Three movies that wouldn’t exist without ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’
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(Credits: Miramax)
Although the nights are starting to draw in, acting as a harsh reminder that summer is coming to an end, it’s the perfect time to watch The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
A hot, sticky film, full of short-shorts, gas stations, and the scent of death intensified by the heat, the road trip that the teens in Tobe Hooper’s film embark on is one that destroys all ideas of freedom.
The budget constraints lend it a DIY aesthetic that bolsters it as more real and terrifying than if it were a shiny market grab, which helped it break new ground. Moreover, the slasher genre, which had its roots sown in the 1960s with movies like Psycho, Peeping Tom, and the introduction of the Italian giallo, was kick-started into a bold new era with this 1974 feature. It handed audiences a graphic display of senseless violence with Leatherface, who ran amok seemingly without motive, and the teens just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming unfortunate victims of the cannibal family’s bloodlust.
The teens initially meet a hitchhiker, whom they boldly let into their van despite his incredibly unhinged appearance and reports of local murders on the radio, which only sets the tone for their inevitable journey towards disaster. They soon come face-to-face with the hitchhiker’s family, including the infamous chainsaw-wielding Leatherface, who doesn’t hesitate to slice them to shreds, even hanging one of the victims on a meat hook, while still alive.
Ridley Scott was inspired by the film’s fear factor and knew he had to do something on a similar level when making Alien. At first glance, they might not seem to share a DNA; after all, Scott’s setting is onboard a vessel travelling in space hijacked by a terrifying extraterrestrial known as a Xenomorph, a far cry from the power-tool-mad, mask-wearing stranger who emerges from his bone and carcass-filled house, apron-clad and ready to kill. Or is it?
He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I watched Texas Chain Saw Massacre when I was prepping for Alien one Saturday afternoon in the Fox studio in a small theatre. It was horrendous, and it scared the shit out of me. I think I started with a hamburger at lunchtime and never took a bite,” adding, “Tobe Hooper did a [great] job, and it was my challenge to say, ‘How do I get that scary?’”
Both films feature a group of people terrorised by a figure whom they are seemingly powerless to stop. Their settings and circumstances render them unable to flare for help; it’s only their survival instincts against a no-thoughts-just-vibes killing machine, which inevitably results in a sole survivor in each story. Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Alien also has a final girl in Ellen Ripley, furthering this now-popular horror trope.
Two years before Alien, however, a movie a lot more obviously indebted to Hooper’s film emerged. Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes similarly follows a group of cannibals who terrorise a family, within a sweltering, quintessentially American rural atmosphere, crafted by Chain Saw Massacre‘s production designer, Robert Burns.
Craven cited Hopper’s feature as one of his all-time favourites, and the success of The Hills Have Eyes helped elevate his career greatly, such that he soon went on to make some of the biggest movies in the history of horror: A Nightmare on Elm Street and, of course, the deliciously meta Scream franchise.
You might think it would be harder to pinpoint a more recent slasher that wouldn’t exist without the film, considering that so many other influential titles have emerged in the decades since, like Halloween and Friday the 13th, but there’s one 2022 release unmistakably indebted to Hooper’s classic.
Ti West’s X is one of the most obvious homages, with its similar Texan ‘70s setting, following a group as they arrive by van to a rural property where killers lurk, which inevitably results in a final girl walking away, having barely survived. Both thematically and aesthetically, the parallels are strong, yet somehow X manages to stand on its own, predominantly because of its unique theme of female ageing, with Mia Goth playing both a young porn star and a murderous old woman. It’s not like West is hiding his homage to the movie, but has his finger on making something distinctive, and its success only proves that these kinds of retro slashers have wide appeal.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is so visceral and raw, you can feel the sweat and the heat of the tarmac and smell the rotting flesh. Hooper might not have ever made a film quite as sensorially hard-hitting as his directorial debut, but thanks to his boundary-pushing approach to grisly horror, in its wake came a barrage of movies that have carried its torch. Although few are as scary as the cannibalistic Sawyer family, who threaten to eat away at you, quite literally.
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