We see rooms full of strange altars made from human bones, and rooms filled with chicken feathers and charms and weird relics. We see the innocent victims being clubbed on the hand, hung from meat hooks, and gone after with the chain saw. A lot of people are going to be disappearing into this house, and its insides are a masterpiece of set decoration and the creation of mood. His girl gets tired of waiting for him, knocks on the door, and disappears inside, too. The guy goes to ask about borrowing some gasoline and disappears inside. He and his girlfriend set off for the old swimming hole, find it dried up, and then see a farmhouse nearby. The two girls laugh as they clamber through the litter on the floor, but one of the guys notices some strange totems and charms which should give him warning. They get rid of him, so they think.īut then they take a side trip to a haunted-looking old house, which some of them had been raised in. They pick up a weirdo hitchhiker who carries his charms and magic potions around his neck and who giggles insanely while he cuts himself on the hand and then slices at the paraplegic. It takes place in an isolated area of Texas, which five young people (one of them in a wheelchair) are driving through in their camper van.
No motivation, no background, no speculation on causes is evident anywhere in the film. But “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” could have been made up from whole cloth without any apparent difference. A true crime movie like Richard Brooks’ “ In Cold Blood,” which studies the personalities and compulsions of two killers, dealt directly with documented material and was all the more effective for that. For all I know, that’s true, although I can’t recall having heard of these particular crimes, and the distributor provides no documentation. The movie’s based on factual material, according to the narration that opens it. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective.
And yet in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. It’s also without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises - a real Grand Guignol of a movie.
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