A Hardesty Day's Night: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
or Sally Hardesty's no good, very bad night of many (MANY) horrors
“The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them, an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
- John Larroquette, in voice over
Spoilers from the start, as per usual. Also, don’t read this while you’re eating. Also, yes, this was my first time watching it, rest assured I will be retreating to a Victorian fainting couch for the next 3-5 working days after I press send.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Directed and produced by: Tobe Hooper
Written by: Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel
Starring: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, et al.
Run time: 83 minutes
Original release date: October 11th, 1974
an immediate reaction from the author of this newsletter upon watching this movie for the first time…
*deep breath*
YO.
OH MY GOD.
no little Texan boy don’t go into the bone house!
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is fifty years old this year. And if you think it’s lost any of its power in those five decades, you are in for a rude awakening. At the head of a table. Surrounded by Leatherface and his family. Sitting on a chair where the arms are made of actual arms.
As I mentioned in Issue 14’s ode to The Exorcist (another film that recently turned fifty years old), it’s difficult to give you a fresh angle on a movie with such a monumental legacy. Plenty of people have spoken about it being influenced by Ed Gein’s murders, about the notoriously grueling, low-budget shoot in which according to Hooper pretty much the whole cast walked away injured and nursing a hatred of their director which took some time to cool off, about how Marilyn Burns’s clothes were so drenched with stage blood they’d gone solid by the last day of shooting, about how close the film came to having actual casualties, you name it it’s been talked about. I am not an academic, nor an expert on matters Chain Saw. I am simply here to give you another freestyle meditation on things that I liked/things that stood out to me/things that will probably haunt me until the end of time itself.
Consider it my tribute to a movie that essentially originated several key components of a slasher movie.
The opening crawl
Three years before Star Wars perfected the form, TCSM had its own opening crawl to set the scene (If you scroll back to the top of this issue, I have transcribed it for your reading pleasure - needless to say, none of this actually happened but John Larroquette’s extremely serious intonation kind of makes you believe for a second that it did)
The fact that John Larroquette was paid in marijuana for his services
Just tickled me, is all.
The opening scenes
The film starts on the morning of August 18th 1973 - over a pitch black screen, you hear the kind of movement that instantly tells you something’s not right. In flashes of light (presumably from a camera) and sound, waxy, rotting body parts are briefly exposed. A news report on the radio gives us context as we are eventually presented with a ghastly corpse sculpture: a grave robber has been stealing body parts from a cemetery near Newt, Texas. As the opening titles roll, the news report continues and we catch flashes of various reports that all signal to one thing: in the midst of this cracklingly hot summer, there’s deep unease and unrest at work.
The general sense that this heat will drive you, too, crazy
We first meet Sally (Marilyn Burns) and Franklin Hardesty (Paul A. Partain) in a van on the road with their friends: couple Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn) and driver/owner of the most 70s glasses available Jerry (Allen Danziger). Sally and Franklin (who uses a wheelchair) are planning check their grandfather’s grave - which lies in the same cemetery that has been disturbed by the grave robber - for signs of damage. Franklin comments that the heat is making him feel a bit crazy, and after a while, you begin to feel the same. Everything looks sticky and sweaty and just very, very WARM. There’s a sense that the unease on the news could very well be a side effect of that heat.
Pam loves a foreboding horoscope
We spend some time with the friends getting to know them in broad strokes; Pam reads Franklin and Sally’s horoscopes, which prove to be a bit on the nose:
(For Franklin): Travel in the country, long-range plans, and upsetting persons around you, could make this a disturbing and unpredictable day. The events in the world are not doing much either to cheer one up.
(For Sally): There are moments when we cannot believe that what is happening is really true. Pinch yourself and you may find out that it is.
Slaughterhouse talk
Apparently Guillermo del Toro became a vegetarian after seeing this movie. I presume it was shortly after seeing this specific section, as the group drives past a slaughterhouse and talk turns to… you know, what happens in a slaughterhouse.
