The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Film Review)

1974 Vortex/Bryanston Distributing Company
Directed by: Tobe Hooper; Written by: Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper
Starring: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, John Dugan
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 84 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 9/10

Maybe a movie called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre seems to sum itself up in its title. However, the oil crisis of 1973 happened a year before the film's release, making the inciting incident of the film, five co-eds running out of gas on a rural stretch of highway, quite pointed. Everything in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre flows out of the early 70's political and cultural climate, with a nutso family of co-ed eating cannibals standing in for either Dick Nixon and his cronies, or the chaotic malaise of the era in general--there's a reason an ongoing news radio broadcast, constantly in the film's background, seems to rattle off horror after horror. The film's flaw, though, is in the fact that I can simply say five co-ed's and have essentially given them as much depth as the film has, outside of the fact that one is in a wheelchair. Then again, perhaps there's a thematic reason for that, as well.
Director, Tobe Hooper, has created a harrowing experience, made only more so by his attempt to edit the film down to a more acceptable rating, as the cannibals hunt down and slaughter co-ed after co-ed. By artistically editing around the violence with bizarre angles, and harsh bursts of sound and light, Hooper's created something far more disturbing. The set designers animal bones, raw meat, and buzzing flies-aesthetic only exacerbates the unnerving mood. From actor's reports, filming it was far more harrowing than watching it--in one of the film's few instances of on-screen bloodletting, the filmmakers slashed an actress' hand with a real knife, and that chainsaw...real, and three inches from some of the actors' faces. This grimy, dangerous tone infects the film, rendering its final minutes nearly unwatchable in their frantic, fever-dream-like attacks on the viewers' senses. It's as intense as a drive home from work in 2018.