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The most purely horrifying horror movie ever made, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre still remains as
disturbing, suspenseful and shattering as the day it first saw the light of a drive-in screen. Its "plot" is textbook modern
American folk tale--a vanload of kids wander off the road in rural Texas and trespass on the wrong farm, where they are murdered
by a family of degenerates who used to work in the local slaughterhouse but now ply their bloody trade on passing people.
From the first images--a corpse wired to a grave, close-ups of sunspots, a dead armadillo in the road--the film goes all out
to show you the uncomfortable. Horror scenes are staged with unforgettable force, using the soundtrack as much as the (oddly
restrained) visuals to batter you senseless, but Hooper fills the film with unsettling details that register on the corner
of the eye. The horror house, where human and animal bones are used in the furniture and a fat chicken is cooped in a canary
cage, is a truly nightmarish locale, and the maniacs all have unpleasant but credible tics. Unlike The Exorcist, which
tried to make horror play with a mass audience, this is a picture for the hard-core crowd: it has an absurdist lack of meaning
as horrific as any "message" could be and is never less than totally committed to scaring you witless.
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