Post by slayrrr666 on Nov 4, 2005 12:12:15 GMT -5
Part one of my "Unending Shame" series of reviews:
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is a classic horror film.
**SPOILERS**
After receiving word that their relatives’ graves may have been robbed, Sally Hardesty, (Marilyn Burns) her invalid brother Franklin, (Paul Partain) and their friends Jerry, (Alan Danziger) Kirk, (William Vail) and Pam, (Terri McMinn) drive through Texas to get to the location. While along they way, they get stranded in this strange town, which has a large house on the edge of town. Thinking a break along the nearby creek might be good for them, they stop and look around. As night falls and the rest of the group hasn’t returned yet, Sally and Franklin decide to head into the night to look for them. While searching, they run into the chainsaw-wielding maniac Leatherface, (Gunner Hansen) who kills Franklin and chases Sally through the woods.
The Good News: Wow, this is a great film! Even though Jason may be my favorite slasher villain, Leatherface is the first, so he holds special commendation. He is also one of the more unique killers in that he is based on a real person, the notorious Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein. The main differences, of course, being the leather mask and the chainsaw. Both are ingenious weapons for any killer to lay claim to: being the first masked killer in cinema history, and for having the most feared weapon of all time. That mask, the knowledge that it is sewn together from human skin, is completely freaky and scary, and that drained color tone, combined with Hansen’s strong performance, make up one scary slasher. Even the other performers in the film are incredible. The family at the end is just a bunch of wackos, and the dinner scene is just completely freaky. It takes a special skill to successfully creep out the audience, and they play it so well that you sometimes wonder if these are actual actors or real insane people that he hires to scare the wits out of the rest of the cast. Even without Leatherface in the picture, it can scare you how good they are. Wow, highlights, where do we start. For me, I can sit till the end of time watching Leatherface chase Sally through the woods, chainsaw blaring, as we all hear her screams running around for at least ten minutes. This is pure suspense genius. All we see is the chase, running through the woods, with Leatherface sometimes cutting up tree branches that probably shouldn’t have been cut, but that just makes the scene more suspenseful. It gives her a chance to get farther away, and yet he still manages to catch up with her, and the doom we feel when he is within striking distance and she is barely getting away are some of the scariest scenes in the history of cinema. This even comes after one of the biggest jumps I’ve ever had. Two people are walking in the woods, talking innocently, when after a while we hear a twig snap. One of them shines a flashlight in the direction of the noise, and from out of the darkness roars Leatherface, chainsaw blaring as loud as he is, and he then slices the first character up in not-very-gory fashion. Even still, the way it’s filmed is so carefully planned out that we think we see the actual cutting of the character, but we never see a drop of blood. That is a brilliant twist over our heads, as we expect something and then something completely by surprise happens that shocks us. Leatherface’s first on-screen appearance/kill is also a shock for first time viewers. One character goes walking around the house by himself and stumbles over a loose nail in the floor. When he regains his footing, a secret door has opened, and in the middle stands Leatherface, hammer in hand. With one swift blow to the head, he’s down. He picks up the carcass, hauls it back into the room, and then just slamming the door shut, where it’s loud banging comes as a long shock. I don’t even have to use the dinner scene, that is too marvelous for me to spoil here, as I’ve said too much already. It needs to be seen yourself to know what I mean. Even the last five minutes are simply incredible, action-packed pieces of lunacy that no one in their sane mind could have come up with, and the brilliant acting already mentioned just drive the scene home so well that it gives the viewer goosebumps just thinking about a scene like that. That is how well made this film is.
The Bad News: The main problem I have with this film is that Leatherface is not the mass murderer many think he is. We only get five kills in the film, and even worse, only one by chainsaw. Granted, the chainsaw kill is the best one in the film and one of the best in horror history, it still can’t make up for the fact that hardly anyone dies in the film. This is a problem that even the remake and nearly all the sequels have in common. A massacre is not five deaths. That can be a bad traffic accident. The storyline needs to be changed so that he has the opportunity to slash up multiple victims. I might be scared of him more if I knew, that in his whole series, he was capable of killing more than one “Friday the 13th” film. These are not body count flicks, so don’t be expecting a large cast to be killed off.
The Final Verdict: This is a pretty solid film. It is a bona fide classic; it has some great shock moments and one of the better villains in horror history. Just kill more people along the way. That part of the critique should not be taken seriously, though, and this film MUST be seen as soon as possible.
Rated R: Violence, mild Language and the murder of a handicapped person
