"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" could be one of the finest examples of horror film-making, maybe even film-making in general. It does not have much plot, but instead exists solely to put the viewer in a state of distress. I remember watching this for the first time and how utterly freaked out I was.<br /><br />Despite being a grueling experience, the movie really does not have much explicit violence. Some of the murders happen just out of the camera's frame; only once do we actually see a chainsaw penetrate flesh, and it happens to be one of the villains. What earns the film its grisly reputation is the unrelentingly grim tone, and by playing this to the maximum, Tobe Hooper manages to make you think you are seeing something that you are not.<br /><br />Hooper starts the film off at a relatively slow pace with a small group of young people on a road trip in a hot van, and it slowly builds in intensity as one by one they fall victim to a family of psychotic degenerate cannibals inhabiting a rural house that they are unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of. <br /><br />Some people might expect the most unsettling aspect of the movie to be the violence, but what I found even more upsetting is the way the deaths of the characters come suddenly and unexpectedly (to them, anyway). It went beyond most slasher films, especially the first two deaths, a couple called Kirk and Pam. Happening upon the dreaded house almost by accident, first Kirk goes inside and is immediately murdered with a sledgehammer to the head. Then Pam begins to get suspicious when he doesn't return. The camera finds her sitting on a swing outside, completely unaware that her boyfriend is already dead inside the farmhouse. When she goes into the house looking for him, she is seized, screaming, by the bizarre "Leatherface", who hangs her on a meat hook through her back. In agony and shock, she is forced to watch Leatherface dismember Kirk's corpse with a chainsaw, all at once aware that Kirk is dead and that she herself is certainly doomed, when just ten minutes beforehand, they were outside looking for a swimming hole. Later, another character goes looking for them and happens upon the house as well, finding Pam inside a locked freezer. The most horrifying thing is that she is not dead yet, sitting upright in shock but then hopelessly shoved back inside by Leatherface, who has now killed her would-be rescuer.<br /><br />These nihilistic scenes signaled an abrupt shift for the film, which up until this point had been a little boring. The sudden plunge into savagery was like a trap springing on the viewer, and the effect was extremely memorable. The remainder of the film dealt with the plight of the final victim, Sally, who endures what has to be one of the most grueling experiences a horror-movie heroine ever had to face.<br /><br />Grotesque and fever-pitched once it gets going, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" was quite a shock for viewers in 1974. In this sense it was a lot like "Psycho"; before it, there wasn't much to compare it to. Rather, it set the stage for numerous films that came after, and it may not resonate with younger audiences who are more accustomed to the films that have been made since.