The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at 50: a brutal yet artful shock horror
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Tobe Hooper’s terrifying 1974 slasher remains one of the most effective and masterly horror films ever made
The next time you see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – and if you haven’t seen it, brace yourself accordingly – close your eyes for the first five or 10 minutes and listen, preferably with a good set of headphones. Because as extraordinary and unforgettable as so many of the images are, the soul of the film comes through on the soundtrack, which unsettles you on several different fronts at once. And now 50 years later, when it’s rightly placed on the shortest of shortlists for the greatest horror films ever made, the film’s ambience still blankets American culture, the low hum (and occasional random shriek) of media malevolence.
The first voice belongs, incredibly, to future star John Larroquette, who narrates the opening scroll with newsreel gravitas. “The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths,” begins the narration, which goes on to describe the events as “one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history”. Though director Tobe Hooper and his co-writer, Kim Henkel, drew inspiration from real-life serial murderers like Ed Gein, the scroll is total nonsense with the whiff of verisimilitude, a strategy that many horror films that followed, like The Blair Witch Project, would deploy to similar effect.
Continue reading...from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/bHuSf2W
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