"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre": It works; that's undeniable. Does that make it good? I'm not so sure.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(Tobe Hooper, 1974)

2 ½ stars

Two words spring to mind when I think about Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre": “fucked” and “up.” Less a horror movie than a carnival geek show; less scary than disturbing, demented and gross; less “hold your breath in fear” than “puke your guts out in disgust,” it’s not something you watch after a heavy meal.

You know the story, right? No? Read the title. Now you do. Nothing matters less to Hooper than plot and character, because, after all, they’d only get in the way of the disgusting mood he wants to create. Hell, even suspense gets the short stick; during the few scenes where he tries making us hold our breaths, he almost always undermines himself by (a) ending the scene with a gruesome slaying, or (b) cranking up the weird music and showing us lots of very, very creepy shots of human bones and human skin (or in some cases, chairs and lampshades made from human bones and human skins).

Is it scary? Not really. Even if Hooper had exploited his “insane killer on the loose” story well enough to overpower our apathy to his cardboard characters, that grossness more than overpowers any potential scares. After all, you can’t hold your breath when you’re throwing up. (Not that this would upset Hooper. Watch closely: it’s obvious that he wanted to gross us out more than scare us.)

If you think about it, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" basically created the slasher genre. No, it didn’t establish the rock-solid formula (girls dying after sex, the killer who won’t die, etc.) the way that John Carpenter’s "Halloween," made four years later on an equally small budget, did. But it set the bar. For almost thirty-five years, horror directors have been trying to make a movie that grossed us out as much as this movie, all failing.

How did Hooper pull it off? To paraphrase Roger Ebert, he had originality (maybe novelty) on his side. When he made the movie in 1973, gross-out gore movies didn’t exist. Unlike his “pupils,” he couldn't steal anything from other movies, which forced him to follow his instincts and make the most fucked up movie that his sick mind could concoct. And let’s face it kids, you always get better results when you use your imagination! (If you don't believe me, just compare "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to one of its rip-offs: The new movies might have slicker technology, but none of those directors had the balls to piss on convention and end the movie with something as gut-churning as Hooper's "dinner" scene.)

But why does this movie exist? I love movies that fuck with my gut – when they do it for a reason. But as far as I can tell, Hooper has no reasons. I mean, why did he make this movie? What’s he trying to tell us? That people are fucked up? Since when is that news?