Minisode - BRRRM-SPLAT! The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Dissected

THIS EPISODE CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS ONLY

Our first minisode!

It turned out almost as long as a regular episode. Eff's sake.

Join Val as he goes over the history of Tobe Hooper's horror masterpiece. The inspiration for the movie, the writing of the movie and the trauma of shooting the movie.

Also find out how Tobe Hooper wanted to make the world's first ever PG-rated cannibal chain saw movie, and why the bemused British censors found it completely unrateable.

We'll also talk about setting dead animals on fire, stinky actors and how the Mafia stole all the profits. 

Will we survive? And what we be left of us??

Transcript

My Dear Willing Participants, 

A slight change in format for this, our first ever mini-sode. 

Following some feedback from members of our growing army of Willing Participants we thought we would ditch the sketches and the silliness and just give you some straight reviews of horror movies. 

But – for fans of the sketches and the silliness – do not despair. You’ll still get that in the regular episodes. 

(Theme)

In the late 1960’s an early 1970’s, horror cinema turned NASTY.

Before then horror cinema was good spooky fun for the whole family, where the unsettling Gothic fantasies of Victorian writers were turned into beautiful tales of the macabre, with evil vanquished and good resplendent. 

But for a generation who lived through violent protest, war and racial violence, these films did not reflect reality. These films did not reflect true HORROR. A new generation of young film-makers wanted to make films that spat on the polite, Darren and Samantha world of their parents. They wanted to bring the violence they saw on the tv – the public executions, the political assassinations, the napalm-scarred refugees - ROARING off the cinema screen and waking the public up out of their complacent stupor.

Films with titles like “Night of the Living Dead”, “Last House on the Left” and “The Exorcist” had a very simple message for their audience. “Do you think you know what horror IS? In this blood-soaked, napalm-bombed, Manson-massacred world, do you REALLY THINK you know what horror IS?”

Please note, Willing Participants, I am not telling you to fuck off. I’m trying to convey the feelings this film evokes. Just to clarify.

“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is perhaps the ultimate fuck you film to its audience. It’s not here to play nice. It’s here to kick you up the arse, to slap you around, to trash your house, abuse your granny and to leave a turd in your driveway. 

If you tell this to non-horror people. They will think you a bit bonkers. Trust me on this. I know. 

If you tell people that “Night of the Living Dead” is social commentary and that “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is a reflection of the times, they will likely sigh, squeeze you on the arm and give you a sad smile. 

To be fair to them, I thought that about “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” for a while. It was such a visceral, intense experience I didn’t think there was intelligence nor thought behind it. But then, I wasn’t thinking clearly.

The first time I saw it, I felt completely bludgeoned by it. Dazed. I couldn’t make sense of what it was while I was watching it, or for a long time afterward. More than any other horror film I’ve seen, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” didn’t feel like a film. It was a trip. It was an experience. A journey into complete insanity. Like having someone’s else’s nightmare plumbed directly into my brain. And the closest thing I can imagine to actually losing your mind.

But only for 83 minutes.

I feel a little better knowing I am not alone in this. Wes Craven, probably the most eloquent man on horror cinema there ever was, said that the first time he saw the film he felt like the director must be insane. Like an actual crazy man was behind the camera. And for that reason, Craven felt genuine fear. That he had no idea what was about to happen next. That this film could go ANYWHERE. 

Think about that. The template, the pattern, all the cues and story beats we were used to were gone. 

I mean, if you are anything like me – a seasoned horror-watcher – you know when a jump scare is coming. You can tell when a cat is about to leap out of a cupboard. Or the moment when a killer is going to rear out of the darkness. And the film-makers know this and they play up to it. It has always been so, as the language of horror cinema has evolved. We know. And they know we know. 

Tobe Hooper, writer and director of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, also knows we know. And that is why he threw the rule book away from his film. No rules. No cues. Whatever you think is about to happen, isn’t going to happen. When you think you’re safe. You’re not safe. 

