The feature film directorial debut from Tobe Hooper.
Based loosely on the crimes of Ed Gein.
First film of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series.
Tobe Hooper was trying to get a PG rating but was given an R instead.
This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist,Lifeforce,Salem's Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it's also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it's blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration forPsycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer,Texas Chainsaw Massacrefollows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they're held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented cannibalistic family, including a character known as Leatherface who maniacally wields one helluva chainsaw. The movie's powerful sense of dread is heightened by its grainy, semi-documentary style--but it also has a wicked sense of humor (and not that camp, self-referential variety that became so tiresome in subsequent horror films of the '70s, '80s, and '90s). OK, in case you couldn't tell, it's "not for everyone." But as a landmark in the development of the horror/slasher genre, it ranks withPsycho,Halloween, andA Nightmare on Elm Street.--Jim Emerson
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