I belong to the last generation with limited internet access, so I figure that I found “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) because of the kindhearted celebratory antics of a man living in the neighborhood I grew up in.
Every Halloween, he’d run around in his front yard with a chainsaw (without chains), and without access to the film he referenced, I began to intertwine the feeling of the one night a year when the world and I were on the same page with the sound of a chainsaw rip.
Everyone within, and most outside of, the film industry can agree that collaborative effort, effective communication, and the unified will to make it happen (no matter how long the food on the table has been there) make a movie happen. Every time, these people chart new maps with roads dictated by the times they live in.
There was something especially wild about the new frontier of horror films in the early seventies. Changes in distribution, the rating system, and the American cultural consciousness created a film texture that went much further in eliciting visceral sensory imaginings from the audience by use of jump-scares. The grit, the use of light to create feelings of heat, and for me… the use of sound effects juxtaposed with the absence of dialogue. The felt reality is not only created by design—we can feel it because we are much closer to that group of people who spent weeks in the same costumes, sweating, solving problems, and working with a budget of less than $140,000.
For context, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was the third top-grossing film in the United States after three weeks on the chart, per the Variety chart. The second was “The Longest Yard” (1974) at $2.9 million, and the first was “Airport 1975” (1974) at $3 million. These numbers prove the talent of the cast and crew, but support by the Texas Film Commission, both publicly and privately, must be mentioned. There was never a climate for a film such as this to gross the amount and to live at number three in any year prior—it took support to push a film that we’d be at a terrible loss without into a place that it could simmer in our consciousness on the scale that a film of its unique flavors deserved.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” can be cited as one of the best examples of regional horror. In a broader sense, it is an example of the power of place, identity, and communities created by placing value on film, filmmakers, and all of the arts needed to make a movie. Had the film been released under its working title, “Leatherface,” we’d still be talking about it today, but I think the conversation would be different if not for the glorious final title we know it by. Co-writer Kim Henkel credits Warren Skaaren, who was the inaugural Commissioner of the newly-formed Texas Film Commission, with suggesting the film be released under “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
The title gave a reality capable of further emboldening and supporting the various taglines used to promote the film:
- “Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?”
- “America’s most bizarre crime! Brutal beyond description! Grisly beyond comprehension.”
- “What happened is true. Now the motion picture that’s just as real.”
Taglines that I mentally collected and carried with me until the day that I was finally allowed to watch the film I’d already cherished by name, by fleeting clip, by production still, and by glimpses of glorious vintage posters.
It meant more to me than watching a movie; it would mean more than I would be able to express until now. It meant that I had the freedom to seek out and discover films that told stories that would help me understand the world I live in. The films I watched became a vehicle through which I could express my feelings in a way natural to me—by the use of narrative imagery.
The horror film has always held restorative, explorative, and cathartic functions for those willing to get lost for the runtime. The human need to have big emotions sympathetically recognized by figures in our own image is one we both seek out and ignore. The more complicated moments in our stories are— the more difficult they can be to navigate within the structure of the mundane—but up on that screen… we have the ability to be present in feelings we’d never let rise to the surface otherwise.
I can feel her laughing as she sits with blood-soaked bell-bottoms in that truck bed. She got away, and that always meant that I could too.
And if I wasn’t able to hitch a ride, I’d ask that the last sunset dance be saved for me.
*October is the 50th anniversary of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
