I am sitting down today to write about horror movies and finding it hard to get started. The world seems caught in a cataclysmic shitstorm of patriarchal White supremacist fascism and capitalist-fueled climate collapse. The pandemic death toll continues to rise as a vocal minority of bigots and science-deniers defend their right to be indefensible fuckwits. Meanwhile, the internet and news media are more than happy to pump every heartbreaking moment into our overworked brains, woefully unevolved for this constant onslaught of appalling violence.
And I sit here with my little movie review and ache for the world and wonder (because compartmentalization is a survival mechanism): what would a 2022 Tobe Hooper Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like?
While puzzling over the shortcomings of Netflix’s recent legacy sequel (directed by David Blue Garcia), I’ve found it impossible not to return to Hooper’s original film. What was it exactly that it did so well? Why does a once-shocking property now feel so insubstantial? What would it take to get this franchise back on track?
The Past
After all, the black humor and naked pessimism of Hooper’s 1974 horror classic was a direct response to a different time of global and national tumult. The doomed Vietnam War was finally winding down after two decades of catastrophic human loss and governmental deceit. Nixon had resigned and finally released the subpoenaed Watergate tapes to the public. Serial murderer and rapist Elmer Wayne Henley had been committed to six consecutive 99-year sentences after a highly publicized trial in San Antonio. The American Dream was dead or dying, and its demise was televised.
These real-life influences aren’t explicitly mentioned in ‘74’s narrative (although the hellish commercial meat industry emphatically is)—Hooper’s bleak vision of the American South is instead reflective of the disillusionment and cynicism arising from both the politics and news media of the time. These elements aren’t overt: they’re baked into the landscape, rotting in the 100 degree Texas heat.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is of course not the only film to grapple (however indirectly) with the harsh reality that set in during and after the long slow death of the American Dream (a fitting moniker for a national ideal that tried willfully to ignore its debt to genocide, slavery and terrorism).
It is in this same figurative landscape that we find George Romero’s politically anxious indie classic Night of the Living Dead (1968), released six years before Hooper’s film. The legacy of that black and white zombie hit proved to be both cultural and economic: it gave indie filmmakers a blueprint for achievable box office success, while portraying an image of post-Vietnam America mired in racial paranoia and existential horror.
Here we find also Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, a 1969 road movie that chronicled with depressing certitude the fate of ’60s American counterculture. Later, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers would jettison the McCarthyism of Siegel’s original for a paranoid autopsy of a country that could no longer pretend that it was on the right track.
It is not in Texas but in Las Vegas where Hunter Thompson said that you could see exactly where the “high and beautiful wave” of American optimism broke, and rolled back again. It is in the cracked soil of that disillusionment where The Texas Chain Saw Massacre lives.
It’s not just cultural context that gives TCM ‘74 its singular appeal. Hooper’s original still hits the way it does because of its limitations, and the narrow band of its scope. It’s the grain of the low-speed 16mm film, the unobtrusive casting, the jarring disregard for predictable character arcs or recognizable structure—TCM ‘74 is often called cinéma vérité because it slides so naturally into its demented anarchy. When those kids cross the threshold of that farmhouse, their doom comes quickly, unhindered by convention or plot armor.
I will risk disrupting the flow of my thought to offer a disclaimer. Appreciating the artfulness and legacy of a film like TCM ’74 is not the same as condoning the methods by which it was made. In his book about the production, Joseph Lanza describes the ’74 set as “intolerably putrid,” and the crew recounts a horror show of dangerous and exploitative conditions. This, as much as the film itself, is part of the messy legacy of TCM. Support workers’ rights in all industries!
The Present
Fast-forward to 2022. Horror is more popular than ever, and it has been a bankable asset throughout this tumultuous (and ongoing) pandemic era. Movies like A Quiet Place Part II, Halloween Kills, Candyman and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It have proved to be surprisingly resilient at the box office. This new horror heyday overlaps (and intertwines with) the simultaneous nostalgia gold rush: studios and streamers happy to capitalize on recognizable IP while updating it with a fancy new legacy tag. Best case scenario, it captures multiple generations of fans by passing the torch from old to new.