In other words: fuck you. You’re alone in the dark with a crazy director. And for that reason, watching the Texas Chain Saw Massacre for the first time is like having a bag put over your head and then being kicked down a flight of stairs. 

For a long time, I thought it must be an accident. Maybe even bad film-making that just somehow turned out great. And this was borne out by Tobe Hooper’s subsequent films. They were fine. Sometimes great. But never again, NEVER anything like this. 

Sure, they occasionally contained moments of genius. When I watch “Funhouse” or “Poltergeist” I get flashes of that insane energy. I can almost see Gunnar Hansen and hear Marilyn Burns when the Freeling’s teenage daughter is thrown around the ceiling in “Poltergeist”, for example. 

But those moments are fleeting. And nothing Tobe Hooper made subsequently even comes close to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you told me the director of THAT film joined a cult and went off to live in the desert, worshipping Coyote-Gods and eating armadillos, I would believe you.

However, I am clearly being unfair to Tobe Hooper and to the entire cast and crew of that film. While “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” may be the ultimate lightning in a bottle horror film. Unrepeatable. It certainly was NOT accidental. There was intent, design and deliberation behind this film.  But, let me explain…

Like the film itself, Tobe Hooper’s path to Texas Chainsaw Massacre was relatively calm, with only slight hints of the chaos to come. He was a successful film student from the University of ??? with a well-reviewed student film under his belt in the early 1970’s.

“Eggshells” was its name, and it told a story about the return of soldiers from Vietnam and a hippy commune under the influence of aliens. I have not seen it. I shall make a shocking confession here. I cannot be arsed. It sounds a little boring and self-indulgent. But very much a reflection of the times. It played at colleges and made no money at all.

“You should make a horror film,” suggested a friend. And Tobe Hooper gave this serious thought.

A stew of ideas was bubbling inside the young film-maker. Something to do with the isolation of growing up in a huge state like Texas. That feeling of feeling under siege by the size of the place. The city felt safe… but once you were OUT THERE. “Out there, got kinda scary,” said Hooper.

And Vietnam was very much on his mind. Like a lot of his contemporaries, he did not go. But he was a deeply political man. As well as “Eggshells” he’d also made a documentary on folk singers, Peter, Paul and Mary. And while that might not sound like a rehearsal for a chainsaw massacre, their beliefs, their politics fed into that stew. 

Ah, but the meat… the raw bloody meat to add in to the mix. As a child, Hooper had been scared by stories of the bizarre killer Ed Gein. His house decorated with body parts, and the mummified corpse of his mother preserved in his house. But Ed was a solo killer, a disturbed man. Hooper also absorbed the stories of the Houston Mass Murders. These were horrific murders of over two dozen young men – perpetrated by not one, but three killers who would lure the unwary men into the home of sadistic killer Dean Corl, who would trick the young men into handcuffing themselves before torturing and killing them. 

Hooper worked on these coalescing ideas with his friend Kim Henkel and they raised $60k to start shooting on a film that was at that time called simply, “Leatherface”.

The low-budget, rough-and-ready style of the film lends something to the movie. It gives the film an air of authenticity – of near-reality. But this is mixed with disturbing images of rotting corpses, and of robbed graves. The story has five young people, travelling in their van across Texas in the middle of summer. But all the while, stories on the radio talk of the grave-robbers. Police take gruesome crime scene photos, and the sun beats down. The five are all in good spirits, with one exception. Franklin. 

Franklin may well be one of the most irritating characters in the history of horror movies. He’s whiny, repetitive, quick to anger and needy. However, his sister Sally tolerates this – even if she doesn’t like it – because he’s her brother and because he’s in a wheelchair. 

Franklin is played by Paul Petain who apologises for his behaviour in this film, on-camera and off. “Franklin was just such a whiny bastard,” he explains. And says he stayed in character because he was afraid of losing the whine.

