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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

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  • Accidental Aesop: Kirk's announcement, "That's the last hitchhiker I ever pick up!" could easily be seen as a morale. Also, make sure you have enough fuel, and never go into someone else's home without the owner's permission, even if your intentions are benign. That's a good way to get yourself arrested or shot for trespassing, even if the owners aren't a clan of crazy cannibals.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Applicability: Multiple critics have noted that the film makes an extremely effective argument for veganism, as it goes out of its way to compare the activities of the villains to the meat industry.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Franklin. Some hate him for his morbid personality, incessant bitching, and just being The Load in general. He also has fans praise him for at least having a distinct personality unlike the other protagonists.
  • Catharsis Factor: Nubbins "The Hitchhiker" Sawyer is established as psychotic, vile sadist who gets a kick out of abusing animals and tormenting his victims, mocking their cries, before killing them. As a result, unlike the other deaths in the movie, which are depicted as disturbing, his death at the hands of an oncoming trunk ends up being completely satisfying to watch, given what a horrible bastard he was.
  • Common Knowledge:
    • This movie is nowhere near as gruesome as its title (and sequels) would lead you to believe. In fact, only one person actually gets murdered by chainsaw, and the scene in question doesn't show any of the graphic details.
    • Conversely, an oft-quoted "fact" about this movie is that it contains not a drop of blood. This is expressly untrue, though the few scenes featuring blood aren't murder scenes. Despite that, the bloodiest moment in the film is a rather prominent scene, and happens early in the film. What is true is that the murders themselves contain little to no blood.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: The truck driver at the climax of the film is fairly popular with the fandom for essentially ending up in the wrong place at the worst possible time, yet even so managing to take over the situation and help Sally get to safety. He even holds his own against the large and imposing Leatherface surprisingly well despite getting the drop on him, and it doesn't hurt his popularity that he graphically runs over the Hitchhiker only moments earlier.
  • Fan Nickname: A few fans call this film "The Texas Hammer Massacre" because Leatherface's kills in this film mainly involve using a hammer.
  • First Installment Wins: The only film in its franchise universally agreed to be good and a classic in the horror genre.
  • Franchise Original Sin: More like genre original sin. Most slasher movies that have followed in the wake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre have been criticized for their generic and underdeveloped characters. Yet, despite being almost universally considered one of the few legitimately great movies in the genre, TCM's characters are even more generic and less developed than in most of its weaker successors, with Franklin probably being the only one of the protagonists to have a distinct and particularly memorable personality. The difference is that most later slasher movies, despite having no interest in real character development, still felt the need to devote substantial time to tedious scenes establishing which character was supposed to correspond to which stereotype. TCM, by contrast, is so relentlessly focused on thrilling the audience from beginning to end that the protagonists' lack of personality never has time to register.
  • It Was His Sled: The benevolent and helpful cook seen early on in the film is part of the Sawyer family.
  • Memetic Badass: Grandpa Sawyer is "the best at killing". While this is clearly just the Sawyers' delusions in the actual movie, some fans jokingly agree that the barely alive old man is indeed the apex predator.
  • Memetic Mutation: The "Chainsaw Dance" at the end of the film when Final Girl Sally makes her escape and Leatherface starts Tantrum Throwing, waving the chainsaw around wildly while actually managing to flip a couple smooth spins into the mix (Gunnar was actually prepping to throw the damn thing and the dance was entirely improvised because of how nightmarish filming the movie was). It's such a signature moment for the character that it actually made it into Fortnite as an emote alongside the character himself.
  • Moment of Awesome: The driver of the 18-wheeler at the end actually smacks Leatherface in the head with a wrench. He's then seen running away afterward, meaning that not only did he actually hurt Leatherface, but he probably lived to tell about it.
  • Narm: After The Hitchhiker is kicked out of the van by the protagonists for nearly starting a fire inside said van and attacking Franklin by cutting him with a knife, he starts angrily blowing raspberries at them. Although it's supposed to show how mentally ill he is, it ends up being silly and hard to take seriously.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The aforementioned Hitchhiker is clearly intended to be both disturbing and scary, due to his psychotic behavior and sadistic personality, enough to make Leatherface and Drayton look like saints by comparison. However, he also acts very goofy and silly like a child in most of his scenes, making him more comical than threatening.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
    • That narrator in the opening text scroll was a then-unknown John Larroquette.
    • Edwin Neal, who played the Hitchhiker, would later join the now defunct ADV Films to get involved in anime dubbing, even having a one-off role as Dr. Robotnik.
  • Signature Scene:
    • Leatherface's Tantrum Throwing Villainous Breakdown of twirling around, waving his chainsaw in frustration as he realizes his victim got away. Sally riding the back of the truck screaming and Laughing Mad is also up there. These are both the last shots in the film.
    • Leatherface suddenly appearing to bludgeon Kirk with a mallet.
    • Pam walking to the house with a Male Gaze shot of her short shorts that also exposes her back in horrible Foreshadowing.
    • The dinner scene, often acclaimed as the most horrific part of the film.
  • So Bad, It Was Better: It was made on a very low budget. This video describes the technical and artistic choices that resulted from the budget, and how they made the finished film seem less like a polished piece of entertainment, and more like a gritty documentary. The film's sequels and remakes were made with much better budgets, and the presenter says that that lost the gritty quality that made the original film so distinctive.
  • Special Effect Failure: You can tell Grandpa Sawyer's haggard complexion is just makeup.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Both within the film series and for its director. Almost no other film in this franchise, and even numerous subsequent genre classics, would capture the soul-crushing depravity and sheer horror this film would capture.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: If you forgot the movie was made and set in the early 1970s, how the characters dress will remind you. Special mention goes to Jerry's perm and bell bottom pants.
  • Values Resonance: The film has been praised for its sole disabled character, Franklin, being quite well-rounded while not falling into being Inspirationally Disabled or having his character revolve around it.
  • Vanilla Protagonist: All of the leads have little to no personality given to them, with Franklin being the closest to a fleshed-out character in the group. Being one of the very first slasher movies means that they hadn't really figured out Developing Doomed Characters properly yet.
  • Vindicated by History: While the film was a success at the box office, it received polarizing reviews from critics for its dark atmosphere and relentless violence. Decades later, it's now seen as a classic and respected for its bloodless depictions of the murders and seen as one of the earliest and more respectable entries in the Slasher Movie genre.
  • Wheelchair Woobie: It's pretty hard to not feel sorry for Franklin, considering he didn't want to come on the trip in the first place and everyone else in the group does nothing but give him shit the entire movie.
  • The Woobie: Sally by the end of the movie. Her insane laughter in the final scene indicates she's lost most of what remained of her sanity and is probably gonna have PTSD for the rest of her life.

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