The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974 35mm)
Thursday Weekly 35mm Movie Night
Thursday, October 18th
8pm | $10
Director: Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a landmark low budget horror movie which is universally considered a modern classic.
Two siblings and three of their friends en route to visit their grandfather's grave in Texas end up falling victim to a family of cannibalistic psychopaths.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre can, and will, be reinterpreted by critics and theorists for decades to come. It was shot in the summer of 1973, during the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Munich Olympics massacre, at the height of the Watergate scandal and the legal investigation into the shootings at Kent State. It was an era of plane hijackings, government oppression and dishonesty, racial conflict, terrorism and revolution. As a mirror of a dark period in American history, “Chain Saw” remains one of the best evocations yet of the era, as a group of young individuals, returning to the nostalgic home of their childhood, stumble into the raw and irrational cruelty of the modern world.
The cinematography is exceptional, the cast and crew work tirelessly to create scenes and images that are raw and powerful and ultimately, against all expectations, beautiful.
TCM simply has to be experienced, no critical analysis can do it justice. Without gore, without the slick look of high budget, it remains one of the most bleak, atmospheric and aurally violent movies of all time. Tobe Hooper's film debut is good enough to top entire filmographies of other directors. It has been imitated countless times, remade and given sequels and prequels to, but there's something primeval about the original that can't be recaptured.
To experience this film on 35mm on the big screen remains as powerful an experience one can ever have at the movies.