![]() ![]() ![]() Viewers in the 1970s remembered the scene as being bloody - and perhaps even including a frame of hook penetrating skin - only because Hooper’s shooting and editing tricked them. But, as you’ve no doubt heard if you’ve done minimal research on the film, the most shocking scene includes no blood or gore.ĭirector Tobe Hooper gives a close-up of the meat hook, Leatherface places Pam (Teri McMinn) on the hook but it’s shot from the front so no special effect is needed, and then McMinn acts like she’s wriggling on the hook. It was initially considered to be the violence version of pornography. Regardless of its classification, the history of how “Chain Saw” is viewed by the public is fascinating – first as trash, then as dark or unintentional comedy, and finally as a genre classic. The quintet would’ve been fine – even after picking up The Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal, brilliantly setting the uneasy tone) – if they didn’t have the bad luck of going to this particular house to ask for gasoline. None of them have to be stalked, except Sally, and that’s only because she temporarily gets away and Leatherface chases her through the barely moonlit woods. And it might also miss out on slasher qualification because all five teens travel to Leatherface’s (Gunnar Hansen) house, where he then kills them. The fact that it didn’t immediately spawn sequels (there are now seven more films, but the first sequel didn’t come out till 1986, and it’s a comedy) also makes “Chain Saw” get overlooked. Yet when I talk about influential slasher movies with my friends, “Chain Saw” is not brought up as often as “Halloween” (1978) and later films, and I think it’s partially because it’s too good at what it does, especially when Burns so convincingly portrays her horror as a family of cannibals tries to kill her. Marilyn Burns, as Sally, is arguably the first Final Girl, and certainly a Scream Queen who earns that label, especially in the conclusive dinner-table scene. ![]() “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974) is perhaps the first slasher film, or at least a proto-slasher, depending on how you reckon it. ![]()
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