American horror movies have entered the 1960s and 1970s, with new development trends. In addition to the vampires, wild mummies and alien monsters in the early castles, they have gradually turned into horror events that happened around people such as "Cape of Terror" and "Haunted House". There have also been a large number of horror films targeting young people with killings. . The horror film style of this era is concentrated on bloody violence and the pursuit of sensory stimulation, emphasizing the authenticity of special effects. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is the representative work.
The cost of filming the film is less than US$100,000, but it has a box office of 31 million in the United States, and has successively earned more than 100 million worldwide. It can achieve such an unprecedented success, lies in the extremely wonderful horror type setting and element presentation. Its youth driving out will be dangerous, there are homicides in the pickup truck, and the hidden murderous intentions in the gas station. Now it has become the standard routine of horror films; while the human skin masks with the homicidal human skin and the electric screaming sound Symbols and shots such as sawing and screaming chase in the middle of the night have become classics in the history of famous shadows.
Unlike the later "The Shining" which focuses on psychological fear and the fiction and reality of monsters in "Jaws", the horror of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" lies in the subtle reality. Whether it is the struggle of the heroine being abducted by the skin-faced man, or the helplessness of the chainsaw chasing the long shot, the fear and imagination brought about by the same kind of murdering the same kind, and the powerlessness of me for the fish and the human knife throughout the story. This will evoke the audience's sense of transposition to the greatest extent, substituting themselves into the role of the brutally murdered.
This fear comes not only from the despair of having no way to escape, but also from the torment of death when it is approaching. At the climax, the half-dead "grandfather" was carried out, and the two grandsons let the grandpa hammer the heroine. At that time, he was too old to lift the murder weapon, so the hammer was lifted on the hostess's head and then fell off, and so on. The torment of this long waiting for death is definitely more than a single blow.
Although the story is quite bloody, the footage of the movie is not cruel, and most of the horror comes from various aspects of rendering and foreshadowing. At the same time, the movie’s description of the villain’s murderer does not simply stop at madness and violence, but vaguely explains their background through character dialogue: modern slaughter equipment has eliminated primitive slaughter methods, old butchers have been abandoned by the times, and unemployment has become Useless people. So the town became desolate and became a hell where the living and the dead coexist.
From the behavior of the three generations of grandparents, we can speculate that their grandfather may have been a butcher. In the time of his father, his violence not only directed against livestock and strangers, but also turned to his sons, driving them to work for them. The hitchhiker is obviously dissatisfied with his father. He protects his mentally retarded brother with a skin-faced boy from being beaten up by his father, and reprimands him in arguing with his father that he will only reap the rewards.
Significantly, of the four grandparents, only the father can communicate with normal people, while the others are either aphasia or crazy. If the grandfather represents the frustrated old-school craftsman, the father is the master who finds a new way of living in the cracks and has the absolute right to speak. The skin-faced man and the hitchhiker symbolize the oppressed and enslaved weak (isn't it incredible to say that they are weak), and the five young men and women mean new things that break into their world.
In this sense, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" can also be seen as the old world's resistance to the new order, counterattack and panic from outsiders. The younger generation of butchers once tried to integrate into the "modern" life. For example, hitchhikers tried to "do business" with young people and sell them photos, but failed because they didn't understand the business rules and appeared to behave strangely. In this process, the guard, arrogance and rudeness shown by the young people are just like the outside world has always imposed on the butchers. This humiliation finally angered the hitchhiker.
Therefore, the hitchhiker lets his grandfather hammer and kill the hostess, which also implies that he wants to restore the glory of the old generation of butchers. It’s just that this contradiction between the old and the new is finally manifested in the way of a family of bloodthirsty madmen, completely replacing humanity with animalism, which is really frightening; and in the end, the man with the face is waving a chainsaw under the blood-red sunset and dancing with pride. In the fun time, this classic scene not only makes people extremely scared, but also has the decline and tragedy that they will eventually be buried by history under the changes of the times. On the chopping board of the slaughterhouse, young people are fish; on the chopping board of the big era, butchers are slaughtered. The tragedy of the murderers wantonly slaughtered, just like the blood of the butchers being run over by the times.
The impact of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" on the horror film industry is almost unmatched. The film itself has a series. In addition to the prequel, there are also parts 2, 3, and 4, with remakes and 3D versions. Not only that, countless subsequent horror films, such as "Scream of Scream", "Terror Wax Museum", "Fatal Bend", etc. have all been affected by it; moreover, many horror movies are labeled "chainsaw". The name, such as the "Chain Saw" series that started in 2004. And Texas, the place where the story took place, became a hotbed for horror stories, and continued to contribute to the screen one by one horror stories and tough and vicious Texas farmers. Today, more than forty years later, the movie still looks creepy. It can be said that it is a well-deserved landmark and great work in the history of horror movies.
The first public account of this article: Burning Crusade (tbc1096), welcome to pay attention.
View more about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre reviews
