By David Dent
Every self respecting horror fan will have their own “my first time watching The Texas Chain Saw Massacre story”. For the record, my own was via a friend, who bought a 20 minute digest of the movie on 8mm around 1976 and invited me over to watch it. Sadly his projector was a silent one, so as a soundtrack he cued up ‘The Greatest Hits of Simon and Garfunkel’ as accompaniment; it was a partnership I’ve never been able to forget.
In documentary maker Alexandre O. Philippe’s latest a group of filmmakers, writers and critics are invited to chip in their own comments on Tobe Hooper’s seminal film and how it fits in with wider horror culture.
Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, directors Takashi Miike and Karyn Kusama, critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and some writer bloke called Stephen King, offer a range of perspectives; all are in agreement that TCM is a film that probably wouldn’t be made today, and also one of the most important horror movies ever made.
Miike’s own exposure to the film aged 15, which he attended at a screening in Japan (where it’s known as ‘The Devil’s Sacrifice) is the most extraordinary, in that he only saw it because his intended cinema visit – to Chaplin’s City Lights – was sold out and he didn’t want to go home.
Australian critic Heller-Nicholas talks about the print doing the rounds in her home country, when the film was finally released, following censorship relaxation in 1985. Apparently copies were struck from an overexposed original which made the whole thing appear yellow, a look which perfectly harmonised TCM with the ‘big vista’ Australian movies being made at the time, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock.
At least one of the assembled talking heads sees TCM as a king of vision of present America, ahead of the zeitgeist it foretold, and there are some interesting comments about Leatherface as a kind of crazed ‘housewife’ in a home of psychotically altered alpha males. Some of this may be the work of Captain Hindsight (thank you Mr Sunak) but each take is fascinating, accompanied by generous side by side glimpses of the movie itself alongside the director’s other work and subsequent movies in some way influenced by Hooper’s classic.
Chain Reactions screened as part of the Overlook Film Festival 2025.
Bloody Flicks 