Chain Reactions (2024)

[bunniefuu]

Is that all I get?

-No.

-Jeez.

Gee, look at that old place.

Looks like something

out of a dream.

Please.

I'm so sick

of these romantic comedies

with these non-committal

titles, you know?

Like, "Feeling sorta,

kinda, whoo!"

Something's gotta give!

It's like, that's like

the movie's way of going,

"Don't blame me,

I got nothing to do with this!"

Give a movie a title!

Give it... And get

ready to bleep me.

...a m*therf*cking title!

- Yeah!

-You know what the greatest movie title ever is?

A movie title should

let you see

a free movie in your head

when you hear the title.

'Cause you go, "Oh, my God,

we gotta go see that!"

Greatest movie title ever?

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre.

My first movie memory

is a memory of terror,

because I was at a Halloween

activity day for kids.

I was 5, down in Tustin Meadows,

and it's the early '70s,

and the adults, they meant well,

but they were thinking,

"Oh, let's make pumpkin cookies,

and let's do cut-out black cats,

and we'll show the kids

an old silent movie,

Nosferatu, that'll be

safe for the kids.

It's an old, silent, G-rated."

And they projected

a little eight-millimeter

thing on a wall,

and it was... It was...

It's still one of the scariest

things I've ever experienced.

It's just this square

of light on a wall

in a library activity room,

and we were just pulled out

of early '70s Tustin Meadows,

and into this nightmare-logic

German vampire world.

Really disturbing imagery

that has its own creepy sense

of time and gravity and logic,

and it really, really

messes you up.

Nothing in Nosferatu

moves very quickly.

The vampire rarely moves.

So, it's like a series

of photographs

that are very, very disturbing.

My first "encounters"

with Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

were images. I wasn't able to--

I didn't have access

to the movie...

This was now the early '80s.

...but you had access

to Fangoria magazine.

I was used to pictures of films

being very well-lit,

very well-composed.

And these looked like

crime scene photographs

that had been stolen,

and then Xeroxed,

and it was second

and third generation.

And there was something

so primitive

and forbidden and creepy about--

Just the photos of the film

were very, very disturbing.

The title sounds like

you're chewing on flesh.

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre.

It sounds like a guy

just ripping into meat.

And now...

let's watch.

Hello?

My first viewing

of Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

happened on my friend's

small, color TV

in his living room,

with his ancient early '80s VCR,

top-loading, no rewind,

no pause.

You put it in, you hit play,

boom, there you go.

- Hello!

- I bet his family

spent eight grand on that VCR.

I remember my friend had this.

We watched it at his house.

This is...

I love how they compiled

a bunch of different images.

This is Leatherface running away

from the house at the very end.

That's Pam being hung earlier.

I always loved the detail

of the chainsaw

hitting the "T" and the "H."

It's like he's k*lling

his own movie.

That's how evil this guy is.

It has the feel that

the K*llers in the movie

have stolen a camera,

and are filming all of this.

The visuals

and the film itself

are ferocious and primitive,

and not quite human.

And the stupidity

of the point of view,

of just the animal

stupidity of it.

There's no clever dialogue.

You can make them stop.

No, he can't.

Shut your mouth.

Can't be helped, young lady.

- Oh, please.

- Shut up.

-You can't let them k*ll me.

-Don't pay him no mind.

There's no negotiating

with this family.

They're not doing it out of

hatred. It's what they are.

You like this face?

Much like in Jaws,

they're like,

"Why are you swimming

in the ocean?

That's where sharks live.

It's kind of your fault."

Man Bites Dog is this

amazing Belgian film

about a film crew,

a young film crew

that are besotted with cinema,

who are following around

a psychopath

while he goes about his day,

and philosophizes

on what life and death are,

and it takes you a while to

realize he's a moron, basically.

But he happens to k*ll people.

Man Bites Dog

shares a lot of DNA

with The Texas Chain

Saw m*ssacre,

but there are moments

in Man Bites Dog

when you see how it's affecting

the film crew,

all the k*lling

that they're doing,

and eventually,

that there is some kind of

moral judgment going on.

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

is so much more brutal

because the camera is

simply observing.

It has no opinion.

It's not being affected

by what it's seeing,

so you get the full brunt

of what is happening.

And weirdly enough,

the camera,

it's almost mocking us

in the weird moments of beauty

that it finds.

Almost like, "I'm gonna show you

this moment of beauty,

because you know something

horrible's coming up."

Kirk.

When Pam gets up

off the swinging chair,

and there's that beautiful shot

of her walking against

the blue sky.

The camera's almost going, "Oh,

you want a nice Hollywood movie?

Well, here's your nice

glamor shot,"

as she's literally

walking into a slaughterhouse.

She doesn't know that,

but we do.

So, the beauty of the shot

itself is mocking us,

and it's amazing.

It just really jangles

your emotions.

He likes what is lurking

beneath what looks like

a picture postcard.

The beautiful Days of Heaven

type shots of the landscape.

Or, you know,

"Oh, this is nice!"

And then it just goes

horribly wrong.

There's one shot in Nosferatu

that totally mirrors

the shot in Texas,

where she gets up off the swing

and walks into the house.

It's a very calm, peaceful,

idyllic shot

of a ship coming into a harbor,

but we know that ship

is crawling with death,

and is bringing the plague

to this city.

He's using it in service

of telling you

that death and destruction

is coming.

And I love it. It's amazing.

I've never forgotten that shot.

This is my theory

about Texas Chain Saw,

because, again,

I've seen the movie 30 times.

The opening credits

have close-up shots

of storms on the surface

of the sun.

Red storms, just blazing

on the surface of the sun,

and then, in the rest

of the movie,

people are always looking

up at the sun.

It's like the sun itself

has become diseased,

and is bathing the world

in this madness,

and it's starting to take hold,

and we're just following

a small group of people.

I think the madness

in that movie

is spreading all

over the planet.

We are just watching

one tiny incident of it.

Leatherface seems terrified

and horrified

by the fact the people

are in the house,

and doesn't quite

know what to do.

