Review : The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The wonders of internet is we are able o search and download classic movies that are otherwise damn fucking hard to find elsewhere.

Despite it has a remake several years before the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre released on 1974 does not enjoy a reissue in DVD in Malaysia, and I have difficulty finding a stand alone DVD for it in the great DVD shop in Amcorp. Thus, I resolve to the only gift God has given us in the post modernism era - Internet, and bittorrent.

So the story is simple, a group of friends travelling to Texas and ends up being murdered by a group of cannibals. At the end, only one girl survives (the prettiest and nicest one in the group, usually).

Although plot is simple, the film is better than any other modern slasher, in fact, being released before the Mike Myer movies, this film has set a few genre convention for slasher horror.

And no, that is not Prof Xavier in his youth

The director make use of a lot of fast cut, extreme close up to build up and express then tension. He doesn't even bother to came out with a rational for all the madness. The killer is not as stylish. He is a little bit fat and clumsy, but this only makes it more real and horrifying.

Leatherface, not as glamorous as Jason, or Mike or Freddy, but deadly nevertheless.

Unlike most of horror film, surprisingly this has almost no nudity, so, sex is not exploited, but violence does, not in a abundant way like nowadays slashers, where they define human anatomy has skin and rose syrup only. Blood only appears if it should, and the effect of it is marvellous.

You can stare at the painted white William Shatner's mask for hours, but I bet you can stand 5 minutes of this one.

The bloody face of the main protagonist is even more scary than the killer, and the most creepy moment is not the killing, but at the end, where the survivor ride of in a hysterical laugh, suggesting that she might have gone mad after all the trauma.

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