This newest legacy sequel (titled simply Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as is the fashion) was shot in Bulgaria and plopped onto Netflix in early February 2022, with little to no marketing (and a trailer that caught some heat for its “cringey” nod to so-called cancel culture). According to Netflix, it has done some decent streaming numbers, and might garner a sequel of its own.
What is curious about this new generation of TCM is how explicit everything has become. The ‘74 original was informed by the politics and culture of its time, but TCM ‘22 hangs everything out in the open. The plot revolves around a group of rich young gentrifiers (“gentri-fuckers,” if you’re the local gas station attendant) intent on developing a dusty Texas town into a vaguely liberal utopia. A run-in at the gas station with a gun-toting Texan truck driver (Moe Dunford) affirms what we gleaned from that “cancel culture” line in the trailer: where the politics of ‘74 were subtextual, here they are right out in the open.
The problem with the film’s politics is not necessarily that they are overt (although this might correlate with the general clumsiness of the script), but that they are incoherent. The script utilizes political flash points—gun violence, gentrification, racism—for purposes of plot and characterization, and then lets the conversation fizzle once the violence starts.
The “final girl” is the survivor of a school shooting but what is the lesson here? That you should arm yourself in case of another massacre? Or at least learn how to turn off the safety? Who is this even made for? Conservatives who decry it as “woke” seem not to have noticed that if anything, the movie validates the paranoia of the open carry gun nuts of the world. TCM ‘22 is filled with buzz words and manufactured political friction but it’s all surface level. There are no takeaways because the movie isn’t interested in those, or doesn’t have the wherewithal to find them.
The explicit nature of the film’s politics is consistent with the violence: we see every snapped bone and severed intestine in lovingly graphic detail. A blue-tinted party bus massacre is among the most grisly scenes in the franchise, and it’s probably not a hot take to suggest that this gleeful blood-letting—not the clumsy politics—is the whole point. And while I love gore as much as the next horror fan, it does feel that even on this element TCM ‘22 (and, indeed, most of the franchise) is somewhat missing the mark.
Despite the censorship and overall reputation of TCM ‘74, it was surprisingly bloodless. As funny as it may sound now, Tobe Hooper tried (and failed) for a PG rating with his original film, because the point was never the graphic depiction of physical violence. The murder of those clueless kids was sudden and senseless, but besides poor Sally (who survived physically if not emotionally intact) it was not a protracted or exceptionally graphic affair.
Part of the indelible appeal of the original is that it feels so brutal despite the fact that its violence happens often just off camera. The violence of the original is profound and lasting not because we see all the gooey bits but because we are shocked by a script that doesn’t give half a fuck about pacing or structure.
The violence we barely see is ironically more visceral than anything found in the TCM descendants because it seems almost real. It’s a vérité nightmare that finds true, soul-shaking disquiet in its persistent nihilism and morbid playfulness. May we never forget that TCM ‘74 is in fact wonderfully goofy. The ‘saw family scrapes together a helter-skelter existence that feels somehow in line with the worldview of the most cynical character of Alan Moore’s The Watchmen: “Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.”
This is the legacy of Hooper’s TCM. It’s the play of casual malice acted out on a bedrock of violent nihilism. This same desert-parched display of human cruelty can be found three years later in Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes. Its anarchic disregard for predictable pacing can be found in Jeremy Saulnier’s backwoods siege movie Green Room. Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion thriller The Strangers echoes the same chilling lawlessness when Liv Tyler’s character asks a masked assailant why they are terrorizing her. They respond simply, “Because you were home.”
In 1974, it just so happened that the ‘saw family was home; the gruesome fate of the intruding kids was decided by nothing more or less than that. For the sake of clarity: I’m not trying to suggest that TCM as a franchise should not be explicitly bloody (let’s give the makeup and effects crew of TCM ’22 their deserved flowers), but there is a distinction between gore and violence. The original knew this. The rest? I’m not so sure.