In a weird way,

up until this point,

I feel like Leatherface

was just digging up bones,

but maybe he wasn't really

k*lling anybody.

He was just digging stuff up,

and making arts and crafts

out of it, and furniture.

But now, people are being

fed into the slaughterhouse.

And, you know, first he clobbers

the guy with a hammer,

the way you would

just stun a cow,

then he grabs the other woman,

and with no diabolism

or passion,

just hangs her on a hook,

turns, goes back to his work,

'cause that's what you do.

And then, after he's k*lled

the third guy,

he goes into the front room,

and he's looking out the window,

like, "What is happening?

What is happening?

Why are people

coming to this house?"

Like, he's not prepared

for this.

Then, later on,

when his family comes home,

they're yelling at him

and bullying him.

It's like the world

is starting to go crazy.

Are you sure--

You...

You damn fool!

You ruined the door!

That last shot of Leatherface

waving his chainsaw at the sky,

it's this bright red ugly sun

like we saw in that first image,

the sun storms,

the madness is fully

taking hold of the earth,

and Leatherface is trying to

k*ll the sun with his chainsaw.

She's in the back of the truck

laughing, she's gone insane,

like the world is now

going insane.

It's an apocalyptic event.

That's what I think

is going on in that movie.

And that's another link

to Nosferatu,

which is, it is an apocalypse

coming to this city.

Whereas in Nosferatu, the sun,

the rising sun saves the city

from the plague

and from the madness,

but in Texas Chain Saw,

there's no escaping it.

The whole world is bathed

in this evil radiation.

Oh, honey, you're gonna

ruin your eyes.

This is not good for you.

Everyone watches

a movie differently.

Here's an example

of how everyone

watches a movie differently.

When I was in college,

I went with my then girlfriend

and her mom--

I don't know why

her mom was with us.

But we went to see

Silence of the Lambs.

And we left the movie,

and I was like,

"Man, that was intense,

like, that was amazing."

And then, her mom said,

"I know. That man

had a ring in his nipple."

And that was the thing

that she took from that.

And I was like, "I think he was

making clothes out of people?"

But, like, that's what

she landed on.

So, with Texas Chain Saw,

you can look at it

for what it is.

It's a horror movie,

a group of people come

and they encounter monsters,

and who's gonna get away?

But you can also look at it as

the most f*cked up

Western ever made,

where this is the long, long,

long hangover

of Western expansion,

of going out,

subduing the Native Americans,

k*lling off all the buffalo.

We've done all that,

there's nothing left.

Hey, man, did you go

in that slaughter room,

or whatever they call it?

The place where they

sh**t cattle in the head

with that big air g*n?

Oh, that-- That g*n's no good.

I was in there once,

with my uncle.

The old way. With a sledge.

See, that was better,

they died better that way.

How come?

I thought the g*n was better.

Oh, no, no.

With the new way,

people were put out of jobs.

You do that?

Look!

So, the people that

did all the gross,

dirty work

that we don't like to look at...

Although we do enjoy our steaks.

But I don't wanna think about

a guy with a hammer,

you know, k*lling a cow.

But now they're,

"Well, we're gonna just

start eating you.

We still gotta feed ourselves,

so you're the cattle now."

And now, here's a van

full of hippies,

like, literally

a Scooby-Doo group,

and they're being slaughtered

by these displaced

blue-collar workers.

The family in Texas

Chain Saw m*ssacre

are doing the most extreme,

disturbing version

of how life operates.

It's not you dying

and feeding trees.

It's somebody hanging you

on a meat hook

so they can cut steaks

off of you,

and serve you to their family

so the family can survive.

'Cause, "I wanna take care

of my dad, and my brother,

and my grandpa.

And, if they need it,

I'll go make myself look like

their mom. I'll be the mom."

Like, there is this absolutely

serving the function of family

in the most damaged

way possible.

Doesn't matter how many flowers

you garland over your backyard,

no matter how many

beautiful books

you decorate your shelves with,

you will eventually die.

Your body--

And death is a horror show.

There's no way to get around it.

There's a Stan Brakhage film

called The Act of Seeing

with One's Own Eyes,

where it's a footage

of an autopsy.

And you watch it--

I remember Alan Moore

described it, where,

at first, you're horrified,

"Oh, my God, this is--"

You know, they're cutting

a body open.

But then, as it goes on,

there is a kind of beauty

in like, this is a really

complex machine,

and it works.

And that's me, I work.

That there is beauty

in all this gore.

So, if you can face the horror

of it dead on, without blinking,

then there's poetry

in you not blinking at it.

The camera in Texas Chain Saw,

by not blinking, by not judging,

is being a very demented,

poisonous sort of poet.

Every frame has something

unnerving in it.

Like, even a long shot

of the highway,

then there's a dead armadillo.

This weird swoop

of the chainsaw at the end

when Leatherface is coming

after their pickup truck,

or that pause that Sally does

after she closes the van door,

-and then she sees that symbol.

-Let's go.

Or, when they go

visit the graveyard,

there's the people that are

kind of laughing and crazy,

and the one drunk

sitting in the tire,

I've always wondered, is he

an accomplice of the hitchhiker?

Is he quietly also helping him

at night dig stuff up,

and he's finally going nuts

thinking about the morality

of what he's doing,

and that's why he's out there

drunk, like, "I've seen things!"

Things happen here about,

they don't tell about.

I see things.

Is the guy who goes and

comes and washes their window,

is he another, like, cousin, or

weird, distant, inbred version,

member of the family that they

don't know what to do with,

and they're like,

"Go wash windows."

There's a whole infrastructure

going on

that they don't talk about,

but it's there.

And, also, just when they go

and find the old house,

there's all those clocks

and watches with nails

through them,

hanging in the tree...

Much like Castle Dracula.

You're now in a zone

where time doesn't matter,

gravity doesn't matter.

We rule things here.

Texas Chain Saw

feels eternal.

The experience itself

will always be disturbing

and frightening,

outside of any context

that you're watching it in.

The moment

of Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

is the moment when Pam

almost escapes the house.

