separate DVD release (I will review that and perhaps the TCM remake and sequels in the not-so-distant future). Also out of the picture is the 2000 documentary "Shocking Truth," which features interviews with more of the cast and crew.

The special features remain holdovers, from the anecdote-heavy audio commentary track with Hooper, Pearl & Hansen (a fun, informative reunion for these three fellas) to the cadre of deleted scenes with text explanations (including the bit where Leatherface goes to powder himself) to the theatrical trailers for all four TCM movies (including two for the original seeing how New Line Cinema re-released it in the 1980s) to the outtakes reel to the segments of unbroken footage soon to be edited into full-fledged scenes ("Study In Filmmaking") and finally the many photo galleries of production stills and promotional art. However, any version of this highly recommended special edition will do for anyone who neglects that the saw IS family!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age