Tobe Hooper
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

During the 1970s, a series of films emerged in the horror cinema genre which, despite being quite different from each other, shared several original elements. The "villains" in these films, all set in rural areas, were not the usual zombies, demons, or ghosts, but rather country bumpkins, violent and degenerate rednecks, with whom some representatives of the "civilized" world found themselves dealing: a group of friends (often free spirits or hippies) or a city family. Films like "Deliverance" by John Boorman (1972), "The Hills Have Eyes" by Wes Craven (1977), and, above all, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) have contributed to creating what we might call the "rural horror" or "redneck horror" genre, which relies on the clash between the values of old America (traditionalist and regressive) and the new generations, steeped in the counterculture of the late 60s.

It's August 1973; horrible things have been happening for some time in a remote town in deep southern Texas: a psychopath roams there, desecrating the local cemeteries, exhuming and mutilating the corpses to then reassemble them, turning them into grotesque, decayed statues. Sally and her disabled brother Franklin, along with three other friends, go there to ensure that their grandfather's grave, buried there, has not been vandalized. Running out of gas, they discover that the local gas station is also out, at least until the fuel truck, expected no later than the next day, arrives. Unable to leave, they decide, at Franklin's suggestion, to take advantage by searching for the old grandfather's house, enticed by the idea of taking a dip in the nearby pond. But instead of water, they find a farmhouse (only seemingly deserted) where an entire family of cannibalistic butchers lives, killing people to turn them into food. And does the nightmare begin?

The film, released in 1974 (in our country it was distributed with the terrible title "Non Aprite Quella Porta"), marks the debut of Texan director Tobe Hooper, who creates his greatest masterpiece: a small independent film (shot with a very low budget), which managed to revolutionize the concept of horror cinema. Thanks to a brilliant idea from the author, that is, telling the story as if it were the reconstruction of a real crime event, the horror of the events is depicted with much more realistic tones than usual. In fact, the film shows a completely new verisimilitude for the time, which never descends into the improbable or cheap splatter (in fact, Hooper chooses never to directly show amputations or dismemberments, merely "suggesting" them, which produces even greater anguish in the viewer).

In reality, the story is not true, but only inspired by the deeds of Ed Gein, a serial killer from Wisconsin who gained much notoriety in the 1950s due to his obsession with corpses, which he used to skin (he had sewn himself a real "skin suit") and with whose remains he decorated his home (his figure also inspired "Psycho" and "The Silence of the Lambs"). It is on him that one of the most terrifying characters of all time is constructed, who, thanks to this film, has now entered into legend: Leatherface (known to friends as Faccia Di Cuoio), a hulking retard armed with a chainsaw, who loves skinning his victims to then wear their skin as a mask.

As the film progresses, the rising tension and unease give way to pure terror, taking the form of a genuine oneiric nightmare (the entire sequence of the "dinner" and the escape through the house is absolutely hallucinatory, developed as a kind of macabre "tunnel of horrors"), aided by the claustrophobic and unhealthy atmosphere highlighted by the almost total absence of a soundtrack, replaced by sporadic industrial noises and the wrenching screams of the victims.

The final result is a masterpiece of horror cinema, with a bent towards social critique (cannibalism as a metaphor for American society's self-destruction, the condemnation of capitalism, etc.), chilling and visionary like only a few films have managed to be (indeed, in numerous countries it was banned or withdrawn from theaters). Unmissable.