At #118 on the S&S list, we come to this early, hyper-influential slasher from 1974.

1974 is also the year that Black Christmas, another early slasher, came out. My take on that movie was that it was defining a lot of foundational genre tropes, but that all the movies that came afterward did everything much better. My take here is exactly the opposite: I think that Tobe Hooper and his crew, while defining even more foundational genre tropes, actually made a movie that is in many ways better than its imitators.

As the movie starts, we get a good solid half hour with a gang of teenagers driving in a van (with zero seatbelts, a thing that always weirds me out in old movies) through rural Texas; we see them talk a lot and get a sense of their inter-relationships, but it’s never really explained what this trip is about other than a vague goal to see the old country home of two of them.

There’s some ominous stuff during this part of the movie, but it’s all fairly lowkey, and mostly everyone is relaxed and having fun; but then once they get to the house, things escalate fast, and it’s only like twenty minutes later that most of the events have shaken out. But after that flurry of action, things slow back down again. The final girl’s encounter ends up being a leisurely affair, with some genuinely odd scenes involving an old man, and a finale that’s one part terror, one part random chaos, and one part interpretive dance.

I always like reading Roger Ebert’s contemporary reviews of medium-old movies, because it’s fascinating to me to see what the reaction to a movie was like at the time; and I think he kinda nailed this one, given his tastes. His rather negative review (he gives it two stars) talks a lot about the violence and how unnecessary it is, and it’s clear (from this and many other reviews) that Ebert just really isn’t a fan of slashers at all, and views them as unpleasant. But still, amongst a bunch of stuff about how he dislikes horror movies, the relevant conclusion is, ‘“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” belongs in a select company (with “Night of the Living Dead” and “Last House on the Left”) of films that are really a lot better than the genre requires.’

Which, yeah, sounds about right. This is a cheap, low budget movie in a genre that isn’t very demanding, but somehow Tobe Hooper elevated it into a movie that was so influential that every scene felt familiar from a half dozen other movies, and yet even at that, it still feels recognizably original and fresh. Genuinely top-tier horror.