The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

"There are moments when we cannot believe that what is happening is really true. Pinch yourself and you may find out that it is."

Tobe Hooper had already made an ultra obscure short, Eggshells (1969), before he got his big break with this ground-breaking horror classic. Deciding after a late night viewing of Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) that the way to commercial success lay with the modern horror film, Hooper turned (like Hitchcock and Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby before him) to the exploits of Great American Madman, Ed Gein. The inspiration behind such diverse product as Psycho (1960), Deranged (1974), Three on a Meathook (1972) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Gein was a lonely psychotic who, in the 1950s, was charged with at least two murders and the mutilation of numerous bodies stolen from the local cemetery. When arrested, his house was found full of human remains, limbs in various states of decay and grotesque household fittings fashioned from human skin. He was even said to have flayed his mother's corpse, wearing her skin as a suit while out grave-robbing.

Armed with one of the truly great titles in the history of the genre (nothing could ever be as grisly as it suggests), Hooper and Henkel utilised many of the details of the Gein case for their roller coaster screenplay. By the time Hooper transferred the story to the screen, the Gein connection was played down in favour of a relentless classic of low budget energy and enthusiasm, Hooper creating one of the cult films of the 1970s.

There have been many claims for films to have been the most influential genre product of the 1970s, though The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has surely more right to the title than any other. It belongs to the new breed of horror film, as exemplified by the film that inspired Hooper in the first place, Night of the Living Dead. It eschewed the 'safe' supernatural horror tradition of Universal and Hammer, opting instead for a dark and dangerous vision of a decaying rural America populated by psychotic cannibals - this was a new kind of horror for the post-Vietnam, post-Manson era. The film turns many of the conventions of the genre on its head - none of the characters in Chain Saw Massacre (and that includes the victims) are particularly likeable, for example, and this, perhaps more than anything else, contributes to the uncomfortable atmosphere of the film. The audience has no-one to root for and even when we are offered a sort of identification figure, she's ultimately driven mad by her ordeal.

Hooper's direction is virtually text book exploitation. For a film with a reputation like this one (most of it generated by that once in a lifetime title), it's surprising just how much restraint Hooper shows in the violent scenes - only in the last ten minutes or so do we see the blood flowing freely. The horror stems from the characters themselves, their lack of motivation and their apparent lack of guilt over what they do. They treat their captives as they would a side of meat ("our family's always been in meat") and show no recognition of them as fellow human beings. The unnecessary 2003 remake fell foul of that great scourge of Hollywood horror, the need to rationalise and explain - it tried to give the hulking Leatherface a motive for his behaviour, a motive which ultimately made him more human and less monstrous. Hooper isn't bothered with such niceties -there are no explanations in his film and it's the more terrifying because of it.

Hooper's technical skills are best highlighted in the film's set-pieces, the first being the shocking murder of Kirk as he enters the family's decaying house. The sequence lasts little more than a minute, though its impact is tremendous. The violence is casual, unexpected and - despite critical claims to the contrary - quite bloodless. There's no fuss or lingering gore shots - it just happens, without warning and Hooper is quite unapologetic in his capturing of the violent imagery. The scene is constructed almost as an homage to the death of the private investigator Arbogast in Psycho. In both films, the victim enters an old house and begins to explore - but instead of the obligatory creeping about in darkened rooms, both victims are suddenly murdered, with no warning, at a point in the narrative that such an act of violence is not expected.

Elsewhere, the death of Franklin provides the film with its finest and most memorable shock moment. Significantly, this is the only time in the entire film that anyone actually dies because of the saw, giving lie to the sensational title, and it again happens off camera. Hooper sets up the sudden appearance of Leatherface with scenes of tense atmospherics; as Sally and Franklin struggle through the trees, there's an awful feeling that something primeval and uncontrollable is lurking in the woods. When he finally bursts out of the darkness and sets to work with the saw, Leatherface finally shreds what few nerves the audience still has left.

The subsequent imprisonment and torture (both physical and mental) of Sally forms the film's most harrowing passage. One of the joys of the better 70s horrors was the way the left audiences not knowing how they should react to the events being played out before them. Laugh, cry, vomit, scream of just flee? All are certainly options here, and the torture pf Sally is usually the point where most audiences are left floundering - it's perversely both hysterically funny and almost unbearably cruel and it's this dichotomy that makes films like Chain Saw Massacre so deeply unsettling.

Rumour has it that much of this footage was filmed in one exhausting 48 hour session, as the film's already meager budget dwindled away to nothing. The harsh, primitive conditions under which the film was shot and the intensity of the performances become painfully evident on Burns' face as the torture and humiliation scenes progress. Her performance throughout these scenes is exhausting to watch and the rumour mill insisted that she was forced to work until she dropped in Hooper's obsessive drive to complete the film. Certainly her portrayal of a woman on the edge of total physical and mental collapse is harrowing stuff and often seem painfully realistic. Hooper employs a series of stylistic tricks to heighten the agony, including a stunning series of rapid fire close-ups of Sally's terrified eyes, the visuals underpinned by strange screeching noises on the soundtrack.

Technically, the film is full of such triumphs; Hooper's camerawork is fluid and confident and his inventive use of light and shade, particularly in the sequences set at dusk and dawn, is gloomily atmospheric. Coupled with creative, razor sharp editing and a bizarre musique concrete score it results in a film that can certainly live up to Hooper's claim for it to be "...a roller coaster ride." Indeed words like 'kinetic', 'relentless' and 'unremitting' have all been thrown around with abandon by those seeking to review the film, and with plenty of justification.

But equally impressive are the film's often overlooked quieter, subtler moments. The looming close up of Leatherface, for instance, just after Jerry's death. What's going on behind that mask? How much of the human Leatherface remains? And just how long has this family been terrorising the Texan outback? The implication - the 'car's graveyard' sequence gives some indication of the scale of their atrocities - is that the Hardesty's and their friends are not the first victims of the deranged family, just the latest in a long line of unwary travelers to fall foul of Leatherface's roaring chainsaw.

A lot has been said and written about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, more perhaps than any other exploitation film from the 1970s. Critics have taken it more seriously than most of its kind (and, one can't help but think, more seriously than Hooper intended), suggesting that the film is - a comment on mass unemployment in 70s America; a redefining of American folklore (Leatherface has frequently been likened to James Fenemore's heroic pioneersman Leatherstocking, Hooper's creation being the modern, corrupted antithesis of Fenemore's character); and even as a metaphor for contemporary sexual politics. All of these readings (and more) can be accommodated within the framework of Hooper and Henkel's script, but for many it remains the reductio ad absurdum of the 'woman in jeopardy' film, one that takes the established conventions of the horror genre to their limits and, in doing so, redefines the genre. Without The Texas Chain Saw Massacre it's impossible to imagine The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Halloween (1978) or Friday the 13th (1980) ever getting made at all. It remains a hugely influential and deeply unsettling film, one that it's director has found hard to top - that Hooper's career went into such a horrible nosedive less than a decade later is a matter of considerable regret.
KEVIN LYONS