Out of work since the abattoir shut down, they keep to the old ways by treating passing strangers the way they used to treat beef cattle. The girl winds up at the mercy of the down-home cannibal clan, a combination of the Addams Family and the inbred rednecks from Deliverance (1972). The fleeing Sally (Burns), Daphne in white flares, is repeatedly caught in brambles and bushes that the killer easily saws his way through. Leatherface slaughters three more teens in quick succession, using a meathook, the sledge, and a buzzing chainsaw. Before you've had time really to register what you've just seen, the killer (Hansen) slams an unexpected, grating steel shutter across the corridor and, out of the audience's sight, finishes off the still-twitching boy. Suddenly, without any Hitchcockian overhead shot to pre-empt the shattering shock, Leatherface - a squealing, obese goon in a tanned skin mask - appears from nowhere and smashes in the kid's head with a sledgehammer. The apparent leading man, a real Freddy type, wanders down a filthy corridor towards a red room walled with animal trophies. Partain) in place of the big dog, take a trip that ends when they unwisely enter an old, dark house. A group of vapid teenagers in a Scooby-Doo bus, with a whining cripple (Paul A. Unfriendly locals snarl in incomprehensible accents and the 70s economic downturn has scattered the landscape with abandoned farms and disused slaughterhouses. We begin deep, deep in the heart of Texas, where dead armadillos curl by the roadside and violated corpses are arranged like scarecrows. Once his film starts, it doesn't let up until the fade-out: other horror films are as frightening, but few are so utterly exhausting. Romero (Night Of The Living Dead (1968) and Wes Craven (Last House On The Left (1972) and feeds the audience through a mangle of unrelenting horror and violence. Rather than Alfred Hitchcock's delicate, suspenseful manipulation, Hooper follows the lead of fellow independents George A. Instead of the single mummy of Psycho (1960), which was also based on the real-life story of Wisconsin ghoul Ed Gein, Hooper has a whole houseful of human and animal remains artistically arranged to freak out the unwary visitor. Lewis' Blood Feast (1963) and all limb-lopping happens out of shot (though patrons who cover their eyes and just listen to buzzing and screaming might imagine things no non-snuff filmmaker could put on screen). There are no close-ups of open wounds (a gore film trademark since H.G. Nothing could possibly be as bloodily atrocious as title and poster ("Who will survive, and what will be left of them?") suggest that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre will be, so Hooper goes the other way. More guts, in fact than are spilled in the movie. It takes real guts to be so blatantly up-front. The outright sensationalism of Tobe Hooper's regional horror masterpiece begins with its eye-grabbing, unforgettable title.
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