The Texas Film That Changed a Genre (Sep 8, 2024)
by Scott Sosebee
September means, for many of us, that a fall semester at the university has begun, but it also means that Halloween is almost here, the time of the year marked by ghouls and goblins, ghosts and gargoyles. One of the time-honored Halloween traditions at our house is to watch horror films, or as my wife calls them, “scary movies.” Our full line-up changes from year to year, but one standard that we watch over and over is one of the most frightening things I have ever seen on screen—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think it has always scared me so much because the writers and producers sold it as based on a true story (it’s not), one that occurred right here in Texas, which meant it could have happened to me—or you, for that matter. For me, it is even more personal than that. The film’s director and co-writer, Tobe Hooper, spent much of his childhood in San Angelo, where I also grew up. Sometimes, the connections just hit too close to home.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was an independent film shot in 1974 outside the studio system at a time when that was not so common. The plot revolves around a group of young, college-age friends who become innocently entangled with a very strange family, which includes “Leatherface,” a chainsaw-wielding, mask-wearing hulk of a man who seems to exist solely for the delight of killing young, sexually active college kids who stumble onto an old farm. Oh yeah, he kills for a purpose; it seems his family is a group of former meat processing plant workers who have decided that butchering and eating people is more delectable than eating beef. Scary, indeed.
Tobe Hooper began to conceive of Chainsaw when he was working as an assistant film director at the University of Texas. His vision was to make a movie that would combine universal elements that seemed to frighten everybody: darkness, deep woods, isolation, being chased, and an almost faceless antagonist who is positively relentless—the subjects of common nightmares. His quirky opening device of a narrator who says, “Everything you are about to see in this film is true” was, according to him, a reaction to the deceit of Watergate, Vietnam, and the oil crisis of the 1970s. Perhaps as a comment on Hooper’s unique psyche, he has claimed that the idea of using a chainsaw as a murder weapon came to him when he was stuck behind a long check-out line at a hardware store and wondered what he could use to “speed through the crowd.”
Hooper co-wrote the screenplay with Kim Henkel, but finding investors for such a bizarre film proved difficult. Ultimately, Hooper completed his film on a meager budget of not much more than $300,000. He cast complete unknowns that he paid very little and utilized difficult seven-to-ten-hour shooting days so he could quickly complete the movie and return rented film equipment. He filmed most of it near Round Rock, on an old farm that is now in the middle of a very upscale housing development. They filmed mostly in July, and temperatures climbed above one hundred on a number of occasions. Hooper had obtained the blood he would need for effect at a local slaughterhouse and spread it all over the walls and floors of the old farmhouse. High temperatures, little ventilation, and the elements combined to emit an odor on the set that, well, was really bad and contributed to the overall mood of the shoot.
Tobe Hooper filmed a particularly gory, blood-splattered, and dark film, one that was hardly like anything anyone had ever done, although, despite the legends and myths, it actually shows little of the actual manner of death the characters suffer. His purpose was to supposedly show “violence with a lack of sentimentality,” which is how he viewed the vagaries of modern society. He had actually thought that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would grant the film a “PG” rating; after all, in his mind, this was not much different from what you see on the news every day and was the reality of a violence-filled society. The MPAA had other ideas. Originally, they rated it “X,” which would have limited viewership to only adults over 18, and also give it a distribution stigma. Hooper cut out some scenes and thus convinced the board to rate it “R.” The whole discussion around the rating issue probably helped theatrical sales in the end because The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a huge hit, grossing over $30 million during a time when that dollar figure meant a tremendous commercial success.
Chainsaw changed the horror genre. To a large extent, it was the first “slasher” film and introduced film devices that would become endemic to the genre, such as the use of power tools as a murder weapon, extreme gore and graphic depictions of murder (or at least the perception of such depictions), and the presence of a large, faceless killer. Also, unlike earlier horror films, Chainsaw seemed to free filmmakers to depict particularly gruesome and brutal deaths for women, something that previous films had been reluctant to do. After the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, horrifying death, more explicit violence, and heavy sexual overtones began to dominate horror movies as each seemed to compete to top what began with Tobe Hooper’s Texas tale.
It opened to mixed critical views, although it has become more praised with the passage of time, probably since the violence, gore, and blood seem tame compared to current horror and action movies. Many of those later critics, influenced by post-modern methodology, viewed Chainsaw as at least equal parts social commentary as horror; critic Kim Newman even went as far to term it a “parody of the typical American, middle-class family in a post-industrial world.” I am not sure about such commentary, but I do know that it still scares the dickens out of me.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.