The hitchhiker
It’s while they’re passing by the slaughterhouse that the group picks up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), something that they quickly come to regret in one of the films many nerve-wrecking sequences. And when I say nerve-wrecking, I need you to know just how much actually happens in a scene which mostly consists of this man just saying stuff. He tells them he was over at the slaughterhouse and how his brother and his grandfather used to work there with him, goes on at some length about how one makes headcheese (which was one of the film’s working titles apparently), produces pictures of his family’s…. work at the slaughterhouse, asking them to drop him off at his house and inviting them for dinner before he quite drastically slashes his own hand, randomly takes a picture of Sally and her friends, tries to sell it to Franklin, fails to do so and sets it on fire before slicing Franklin arm and promptly getting kicked out of the van. He tries to chase it and leaves what the others later find to look like a strange mark.
It’s a lot is what I’m saying.
And yes, there’s a reason some of the words are in Italics, can you guess what it is, oh go on, go on, go on.
The gas station
Continuing the bad vibes bonanza started by the hitchhiker, the group pulls over at a gas station (WE SLAUGHTER BARBECUE) which has no gas available but plenty of DELICIOUS BARBECUE!!!
Whatever the fuck Franklin’s eating as they explore the abandoned house oh my god, please stop eating it it looks like a finger
…. DELICIOUS BARBECUE!!!!!
The way we get to know a lot about this group in the space of very little time and with very little actually said
It’s especially prevalent here as the group go exploring in the abandoned house that used to belong to the Hardesty family, minus Franklin as he can’t get up the stairs and wanders around on the ground floor. (“Come on, Franklin! It's gonna be a fun trip! If I have any more fun today, I don't think I'm gonna be able to take it!”).
… and thus the horrors commence
Kirk and Pam walk to the swimming hole. The swimming hole no longer exists. What does exist is a nearby house which is running gas-powered generators (and also has a suspiciously large collection of cars under netting) so Kirk decides to see if he can barter his guitar for gas. From god knows where, a stray tooth (!!!!!!!!!) falls down and Kirk jokingly presents it to Pam as a present. She stomps off to sit on a nearby bench and Kirk goes into the house, his eyes drawn to an open door. Showing a blood red wall. On which numerous animal skulls are hung. AND HE STILL FUCKING GOES TO THE DOOR AND SURPRISE BITCH, HERE’S OUR FIRST GLIMPSE AT LEATHERFACE BYE KIRK YOU ARE NOW VERY DEAD.
the chicken room
Is where Pam ends up when she goes looking for Kirk. A room strewn with chicken feathers and skulls (THE BONE SOFA???), a room which the camera explores in flitting, horrific shots for what feels like ten long years.
hook line sinker
Leatherface comes after Pam, naturally, but the most heartbreaking thing is that she very nearly escapes before being pulled back in by him. Hung on a meat hook (HGNGNGNNNNN), she is forced to watch as ol’ Leatherface fires up his chosen instrument of chaos (it does give a little thrill to see the chainsaw for the first time) and goes about carving up Kirk.
the noise of the generator which sounds so much like the noise of a chainsaw
It’s just there as people approach the house and it’s such an effective bit of sound design.
oh Jerry
Sally, Franklin and Jerry are at the van, debating whether to go looking for Kirk and Pam, wait for the gas tanker that will never come or just chance it and go. Jerry (after being a sarky git to Franklin) goes off and searches for the duo, and can you guess what happens to him, can you guess, it’s Not Great!
a jump scare for the ages
After deciding to look for the others, Sally and Franklin take down the path to the house. Franklin can BARELY finish saying “hey Sally, I think I hear something” before Leatherface is just FUCKING THERE and ambushes them before Franklin is killed in front of Sally’s eyes.