I feel like that moment

separated a specific generation

of horror movie fans:

the ones who stayed became

the people that read Fangoria

and got into

all the John Carpenter stuff,

and the ones who were out

were just like,

"Yeah, this isn't my...

It's just not my thing."

And I know people my age now

who have never gotten

beyond that point.

Once the porch scene happens,

they're like, "Yep, I'm out."

It's also

a very, very twisted version

of the scene

in Gone with the Wind,

where Rhett Butler,

who basically r*pes her,

he just-- "You're not

turning me out tonight,"

and he picks her up,

and takes her up the stairs

while she's pounding on him.

It's just a mutant version

of what people thought

romance was in movies.

There'll be no locks or bolts

between us, Mary-Kate,

except those in your own

mercenary little heart.

You watch it now, you're like,

"Ooh, yikes."

So, at least

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

was like, "Well, this is

what it actually is," you know?

She is literally

a piece of meat, ka-chunk.

I see Tobe Hooper as the best

kind of film stylist,

in that he was an opportunist.

You can plan and storyboard

all you want.

It's when you get

to the location, and realize,

"Oh, that shot I want

I can't get,

but I could get this."

They had no money.

And it has that adrenaline,

desperate quality to it,

of, "We're grabbing shots

wherever we can."

I watched it again,

on my big-screen TV,

and I just now realized,

the lamp over the dinner table,

that's a human face.

And the "armchair." Get it?

So, there's all these

little details.

Bob Burns, the art director,

was frigging amazing.

I mean, look, Tobe Hooper

did kind of a scary thing

for an artist,

which is he really

didn't blink from his dark side.

Sometimes the zeitgeist

picks a messenger,

and that messenger doesn't

realize that they're the one

that's being picked, and they're

the one that's channeling

and delivering

what the zeitgeist

wants people to look at.

And I think the zeitgeist,

clearly, is prankish

and playful,

and it's like, "Oh, I'm gonna

show people what they are

through the grossest

drive-in movie possible,

but that will actually

stand the test of time."

Hello?

Is anybody home?

Excuse me, I'm looking

for some friends.

Hello?

I thought I heard something.

There's a light.

- Yeah?

- Yeah.

Oh, looks like a house.

What are you doing?

No, no!

According to Sheriff Maldonado,

there were instances

in which only the head

and extremities were removed.

Do you believe in Jesus?

Yes, I do.

Well, you're gonna meet him.

Where is my ring?

Did you ever go back to the

theater to watch City Lights?

I was born in the same year

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

was born.

I grew up on the border

of the outer suburbs

of Melbourne in Australia,

and the bush, effectively,

and we were about 40 minutes

from Hanging Rock.

So, growing up, that film was

hugely, hugely important to me.

Because it really tied film

and the magic of film

to a place

that I knew really well.

What we see...

and what we seem...

are but a dream.

A dream within a dream.

And for my eighth birthday,

my parents took me--

They brought me

a brand new little lace dress.

And for some deranged reason,

they thought it would

be funny to hide.

When I went to the bathroom,

I came back, they were gone.

And that has stayed with me.

Miranda,

don't go up there! Come back!

That feeling has stayed with me.

Partially resentment

to my parents,

but mostly just that fear

and that connection of fear

to the cinematic.

For a lot of Australians

of my generation,

Texas was like Road

Runner cartoons.

You know, it was this sort of

imaginary, faraway place.

The Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

was denied classification

in 1975 twice,

and then again in 1981.

It wasn't until 1984

that the film was cleared

for release.

Give me that flashlight!

My memory

of Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

in those very early days

when it was finally released

was it was something

that was the terrain

of friends' older brothers.

Very gendered and very forbidden

for little girls.

And so there was a sense

of danger and excitement

to Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre,

this film that's been banned

for ten years,

finally released in Australia.

I was far too young

to see the film,

but I have a kind

of ambient memory

of it being in the atmosphere.

And I don't know

where I first saw the trailer.

K-Tel Video.

Your home of entertainment

presents more great titles

from Filmways VTC.

This is the

horror movie to end them all.

It feels like

Leatherface cut the trailer

to the Australian

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre.

Like, it's off its head,

it is mental.

It has this incredible

kinetic energy.

It doesn't make

a lick of sense at all.

It's like an art film.

It's like this avant-garde,

experimental frenzy.

And, you know,

you have sort of flashes

of generic horror content,

but, you know, kind of blurred,

this sort of Stan

Brakhage-esque,

experimental blur.

It's like Mothlight

with serial K*llers.

It kind of has no relation

to the film,

in that sort of images

from one moment

are sort of placed

next to images

from a completely separate

part of the film.

And so the sensory

really takes dominance.

Help!

And that does come through

in the film itself.

Get back and push down.

This is impossible.

I knew something was there.

The first time I saw the film

was when I was a bit older,

so it would have been

the early '90s.

And it was always presented

to me as a kind of test.

Are you hardcore enough?

Got something for you.

Ugh!

I first saw Texas Chain Saw

alongside things like

I Spit on Your Grave,

Faces of Death, Executions.

And because these films

were really gatekept

by the young men

that I knew at the time,

there was a real clash there.

And I remember

watching these things

and thinking,

"These are for me."

Like, "These really speak to me.

These don't belong to you."

So, the Australian VHS release

of Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

really right through

until the late '90s

was copied from, like,

a really beat-up film.

So, you have the wear and tear

of normal VHS usage

combined with the fact

that it was a pretty, pretty

shitty print to start with.

So, the version that I saw

and that most people

of my generation saw on video

doesn't look like the version

that we see today.

It's visually

completely different.

I don't remember that film

having any blue or green in it.

I remember it being

yellow and scratchy

and faded and beat up

and that that was part

of the danger.

The feeling that you were

watching something really covert

that you weren't meant to see.

Because the version

that I first saw was so yellow,

I tethered it

much more closely, I think,

to a lot of Australian film

that I'd seen.

What we see...

and what we seem...

are but a dream.

A dream within a dream.

Because yellow is really

very, very at the forefront

of the aesthetics

of the outback

and of the desert.

So, yellow is how I see heat.

