World Famous Comics: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Special Edition)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Special Edition)
Starring: Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain, William Vail, Teri McMinn Directed By: Tobe Hooper Average Rating: Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Geneon [Pioneer] Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: October 14, 2003 Running Time: 84 minutes Theatrical Release Date: October 01, 1974
Description: The ultimate version of a classic horror film. Painstakingly restored from the original 16mm ECO negatives, this special edition presents Tobe Hooper's classic film as you've never seen it before. Now...step into the twisted world of the ultimate dysfunctional family and rediscover the total madness of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". Includes: audio commentary featuring Tobe Hooper, director of photography Daniel Pearl and Gunnar Hansen ("Leatherface"), 30 minutes of deleted scenes and outtakes, blooper reel, original theatrical trailers and television spots and still photos. Starring: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen.
Amazon.com essential video: This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Lifeforce, Salem's Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it's also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it's blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration for Psycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they're held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented cannibalistic family, including a character known as Leatherface who maniacally wields one helluva chainsaw. The movie's powerful sense of dread is heightened by its grainy, semi-documentary style--but it also has a wicked sense of humor (and not that camp, self-referential variety that became so tiresome in subsequent horror films of the '70s, '80s, and '90s). OK, in case you couldn't tell, it's "not for everyone." But as a landmark in the development of the horror/slasher genre, it ranks with Psycho, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. --Jim Emerson
One of my all time favorite Films ever made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tripped me out when I first rented it on VHS a few years ago. It was around 2001 and I rented it because I was like 13 and Bored! So me and friends watched it late at night, and everyone disliked it, cause they were idiots. I loved it! The film is so bizzare. Its just this old movie with a group of friends discovering an obandoned farmhouse near one of the girl's grandparents' old house. In the farmhouse lives a strange, sadistic murderer and his entire family! It's so creepy and trippy cause you don't see it coming, especially when you don't really know anything about the series whatsoever. It was really scary and strange and artistic. I really enjoyed it. It's filmmaking at it's finest. Easily one of the greatest indie films I have ever seen and the best horror film bar none!
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE [BLU-RAY] WORST VIDEO I HAVE SEEN IN MY LIFE. Before buying this blu-ray, I did not know that they are the much OLDER version.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre This is perhaps the stupidest movie ever made. If not the most stupid, it should easily make the top five (or would that be the bottom five?). Either way, the acting is terrible, the sound is horrific, and the plot appears to have been written during an afternoon of drinking and football watching.
Five idiotic morons, one in a wheelchair, are in a van in rural Texas. They stupidly pick up this total scumbag hitch hiker who proceeds to give everyone the creeps, but he isn't thrown out of the van until he cuts the dork in the wheelchair. The wheelchair guy is easily the most annoying of all the cast members. After hearing him deliver two lines, I was ready to take my chainsaw and destroy my TV.
One by one the youths go to this old farmhouse and encounter the idiot with the chainsaw. Oddly enough, his chainsaw starts on the first pull, and stays running throughout most of the 15-20 minutes of his scene. I kept wishing for it to behave like a real chainsaw and stop running for no apparent reason, or at least run out of gas. Unfortunately, it did neither, it just ran. So the fat guy with the mask (presumably made from human skin, but we don't know for sure) runs through the woods at night chasing down his victims.
By the end of the movie only the blond bimbo is left alive. For her part, all she does is scream. I began to wonder if she was paid by the scream, in which case she must have done all right for herself. She gets recued by some unknown hero in a pickup truck and they ride off into the distance.
If you must watch this dud, then I suggest do it with the volume either off on on real low. I recommend this not because the movie is scary, but because the sound will either cause your wallpaper to peel, or your skin to crawl. I can't understand how anyone with an IQ higher that 20 can give this movie any kind of positive review. It's just plain dumb.
Fresh from the Slaughterhouse Review of the Blu-Ray edition (4 stars out of 5)
The Good Things *Includes a number of special features; documentaries, deleted scenes, outtakes, and trailers. *The movie is one of the freakiest ever made. It has some graphicness to it, but is not quite as bad as I thought it would be (newer movies like "Saw" are way worse). It achieves terror more through the creepy settings and unsettling ideas. *Filming style is good. Has a lot of good camera angles and movements. *Production design (for a low-budget movie) is good. The house they go to is the freakiest thing ever. Costumes are great. Make-up effects are great. *Sound design is great. *The story is simple, and straightforward. *Characters are good and very well-acted. Writing is not bad.
The Bad Things *Special features are in standard definition. *Even though the blood and gore is limited, it is disturbing enough to scare some people away. Not reccomended to those who are easy to scare.
The Questionable Things *The video quality on this disc is rather grainy and fuzzy. It has some cleaness, sharpness, and color to it, but its not the best. Still, the grain accentuates the film very well, and can be considered a good thing. *Sound quality is okay.
This is truly one of the scariest films I've ever seen. Its creepy, unsettling, and intense. A definite precursor to modern films like "Saw," but without being overly graphic. This way, I see it as being very classy. Combined with a good cast of characters and a simple plot, its very effective. Everybody who can handle it ought to watch it at least once, for it is quite scary.
Who will survive, and what will be left of them? If you're reading this review because you have never seen this film, stop now, navigate back to the product information page, and click "order". Created in summer of 1973 by Tobe Hooper, TCM has become one of the most recognized and influential horror films of all time. Achieving super cult status, spawning sequels, action figures, Atari games, it's safe to say that this one is a force to be reckoned with.
"The film which you are about to see, is an account of a tragedy that befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected, nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them, an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day would lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
The infamous monologue that is forever etched in the minds of horror lovers everywhere begins the tale of five youths who embark on a roadtrip across rural Texas to visit a relative's burial site. However, the trip becomes a nightmare as they one-by-one fall victim to a family of cannibalistic savages in the Texas backwoods.
Reviewing a horror classic as revered as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is hardly necessary as there is certainly nothing I can say about it that hasn't already been said. However when I see an overall rating of four stars for a movie like this, I am forced to throw my two cents in. TCM is a horror classic and will remain viewed as such for many generations to come.
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