The Only Saw That Matters
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE in 4K. That's it. That's the column.
I was too young to see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre when it first opened, though I do remember being thoroughly creeped out by newspaper ads for midnight screenings in the late ’70s, burning the tag line – “Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them?” – into my kid brain. It left plenty of room for me to imagine the worst – much like the movie itself, which is famously low on visible gore but positively heaving with gristle and menace.
Now nearly fifty, it still feels unique. Even after all the sequels, prequels and remakes, Tobe Hooper’s seminal horror film remains the perfect cinematic distillation of a nightmare. Even after decades of attempts to replicate specific scenes or characters or even the entire aesthetic, there’s nothing else like it.
And I admit it, when MPI announced it I was a little worried a 4K edition of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre might simply be too much. Imagine being trapped with a pristine version of that movie, every image sharper than any home presentation had ever previously allowed, that groaning, grinding soundscape (created by Hooper and Wayne Bell) oozing out of every speaker in a new Atmos mix. It’s a lot, right? But of course that’s the point – and also of course, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre can never be truly pristine. Shot on reversal film, its grainy, blown-out look is baked right into its chemical composition, guaranteeing too-white whites and reds that look downright grimy. And there’s a lot of red in this movie, in all sorts of color gradations.
Here's a fun thing I only realized on this go-round: Both The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, released just six years earlier, start off with the same premise, as some young people drive to a cemetery to visit a grave. But where Night’s brother and sister are dressed for a memorial, siblings Sally and Franklin Hardesty are sweaty and dishevelled, boiling in the Texas heat long before we ever meet them. Their purpose is also considerably darker: They’ve arrived to see whether their grandfather’s plot has been desecrated by grave robbers. And as nihilistic and gruesome as Night of the Living Dead becomes, it’s got nothing on the grotesqueries this movie has in store.
Narrator John Larroquette promises us a buffet of the mad and macabre, and that’s literally what Hooper presents us: By the time Sally Hardesty wakes up at the Sawyer dinner table it’s as if she’s been led there by a God who’s not just indifferent to her suffering but actively encouraging things to get worse, and the sheer squirming wrongness of it all just keeps pulling us closer and closer in, as if mashing our faces against the screen would somehow let us understand why this is all happening.
Fun times, right? And yes, this UHD presentation – mastered, as I understand it, from the same 4K restoration that was the basis for Dark Sky Films’ 40th anniversary Blu-ray in 2014 – does reward that level of attention: We can see every bone on the floor of the Sawyers’ sitting room, every pucker of the stitching on Leatherface’s mask. The tires on the Hardesty van are clotted with dirt, echoing the pores thick with sweat on everyone’s faces. Marilyn Burns’ eyes pop just a little more in the last reel; Gunnar Hansen’s eyes glisten that much more brightly behind his taxidermied visage. But we never get total clarity, because the movie moves too quickly to let us take everything in; each time I revisit this film, I’m left in awe of what Hooper and his collaborators – co-writer Kim Henkel, cinematographer Daniel Pearl, editors Sallye Richardson and Larry Carroll – accomplished. You can’t crack it. It just keeps coming at you.
A companion Blu-ray offers hours and hours of special features, assembling nearly all of the extras produced for previous editions – including two feature-length docs, The Shocking Truth and Flesh Wounds: Seven Stories of the Saw, and an hour-long 2014 Q&A with Hooper and William Friedkin (!) in Los Angeles previously exclusive to the 40th anniversary “Black Mariah” set – and throwing in a brand new feature-length work.
The Legacy of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, written, produced, directed and edited by Phillip Escott (and produced for the UK label Second Sight, which has its own UHD platter coming later this spring) is a talking-heads doc going through the film almost scene by scene with a gallery of horror afficionados, some of whom have taken their own stabs at the franchise: Marcus Nispel, who helmed producer Michael Bay’s 2003 remake, is here, as are Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, who made the 2017 prequel Leatherface, and Fede Alvarez, who’s one of the producers on the recent Netflix sequel.
None of those projects is brought up for comparison, because that would be mean; the original remains the only Texas Chain Saw Massacre worth talking about. There’s a lot of love for the film, of course, and also for Hooper, whose struggles to define himself in and out of Hollywood for decades after making his mark are discussed ruefully, and with no small amount of sadness, by his longtime friend Mick Garris.
And it’s true, it’s a shame Hooper never made another movie with the cultural and aesthetic impact of his breakout … but really, how could he? The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a product of its moment and the circumstances of its production; the moment it arrived, Hooper’s entire world changed and he could never go back. Thankfully, when he made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 he knew better than to try, making a glossy, broader and borderline ridiculous picture that actively rejects comparisons to its predecessor.
I mean, Poltergeist is rock-solid, and I have a nerdy affection for Lifeforce’s attempt to make an R-rated Hammer horror picture for the post-Star Wars era. But neither of those did what The Texas Chain Saw Massacre did, and still does. Few films do. That’s the point.
And I can prove it! MPI has very kindly supplied me with a giveaway copy of this new release, and if you e-mail me at normwilner@gmail.com with the subject header “The Saw Is Law” by noon ET on Wednesday, March 1st, I will select one random entry to receive it! Must be legal age to operate a chainsaw, and a resident of the U.S. or Canada. You know how this goes.
MPI Media Group rolls out The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in a new 4K edition this Tuesday, February 28th, available in both Steelbook and standard packaging. And that's not the only must-have title dropping that day, as you'll see over the course of the coming week. Stay tuned!