More_Badass
Member
First saw TCM last summer, but didn't like as much as I had hoped. Decided to watch it again, with a more attentive eye and I enjoyed it much more. If there's one thing the movie nails, it's tone; from the opening narration and the unsettling camera flash sounds over imagery of rot and death, to the dilapidated sun-scorched Texas outskirts, you feel the intense heat and the grimy desolate middle of nowhere isolation
The tension and off-kilter unease builds, until in broad daylight, Leatherface just appears, no warning, no build-up or creepy music needed. And with that, the characters are in the midst of a nightmare. Halloween may be more tense, and Elm Street may literally take place within nightmares, but Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a nightmarish chase through hell.
Unlike other slasher movies, the horror here isn't the invasion of the killer and evil onto the banality of normal life. It's everyday people suddenly finding themselves in a gruesome insane nightmare so far removed from normalcy. TCM does it better than many other movies I've seen. One hammer blow to skull and slamming door, and suddenly the movie becomes a slaughter, a rush of meathooks in backs and hammers to skulls and chainsaw eviscerations and skeletal tapestries and dismembered limbs and cannibalistic mockery of your everyday family dinner.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't gory or that bloody by today's standards, in fact it barely shows any gore or blood, but you still feel all of it thanks to the sheer physical brutality of Leatherface, the sound effects, and the characters' acting. The twitching body after hammer to the head is more disturbing than any shot of a crushed face or spraying blood could be.
The dinner scene is still effective as well, partially because it feels like you're trapped in what is just an everyday family dinner for these people, which makes it even more horrifying. The causal nature of it all, bringing Grandpa down for dinner, father and sons sitting together among face skin lamps and chairs with literal arms. It's the typical family dinner twisted and perverted.
And surprisingly, I liked this Leatherface's design much better than the remake, which I had seen a while back. Previously, that design was my favorite, but after watching the original, 1974's look has this rough design that is just unsettling. It doesn't fit quite right and is oddly shaped (you know, like a human skin mask roughly sewn in some Texas backwoods basement), the eye areas are shadowed giving him an inhuman look. While 2003's fits perfectly like a nicely-molded mask. It just doesn't seem as creepy.
