The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Gunnar Hansen)
Who will survive, and what will be left of them?
Quick plot: A group of teenagers having a grand old time road-tripping through Texas pick up a weird hitchhiker, who leads them to an isolated house where his deranged, cannibalistic family awaits. Among the clan is Leatherface, who wears a mask made of his victim’s skin. His preferred method of killing: chain saw.
Scariest scene: That would have to involve the meat hook and the girl Leatherface hangs on it.
Final say: Director Tobe Hooper, who would go on to make more mainstream scares like Poltergeist, struck gold with this grisly tale by making the most of his low budget. That is, the movie didn’t look like a movie at all. It looked like documentary footage, devoid of intrusive music cues and self-referential dialogue. That scene with the meat hook, for instance. You keep expecting it to cut away, but the camera mercilessly stays put while the poor girl gets filleted.
Fun fact: That voice you hear at the beginning, setting up the story through narration? None other than John Larroquette, who was doing a favor for his director friend. About the best thing you can say about the recent remakes is they brought Larroquette back.
Fun fact #2: The filmmakers went out of their way to scare audiences even further by insisting their movie was based on a true story. Well, they based the killer on a real person — Ed Gein, who killed and skinned people in the 1950s — but he lived in Wisconsin and used a pistol. I guess The Wisconsin Pistol Massacre just didn’t have the same ring to it. Gein’s gruesome story was also the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.