Review - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Okay. I was five when this movie came out. I remember hearing about it later, when I was considerably older than five, and it was still THE horror movie, the most talked-about horror movie ever, the one notorious for having an X rating—-and NOT for sex.
NOT for sex? They give movies X ratings for things other than sex? Really? How many times have they done that? Oh, just this once? Ever? Okay.
Remember X ratings? Now we have NC-17 ratings for some reason. Living in North Carolina, when I heard X ratings were going away in favor of NC-17, I thought that we as a state were so worried about movie content that we’d legislated our own special rating which outranked the national X standard. But no, the NC stands for No Children.
Oh.
Anyway, at that time, before video stores (what’s a VCR? Shut up.), and slightly before cable TV, all I knew of X-rated movies were the surprisingly plentiful wild rumors I heard about them in 4th grade, which wasn’t exactly reliable information, y’know, coming from a bunch of lying 9-year olds. “Oh yeah, I’ve been to one. It wasn’t that great.” It was an interesting time, kids suspected that it somehow made you cool to have seen an
X-rated movie, but on the other hand, most boys still thought girls were icky, so their little undeveloped brains didn’t really know how to reconcile this well enough to invent a good I-went-to-an-X-rated-movie story to show off to their friends.
Aside from this questionable information, which I nevertheless paid close attention to for verification later, the rest of my X-rated knowledge was this: I knew vaguely that there was a drive-in off I-85 which showed X-rated movies; the only place within hundreds of miles which actually catered to the filth demographic. (A pretty bold business venture to start up in North Carolina, in the 70s.)
At first I only had a suspicion that the movies played there were—-well, different—-when I read the Starlite Drive-in ads in the newspaper. The movie titles were a bit different from all the other movies I’d heard of. And they were the only ones without any black-and-white reprinted poster art. Also, I never once saw a TV commerical for any of those movies, no matter how late I stayed up. As I grew older and finally found out where this Drive-in was, I would invent more and more elaborate ways to get my parents to drive past it on the interstate late at night, slowly, to try and get a glimpse of what this infamous specialized rating was all about. (We drive past. “Oh, I think I left my GI Joe at the restaurant.” After some cursing, we turn around. We drive past again. “No wait, here it is.” We drive past again. “Oh my gosh, is that a kitten in the road? STOPPPPPP.” We slow way down. You get the idea.)
Oh yes, and to round out the extent of my Knowledge of Adult Things, there was the Esquire Health Club, just off the highway. I always assumed this establishment was the reason we moved to my hometown. The place with the classy understated words “ALL GIRL STAFF” in foot-high red neon. It’s still there to this day, those same red neon letters your only hint of the wondrous unnamed goings-on inside the windowless plywood-covered walls of the architecturally insignificant building.
But that’s nothing to do with X-rated, that’s prostitution or something. It’s different.
Anyway, when we got Dish Network, and I saw that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was going to be on the Independent Film Channel at three in the morning, I DVRed it.
Here are my thoughts:
1. That was a truly creepy movie. Score! Of course, when I watched it, I was under the impression that it was a true story, and that added to the creep factor significantly. This sort of thing always nags at me a little bit, when I think something’s a true story, some horrible event, and someone thought it was okay to make a movie out of it for fun and profit. I figured, however, after 35 years it wouldn’t be considered ‘too soon’ anymore and watched it.
So yeah, I know it’s a creepy movie when I find myself comparing it to Seven, which is my favorite horror movie of all time (although I’m not sure it’s absolutely correct to call Seven a horror movie—-but I digress). You know, the kind of movie where you find yourself questioning seriously what sort of person is it really who came up with this stuff, and should they be allowed to roam free in society.
2. Oh it’s NOT a true story? WHEEWWWWW. I did a little research afterward and found out it wasn’t based on a true story. I was torn about finding this out; I was very relieved that this horrible night never got written up in anyone’s diary, but on the other hand it lost a little bit of its creepiness to find out it was just a horror movie.
3. X-rated? Really?? I dunno, maybe this was not the original theatrical version, but I was watching it on IFC, and when you watch a movie on IFC, their stupid vanity logo glaring at you on the bottom right of the screen throughout the whole movie includes the tagline ‘Always uncut’. So if this was really the X-rated version…I mean, the storyline was awfully creepy, and yes, there was a chainsaw, and yes the
chainsaw did do some massacring, as you might imagine. But it wasn’t particularly gory massacring. I’ve seen plenty of violent movies which were only rated R which were wayyyy gorier than this. And even during the same time period, the Dirty Harry movies were gorier. I thought that while its creepiness level was off the freaking grid, its rated Xiness level was pretty notably tame.
So in conclusion, if there’s anyone out there other than me who likes horror movies but hasn’t seen this one yet, I can safely say you owe it to your horror-movie-going self to see this one, because YIKE.
And also, you don’t have to feel guilty, cz it’s all made up.
And also, don’t let the former X-rating scare you off, because unless I saw the special made-for-TV-’uncut’ version, or unless I’m misremembering and the X-rating was for one of the sequels or something, there’s no reason at all this should ever’ve been X-rated. These days Disney would actually seriously consider handling the distribution, because then they’d be able to churn out sequels like Massacre II: Leatherface’s Grand Adventure and Massacre III: Grandpa’s Ball, and the Disney cookbook, The Creepy Gas-Station Guy’s Guide to Making Sausages and Jerky.
PS. One last interesting thing about the movie is that there’s a little two-paragraph narrated introduction to the movie, which I thought nothing of, until I saw that it was credited to none other than John Larroquette. Yes, that’s right, Dan from Night Court narrated the beginning of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
PPS. The next time I’m teased about being a possible serial killer, by someone from Texas (which has really happened), I will laugh and remember this movie and tell them, “Well that hurts coming from you, Texas-boy.”
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