I was a little nervous about seeing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre initially. From all accounts I had heard, it was among the most terrifying, most horrific, most grueling films ever made.
Well, I have to admit, when I finally built up the courage to see it myself, I found myself a little... let down.
Don't get me wrong, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't a bad movie. I just didn't really find it scary. Exhausting, yes — grueling, yes. But not scary. When Leatherface chases Sally through a tangled forest, I found her incessant screaming more discomforting than the situation. When she is held captive by the Sawyers and about to be killed, I found myself distracted by Tobe Hooper's extreme close-ups on her eyeballs.
In the end, I was most impressed with the film's atmosphere of decay and depravity. I think it's interesting to compare it with Psycho — both movies share the same basic element of the Old, Dark House in a rural setting being a host to insanity and murder. But while the Bates Motel is mostly intact and appears basically normal, the Sawyer home boasts clocks impaled on the eaves, a room filled entirely with feathers and bones, and a literal "arm"-chair. Ultimately, the most effective moments in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are where nothing much happens, and you just soak in the hellish atmosphere Hooper has created — the opening shot of a mutilated corpse strung up like a scarecrow, the mass of daddy longlegs crawling in a corner, the profoundly uncomfortable scene with the hitchhiker in the van.
Film Exhausting, but not terrifying.
I was a little nervous about seeing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre initially. From all accounts I had heard, it was among the most terrifying, most horrific, most grueling films ever made.
Well, I have to admit, when I finally built up the courage to see it myself, I found myself a little... let down.
Don't get me wrong, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't a bad movie. I just didn't really find it scary. Exhausting, yes — grueling, yes. But not scary. When Leatherface chases Sally through a tangled forest, I found her incessant screaming more discomforting than the situation. When she is held captive by the Sawyers and about to be killed, I found myself distracted by Tobe Hooper's extreme close-ups on her eyeballs.
In the end, I was most impressed with the film's atmosphere of decay and depravity. I think it's interesting to compare it with Psycho — both movies share the same basic element of the Old, Dark House in a rural setting being a host to insanity and murder. But while the Bates Motel is mostly intact and appears basically normal, the Sawyer home boasts clocks impaled on the eaves, a room filled entirely with feathers and bones, and a literal "arm"-chair. Ultimately, the most effective moments in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are where nothing much happens, and you just soak in the hellish atmosphere Hooper has created — the opening shot of a mutilated corpse strung up like a scarecrow, the mass of daddy longlegs crawling in a corner, the profoundly uncomfortable scene with the hitchhiker in the van.