And I knew that Texas was hot,

and it's like, okay,

so it looks like this,

it looks yellow.

It's this very

Australian aesthetic of heat.

You know, it looks like things

like The Proposition.

Australia.

What fresh hell is this?

And it looks like things

like Wolf Creek.

It looks like the start

of Wake in Fright.

I first saw Wake in Fright

on a VHS tape

that was taped off

this one famous

TV broadcast in 1989.

And, of course, it's this

washed-out print

that was shown on TV,

on a tape that had been played

a hundred times before.

And I saw it at school,

and it was, you know,

hot Australian summer

with no air conditioning

in my classroom,

which fits in, of course,

beautifully to the film.

It's like this sort of

post-apocalyptic Kansas

in like a really f*cked

up Wizard of Oz.

And it's, like,

this is the outback.

Welcome to Australia.

My memory

of it, seeing it on video,

looks exactly like

my memory of seeing

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre,

and it's tethered so tightly

to the things

that were going on in my world,

and in my life, in my country,

at the time.

In 1983, we had,

uh, dust storms,

these enormous dust storms,

terrifying dust storms.

We had horrific bushfires,

the Ash Wednesday bushfires,

which were

absolutely catastrophic.

It's the most scary thing

that's ever happened to me.

It's the most frightened

I've ever been.

I have this very, very strong,

vivid memory

of these sort of yellow,

very heavily yellowed images

of houses that have

been burnt down

and all that remains

are the chimney stacks.

And every time, even now,

no matter how many times

I see Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

and I see that tombstone,

I always think

it's a chimney stack

every single time.

There she is, ladies.

Hanging Rock.

Hanging Rock

was so physically close

to where those fires were.

The bush that you see

in Hanging Rock

is the bush that was destroyed

in those fires.

It's the same place.

And there's a beautiful little

montage sequence in Hanging Rock

where the girls are sort of

swaying and spinning

and they take off their shoes

and it's hot.

And I feel that heat.

My body remembers that heat,

and that panic,

and that fear,

and that disorientation.

So, when I think of

the dust storms

and I think of the fires,

over time,

they've sort of blurred

with images from films.

And the heat that I associate

with Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

has sort of bled into

my memories

of the Ash Wednesday fires.

And the fact that one was real

and one was a film,

you know, memory doesn't care,

it doesn't care.

It's like this weird,

porous thing.

I find it hard to be

objectively critical

about Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

because it's a film

that you feel

before you think about.

It's a very smart film.

The depth

of the cultural knowledge

is extraordinary to me.

And I don't even know

if it's conscious.

It probably isn't even

a conscious thing.

I think of that moment

in the van

where the hitchhiker shows them

the photographs of the meat.

And the first photograph

looks exactly like

a Rembrandt painting.

And the second photograph,

very heavily reminiscent,

I think, of a Francis Bacon.

And it's-- There's Leatherface

vibes there for me.

There's no way

that the Black Maria truck

at the end is an accident.

Black Maria was the name

of Thomas Edison's film company.

It was the very first

film company.

I feel like the hitchhiker

when he takes his Polaroid photo

and he's like...

You know, it's, " Look."

The magic of photography,

the magic of cinema.

You took my picture.

And that feeds back

into this early film tradition

where it's like, "

I can't believe

cinema's a thing."

You know, I can't believe

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

is a thing.

I can't believe it works.

I can't believe this film

pulls off what it does.

Magic.

Everything means something,

I guess.

That's

my motto as a film critic.

You know, film critics

are often accused

of reading too much into things.

No art is ever created

in a vacuum.

Whether it's conscious or not,

film soaks up the zeitgeist.

It has to. It has to.

It's extraordinary to me

the parallels

between Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

and a lot of Australian cinema

in the 1970s.

It's eerie because these are...

These are places

that are literally worlds apart.

It's an odd thing to say,

but I think

we almost don't pay

enough attention to Leatherface,

which I know sounds strange

because he's one

of the great monsters of horror.

Where are the kids?

Where are they? Show me!

It's a home invasion film

from Leatherface's

point of view.

He's... He's really stressed out

that these young people

just turn up in his house.

If you watch him as he moves

from the kitchen to the window,

he's fussing,

like, he's flapping.

He's like, "I don't know

what to do with myself."

It's such a, like, it's such

an Italian, like, "Mamma mia,"

like, it's so gestured.

It's gorgeous.

It's very Buster Keaton,

the way that he moves.

It's silent cinema, you know?

It's the legacy

of the Black Maria.

As much as my memories

of the film

are tethered to yellow,

so much of the film's energy

completely changes

with the color red.

When I think

of Hieronymus Bosch,

I think of the Hellmouth,

you know, these big, sort of

gaping red, terrifying voids

that I think Texas Chain Saw

makes quite literal.

This idea of the Hellmouth,

you know,

taken from the Medieval art

that was presented in paintings

and in manuscripts

as a literal mouth,

like a big red mouth

with, you know, people inside

or devils with big red mouths.

Those strange

little art objects,

the feathers and the bones,

these weird little things,

they're like they're straight

from a Hieronymus Bosch

painting.

And it almost feels to me

like Texas Chain Saw

is riffing on that.

The scene

with Sally and the Cook,

I think, is, um,

is really pivotal.

Sally's literally sandwiched

between the cannibalistic grill

and the saucers

on the other side.

I think that's really great.

And Cook pushes her

against a chopping block,

you know, in case

the cannibalism motif

isn't kind of

coming through already.

And we have this

incredible moment

where he leaves to get the car.

She thinks he's going to help.

And the sound

of the sizzling escalates

and the sound

of the radio escalates.

Barometer is 29.9 and rising.

Acting on a tip...

You see the horror in her face

when she puts it all together

and realizes

that what she's hearing

and what she's seeing

are connected.

The way that that grill

is presented

is this terrifying

red, gaping void.

It is the entry to hell.

...there were

instances in which only

the heads and extremities

were removed.

And others in which only

a hand or foot is removed.

The remainder of the cadaver

left intact.

Somebody! Help me!

Help me!

Please! Please help me!

Please!

My first movie experience

was a horror movie.

