Far from a curse, Tobe Hooper’s tiny budget made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a timeless horror classic…
The heat and humidity were almost unbearable.
The stench was so bad that some crewmembers were throwing up outside between takes.
Everyone hated me by the end of the production,Hooper admitted in 2014.
It just took years for them to kind of cool off.
How its intensity and style influenced dozens of other filmmakers and their movies, includingRidley ScottsAlien.
Instead, Hooper uses sound, editing, and framing to suggest the violence and bloodletting.
Deep down, we know that were watching actors acting and special effects dowsing and splattering across the screen.
Its a car flying down a highway without any brakes; a rollercoaster wildly out of control.
Theres little of the high school, soap opera relationship back-and-forth between the characters.
The terrifying Leatherface and the rest of the cannibal family go otherwise unpunished at the end of the movie.
The luckless Sally (Burns) escapes with her life, but not, we suspect, her sanity.
Its a raw, ugly film for a raw and ugly era.
The sense of death positively emanates from Hoopers movie.
Hooper had initially thought about having the hook exit a prosthetic neck, with an accompanying geyser of blood.
The lack of budget and Hoopers ill-fated desire to get the film a PG-rating quickly nixed that idea.
Instead, McMinn was hung on a simple and very uncomfortable saddle.
The screaming and Pearls low camera angle effortlessly sell the scenes horror.
A lot of the editing took place in Hoopers own house.
Haunted house movies and glossy slasher flicks are, in essence, fun ghost train rides.
We can almost smell the engine oil emanating from Leatherfaces chainsaw.
We can almost feel his breath in our face.
Over 40 years later, the breath still feels hot and rancid.