To be fair to him, this did make Marilyn Burns’ job easier. Marilyn plays Sally and says of Paul’s character, “There really wasn’t much acting involved.”

But back in the van, the young folk are oblivious to the gruesome crimes taking place elsewhere. Pam – the other woman in the group is far more interested in astrology, and tells Franklin that, “Travel in the country, long-range plans, and upsetting persons around you, could make this a disturbing and unpredictable day.”

In retrospect, that’s… sort of funny. 

Astrology aside, these five get so many warnings. Of course, the warnings aren’t really for them. They are for YOU, dear Willing Participants. Your anxiety for these five will be “buzzing” – if you’ll pardon the expression – by the time the kids decide to pick up a hitch-hiker. 

And here’s where some modern audiences might have a problem with “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”. Because – and here’s the thing – Texas Chain Saw Massacre does not do subtle. It’s not interested in nuance. Some people I know say they sit and laugh through Texas Chain Saw Massacre and that may be due to characters like the hitch-hiker. 

He's a bad-toothed, gurning, grinning, yokel, yeehaw. A twitching, snickering cartoon character. And if this turns you off and drops you out of the picture, then I understand. I do.

But it works for me. Oh my yes. There is a point in Texas Chainsaw Massacre when you go from reality to fever-dream. And for me, this is that moment. When all of Pam’s warnings about Venus in retrograde start to come true and we realise we’re not in Kansas anymore. The hitch-hiker and Franklin start to talk about slaughter houses, with the hitcher becoming increasingly excited as he discusses his bloody work.  This is a man who ENJOYS killing things. 

Things go really badly, really quickly as he takes a razor and slices Franklin’s arm open. Naturally, he gets thrown out of the van, but the five kids are shook up and their nerves are jangling. They decide to visit a nearby house to see if they can buy some fuel. Again warnings. Flashing, danger signs everywhere for the audience. But again – using that dream-logic – the characters just don’t see it. 

The relentless buzz of an electrical generator. The cars hidden under a tarp, like fat flies in a spider-web. The fact that there is a fucking actual human TOOTH sitting right there on the front porch of the house…

We are about 30 minutes in at this point. Just so you understand the pacing here. This is a short film. We are about to leave sanity behind. Are you ready?

Now what happens next is NOT gory. I should emphasise this. People see the title and expect a bloodbath. That is the point. This is a film that takes place mostly inside your head – as you look away from the carnage. However, if you do keep watching you’ll see – remarkably little. 

In fact, you’ll probably see more blood watching an acne’d teenager shave his face than in the entirety of this film. 

There is a reason for this. Get ready to laugh. Tobe Hooper really wanted – and actually hoped – that “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” would get a PG rating. 

And no, I’m NOT fucking kidding. 

In all seriousness, Hooper called the Motion Picture Association of America and seriously asked them actual questions like, “So how would you recommend I shoot a scene in which an actress is hung on a meat hook, without getting an R rating?”

Wouldn’t you have just LOVED to have heard the answer to that question?

As it turns out, the MPAA were unable to offer helpful advice, and Hooper’s film never did get that PG rating. But the thing is, it absolutely is NOT gore that’s the problem here. In the UK, the British Board of Film Censorship had a similar problem. They watched the film and were planning on advising cuts that could be made to make the film acceptable. 

They couldn’t think of any. 

There’s not on shot, not one moment in the film that – in itself – makes this film intense and terrifying. It’s the WHOLE FUCKING THING. What happens next in the film is like falling through a trap door. It’s an end to sanity. It’s sudden and hellish and brutal and surreal. You’ll find yourself in a room where nothing is right. Where every item of furniture is made from human body parts. Where people are dragged into slaughter rooms with a SHRIEK and a CLANG and then it’s over. 

