Eaten Alive At A Chainsaw Massacre Excerpt

"...the soundtrack is dominated by the sounds of dirt crunching, a discordant whine (part of the music track) and then of periodic camera flashes "clicking" away. On screen, quick cuts of a rotting, decayed corpse are seen in close-up, surrounded by utter darkness. After a short span of these disgusting close-up "flashes," the first fully-lit, recognizable composition of the film is revealed: that of a body displayed atop a cemetery monument. A ghoulish work of art.

The camera originates the shot with a close-up of the corpse's goopy-looking face (replete with a full set of teeth, which gives the impression of a smile), and then pulls back to reveal that his dead body has been "posed," as if indeed a masterpiece of art. Behind and above the corpse hangs a marmalade sky, with the sung hanging low. In one sense, this sequence depicts the particulars of a grave robbing (from the shovel shifting the dirt above the corpse's plot, to the perpetrator proudly snapping photos of his handiwork), but in another, this opening gambit is evidence of Hooper's new world disorder.

The first real composition of Chain Saw is of the dead propped up, perched outside of a grave and positioned under the light of he sun, instead of below the earth in the dark and gloom of the grave. The image of the posed corpse simultaneously suggest that madness reigns in this universe, and that the architect of madness has an unconventional eye for beauty art.

For as certainly as the Hitchhiker and Leatherface are sick in their hobbies, they have an undeniable knack with arts and crafts..."

- from my analysis of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, page 55. Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper (McFarland; 2002), now in softcover.