![]() As the film suggests again and again narratively (by the arbitrary order in which the protagonists are killed) and visually (by frequently placing our heroes in diminished positions within his compositions), meat is meat. At the same time, the characters are archetypal enough that Hooper is able to easily equate them with the cattle of the local slaughterhouse. Our heroine Sally (Marilyn Burns) is an average yet genuine human being worthy of our empathy with typical supportive friends with quirky traits of their own, particularly the zodiac-spouting Pam (Teri McMinn) and her ineffectual boyfriend Kirk (William Vail), who we at first think will be the traditional, rugged leading man. ![]() Hooper and screenwriter Kim Henkel also achieve greater thematic resonance thanks to character construction that is a bit more complex than it may at first appear. Much like a bad dream where, no matter how hard you try to run, your legs just won't cooperate, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre captures that primal, irrational terror and milks it for every last drop of effectiveness. Yet there's a sustained through-line of (il)logic, that may not make "sense" on a conscious level, but it feels subconsciously correct. Screen direction frequently shifts, eye-lines don't match from one shot to the next, and the low-budget conditions often wreak havoc with continuity of lighting, performance and dialogue. On the level of craftsmanship, the film' would seem to be a mess. It accomplishes that with astonishing fidelity. Its sustained power, in my opinion, is Hooper and cinematographer Daniel Pearl's aim to reproduce the structure and syntax of a nightmare. The film exists in our memory banks as a collective nightmare with images that still hold enough raw visceral power to shock nearly fifty years after its original theatrical run. The very definition of '70s grindhouse horror, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not only a classic of the genre but a piece of our shared cultural lexicon.
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