Where human flesh is ripped apart with no thought, no feeling no sympathy. Like a chicken having its neck wrung or a pig being bled over a bath. There’s no other film I can think of which so quickly rips away all the illusion that life is sacred and announces with a chuckle that “They just shoot a bolt into their head!”

Understandably, we cling to our lives, and the idea that our lives are important. But not out here in rural Texas. Here you’re just meat. And while the film never mentions cannibalism, it’s very clearly conveyed that the victims of Leatherface are no more than livestock to him. He has no malice. It’s just that slicing up cuts of meat for the barbecue is his JOB. And he is having a REALLY busy day. 

In one of the more amusing interludes in the film, we see Leatherface, clearing perplexed and flustered. Where are all these kid-shaped cattle COMING from? And will he get in trouble?

(As it turns out, he does, “Look what your brother did to that door!” says the cook.)

You’ll note, I am steering clear of giving you the details of the plot. And who dies. And how. And in what order. 

If you have never seen the Texas Chain Saw Massacre I have no desire to ruin it for you. I see my job as setting expectations and creating a mood. It is my dear wish, Willing Participant, that if you ARE a Texas Chain Saw Virgin, that you will put this film on IMMEDIATELY after listening to this podcast. And I hope my stories enhance the experience for you.

And, incidentally, I have just decided to copywrite the title “Texas Chain Saw Virgin”. I have the poster in mind already.

The first time I saw the film, that last 60 minutes just left me reeling. Like I had been hit on the head with a mallet, or taken drugs, or couldn’t wake up from a nightmare or all three. The atmosphere is claustrophobic, and hysterical. The endless screaming. The cruel mockery. That sense of complete hopelessness. 

Tobe Hooper emphasises this with CRAZY camera movements, and striking close ups of desperate, crazy eyeballs, searching desperately for a way out. We recall those close-ups of the sun at the starts of the film, solar flares being replaced by red veins in the eyeballs of the victim and we make the connection that this was doomed to happen in this insane world. It was meant to be.

And in the midst of all this, a victim gets offered supper. While tied to a chair. Made of human body parts. And assured she’ll feel better after she has had something to eat.

There’s nothing like touches of normality to make the craziness seem more crazy, said Hooper.

The dinner time scene may be one of the most intense horror movie scenes ever filmed. And here’s where I wonder if I wasn’t partly right about this film being almost accidental genius. Of catching the lightning of brilliance and circumstance in a bottle. 

Shooting the dinner scene was sheer torture, according to Hooper and other members of the crew. “It was a very abusive production,” Hooper admitted later. 

They shot the dinner scene inside, in the unrelenting Texas heat. Outside, it was, apparently about 90 degrees Fahrenheit – so approximately 30 degrees Celsius. But bear in mind that there were blackout sheets up to make the scene look like night-time. And then add in all of the lighting equipment. Gunnar Hansen, who plays Leatherface approximated it was more like 45 Celsius inside the house.

I think it would be appropriate to mention set designer Robert Burns at this point. To my mind, he is the unsung hero of this film. The bizarre creations you see around the Sawyer house are entirely his. He even learned taxidermy to stuff the armadillo you see at the start of the film. 

He spent a great deal of time scavenging for dead things for this film, and them turning them into the sinister, bizarre artwork you see around the house. He invented fake human skin, which is a mixture of latex and fibre glass, to give it that fibrous look. So that’s Leatherface’s mask – and also the skinned face with a lightbulb inside it. 

He also managed to get hold of several dead animals from a local vet, and pumped them full of formaldehyde to keep them from rotting. 

The reason I feel the need to bring this up now, is that – back in that oven of a film set – where the Texas cannibals are hooting and hollering and taunting and laughing over their victim. And their victim is screaming and crying and shrieking and howling. There are MULTIPLE dead animals, which may or may not contain stinking chemicals, stinking up the set and rotting right in front of the actors. The stench was incredible. 

And if THAT weren’t bad enough, this is a low-budget movie, remember. Without an extensive costume department. Basically, everyone had just the one set of clothes, for the entire shoot, which had to be retained for continuity. 