It was called Bambi.

I was probably 3 years old,

and I remember

Bambi's mother saying,

"Man has been in the forest,"

and I just went,

"Oh, my goodness."

What happened, Mother?

Why did we all run?

Man...

was in the forest.

I've been a movie fan

since forever.

My first editor,

Bill Thompson, said, uh,

"Steve King has got a projector

in his head."

And there's some truth to that

because I grew up on the films.

I gravitated toward

monster movies.

My brother didn't care for them,

and so I would usually

find myself sitting by myself.

I love the black-and-white

movies.

The idea that reality

and the outrageously crazy

could merge together in a film

and it would be realistic.

What I'm thinking about

in particular

was Ray Harryhausen's work

in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,

where you see a flying saucer

crashed into the reflecting pool

in Washington D.C.

And you see another one

that wobbles

and then takes off

the Washington Monument.

And I thought,

"I wanna do that."

I wanna bring the reality

and the make-believe together

in the same place

so that you can't even

tell the difference.

Stay away!

There are a lot of movies

that are like that,

that, uh,

I just absolutely love.

One of them is The Haunting

of Hill House.

That movie scared

the living sh*t right out of me.

It wasn't anything that you saw.

It was what you thought you saw.

You could see a door

bellowing in and out

like a lung.

You could see a shape

in the plaster

that began to look like a face,

that sort of thing.

I... I just loved that.

It's all suggested.

It's all shadows.

And there's a scene early on

in The Exorcist

where a clock just stops

for no reason.

It just tick, tick, tick,

and then it just stops.

That's a very unsettling moment.

You have to be a real artist

like Robert Wise

in The Haunting of Hill House

to do the thing

where it's just

almost suggested.

There isn't really

a lot of blood

in Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre.

I should say that I never saw

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

when it came out.

I saw it in 1982 in Colorado.

I was a young father,

and I was writing to stay ahead

of the bill collectors.

I was in the theater

almost by myself.

And that's when a movie

really has a tendency

to work on you, you know,

to get its cold little fingers

under your skin.

It had that kind of

washed-out '70s look

for want of a better term.

You could tell that this print

had been around for a while,

and it's better for it

because it just looks...

It looks f*cking real,

and it works because

there's no artifice about it.

There's no, you know,

kind of buildup.

There's no character nuance.

I mean, there are scenes

in the graveyard.

They're not extras.

They're not

Hollywood people at all.

They look like they came

from the nearest

little Texas town.

My granddaddy's buried here.

Can we find out

if anything happened to him?

What's your granddaddy's name?

Honey, that big heavy fella

with that flashlight

in his hand,

that's the sheriff.

You go tell him your

granddaddy's buried in there.

-He'll let you in.

-Thank you.

Say, fella, I'm gonna

run off with your girl.

You don't mind, do you?

It's fantastic.

And that adds to the horror,

because you never feel

that kind of barrier,

that see-through

barrier between,

"Oh, well,

this is just a movie."

You wanna get about four

or five men and a couple dogs?

There's a house over here

behind those trees.

We wanna go check it out.

Night of the Living Dead

is the same way.

You know, you don't know

any of those people.

They look like real people.

The zombies

look like real people.

It just feels

like you can't tell

where fact ends

and fiction begins.

The thing that sticks

in my mind, of course,

was they're trying

to k*ll the girl

and they want to use

a sledgehammer on her,

and they keep trying

to give the old man

who's just green, uh,

to give him the hammer.

And that's... That's a very

Cormac McCarthy scene.

In fact, in some ways, I see

a book like Blood Meridian

by Cormac McCarthy

and Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

as almost like fraternal twins.

The slaughterhouse,

the idea about the bolt g*n,

it's a real Cormac McCarthy

touch.

- What is that for?

- Would you...

- Would you hold still, please?

- The air g*n.

It shoots a bolt into their

skull and then retracts it.

It's just, "Boom."

Goes, "Boom."

Franklin, I like meat.

Please change the subject.

-Boom.

-That's terrible.

It's still going on.

Josh!

Josh, where are you?

Tell me where you are!

Texas Chain Saw

has a lot in common

with The Blair Witch Project.

My memory is...

I'd gotten hit by a van,

and I was in the hospital,

and I was in early recovery,

and I was in a lot of pain,

and I was taking a lot of dope

for the pain,

and my son came in,

and my memory is

that he had a TV monitor

hooked up to an actual

tape machine.

And we sat and we watched

that movie.

And the more we watched,

the more these kids got into

the woods and started to see

these talismans hanging

from the trees and everything.

I got to a point where I said,

"Joe, turn it off.

I can't take anymore."

And that's rare.

I'm kind of case-hardened,

but every now and then,

one will get under your skin,

and that one really

got under my skin.

Both of them were made

on tiny budgets

with small casts.

And both of them have a look

that's almost amateurish,

but they both work...

because you don't really see

what's going on at first.

I don't think in

The Blair Witch Project

you ever see exactly

what's going on,

because it all leads up

to that final shot

with the guy standing

in the corner of the basement

with his face to the wall.

It's terrifying, but you can't

even say why it's terrifying.

Whereas in Texas Chain Saw,

the brilliant thing

that Tobe did

was he begins with a number

of Polaroid photographs

that flash and are gone,

flash and are gone.

And we find out later

that they're bodies

that have been exhumed

from a cemetery.

But really beyond that...

My old agent, Kirby McCauley,

used to say,

"It's all violins.

It's all violins."

You don't really see too much.

I think that at some point,

you have to put your cards

down on the table.

You have to show what's there.

That's always been

my philosophy.

Horror is disintegrating

into a pile of putrescence.

Whereas terror

is that ball

bouncing down the stairs

in The Changeling.

It's a really scary moment.

I've always felt

that horror was easy,

and at the same time

terror is probably

a finer emotion

if you want to put

an adjective on it.

But I've tried to use terror

in some of my stories,

mostly The Shining,

which is a story

where you just see things

out of the corner of your eye

for quite a while

before the horror

really kicks in.

The things that are primal

and terrifying

are the things

that we know as children

that we really, really fear.

