The horror movie GOAT. No question.
I first saw this film in the summer of 1987 on regular television. Some local Wausau, WI station was showing it one fading summer afternoon. I remember some people, schoolmates I think, telling me at the time that it was a gore-fest, and I was under the assumption that all of that was edited out for television upon this viewing.
I was wrong. The only thing gory about TCM is the title. Those fools probably hadn't even seen the damn thing. Director Tobe Hooper leaves 98 percent of the carnage to the imagination. That's what makes it one of the scariest movies ever made, and possibly the best example of the perfect horror film. There are no mistakes here, despite being shot by a ton of rookies using 16MM film. I was pinned to the screen by the breakneck pace and unpredictability despite it being edited for television by WSAW 7. There's more to fear in the world than vampires, werewolves, and mummies. There's people, as John Carpenter stated, and they're scarier than anything else.
Especially now. They scare the shit out of me. I've been accosted here in Texas in the vegetable aisle for wearing a BETO tee shirt, by some joker who didn't inflict any chain saw massacres, just far-right anger that I'd dare wear this democrat gear in public. In those beady, piercing, insane eyes, I wasn't doubting his potential for gratuitous violence.. The 70's introduced us to that new element of horror on the screen.
Puncturing reality.
I go into more depth into how TCM reflected its decade here, so I won't digress further. The film launched a wobbly franchise with its ups and downs, remakes, reboots, straight sequels. None of them can touch what Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper accomplished here. Out there, in the woods, whether it's the heat of Texas or the cold of Wisconsin (as Hooper's family reportedly has members from, that regaled him with stories of Ed Gein) there may be bent, malfunctioning human beings of a kind, capable and maybe even eager to do harm.
This is what the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meant, and still means to me to this day.
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