“We STANK,” says Marilyn Burns of her time on the set. “My blood-soaked trousers practically stood up by themselves.”

“Everyone hated me,” says Hooper of his time directing that scene, as he kept pressing them and pressing them to go on, regardless. Through the dinner scene, then the grandpa scene, and it just went ON and ON.

Gunnar Hansen had to run outside to be sick. Tensions ran high. At one point Marilyn’s chair got pushed over, and the crew just left her on the floor, with a filthy rag stuffed in her mouth as they argued over the best way to get the shot.

To try and alleviate the smell, Tobe Hooper decided to burn some of the more stinking dead animals with which Robert Burns had decorated the set. He poured petrol over a pile of carcasses he no longer needed, and lit a match before realising – to his horror, that this didn’t make the smell go away. Quite the reverse.

Soon, the set was filled with the smell of burning dog, marinaded in formaldehyde. And still the shoot went on. Twelve hours, twenty hours… After about twenty seven hours, Hooper finally got what he needed.

I think the circumstances under which this film was shot, really comes across in the film, and gives Texas Chain Saw Massacre that unique energy it has. The dinner sequence is the most obvious. But when Teri McMinn is hung from the meat hook (she was actually in a harness made of flesh-coloured stockings) she was in real pain. And when the actor Alan Danziger’s character was to encounter Leatherface for the first time, he was led onto the set in a blindfold so that he reaction would be real.

Understandably, when Gunnar Hansen emerged as the crazed killer, Alan forgot to act and simply ran away screaming, ruining the shot.

As for poor Marilyn Burns and her stinky trousers, she was happy to see the back of them. But then… she got a call one day to say one of the key scenes – her final escape in the back of the pickup truck – didn’t work and they would need to do it again.

She explained that her hysterical laughter in that scene is not acting. That was really how she felt.

By the time the film wrapped, the original budget of 60k had more than doubled to 140k and so Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel ended up having to sell a lot of their shares in the production company to finish the film. Hooper – like John Carpenter – did the score himself and it’s just a terrific atonal mix of bangs, crashes and atonal metallic noises which fits the mood of the chaotic film perfectly. Hooper used improvised instruments, including saws, bones and pots.  

The dire financial straits of Hooper and Henkel led to perhaps their most disastrous decision. They leapt at the offer of a company called Bryanston to distribute the film. Unfortunately for them, Bryanston was operated by New York mobster, Anthony “Big Boy” Peraino. And as a result, even though the film made millions – Bryanston fiddled the books and reported a loss on it and everyone involved got peanuts for making it and appearing it. Gunnar Hansen received the grand total of $47 in his first royalty cheque.

Despite that catastrophic poor judgement, Hooper did have one last stroke of genius in him. In naming the film. By this stage it had gone through a few titles including “Leatherface”, “Stalking Leatherface” and even “Head Cheese”.

Hooper mentioned the title “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” to a friend who responded with sheer disgust.

“That’s TERRIBLE. What a terrible title. I wouldn’t go to see that. I wouldn’t let my girlfriend see it. Nothing. NOTHING with that title,” said the friend.

“That’s the one,” said Hooper.

So all of the above – the madness of the shoot, the lack of money, that generation’s nihilistic hatred of authority, the spiralling violence on the news, and a wish to put an uncompromising HORROR film on the market all conspired to make The Texas Chain Saw Massacre what it is. A genuine masterpiece, unlike any other. 

Oh, and a decent amount of black humour too – although Hooper himself called it “red humour”. He was disappointed that the public didn’t pick up on this when the film was released. He surmised that they were too traumatised by the film when it first came out. “It took them about five years to realise it was there,” he explained.

