The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Writers: Kim Henkel & Tobe Hooper, from a story by Kim Henkel

Stars: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, John Dugan

A group of friends (Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, and Teri McMinn) endure a nightmare in rural Texas when the old family home turns out to have some unsavory neighbors (Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, and John Dugan).

 

Tobe Hooper’s low-budget horror classic gives us more to chew on than just the surface action of cannibal crazies in the Texas sun.

 

Its depiction of gruesome, unsavory truths percolating beneath the veneer of wholesome all-American tropes like family, barbecue, and country livin’ seems like a forerunner of the kind of storytelling that David Lynch would later perfect.

 

Its depiction of the pathology that comes out of economic displacement seems more relevant today than ever; today, Leatherface and his clan would probably be strung out on opiates.

 

It’s interesting to compare the way our hapless protagonists merely tolerate the wheelchair-bound Franklin as a nuisance while the cannibals appear to value family more highly by saving a place of honor for Grandpa, lauding his accomplishments and trying to make him feel useful again.

 

The finale completes this nihilistic view of our red, white, and blue underbelly by seeming to deny the possibility of defeating evil, merely of avoiding it in the hope that some other poor bastard will have to face the music instead.