The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974 or the pioneer in ultraviolence

Blender Dumbass
October 10, 2025

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If today we have a lot of films to choose from when we want to shock ourselves beyond believe: from barely serious, yet distrusting films by Eli Roth through intense hyper-violence by Coralie Fargeat or depressing looks at the world by Lars Von Trier all the way to deranged films like The Serbian Film, in 1970s you had probably only one true contender for such a level of derangeness. And it was the Tobe Hooper's 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

In the book by Quentin Tarantino Cinema Speculation Quentin describes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as the perfect film. It is a slasher, in a sense that we have a group of young people, from which only one will barely survive. It has violent psychopathic characters. And we have a very brutal choice of a weapon: a chainsaw. But despite it being a brutal slasher, it is not a bad movie. Most brutal slashers are frankly dog-shit. They go out of their way to get their characters into situations where they are killed. And stuff like that. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is different in that regard.

There are a lot of conspiracy theories about the film Hooper made in 1982 called Poltergeist. Where Steven Spielberg acted as a producer. People say that perhaps Spielberg was the one setting up the shots, while Hooper was only a "director" on paper. And watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre you can see why people think that way. The two films are completely different when it comes to how they feel. The Chainsaw movie is all rough and disturbing. With shots that feel more improvised than rehearsed. While Poltergeist feels almost like a Steven Spielberg film.

Yet watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while paying attention to the shots ( keeping in mind the extremely low budget the film had ), you can see that Hooper directs it not too dis-similarly from Spielberg. Spielberg, for example, likes to move the camera as somebody is walking or running, shooting said somebody through stuff. Like there could be a wooden fence, for example, and the character would walk along said fence. And Spielberg would put the camera on the other side of the fence, and move it together with the actor, so the fence is flying by in the foreground. Giving a strong sense of momentum. You can see shots like that in 1974 Jaws, and even in his recent films. His 2002 Minority Report comes to mind, where a similar shot is used in the kitchen with Tom Cruise. And hell, even in Spielberg's 1968 test short-film Amblin you already see a sloppy early version of the shot. Tobe Hooper uses the same technique a few times in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where there isn't any involvement from Steven Spielberg.

You can also see how this movie influenced directors like Quentin Tarantino. There is something oddly similar between this movie and Tarantino's Death Proof. There are some rather fucking amazing shots, that Tarantino couldn't resist taking into his cinematic toolbox. Like the shot of the girl walking toward the house of cannibals right after we learn that there are cannibals. It is shot from below and kind of up-her-ass. But it looks stupidly epic and kind of makes the moment feel grandiose in a way. Also the whole structure of the film reminds me of a rather recent Ti West 2022 horror film X. It feel like Ti West literally paid homage to the whole film of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre but made it for the R rating and added the much needed nudity.

Speaking of the R rating. Tobe Hooper tried his best to make The fucking Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the PG rating! Are you fucking kidding me? Yes there is cinematic violence in the film, but you can kind of see that it is very infrequently shown on the screen. And the film is using Alfred Hitchcock kind of Psycho technique in the violent scenes. Like technically you don't see much of it, but the feeling is still as visceral as if you had seen it. I bet something like that could ( in theory ) fool the judges of The Code, but not the MPAA. The film got the R rating despite Tobe trying to not be an ageist and allow kids to come see how a cannibal is cutting open a man on a wheel-chair with a chainsaw.

And then there are obvious mutilated corpses on the screen. And an almost dying man. And bones and other very nasty imagery. Like the film is begging for an R rating. And while I know that in the 70s MPAA was less ageist and some of the stuff that will get you R now would be fine back then for PG. I still don't see how Hooper could have made this film PG.

Happy Hacking!!!