Hooper would go on to really make it clear that he wasn’t being entirely serious in the sequel Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2, about 12 years later. Now I like the sequel, don’t misunderstand me. But nowhere near as much. It is definitely a sillier, cheesier – even campier film. Made in the 1980’s with an 80’s sensibility, it’s a lot more gory, but a lot less scary. It feels like a film. A lovely big, overblown silly 80’s horror film. There is something almost goofily loveable about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but it is no masterpiece. And yes, Tobe, we got the humour this time around.

I also have issues with the 2003 remake. It is, definitely, an excellent horror film. It’s grimy, dark, menacing and grim. With a far more physically threatening version of Leatherface, more bloody and graphic violence and a cast of grotesques. Women who look like they’ve walked off the pages of a Far Side cartoon, wild, feral children and R. Lee Ermey perfectly cast as a terrifying cop.

But it also feels less like the insane ride of the 1974 film, and more like a traditional horror movie. Those horror film cliches – those familiar cues and patterns I mentioned earlier. The things that Hooper’s film removed specifically to pull the rug out from under us… They are all back in 2003. The music informs us where this thing is going. Jessica Biel’s hero is far more of a traditional final girl than Marilyn Burns. Jessica does not lose her mind and laugh hysterically in 2003. She gets mad and GETS EVEN. 

I do not find that as scary.

Perhaps the best way to sum up my feelings is to compare the two actors, Burns and Biel side by side. Jessica Biel is a fine actor, and I do not mean to criticise her. But, you must admit, there is no point in this film where she looks like she couldn’t be on the front cover of a magazine. Marilyn, not so much. Unless that magazine was Abbatoir Worker’s Roundup.

Please do not misunderstand me. Texas Chainsaw Remake is a good horror film. The chase sequences especially are really tense and exciting in a way the original really does not manage. But to me, it felt a little generic. Like something I’d seen before. It looked stylish, but so did a lot of early 2000’s horror films. The acting is good – but you can tell it’s acting. The REAL panic. The ACTUAL terror? For me, it just wasn’t there.

I have a theory that many of the scariest films ever made pick up on genuine terror or discomfort from the actors. We know that the “Blair Witch” directors actually DID try to freak their actors out during filming. We know that William Friedkin fired guns during “The Exorcist” to terrify his actors. We know that the actress Sarah Peabody was abused and actually threatened with physical harm by actor David Hess during the making of “Last House on the Left”. We know that Shelly Duvall was consistently demeaned and humiliated by Kubrick on The Shining, to get the performance he wanted from her. We know that the Evil Dead actors endured a shoot almost as torturous as that on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Now, I should emphasise – none of this is acceptable. Especially the deliberate cruelty of Kubrick and Hess. But the thing I find about all of these films, is that the absolute terror of the actors does convey itself right through the camera lens. And if this film works for you, I think that is what you are picking up on. The panic, anxiety and hysteria that comes through in this film was – in large part – real.

If you are a younger horror fan you may find yourself disagreeing with me. I hope you are not patronised by my saying this. It just seems to me that if you come to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” after seeing “Saw” or “Hostel” then you won’t find the content as immediately shocking as I did. If you view this after seeing “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity” then you may find me describing the style of this film as being “realistic” as just silly. Sometimes the order in which you are exposed to horror films colours your opinion of them.

For me, and for a generation of horror fans. This film was a revelation. It was banned, for decade in the United Kingdom, and for that reason had an enormous reputation as the most depraved horror film possible. It does not deserve that reputation and, quite honestly, you may watch this film and wonder what all of the fuss is about. 

But for me, I come back to Wes Craven’s comments and the problems of the poor old British censor. For me, this film is more than a film. It’s a sensory overload. Of hideous sounds, imagined sights, an unrelenting nightmare. It’s 83 minutes of madness. It’s an experience. A vibe. A buzz.  And maybe the most ferociously original horror movie I can think of. 

It is NOT for everyone. But if my description has piqued your interest, I hope it has also prepared you for the experience. 

But don’t say, I didn’t warn you.

Goodnight.