Like, when I was a kid,

I can remember

seeing frost on the window

and thinking

that it was the face

of some crazy person who was

out there trying to get in.

And so, if I were

to make a movie,

and put frost on the window,

and sh**t it the way

that Robert Wise

shoots some

of the plaster figurines

in that bas-relief

in that movie,

I think it would work,

because I think

that most children

they may not have seen

frost on a window

that looks like a face,

but they've seen, like,

dolls that are terrifying

for some reason.

That appear to be pleasant

enough in the daytime,

but once it's nighttime,

they take on a different aspect.

Tobe did some of that

in Poltergeist.

So, it can go either way.

But you have to be a real artist

to do the thing where

it's just almost suggested.

My boots aren't laced!

Oh, my God,

what the f*ck is that?

What the f*ck is that?

It is scary in a way,

and Blair Witch

is scary in a way

that Hollywood movies

don't seem to be able

to replicate.

And I think part of the reason

is because there are

too many people

involved with

the creative process in movies.

I've run into producers who say,

"Well, yes,

I want to give you notes

about this and that

and the other thing."

I hate the g*dd*mn notes, okay?

Because whatever

they want to do,

every step h*m*

the process

a little tiny bit more.

With Texas Chain Saw,

Tobe didn't have

to worry about any of that.

He could do

where the spirit moved him.

So, you see that

in small budget,

independent movies.

It's true with Evil Dead.

Evil Dead is ba*ls-to-the-wall

horror.

When I saw Evil Dead in Cannes,

I went nuts for that movie.

I thought it was

really terrific,

really scary, and really,

really original.

Oh, God.

And I said to Sam

when I finally met him,

Sam Raimi, I said,

"How did you do

that steady cam thing?"

I said, "Kubrick took

all this special equipment

and very expensive stuff

to make what's essentially

a very cold movie."

And Sam Raimi just

kind of laughed and he said,

"There were two people

holding a two-by-four

with the camera mounted on it,

and they just ran like hell."

That's the solution

that wouldn't occur to somebody

who's making a Hollywood movie.

The merits of Texas

Chain Saw m*ssacre.

Well, I think it puts us all

in touch with our primal fears,

and it gives us a chance

in a relatively harmless place

to experience emotions that

we ordinarily wouldn't feel.

And I think those things

are valuable.

Not everybody does.

Is that social?

Is that social?

I don't know if it really is.

You know, that's a...

That's a question of morality,

and I'm not sure that when

you deal with entertainment,

those boundaries

are necessarily the same.

Speaking just for myself,

I actually want to violate

good taste.

I think that that's where

you're supposed to go,

as somebody who writes

horror fiction,

or stuff that

has to do with the macabre.

I'm sure that, at the time,

when Poe wrote that

Tell-Tale Heart story,

and he wrote about

dismembering the body

and putting it under

the floorboards,

there were people who went,

"That's too far,

that's too far."

Well, you're supposed

to go too far.

I think that

when it comes to movies,

the taste and conscience

side of it

belongs not with the filmmaker

but with the people

who do the rating for the films.

And I think that their tastes

and their ratings

are very plastic.

The swearing, Paul.

There, I said it.

Yeah? The profanity bothers you?

It has no nobility.

For instance, you know,

you can see a movie

where Godzilla stomps a city

and it will get a PG-13 rating.

And as long as you don't

show dismembered bodies,

it's all right.

But when you draw back

a little bit

and you think about it,

there are thousands of people

that are being k*lled

by movies like Godzilla,

or Marvel pictures

with supervillains

that lay waste to huge cities.

We just don't see them.

Sam Peckinpah once said,

"There's nothing

more pornographic

than a Hopalong Cassidy movie

where you go 'pow', like that,

and the guy goes 'Oh' like this

and he falls down."

There's no blood, there's no

mess, there's nothing like that.

It's very sanitized.

He just goes, "Oh, God."

Like that.

He doesn't say "Oh, God,"

because that wasn't allowed.

But Peckinpah said,

"I'm gonna actually

show what happens,"

so that in a movie

like Straw Dogs

or The Wild Bunch,

you see what happens

to the people who are shot.

There's blood.

He even shows it in slow motion.

So, yeah, morality and movies,

morality and art,

I don't think

they really go together.

Somebody else has got

to decide that.

You can't ask Tobe

what he thinks

about taste and conscience,

because Tobe is gone

to the great reward in the sky.

If you asked me, I would say

he never thought about taste

and conscience in the least bit

when he made that movie.

You never know what boundaries

are gonna be violated,

because that's what it's about,

it's an outlaw genre, really.

And it always has been.

You can't ever get comfortable.

And that is the artist's job,

to make you uncomfortable.

And I think that there's a great

g*n culture in this country

that's partially fueled

by movies like Death Wish.

The difference between

a movie like Death Wish

and a movie like

Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

is you don't really expect

some impressionable

18- or 19-year-old

to go out and buy a chainsaw

and start cutting people up,

whereas somebody

who saw Death Wish

might very well say, "Yeah,

that's a pretty good idea.

Never mind the movie, f*ck that.

Let's go out and sh**t a bunch

of drug pushers or something."

You have to be careful

about that.

Now, I have a book called Rage

that was published.

It was written halfway through

senior year in high school,

and it was about this kid,

Charlie Decker,

who comes in

and shoots his teacher

and holds his class hostage

with a g*n.

And it gets the class

sort of, like, on his side,

and then, later on,

there was a sh**ter in Oregon

and he shot three or four kids

and that book was found

in his locker,

and there were a couple

of other cases.

And I said,

"This might actually

be an accelerant."

And I pulled the book,

because I don't want

to think of myself

as partially responsible

for that.

It was written at a time

when school shootings

were unheard of.

That's my only defense,

and it isn't a good one.

Seventy-four, November,

take nine.

I admire this movie so much,

and it was made for,

you know, chump change, really.

It's amazing.

And Tobe was young

when he made this movie, too,

because you don't know

at that point

that you can't do

certain things.

So, everything is on the table.

It's a fantastic thing.

