Friday, October 05, 2007

Texas Chain Saw Massacre

(1974) ****

Is Ed Gein really going to be my favorite movie this year?

As has been well documented here, TCM is based on the story of Ed Gein. Did Ed Gein run around squealing and waving a chainsaw? No -- he was a quiet man and he didn't own a chainsaw. And while I've never been one to let distorted facts get in the way of my enjoyment of a movie, I've got to admit that seeing Ed Gein so early on has left me with a hankering for backstory.

Sadly TCM doesn't really have any. We know virtually nothing about any of the victims and even less of their assailants. Leatherface isn't mentioned at all before he shows up. In the remake, when he first appears, one of the victims exclaims "Oh my god, what is that?" -- not "who," "what". That's what he's like here. He's given pretty much no characterization. He appears and he kills. This happens with every single victim except the last one, Sally Hardesty. He steps out from behind a door and the hammer comes down. Like a living whack-a-mole, except he's huge and he's the one holding the weapon.

And boy, is that fucker relentless. When Sally manages to elude him, you can hear his chainsaw off in the background, only getting quieter when Sally's making progress. The moment she stops for any reason, that sound gets louder and louder and louder.

About the only thing we really know about him as a person, though, is that he's severely mentally retarded. He thunders around the house squealing with simpleton laughter the whole way. He's a killer because he comes from a family of killers. If he grew up in Martha Stewart's house, he'd be plying his limited mental capacity towards making crude figures out of porcelain clay and then eating them. He'd also be eating mad-delicious pies and shitting his pants. That laugh would be the same.

The film's later scenes, featuring Sally held hostage by Leatherface and his brothers, are shot in a bewildering array of close-ups and camera tricks. One of the cooler shots is of Sally's eyeball flitting from side to side, filling up the entire frame. On a movie screen, her bloodshot veins would be 10 feet long. This jagged visual scheme fits in perfectly with the mood in the room. It's a circus in there: screaming, threats, man soup. Watching the crazy brothers trying to get their grandpa to hit Sally with a sledgehammer, I couldn't help being reminded of watching the State and seeing Emmett trying to get Lyle out from under a beached canoe while standing in it.

Where most slasher movies rely heavily on suspense, TCM's main weapon is discomfort. The action happens out of nowhere, so there's no real buildup of suspense. Like the victims themselves, we have no idea anything bad's going to happen until a split-second before it actually happens. Instead, the scene we spend the most time with is that nutty dinner scene, with all that grating madness spewing out of Leatherface's brother and all those quick cuts and fish-eye shots. So what results is more of a mood piece; like the latter scenes of Midnight Cowboy, but with bloodletting.

Devices used in TCM have been copied countless times in subsequent gore movies. It has a lot of great moving camera-work. It's got an excellent industrial-scrape soundtrack. Without more character development though, it's not exactly what I'm jonesing for at the moment. Still, it's a classic, no doubt about that.

10 comments:

JPX said...

"If he grew up in Martha Stewart's house, he'd be plying his limited mental capacity towards making crude figures out of porcelain clay and then eating them." Best quote of the week!

I still get shivers when Leatherface makes his first appearance in the film. There is something so disquieting about him clubbing that guy over the head and then sliding that creepy metal door shut - cue creepy music!

Johnny Sweatpants said...

At first I was all "Oh no, not another Texas Chainsaw review!" (There were 11 last year.) But Marc delivers another gem. I laughed my ass off at the Martha Stewart gag too.

It's the twitching on the ground that sold this one for me. No screaming, just a thud and then twitching.

Jordan said...

Great review. I've always been afraid to see this one because the premise is so thoroughly unpleasant.

JPX said...

Jordan, the premise is unplesant but from a blood and guts point of view it's strictly PG. I don't think there really is any blood in it - think shower scene from Psycho. People remember that as a bloody scene where you can see the knife plunge into flesh, but that's just brilliant directing/editing.

50PageMcGee said...

yeah, but while TCM might not be gory, it's definitely unpleasant. it's not because of wounds or blood, it's because of the assailants. because our characters are tied to a chair having to listen to their loony jabbering, we have to as well. we could almost feel their mouth-breathing and spittle flicking on our cheeks.

Jordan said...

Is this the movie where the girl's hiding under the table while her boyfriend's being loudly murdered on top of the table and the blood spatters all over her? Or is that something else?

Johnny Sweatpants said...

That was Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning from last year.

AC said...

Agreed, Chainsaw is not bloody per se but it is still very shocking/disturbing.

DKC said...

I recently caught the last five minutes of this movie. When she escapes from the house and the brother and Leatherface are chasing her down.

Even that little bit was pretty disturbing to me.

Octopunk said...

Wow, there were 11 Chainsaw reviews last year? Nice to see us doing our jobs. The twelfth was wonderful; that Martha Stewart crack brought tears to my eyes.

I agree on the unpleasantness. A number of these TCM flicks spend a lot of time wallowing in how cray-zee the freakos are, and the combo of tedious and disturbing can be pretty wearing. It spawned a whole sub-genre of Mad Hillbilly flicks, and I've always found them problematic. Rob Zombie thinks they're wooooonderful, which just exacerbated the problem because he let us know this by making more of these movies.

Malevolent

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