Today's subject is a little different though. As patently absurd, campy and over-the-top as this film is, the part of it I refuse to believe isn't even something that happened in the story. It's the idea that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was directed by the same guy as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1. Yeah that's right, Tobe Hooper, the man who in 1974 created a horror masterwork with no budget, no stars, under the worst imaginable filming conditions, somehow followed it up 12 years later with a sequel that basically sprays moldy diarrhea over everything that was great about the original. I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that the same director made both of these movies.
Before we get into the crime against cinema that was TCM 2, let's just recap the first one a little. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, loosely inspired by the Ed Gein murders (as well as those of Dean Corll - look up that saga, it's revolting), was shot using grainy 16mm film, on a budget of roughly $150,000. Like Night of the Living Dead it made use of real rural locations (see Herzog, Werner: "the voodoo of location") and was filmed in a cinema vérité style, allowing the horrific tale to come to life in a way that felt totally authentic and heightened the terror. We as the audience feel like we're experiencing these ghastly events along with the protagonists. The cast of unknowns is first-rate, playing the scenes in a casual, naturalistic way and largely improvising the loose dialogue. By the time everything goes to hell in the second act, we've been given a reason to care about the five young adults. We're given no background about the family of maniacs - they are simply an evil force of nature, with no discernable reason for what they do; making sense of it would undermine the senseless cruelty Sally endures in the final half-hour. But despite the film's grisly tone and subject matter, almost all the violence and blood is left to the imagination. Only once for example do we see chainsaw meeting flesh, and it's when Leatherface (one of the great boogeymen of horror cinema) falls down and accidentally gouges his own thigh. But the film's timbre is so intense and macabre we think we're seeing more gore than we are. It's brilliantly understated. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is far greater than the sum of its parts; all the unconventional elements came together - off-putting locations, genuine performances, innovative cinematography (the closeup montage of Sally's face during the dinner scene is mindbreaking), and unsettling musique concrète-inspired score (courtesy of Wayne Bell and Tobe himself) - to create a fully immersive experience of palpable terror. It's one of the all-time great horror films.
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| This guy is terrifying. |
