![]() Hooper achieved such a high level of terror by shooting much of the violence in broad daylight. While he’s certainly not a victim, he’s also not evil incarnate like so many of the movie villains he later inspired, and his piggish squeals and grunts are indicative of his warped humanity that every single Texas Chainsaw sequel and remake would go on to fatally neglect. He’s skittish and easily frightened, and even when charging after victims behind the smoke and rattle of his trusty chainsaw, he’s clearly compelled to do so through years of manipulation and abuse. ![]() Leatherface - who changes into various frightmasks as one would alternate between casual, work and formal attire - exhibits a clear cognitive dysfunction throughout the flick, one that is exploited by the other members of his unhinged, inbred family who subsist, it’s implied, on selling barbecued human meat at the nearby Last Chance Gas Station. The imbecilic Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), however, doesn’t cut down his chainsaw fodder due to the typical motivation of insatiable vengeance or pure evil, but instead rips apart his first few victims out of what, at least in Texas, could be construed as self-defense. This film would help build the formula for sadist horror at large, and its machinery-as-murder-weapon innovation still sees widespread popularity today in the Saw and Hostel franchises (even as the slasher subgenre itself has been reduced to self-parody). The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, like many great lo-fi horror films, was built around a simple premise: a group of young people visit an abandoned house that holds sentimental meaning for a pair of them and, upon seeking to fill a gas can at a nearby farmhouse, are picked off one by one by a madman. Unfortunately, Hooper’s ultra-low budget horror high-water mark would join the increasingly prevalent trend of surprise landmark films spawning a plethora of sequels and retreads that gut their source material of all meaning, only preserving a skin-deep resemblance. In turn, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 exploitation masterpiece would act as one of the primary catalysts for the rise of the slasher subgenre throughout the next decade-plus, and the Leatherface character would become the forerunner for wordless killing machines such as Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. ![]() Where would the horror genre be today without Ed Gein? The Wisconsin murderer, grave robber, mother lover, dermal mask-maker and grisly interior decorator provided inspiration for Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and, perhaps most directly, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
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