It's a kind of a classic

feel to it,

a classic, primal,

horror movie feel.

Man, the movie is like

f*cking less than

an hour and a half long.

It's almost a short subject.

It really gets in there.

It's like a Beatles song,

in a sense.

The archetypal Beatles song

would be like, "She Loves You,"

or "I Wanna Hold Your Hand."

Two minutes and 17 seconds,

gets in,

does its business, done.

There's no fat, there's nothing.

So, yeah, I would say

that it's timeless.

And you can't say...

You can't say

it's part of the zeitgeist,

because it's so early, you know.

It feels like, almost like...

the zeitgeist came later.

Do you see what I'm saying?

That it's like...

Just its own thing.

I read somewhere

that Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

is the only movie

about psychotics

that was made by a psychotic.

And it does have

some of that feeling to it.

I worked with Tobe

a little bit on Sleepwalkers,

and Tobe was just this

soft-spoken, nice man,

and quite handsome.

And he had his lines down pat.

Hey, buddy, buddy.

I ain't taking the rap on this.

I lock this place up

every night.

It's not my fault

if every pervert, weirdo--

Don't talk to me,

go to talk to someone in charge.

I'm busy.

And I didn't get

a real chance to talk to him,

but my idea about him was,

he's like the rest of us

that do this for a living.

He puts on his normal face

and he comes out

and he does his job.

And I'm the same way.

I wear a normal mask

when I'm doing these things,

and then I turn into

somebody else

when I'm writing something

that's really scary.

And there's always

a kind of a smile on my face

because I'm thinking to myself,

"I'm gonna getcha."

No! No! No! No! No!

No, please, no!

Please, please, please, no!

No!

The first time I got

to see the movie

was on film actually,

at the Angelika Film Center.

I was about 19.

I was probably

in the fourth or fifth row.

And I remember walking

out of that theater

feeling like I had never seen

such a legitimately

terrifying vision of the world.

I didn't understand

that the movie

was going to affect me

the way a great work of art

can affect you.

And to see a movie that had this

grindhouse kind of reputation,

and then to recognize it

as an American masterpiece

was just this really

interesting,

disjunctive experience for me

as a young artist.

I feel like we are watching

this incredible depiction

of multiple populations

that feel entitled

to a way of life.

You don't want to go

fooling around

on other folks' property.

Some folks don't like it,

and they don't mind showing you.

Oh, my father owns it.

-That's your daddy's place, huh?

-Yeah.

Whether it's the kids in a van

who want to see an old home

that's in their family...

They already have a legacy

of owning property.

They have the legacy

of having a car

and taking a vacation,

road-tripping together.

...or the nightmare family

they run into

and are tragically going

to collide with.

That family is sort of

the other side of the coin,

of this depiction

of an American family

in which their industry

has been taken away,

their livelihood

has been taken away.

And yet, there is a sense

that they are owed

their jobs back

as professional K*llers

and good K*llers.

To watch the dinner scene again

in the very quiet privacy

of my own home,

where I'm certain my dog

thought something terrible

was happening in the other room,

I was really struck

by the depiction

of, first of all,

this idea of the patriarchy.

I won't have this.

It brings up so many complicated

feelings as you're watching,

because on the face of it

what's happening

is offensively violent,

offensively grisly,

and yet it has this quality

of high comedy,

because it really is so revealed

as base and pathetic.

They, as a family,

are so pathetic.

He's just a cook.

Shut up, you b*tch hog.

Me and Leatherface

do all the work.

He don't like it,

ain't that right?

You're just the cook.

Shut your mouth!

You don't understand nothing.

I cannot help

but watch the movie

and feel some

very uncomfortable sympathy

for those characters,

and deep sadness.

When they're talking to Sally

at the dinner table,

it's the saddest, scariest

depiction of masculinity

I think that might

exist on film.

And of a broken masculinity.

Leatherface is a child.

And the chainsaw itself

is just another prop

in a role he's trying

to find a place

in the production to play.

Like, he's in a family

with no role,

and that has made him

completely insane.

Howdy.

Want to take off the mask, huh?

No? Okay. All right.

And so,

to see human monsters like this,

it's actually evoking,

I think, the feelings

that a lot of older

horror classics,

I think particularly

of Frankenstein,

where that monster

is the product

of something larger,

something far more diabolical

and f*cked up.

I can't look at Leatherface

and feel like

he's simply a monster.

He is a part of us.

And for that reason,

I can't reject him out of hand.

There's something about

this family's

inability to modernize

that is both, like,

incredibly touching

and maddening,

because they are stuck

in an America

that doesn't exist

for them anymore,

and it's made them insane.

And I feel like

that's something that

Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel

were investigating.

What do you do when you take

a person's livelihood away?

No matter what you think

of their livelihood.

And I think in a funny way,

the monster family

and the victim family

are incredibly entwined

in their identity, in a way,

and in their expectation

of what America owes them,

and what the promise

of the American dream really is.

Didn't you say there's

a swimming hole around here?

Yeah.

Well, Pam and I'd like

to go swimming, man.

Uh, there used to be a trail

down between those

two old sheds.

Come on, we'll find it.

This must be it.

Perhaps the bigger

nightmare of the movie

is that it didn't exist at all.

I feel like

watching the movie 50 years on,

it is as if we are witnessing

the young artist Tobe Hooper

looking into the future

of America.

And he is imagining

a world on fire.

He is imagining

a level of American violence

that seems to be unprecedented,

day after day.

He's seeing a depiction

of community relationships

that have completely

disintegrated, and...

It's like the movie

is evergreen,

so sadly, for Americans,

because it feels relevant still,

even strangely

more relevant to me now.

Health officials in

San Francisco reluctantly admit

they may have a cholera

epidemic on their hands.

Some 40 cases of the highly

infectious disease have

been confirmed.

And he sets it all up

in those opening minutes

with the bad news

that could be

the bad news I'm listening to

on my drive to talk

to you today, 50 years on.

I mean, it's an uncanny

kind of prescience.

By putting the date

at the beginning of a movie

like this or like Psycho,

instead of making it more real,

what it does is

it makes it timeless.

