"The world has gone crazy," one of the victims observes early in the film, and we are constantly reminded that the chain saw massacre is neither isolated nor comprehensible. The universe of TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is unrelentingly hostile. Not only are we forced to contemplate the horror of being held captive by a group of crazies who intend to torture you to death or the feeling of being skewered alive on a massive meat hook we are also forced to face the pain of frustration (Franklin left downstairs by his sister and friends), of annoyance and hostility (the argument between Sally and Franklin), of being confined to a wheelchair, of enduring the oppressive Texas summer heat. It is a film which generates horror, not through the liberation of demons from the psyche, but by confronting directly the reality of human pain. There is a relentlessness to its pacing, its unendurably protracted scenes of horror, and its intolerably mounting suspense which has less to do with entertainment than with catharsis, and less to do with catharsis than with pain. The real horror is snipers with guns, maniacs with knives, and lunatics with bombs - normal-appearing people who suddenly turn deadly.ĬHAIN SAW undoubtedly offers one of the most intense and physically exhausting movie experiences available. The real horror is that, when walking to class or driving to work or watching a football game or picnicking in the countryside, someone may murder you. The real horror has now become that some night your next door neighbor might knock on your door and, when you answer it, blow your head off. But they were just the very visible tip of an iceberg that seemed to keep growing: anonymous brothers who murdered sisters, children who murdered their families, handymen who killed their employers, people who slaughtered people they never met. Charles Whitman, Richard Speck, Charlie Manson, and others became famous. There were still movies with monsters and movies celebrating the grotesque and the unreal, but the horrors in society were changing. The terror came at a typically American motel, and the car, clothes, and people were not alien but very real. In 1960 Alfred Hitchcock made PSYCHO and the monster this time looked like you and me. Hollywood made many science-fiction films but not many horror films. It is Bermuda shorts, straw hats and Nikons and corpses, blood and mountains of hair and teeth. We are the audience watching Alain Resnais' short NIGHT AND FOG about the Nazi concentration camps as he talks about modern day tourists posing in the doorways of the ovens to have their photographs taken. We are the audience with those privileges, fascinated by watching humans slaughtering humans. Film audiences are allowed such privileges. They didn't really want to be involved they only wanted to watch. But when the tables turned the elite hurried home. At the first battle of Bull Run, the Washington, D.C., elite drove out from the city with picnic baskets to watch the anonymous boys in blue slaughter the anonymous boys in gray. The ritualization of war that allowed us to cope with disguised genocide broke down and we were forced to confront a new kind of horror. There was World War II, the Nazis, and ovens with people mass-murdering other people. The society changed and the film form with it. Having oneself scared half to death can be a surprisingly pleasurable experience. Part of the advertising campaign for the original FRANKENSTEIN (1931) announced that there would be a nurse in the lobby. People screamed and fainted and continued to go to the theatres. Vampires, the Frankenstein monster, werewolves, mummies, and zombies represented terrors that we were scared we might meet in the dark. Horror novels and films used to create terrifying images of our innermost fears. Once it was monsters and now it is maniacs.
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