The Future
Perhaps the worst thing I can say about this new era of TCM (besides its irresponsible handling of real politics) is that it feels indistinct from the rest of the major horror franchises. In 2022, Olwen Fouéré wins the fairly thankless role of Sally Hardesty, traumatized from—and ultimately defined by—her previous run-in with Leatherface and his twisted family. The handling of her character in relation to past trauma is so similar to the role of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy that some have graciously suggested that it’s a form of parody.
Leatherface similarly has never been closer in style to iconic slasher villains like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees, but he doesn’t belong with them. TCM has always been the black sheep of the main slasher franchises in part because it’s a family affair. Leatherface is (or was) the “baby” of the family, always holding the short end of the power dynamic—a Lennie Small type berated into meanness by his demented patriarchal family. Leatherface was never meant to be an eternal monolith of symbolic evil, like Carpenter’s mysterious Shape. We don’t need another inscrutable juggernaut: we need the gonzo cannibal family back.
I am not arguing that we should be clinging to some unchangeable model. Even if we could recreate the ‘74 original, why would we want to? The world has changed since then, and Tobe Hooper himself had no qualms about adapting his ‘saw family into something wholly stranger and more comical than the source material.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 wasn’t something Hooper had to be talked into; he had the audacity to expand upon his treasured original before there existed a film Twitter to voice their shrill outrage at the very thought. Clearly, Hooper didn’t consider his ‘74 exploitation hit as some kind of sacrosanct artifact. The sequel came out a full 12 years after the original, and the dismayed disillusionment of the ‘70s had blossomed into the grotesque neoliberalism of the ‘80s.
“There was Reaganomics, affluence, Ferris Bueller . . . looking back, it’s one of those strange films, where you wonder how it ever got made. You don’t know why it exists . . . which I liked a lot.”
—Tobe Hooper
By Hooper’s own admission, TCM2 is a bizarre and unnecessary sequel packed to the eyeballs with ‘80s excess, informed by the moral bankruptcy of Reagan’s merciless corporatocracy. Lieutenant “Lefty” Enright (Dennis Hopper, playing the vengeful uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty) aligns himself against the ‘saw family, but strip away the context and he is as crazy as they are: another maniac wielding not one but two chainsaws, intent on burying the whole damned clown show even if it means self-destruction.
The chainsaw battle between Lefty and Leatherface perfectly exemplifies the wild self-parodying exorbitance of TCM2, and the dogged determination of Hooper to convince audiences that these are, in fact, comedies. When considering the state of TCM today, we might find some inspiration in Hooper’s refusal to hold anything (even his own work) as sacred or untouchable.
The irreverent and mutable quality of this franchise provides both a challenge and an opportunity for future entries. We don’t need another mythic killer à la Michael or Jason. And we already have enough grim metaphors for trauma and grief. TCM is more “zeitgeisty” than these other tentpole properties, and it must be allowed to change with the times. Garcia’s TCM ‘22 clumsily modernizes the language of the franchise, but the tone and infrastructure do nothing to shake us loose. Our world feels more fractured and chaotic than ever, but this formula feels too safe to reflect it.
The safe bet legacy model is at odds with a franchise like TCM, which should be allowed to take big swings and creative risks. TCM ‘74 was cynical in its story, but this corporate monetization of nostalgia is cynical in a real and damaging way. It may take a producer or director with sizable clout and a distinct vision to break this franchise out of its decades-long identity crisis.
I want a Texas Chainsaw Massacre that is willing to piss off fans and executives alike. I want the jester king of franchise horror, holding up a funhouse mirror to a capitalist society hellbent on grinding us down to bonemeal. I want to see this franchise burn it all down and frolic on the smoldering wreckage. If we’re going to make poor Leatherface dance for us time and again, let’s give him something to celebrate.
Asking for a fresh take on shocksploitation that can harness the howling evil of today’s world-destroying oligarchies is admittedly a tall order, but here I am asking for it anyway.