40th Anniversary
 Tagline: Before Halloween.... Before Friday The 13th.... Before Scream.... There Was The Saw. Tagline: Who will survive and what will be left of them? 40 years ago, five youths on a weekend getaway in the Texas countryside fell prey to a butcher in a mask made of human skin and his cannibalistic family, and horror cinema would never be the same. Violent, confrontational, and shockingly realistic, director Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre terrified audiences in a way never thought possible when it was unleashed on a politically and socially tumultuous America in 1974. Facing a storm of controversy, censorship, and outcry throughout its troubled release, this masterpiece of horror has stood the test of time to become a landmark motion picture and cultural milestone. To celebrate the film's 40th anniversary and its enduring ability to scare audiences both new and old, Dark Sky Films proudly presents The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in an all-new 4k digital restoration and with a newly created 7.1 surround sound mix supervised by Toby Hooper. Get ready to experience fear in a whole new way. Storyline: En route to visit their grandfather's grave (which has apparently been ritualistically desecrated), five teenagers drive past a slaughterhouse, pick up (and quickly drop) a sinister hitch-hiker, eat some delicious home-cured meat at a roadside gas station, before ending up at the old family home... where they're plunged into a never-ending nightmare as they meet a family of cannibals who more than make up in power tools what they lack in social skills... Written by Michael Brooke Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, January 12, 2012 -- Mad and macabre. -- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the most brutal movies ever made, but it assaults the senses rather than the eyes. Where many Horror pictures dress up their sets with blood and body parts, Director Tobe Hooper's film is instead of the type that creates a nerve-rattling environment in which terrible things take place, unimaginably grotesque and horrific things that the director shows, but doesn't show in all of the slimy, unbearable detail. The movie scrapes on the nerves and is defined by a final act that's little more than incessant outward screaming and inward agony that's personified on the screen in poor Sally (Marilyn Burns) but truly manifested within the viewer's own spirit. The movie claws its way into the very essence of its audience and refuses any breathing or maneuvering room. Its awfulness is such that one cannot escape from it, and in a strange way, it makes the audience wish not to escape from it. The movie's strength lies in its depiction of absolute genuine terror, of modern innocence clashing with something so sinister yet so basically and naturally primitive that one cannot help but to stare with jaw agape and stomach churning at the horrific picture painted in blood, sweat, and a skewed sense of reality that oozes hopelessness and sorrow in every frame, even in what is but the figurative calm before the storm. Indeed, this is the embodiment of Horror, a movie that's raw and relentless and that encapsulates the very essence of what can only be described as some kind of otherworldly, unusual brand of fundamental terror. Five teens -- Sally and her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) Hardesty, Pam (Teri McMinn), Jerry (Allen Danziger), and Kirk (William Vail) -- pick up a hitchhiker in sticky hot Texas, only to find he's just a little bit off-kilter. He photographs Franklin and quickly burns the picture. He slices open his own hand, and slashes Franklin before being kicked out of the van. The teens are traveling to verify that Sally and Franklin's grandfather's tomb has not fallen victim to vandalism. Satisfied that it remains intact, they head off to the old Hardesty place when they find themselves running low on fuel and the local filling station dry. A brief visit becomes an eternal nightmare when Kirk and Pam wander off in search of a place to swim. They instead stumble upon a dilapidated old farm house that's home to a crazed family of butchers, including the deranged Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) who maliciously and without remorse slaughters the visitors. Can the remaining teens figure out what's happened to their friends, or will they, too, succumb to a most heinous fate? Whether ignoring the hype surrounding the movie, dismissing its reputation, and setting its legend aside or not, one can see what one wants to see in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre because it's so uniquely effective at obliterating its audience's sense of self, direction, normalcy, and safety. The movie is thought to be so brutal because it is, though it's brutal in a more terrifying, more fundamental sense than is the splatter garbage of modern cinema. The movie's title is as raw as its visuals yet far more grotesquely detailed in the image it creates in