RETRO REVIEW: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Blood is coming, bleh.

–Not the Editor (?)

2014 marks the 40th anniversary of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the acclaimed horror film by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Invaders of Mars, Spontaneous Combustion). The story is simple: five teenagers on a weekend getaway run out of gas on the road. They find an old, abandoned house to rest in, unaware of the chainsaw-wielding murderer Leatherface (Gunner Hansen) who’s hunting them down one by one. Aside from inspiring countless slasher flicks, such as Halloween and Friday the 13th, the movie disturbed and continues to shock audiences with its grit, realism, and unapologetic horror. This movie didn’t dance skeletons in your face, it scattered them across the floor. You weren’t there to be entertained but challenged.

So then, what does Hooper challenge us with? He asks the audience to entertain a notion: humans are perceived only as sacks of flesh. The philosopher René Descartes, in his Discourse on the Method, notes humans differ from animals by their ability to reason and use free will. The movie brings up the slaughter of animals often. Characters debate over which method is best, which one can be most easily justified, so as to not cause the suffering of the animal. The question is placed on the table whether animals should be consumed for food or not. According to Descartes, animals are machines, acting solely upon instinct, never using reason. Because of this, they are not aware of their existence and don’t feel pain, so one shouldn’t have any hang-ups about beating a cow with a sledgehammer. Hooper confronts this idea head-on. By intermixing pig squeals in death scenes and having Leatherface hang his victims on butcher hooks, he has us become the animals. If we’re aware of our own suffering, who’s to say animals aren’t as well? If we’re both sacks of flesh that can be similarly destroyed and decayed, what truly makes us human?

The movie is popularly acclaimed for its gritty realism, but despite this world’s resemblance to ours, the awkward cinematography, quick editing, and dramatic lighting makes this scenario dreamlike. One’s physical capabilities in a dream are unpredictable. Our teens are filmed running in a way that never lets the boogeyman ease up; their bodies seem sluggish and unresponsive. However, there are other moments when, despite how battered and bruised one is, the will to live pushes through and, in desperation, they keep running. Similarly to Descartes, Hooper makes sure to disregard the body as the hallmark for what makes one human, because in a nightmare, all physical aspects are unreliable.

In a bone-chilling scene, one of the teenage girls goes into a neighboring house where Leatherface lives. She trips and falls into one of the rooms, its floor covered in all kinds of corpses. Feathers and bones litter the floor. Rib cages of birds are strung up and hung like macabre Christmas decorations, right next to human hands. Inside a cage, a chicken is trapped, presumably next. Aside from disturbing the girl, alerting her to the nature of the homeowner’s depravity, there’s one aspect of the room that catches her eye: pieces of a human skeleton have been stripped clean of flesh, dismembered, and rearranged. The symmetry of the arrangement alludes to deliberate artistry, the use of reason. If someone perceived to be a brainless monster can create art and use his will to express himself, regardless of the tools and materials, that person is human.

Descartes’ criteria takes a weird turn here: if humans and animals are just animated sacks of flesh, there should be no remorse about their murder. However, Hooper has shown us that humans exist in this world. They’re aware of their existence. They use their reason. There’s no justification for such gruesome atrocities, and this is where the terror comes in. According to Descartes, humanity’s status as a res cogitans (thinking thing) elevates us above the animals. But here, Hooper says that won’t save us. We balance our apex status on the food chain with the grim reality that at any moment, we could be stripped of our humanity, destroyed and mangled like cattle to the slaughter.

Rarely has horror struck this deep to the bone. From a genre of startles and heart-rushing spooks comes an idea that terrifies us, that cuts to the core of our self-understanding. It’s not disturbing because of the chainsaw or the chases. It’s disturbing because, at the end, I felt as though I had woken up, but I wasn’t sure I was truly awake. I wasn’t sure if I was truly human, and if a movie can influence one’s perception so strongly, it has to be doing something right. As evidenced by its 40-year legacy, I think it’s doing exceptionally.

If you enjoyed Daniel’s review, you can find the rest of his work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You should also follow him on Twitter @manwthtapln.

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