Rating: 8/10
Watched: September 1, 2026
This is my second time watching this movie, and the first time, the experience was pretty terrible. I'd rented it on VHS somewhere in the mid-to-late 80s and all I can honestly remember was that most of it was in total darkness.
The version I watched today is the 50th Anniversary restored edition, and let me tell you: the restoration is quite literally night and day. It's a general peeve of mine when directors choose darkness as 'ambiance' over storytelling, but that was never the case here.
So let's get to the movie itself.
It's a LOT funnier than I was expecting. All five of those teenagers are honest-to-gosh idiots, with Franklin being one of the most ridiculous people I've ever seen in a movie. He's cranky, he's mean-spirited, he's got a weird obsession with knives that his friends are surprisingly okay with and he throws temper tantrums when he's having a bad time.
One of the things I like to wonder about when I'm watching a movie like Texas Chainsaw Massacre is how long I'd put up with weird shit before calling it quits.
In this instance, it's incredibly likely I wouldn't even go on the trip if Franklin was present. There's no way that how he is in the movie is a new thing to anyone else. I'd rather not go if a major buzzkill like Franklin was in the car.
If for some reason Franklin was actually a sweet and reasonable fella before this and it's just the pressures of being handicapped on the road, the very next thing that'd have me quit the trip is the hitchhiker. THAT guy was very obviously completely deranged that he really should've been kicked out of the back of the van while it was still in motion, and that was BEFORE he decided to cut open his hand.
One of the more interesting things about this movie is that the world was smaller back then, so the simple act of walking up to and going inside someone else's crazy old haunted Murder Mansion probably didn't seem like a big deal. It's not the world was any less dangerous, it was that it just didn't seem that way. Need gas? I'm going to go on up and ask for some help. Wall of Mounted, Stuffed Heads and Skulls?
This is the Deep South. Probably just a taxidermy enthusiast.
Even though this really is only my second time seeing it, I've seen a lot of horror movies and I'll say this about Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Obviously made on a small budget, it's clear to see why it inspired so many sequels and reboots AND why it influenced so many other horror movies.
Because it's a bloody good time. By the time Leatherface makes his terrifying appearance and things turn nasty, we're prepped and ready to be terrified and grossed out until the last frame. With Sally as The Final Girl, trapped in Backwater Nowhere, being hunted by Leatherface and trusting the absolute wrong person, we get a full, final look at the inescapability that truly would be a family of hillbilly cannibal crazies living in plain sight.
Like a lot of older horror movies, Texas Chain Saw Massacre walked so other movies could run, and that's saying a lot. Sadly, because I've seen so many horror movies, I didn't find this one terribly scary, but what I DID find it was UNSETTLING. There's a rawness to it that earns it's 8/10 from me.