the mind than what is actually seen on the screen. The picture exudes a terrible sense of atmospheric unease, heat, dilapidation, and frightening absurdity. Its detailed and lengthy focus on the detached, brutal, yet accepted slaughter of cattle defines the entire movie and shapes all of the evil characters, characters who cling to some oddly romantic notion of the old way, a way which is so settled into their very essences that they can no longer distinguish the difference between a soulless animal and a human being, and even if they can, it's their own long-eroded soul and life of violence at the slaughterhouse that's likely to blame. These are bad people, these are crazy people, but they are normal people in their own home, and it's their off-kilter sense of normalcy and complacency and their almost robotic, heartless, and methodical way of slaughtering that's one of the film's primary sources of terror. One cannot conceive of, let alone accept, such a lifestyle of absolute detachment and indifference to human life, yet there it is, lingering on the screen in a final act where only primal screams and moral disgust may counter the grotesque activities of a family completely detached from the reality around them. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also succeeds at wearing its audience down because it lacks slick technical polish. The rawness of the photographic style and film stock give off a complimentary grit and griminess that nails down the disgusting developments. There are no themes here; this is a pure, unadulterated story of slaughter and survival. It's a movie made only disturb its audience, certainly not to give them any kind of pleasure or any sort of hope, and definitely one not interested in even a momentary reprieve from the terror, from the awful screeching and shrieking flash bulb sounds at the beginning to Leatherface's tribal chainsaw dance at film's end. It's a film that teaches only not to pick up strangers, run out of gas, or leave home without a firearm. The movie seeks not to tell a story, but to show a terror. It attempts not to explain, but to depict. The movie is hands down the most effective combination of visual, aural, and emotional grotesqueness ever captured on film. In essence, it's the worst possible experience anyone could ever have in a movie theater, which is exactly why it's so fundamentally effective. This is the very essence of the Horror genre. It's anything the audience wants it to be and it allows for the human mind to effectively place its adjoining body and soul into the middle of the fray, to not imagine or see the terror, but to experience it almost firsthand, to feel that inner tingling and clenching fear, that uncontrollable tremble that signifies such close proximity to death and that truly lets one know that one is still alive. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is an awful, vile picture, which is exactly why it's the most effective Horror film ever made. There are certainly many, probably uncountable, movies that are more slick and polished and made with a larger budget -- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake amongst them -- but not a single one of them is as raw and unforgiving as this. Director Tobe Hooper has actually accomplished this feat through minimal use of blood, using instead the perfect atmosphere that conveys true terror like nothing before and nothing since. The movie practically sucks the life out of the audience, so close to danger and death it brings them. It's a testament to the true worth and effectiveness of the Horror genre that will likely never be bettered. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a bonafide genre classic, a one-of-a-kind film that will be remembered in the annals of Horror until the end of time. Its reputation is partially built on the name and the imagery it convokes in a popular culture sense, but the film is so much more, a dark, moody, extraordinarily well made, and deeply frightening experience that relies far less on gore and far more on suggestion and atmosphere and purely evil characters to scare its audience. It's the pinnacle of the Horror genre and a film not to be missed. MPI's Blu-ray release of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre features excellent video, superb 7.1 channel lossless audio, and tons of supplements. This release earns my highest recommendation. [CSW] -3.6- America's Most Bizarre and Brutal Crimes!... Cast Notes: Marilyn Burns (Sally Hardesty), Allen Danziger (Jerry), Paul A. Partain (Franklin Hardesty), William Vail (Kirk), Teri McMinn (Pam [as Teri Mcminn]), Edwin Neal (Hitchhiker), Jim Siedow (Old Man), Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface), John Dugan (Grandfather), Robert Courtin (Window Washer), William Creamer (Bearded Man), John Henry Faulk (Storyteller), Jerry Green (Cowboy), Ed Guinn (Cattle Truck Driver), Joe Bill Hogan (Drunk). IMDb Rating (09/11/14): 6.5/10 from 1,409 users
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