The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Directed by Tobe Hooper. US. 1974. R. Running time: 83 min.
- Fri, Aug 1, 10:00 pm
To get a sense of the anxieties and preoccupations of a certain era, it's usually instructive to look at its horror movies. For example, official reckoning on the Vietnam War wouldn't come until years after the fact, but the ugly extremes of human atrocity were on display at the drive-in, where horror films were making a dramatic shift away from the supernatural and into the real. Though George Romero and Wes Craven had broken ground with Night Of The Living Dead and The Last House On The Left, respectively, Tobe Hooper's 1974 movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remains the Vietnam era's definitive horror classic, if only for its unvarnished, documentary-like images of humans led to the slaughterhouse. With it and its sequel 12 years later—both recently released on reverent new DVD sets—Hooper had the misfortune of making films simultaneously of and ahead of their time. (Scott Tobias, The Onion)
Click here to continue reading Scott Tobias' review on The Onion AV Club.
Click here to read Eric Henderson's review on Slant.com.