“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is undoubtedly one of the most important and recognized films in horror movies. This film takes place in the late 1970s, where horror films were taking a turn toward more realistic stories. In fact, this film begins with a virtually false warning that its events are based on real events, creating an atmosphere of realism from before the film began. In “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, a group of friends en route to visit the grave of the grandparents of two of these that has apparently been desecrated. Along the way they encounter a mysterious hitchhiker, with which they have an awkward moment, not knowing that this was only the preamble to what awaited them. Soon after they arrive at an old house where a family of cannibals lives, which becomes their worst nightmare.

The first thing to consider is that this film takes place in Texas, which is possibly the state that best represents American culture and one of the most important states in the livestock industry and where the oil drying fields problem was present. It also takes place in the first half of the 1970s, where American society was experiencing many political, economic and social pressures, suffering the ravages and losses of the war in Vietnam and being in the midst of a strong economic recession. With a budget of only 140 thousand USD, the director was able to create a masterpiece. Each object is intelligently placed to carry a message, either to argue about the psychological health of this family, or to provoke despair and fear in the viewer. The mostly correct and essential performances in carrying the message of imminent danger across the screen. Although it can sometimes be seen that these actors did not have much acting experience, this does not interrupt the tone of the film. These factors will give us an unconventional movie. The scenes of violence are extremely realistic; an effort that cost a large part of the cast to suffer injuries while recording. Although there was no blood shown on the scenes, the terror was always there. Instead of betting on teaching gallons of blood in an unreal representation, it is preferred to show enough to make it uncomfortable and real.

Another interesting point of this film is how a distorted model of what in the United States is considered to be a normal family is used. There is even a distorted version of the dinner, an important exercise in the social core of this nation. The use of these distorted versions of the family and dinner make everything that goes on at the time feel uncomfortable, as it goes to the roots of the values, but their actions are completely contrary to what is expected. Even the appearance of the house as a dark and decadent represents an antithesis of what is moral decline in society.

Visual effects are more than correct. We’re not talking about a high-budget movie. However, it is also not apparent that the visual strength of the anthropophageic iconography of this house of horror does not require great effects. Hooper doesn’t need to resort to gore to crush us. For example, that scene where Leatherface knocks down one of the protagonists of a brutal hammer and takes it while the spasms still shake him. Interestingly, he decided to use real blood and substitute some screams for sounds of pigs at the slaughterhouse. Quite a statement of intent because human beings are only cattle for this demented family.

Contrary to what has been intended in other productions, Tobe Hooper does not propose any exercise in the analysis of the movie. He also does not raise a scenario where there is a reason that explains what is happening. The film is a simple exercise in terror and evil. A clear attempt to punch us in the face through a tour through our deepest fears and nightmares. Reading the argument invites you to think that we are going to see a typical slasher movie. However, here you don’t just seek to scare the viewer… but also to distress him! That is, the death of the characters is not as important as the sick background that surrounds them. We see this clearly through that scene where a grandfather, apparently dead and mummified, draws strength out of nowhere to suck the bleeding finger of a victim. I had a hard time with the movie, but I understood that I had a great job in front of me. Not only was it the feeling of fear so typical of horror movies, but I felt uncomfortable. Perhaps that’s why I remember the words of the late Roger Ebert when he said that “there are horror movies that, despite their enormous quality, we don’t have to enjoy.” Certainly this tape is one of them.

A different cinematography but similar genre, is the movie “Giallo”, yellow in Italian directed by Dario Argento. First of all, Argento is obviously not a guessing game: the identity of the murderer is not a secret, and his motives are as simple as they are clear. The deformed, ugly, who cannot bear the sight of beauty and must therefore compulsively destroy it, is, of course, ultimately a stereo type, or rather: an archetype.

The movie begins in Italy itself, where a mysterious psychopath who is dedicated to murdering young foreign girls as a taxi driver to kidnap them has long operated; his methods are sadistic and most disgusting, yet no one has managed to catch him yet… but perhaps the strangest thing of all is the yellowish color of his skin. The last of her victims is a young French model named Celine, although her sister Linda, a flight attendant who is also in the country, is unaware of what happened, she only knows that Celine is missing and that she has called her desperate for help from a taxi. In this way, Linda will turn to Detective Enzo Avolfi, who carefully studies the killer’s case, to help her find her sister. Both will team up and be immersed, between clues, theories and riddles, in arduous time trial research to catch the psychopath before he tortures and kills more women.

The movie is different to “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” when it comes to how explicit these movies are. Beside amputated limbs, severed fingers, crushed faces, crushed jaws, dissected arms, scattered across the floor and liters of blood covering the walls, here, we have virtually blood shown on the scenes, which is usual for a director who taught violence and blood at his best. The movie’ message to the audience is different and more reliable to actual and recent worldwide problems. Gender inequalities and discrimination. An article by Will Wright shows the gender lines of the movie. “These took the form of a “polemic against the structures of patriarchy which found a critical incentive in analysing the way in which the image of woman is both celebrated and degraded in cinema for the benefit of a prurient and notionally male spectator.”

The movie itself faced several problems and it is considered a failure. The actors are quite mediocre. Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor from “The Pianist” (2002), is truly disastrous in his double acting foray. First, like Inspector Enzo Brody, an uninteresting and profound character with little personality of his own; and second, like the killer, who as a threat leaves a lot to be desired, especially in terms of his way of thinking as a murderer, so the viewer wonders if this guy can really be the killer. This, in keeping with the film lacking the rhythm, tension and interest on the part of the viewer with respect to the killer, makes the audience wonder where those classic scenes left, where the viewer had an interest and even sympathy for the skill of the killer to hide and sneak away all the time. The special effects are not impressing, starting with a derisory make-up for the killer, an Oscar winner actor, and 14 million USD budget, ten times higher than “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, this conventional movie did not exceed its expectations. The film is visually appealing, but far from the mastery of “Pera”, for example: there is no virtuosity in camera or in plane composition, there is in its place correction. If you hope for a new Suspiria (1977) or Deep Red (1974), you can look elsewhere, because “Giallo” is not one of these. It is instead a well-made but unfortunately right impersonal thriller that probably appeals to a broader audience than is common with a Argento movie. In the end, I still see it as something positive that the film is not a catastrophe, which could as well have been the case, proving that there is still some gunpowder in the old Italian horror master.

Works Cited:

“Dario Argento, Maestro Auteur or Master Misogynist?” Offscreen.
“Genre, gender, giallo: the disturbed dreams of Dario Argento” University of Georgia.
“Murder, Italian Style: A Primer on the Giallo Film Genre” Vulture.
“In ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre,’ Sympathy for the Devil” New York Times.
“The Best Horror Movie of 1974: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” Paste Magaine.
“Blood for Oil: Crude Metonymies and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)” Edinburgh University Press.