The chase from hell
A bit of commotion for Marilyn Burns please because what follows is a foot chase which 1) looks absolutely exhausting, 2) involves her throwing herself out of a window, 3) goes on for SOME TIME and 4) involves her discovering the rotting corpse of a woman and the seemingly dead body of a man who looks about as structurally sound as Petyr from What We Do in the Shadows does.
oh good, the guy from the gas station is also part of this, who could have guessed
Sally eventually manages to run back to the gas station, where she is briefly comforted by the proprietor (at this point she’s riddled with shock) before lingering shots of the meat in the barbecue over a news report about the grave robber clue us in that she’s absolutely not safe at all. The gas station guy then ties her up and drives her back to Casa de Leatherface, but not before he picks up the hitchhiker (TOLD YOU) and scolds him for sloppy work. At the cemetery. Of course.
Quote of the film
The gas station guy/The Cook to the hitchhiker: “Look what your brother did to the door! Ain't he got no pride in his home?”
yes, Leatherface is the hitchhiker’s brother, try to look surprised
“Grandpa” joins the dinner
Sally’s mounting horror as Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring “Grandpa” down from the attic, him turning out to be very much alive (SOMEHOW), them cutting Sally’s finger so that “Grandpa” can lick her blood, oh my god no wonder she fucking faints.
the dinner party from hell
Sally wakes up, tied to a chair with actual arms for arms and from this point out essentially never stops screaming as the family bicker with each other (best not to unpack the family dynamics here because my god), taunt her by imitating her screaming and eventually decide to have “Grandpa” kill her with a hammer.
This is where the entire plan unravels because despite being told repeatedly that he is “the best” at hammer killing, he’s got about as much strength in him as the spine with eyes in the wheelchair from SpongeBob and after several attempts which end in the hammer just falling out of his hand, Sally takes her chance and breaks free, once again throwing herself out of a window into the light of dawn breaking.
Sally’s escape
Just a brilliant scene with a gloriously cathartic ending. Sally hauls ass as Leatherface (avec chainsaw) and the hitchhiker give chase, and to her relief (and that of the viewer), a massive truck drives into view. The truck driver runs over the hitchhiker, helps Sally to gain some distance on Leatherface and runs for the hills before she manages to flag down a smaller pick-up truck and NARROWLY manages to escape him. She’s covered in blood and sweat, giddy and giggling and screaming “GO! GO!” to the driver as Leatherface flails his chainsaw in a bizarre sort of ballet. The sun rises. The film cuts to black. You have your answer: Sally survives, bodily intact but deeply traumatized.
final thoughts
I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that this was an easy watch or an easy film to write about. It wasn’t and it isn’t. As I said, it has lost none of its power in the five decades since it was released. It’s not as gory as you think it is (in fact it’s actually light on the gore, used sparingly but effectively) but it’s also deeply disturbing and still relevant today.
Marilyn Burns gives a tour-de-force performance, one that nobody should ever take for granted given the circumstances of the shoot - her screams are the soundtrack to the denouement of the film and it’s the kind of scream that you’ll hear in your dreams for some time after you watch it. It’s a mixture of disbelief at what’s happening to her, just shock at the gruesomeness of it all and real, actual pain, and it’s rightfully lauded as a benchmark performance. Here is your ur-Final Girl, the blueprint which would go on to be perfected down the line with the likes of Laurie Strode, Nancy Thompson, Kirsty Cotton, Sidney Prescott to name but a few. I can but bow down to her.
Similarly, Gunnar Hansen (who was apparently the absolute nicest man in real life) manages to infuse Leatherface both with the requisite menace (and he doesn’t even need to speak for it, he just needs to be in the frame because Gunnar Hansen was fucking massive) and a kind of sadness. Here is an instantly iconic horror villain who kills not because he’s a sadist, but because he’s afraid of his family and just following orders. Non-verbal and clearly suffering from the abuse of his relatives, there is a depth to him given by Hansen’s commitment to the role. What a gift this film is for the genre, to have inspired so many that followed in its footsteps and to have at its heart two absolute blinders of performances. It may be a tough 83 minutes to sit through but at the end you’ll feel relief along with Sally; as she drives off into a new morning, cackling, alive, you’re right there with her.