The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

4 Stars

I avoided this movie for a long time pretty much due to it's title. That alone implied an unenjoyable gore-fest to me. But with assurance from my best friend that it wasn't even that particularly gorey, I found this movie is actually a really interesting, artistic, and funny family jape, underneath all that murder. The dialogue and overall writing was fantastic, and I loved all the furniture made from skeletons and carnage, very Ed Gein. It made Leatherface appear to be the artistic talent of the family, while his father does the cooking and his brother runs around on the highway. Naturally it seems that Leatherface was partially inspired by Gein. My friend made the point that Leatherface is kind of a tragic figure - he was really just protecting his home and doing the grunt work his family forced him to, while clearly having the place of their whipping boy.

When grandpa turned out to be alive I just about shit myself. That was hilarious. Leatherface's majestic chainsaw dance at the end was iconic. I never would have guess I'd like this movie as much as I do. The only thing that kept it from being five stars for me it was that some of the chase scenes and the torture scene did go on for too long. I did get bored after a little while. It's already a short movie but I think it could have been shorter, and they ended up having to drag out those scenes in order to make it a feature film length.