Far less exploitative than its title insinuates, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the universally recognized achievements in horror cinema, an effective and important piece of horror that has shocked and disturbed audiences since its release in 1974. And yet, there is a strong feeling of restraint and style throughout the film that successfully exploits the doctrine of “less is more”, providing fright based on the premise that won’t you don’t see is far scarier than what you do see. In essence, it achieves what horror is meant to achieve: it lets your imagination run wild.
          The film centers around a group of youths, two young men and their girlfriends, plus a wheelchair bound friend, Franklin, who is the brother of one of the girls, Sally. The five are visiting the two siblings’ old house to reminisce on times past. On the way, they visit the local cemetery to check on the grave of a loved one after reports of grave robberies and vandalism, a premonition whose importance is made all too obvious in the opening sequence. Once at the house and in need of gas, two of the kids wander to a local house run entirely on gasoline generators. Not surprisingly, they are killed, and the rest of the movie becomes a search and hunt of the rest of the group by the chainsaw wielding psychopath and his family, the culprits behind the recent grave robberies.
          The plot, however, is not nearly as important as how well it is played out. For all intents and purposes, the storyline is rather weak, and any character development is minimal. Instead, Hooper made the film as raw and dirty as possible in order to scare the audience due to the sheer insanity of the situation. The audience may not fully know the victims, but what they experience and are subjected to is terrifying in its own right. The best example of this, of course, is the now infamous “dinner table” scene, where there is essentially no action (besides Marilyn Burns’s screaming), but the quick cuts and camera movements exemplify the terror of the situation. This coupled with the petty torments and humiliation Sally faces (plus the fact that the family is having an everyday meal of processed human meat) reinforces the feeling of the mental rape forced upon the victim.
          However, for all the insanity and “mental rape”, as I put it, that is featured, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not a revealing film. The common stereotype of the film is its graphic violence; the title alone provokes thoughts of unregulated carnage and violence coupled with twisted macabre of all varieties. In reality, however, these misconceptions prove the film’s effectiveness. Although undoubtedly horrifying, the gore in the film is kept to an absolute minimum, despite innumerable opportunities for it to turn into a complete exploitation bloodbath. Almost all violence, and certainly most of the deaths, are hidden by, say, a well placed table, or even the victims’ bodies. It’s the intensity and terror of the situation that fills in the gaps, that although the audience sees little blood, the scenes are vividly remembered as explicit violence. As if borrowing from Hitchcock’s “shower scene”, what remains unseen is scarier than what is revealed.
          Despite this, I believe what remains the most effective terror device in the film is not merely how well Hooper sets up the film, but the content itself. The sheer oddity to see furniture made of human bones, or a chicken in a cage hanging from the ceiling, is the creepiest aspect. To think that people live in such disarray is haunting, that the strewn collection of garbage, resembling the appearance of an abandoned house, provides the perfect location for equally heinous behavior. Hell, the only thing scarier is the non-fictional aspect; Wisconsin killer Ed Gein really did dig up corpses to decorate his house. Crime scene photos for the two murders he committed eerily resemble the house in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, perhaps all too well.