If you ask me, the late, great Tobe Hooper never gets enough credit for masterminding one of the most significant titles in film history; one that -- like Psycho (1960) before it -- literally re-writes the rules of screen decorum, and shatters all sense of convention.
Where Hitchcock artfully fractured the act of learning amongst three sets of protagonists in Psycho, Hooper takes the next, trailblazing step.
He subtracts the idea of learning all together from Chainsaw, to incredible and often harrowing effect.
The colorfully-titled 1974 film -- now half-a-century old -- arises from the context of the "savage cinema," a trend we associate with such titles as Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, Last House on the Left and Deliverance. In keeping with that sub-genre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre doesn't spare the sensibilities, or dodge dark issues concerning human nature.
The Texas Chainsaw Masssacre depicts an. uncaring, disordered cosmos in its powerful visuals and in the discordant musical cues that open the film. The first clear composition of Chainsaw is of a rotting corpse propped up outside its grave, and this is an early visual indication that something is universally wrong.
This ghoulish scarecrow symbolizes the idea that "death has risen" and order has been overturned. This visual is later re-inforced by a shot of road kill in the path of the protagonists. It's an armadillo, dead on the road, and it rests upside down in the frame, a visual composition/symbol of death in the cinema since the beginning of the art form.
Over and over again, disorder reigns in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
- A spider web flourishes inside a house, a human dwelling.
- There's talk of a watering hole...but it's just dry earth.
- The kids visit a gas station, but there's no gas.
Again and again our expectation of order is confounded. Insanity has supplanted sanity in the film, right down to its core, taboo--breaking genetic structure.
If Hitchcock denied the audience of a single identification point with the murder of Marion (Janet Leigh) in the shower, Hooper in Chainsaw denies us the idea of heroism (and therefore learning...) all together.
Each of three kids goes into that cannibal farmhouse in rural Texas and violently meets his or her death, without passing on any knowledge or learning whatsoever to those who remain. Forget about mounting a defense or beating the bad guys; Leatherface and his kin. The movie offers no constructive second and third acts, at least not in a traditional narrative sense.
The film's structure, essentially repetitious, blocks every attempt for us to learn more; for the protagonists to learn more about their terrifying plight. This structure subverts our expectations and literally makes us feel endangered in theater. The movie's young cast, and by extension the audience, feel like it has no chance. Madness is victorious, even if Sally escapes.
Indeed, even at film's end, order is not restored. Leatherface just keeps on spinning. The world around him may be out of gas, but he's still sputtering, twirling and dancing in unending insanity and blood lust.
For fifty years now, he has been spinning, through sequels, remakes, and even 3-D, but it is the original classic film of 1974 that Leatherface grabbed ahold of our psyche. Half-a-century later, he still refuses to let go. Twirl away, Leatherface...
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