HAPPY SCRIPTOWEEN!
Genre: Horror
Premise: A group of teens on a homecoming vacation stumble upon the ultimate house of horrors, with a chainsaw-wielding maniac using his home as a de facto human slaughterhouse.
About: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shoot was infamously harrowing due to how hot it was (the movie was shot in 100 degree Texas heat for weeks). The actor who played the hitchhiker said shooting his scenes was the worst experience he’d ever had in his life due to the extreme heat and excessive body odor. “And I fought in Nam,” he pointed out. While director Tobe Hooper would go on to have a successful career after the film, nobody else on the production or cast would experience any success in the business.
Writers: Kim Henkel and Toby Hooper
Details: about 90 minutes long
They don’t make this movie anymore.
The industry doesn’t like exploitative violence that doesn’t seem to have any point other than making people suffer – women in particular.
Is it a good thing that we’ve ditched this sub-genre?
I would argue it isn’t.
There’s something to be said for preying on our “worst case scenario” fears in a fake, and therefore, safe, medium. It’s very likely you will never find yourself kidnapped by an insane crazy backwoods family in your lifetime. But that doesn’t mean you don’t fear it in the back of your mind. It doesn’t mean that when you go on that road trip and you take some barely traveled road into some sketchy decaying town that you aren’t thinking, “Um, am I going to end up being turned into a rack of barbecue?”
That’s what good horror movies are good at – they identify an experience that all of us are scared of and they ask, what would happen if you really found yourself in that experience? We get to live it, but from the safety of the movie theater.
Sally, her wheelchair-bound brother, Franklin, and friends Pam, Kirk, and Jerry, are headed back to Sally and Franklin’s home town in the heart of Texas for a little mini-vacation. After failing to score some gas, they stumble upon a mentally unwell hitchhiker who starts rambling on about the old town slaughterhouse.
They wisely kick that dude out of the car before heading to Sally’s old home. Kirk and Pam decide to head down to the old pond to get a swim in, and while they’re there, they spot an old house nearby. Kirk thinks they might have some gas so off they go.
Kirk gets about 15 feet into the house when a crazed masked man bashes him over the head with a hammer. Pam is soon captured as well, and we get the sense that this house is being used as a de facto replacement for the old slaughterhouse. Except now, instead of slaughtering animals, they’re slaughtering humans.
Jerry gets taken out next. And, as a still ignorant Sally pushes her brother around, our slaughterhouse buddy arrives with a chainsaw and plunges it into poor Franklin. Sally runs all the way back to that gas station, but it turns out the owner is part of the family, and brings her to the home, where she’s the guest of honor in the most horrific bizarre dinner ever. Of course, the point of the gathering isn’t a kind one. They plan to butcher her for dessert. Somehow, Sally is able to escape the home. But Leatherface and his chainsaw are close behind.
Whenever I look back on these classic movies, I try to identify what it is they did right that all their other failed competitors, both then and now, did wrong. Cause when I watched Friday the 13th, I’m not going to lie. I didn’t see much that movie did right over other films.
But you can definitely tell why Texas Chainsaw Massacre was better than all the rest. There are a lot of small but clever writing choices that tell me they actually thought about the script beforehand. For example, they go out of their way to set up the slaughterhouse in the opening act, which heavily plays into what goes on later.
A lot of horror writers wouldn’t have bothered to do that work. They would’ve thought of this cool mask and a guy with a chainsaw and that’s all they’d need. They wouldn’t need *why* or *how* that person became like that. But doing that extra work clearly helps because everything in this house and everything about this family and everything about the final dinner really goes back to the slaughterhouse.
But let’s rewind for a second. Even before the slaughterhouse, I thought Hooper made some strong writing choices. I liked that he made Franklin paraplegic. One of the first scenes is him needing to be wheeled off the side of the highway to take a leak. It’s kind of sad and awkward and unsettling, which is exactly what you want in a horror movie. You want your viewer to be unsettled.
Also, lots of writers don’t put any imagination into the group setting of these movies. Hands down, 99 out of 100 would’ve went with five able-bodied friendly teens. Franklin adds a completely different dynamic to the group since he’s not a friend. He’s the brother of one of the characters. So you’re already making the group off-kilter. Which is AWESOME. That’s what you want to do with group dynamics. Make them imperfect. Because that imperfection is going to come out in interesting ways, starting with the dialogue and the way everyone talks to Franklin.
Also, he’s a burden. They can’t just run around with Franklin a part of the team. A lot more thought has to go into things. And that’s great for storytelling as well. If everything’s too easy, the story tends to get boring.
One unheralded aspect of the film is the pacing. There’s something very naturalistic about the pacing that I don’t see in bad versions of this movie. We seem to take our time with moments yet we still keep the story humming along, as the characters are lured into this black widow’s nest one by one. I never felt the story was too fast or too slow.
Whereas, when I watched The Evil Dead, the entire opening act was a disaster. It was 20 minutes yet it felt like 20 hours because nobody really said anything interesting or relevant. Which is another reminder not to overlook the power of writing when it comes to horror. It DOES make a difference.
Speaking of the horror, here’s a tip you can use. You can utilize your title as a means of suspense. Like we talked about Thursday, the Golden Rule of horror is to imply something bad is going to happen to your characters then milk that line of suspense all the way up to its conclusion.
However, if a group of friends are just hanging out and chatting the whole first act, where is that implication of doom coming from? Well, how bout the title? The title is “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” So we know a brutal massacre is coming. Therefore, within 1 second of the movie’s opening, a line of suspense has been laid out. We know these people are in trouble. So we’re determined to follow them and hope for their survival.
With all that said, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is yet another example of why movies are lightning-in-a-bottle. They’ve tried to remake this movie twice now and both times it’s been horrible. Why? It’s tough to tell. Cause the concept is strong. The situation is scary.
I suspect that with subsequent versions, the directing got too slick. And part of the miracle juice that made this movie work was that it was shot documentary-style, which helped it feel real. Any way you can trick the audience into thinking that the horror movie they’re watching is real is a good thing.
Not for the feint of heart. But this is definitely a classic that stands the test of time. It might even be more scary today than it was then, because they don’t make movies like this anymore. Which means The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a very jarring experience.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Throw a wrench into group-centric first act horror. I read endless scripts with teens and 20-somethings driving to the scary location where the movie is going to take place and they all read the same. Forced camaraderie. Movie-logic jokes (jokes that the characters think are funny but not the audience). They’re all the same and they all tend to suck. So throw a wrench into things. Mix it up so it *doesn’t* feel the same. By adding the hitchhiker to the opening act, it felt different from every other version of these movies that I’ve seen. Great choice.