In planting this concept

of specificity for the audience,

a day that something

terrible happened,

for which and to which

we can apply

all kinds of memories

of our own.

It's like Texas Chain Saw

m*ssacre is saying,

"Well, this film

is going to now enter

that pantheon of memory for you

and will be burned

in your memory forever."

It's like he's branding

the audience with the time.

The date is very powerful to me.

Um, August 18th is the day

my brother died.

And I feel like I know...

I just feel like

that date visits me, uh,

in this interesting

kind of cosmic way.

And, um...

It's just a strange,

strange thing.

Strange.

When malefic planets

are in retrograde...

And Saturn's malefic, okay.

...their malefice is increased.

The depiction of

and the conversation around

the planetary alignments

on an astrological level

along with

the constant reference

to the sun and the moon visually

in the language of the film

to me is part

of that bigger strategy

that Tobe Hooper was employing

that seemed to suggest

something almost mythic

about what we were

about to watch,

that it's not

small-town America.

It's a depiction

of primal human animus,

primal human urges

and disappointments

that can only

end in catastrophe.

But it's as if he's saying,

you know,

this is the landscape of myth.

And so,

we are witnessing that

getting acted out upon these

terribly unlucky characters.

But then we're also witnessing

this violence being perpetrated

by characters who themselves

also seem terribly unlucky.

The film

which you are about to see

is an account of the tragedy

which befell a group

of five youths...

I mean, I always forget

about the opening crawl,

and then to see it, it's like

what Hooper is preparing us for

is the American nightmare.

And then he's titillating us

by saying,

"And it's a true story,"

which is its own kind of

theatrical flourish of the film.

And then to be in that graveyard

and get those fast shock cuts.

...this morning.

Officers there discovered

what appeared to be

a grisly work of art.

Along with this

incredible tracking shot,

it's as if to me, Hooper,

the filmmaker,

is announcing himself

and saying,

"And now I present to you

a grisly work of art."

Such an interesting question

to think about the role

of beauty and poetry in art.

And this larger question

perhaps about its necessity.

The feathers

that fly through the air

as we watch characters

crawling across a floor

to find a piece of furniture

made out of bones.

It's so much like the thing

that would bring a child

back to Grimms' Fairy Tales,

even if it meant they lost some

sleep and had nightmares.

And I think

that is the secret ingredient

to the film's brilliance,

is that he's not

making something

that we can strictly

look away from.

The final sequence of

Texas Chain Saw on the highway,

it's a collision

of competing ideas

about the American project

as something hopeful,

optimistic, fair,

and then the madness

of human impulse,

human instinct.

Hooper is saying, in my opinion,

"I'm not optimistic

about America,

but I do believe

beauty still has a place."

And that that idea

that in other horror films,

the sun rises

to put evil to bed.

I think, in Hooper's case,

he's saying the sun rises

so that we may see evil better,

so that it's more legible to us.

I have a friend in San Francisco

-that you could stay with.

-Really?

Eggshells

is an interesting first film

because it's really clear

that Tobe Hooper was interested

by American motifs.

The concept

of the big old house.

The concept of the town square.

I think Eggshells displays

this really interesting

sense of freedom.

Freedom with the camera,

freedom with the rhythms

of the storytelling.

And it was sort of

like a test run

for Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre,

which I think became a much more

classically distilled story.

And then he took some

of those stylistic flourishes

and really found

his filmmaking voice,

his visual language.

And there's something about

this is America, right?

Like the plains,

a sense of wide-open space,

a sense of possibility.

A sense of modernity is welcome

here with this, you know,

vehicle slicing through

the frame.

So, it's kind of playing

on our romantic notions

of the American landscape.

Hello?

His obsession with

doorways

and framing people in doorways,

it makes me think of Bergman.

It makes me think of Tarkovsky.

I feel like Hooper

is right up there

with indelible images

about characters

at a threshold from which

walking through the door

ensures you will never return

to your old life.

There's a sequence

in Texas Chain Saw

that I watch and have

to fight the urge to look away,

and also want to figure out

exactly how it was achieved.

Which is the moment

that Leatherface takes

Pam's barebacked body,

lifts it up onto that meat hook.

I'm sure there are cuts that

allow for a trick of the eye,

but my experience

of it is always,

this is one continuous

nightmarish thing happening

and it feels so real.

It's so beautifully

staged and framed

to set it up with the bare hook

previous to that moment

so that you are really

focused on it.

You really sense its potency

in the frame.

I have that experience

with other movies,

like Come and See,

the Russian film.

There's a sense that

what I'm watching

is a living,

breathing nightmare.

What makes this movie

an enduring masterpiece

is that its thesis seems to be

America is a madness,

and I want you to look at it

and experience it.

And there's art

that perhaps works

within a more polite setting,

but ultimately,

I think most great art

is a punch

in our complacent faces.

That movie expands my notion

of what art even is.

It allows me permission

to make stories that feel

maybe harder sometimes...

...or more unpleasant.

Spit on it, spit on it!

-f*ck you.

-Spit on it.

And still believe

that there's a place for beauty.

There's a place for redemption.

I think Tobe Hooper

wanted people

to walk out of that theater

shaken and changed.

And he did that using the medium

in a really sophisticated way.

He uses so much art and poetry

in the filmmaking

that I would think many

audience members

couldn't help but feel

seen, spoken to,

provoked, and respected.

I can't think of a better

mission as an artist,

you know, to make work that is

attempting to see its audience

and make them see something

bigger than just the mirror.

It's a hard movie to watch.

It's a hard movie to re-watch.

And I keep going back to it

because it's worth it.

It has poetry...

beauty...

No, no, they didn't see me.

...shock...

awe.

The remains of relatives

have been removed.

No suspects are in custody.

Tragedy.

It's as big an American film

as any American classic.

And for that reason,

I keep returning to it,

because it gives something back.

There's always more to see.

Sally?

- Sally--

- There's always

more subtlety and meaning

to glean from re-watching it.

Sally!

How lucky

we are as cinephiles

to have Texas Chain Saw m*ssacre

as an American statement.