The National Film Registry chooses 25 movies each year that represent significant contributions to the medium on the basis of history, aesthetic, and culture. Horror has some important works in there already, with Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Jonthan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs (1991) standing tall among them. It’s easy to justify their place on the list. These movies changed the language of horror and the potency of unique expressions of violence. Night of the Living Dead, for instance, turned blood and gore into instruments of political thought that could shine a light on a country’s descent into immorality. Freaks, on the other hand, challenged societal perceptions of normalcy and found it more dangerous and unstable than the so-called freaks at the center of the story.
Clearly, the bar for getting into the Film Registry is quite high. And yet, the latest horror classic to be included in it surpasses these expectations, and its contributions are undeniable. That movie is Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and it’s one of the most deserving movies to ever have made it to the Registry.
Loosely based on the real case of serial killer Ed Gein (also known as The Plainfield Butcher), Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of hippie friends that cross paths with the iconic Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a chainsaw-wielding maniac that wears masks made from of the faces of his victims. He’s part of a family of cannibals that live in a house that’s furnished with sofas and other appliances made from human skin and bones.
Leatherface and his family proceed to kill most of the group, but it’s all about the one that survives. One of the girls, called Sally (Marilyn Burns), manages to avoid becoming dinner for the cannibal family and rides away in the back of a pickup truck at the end of the movie, laughing in triumph and in abject terror. That last detail was responsible for birthing one of horror’s most treasured and lasting tropes: the final girl.
This kind of contribution is what film registries are made for. The final girl, just as the name implies, is the character that survives the slasher against all odds. Slasher movies are, by definition, showcases of violence that want audiences to rejoice in the free flow of blood and gore. Overcoming a living death machine that’s chasing after you means getting one over the slasher. It means leaving the killer unfulfilled.
The final girl trope is not indicative of a full-blown victory, though. Rather, it is a middle finger to the killer. It’s about finding a bit of damaged hope in all the ugliness. As a result, it gave women a bigger sense of agency and a power that many other horror movies before it didn’t really afford them. That alone is worthy of preservation in film history.
What also cements Chainsaw Massacre’s status as a pillar of American horror, after mention of the final girl, that is, is its approach to violence. Hooper isn’t interested in set-piece kill scenes or flashy dismemberments. It’s about capturing something raw, messy, brutal, and plausible. Unlike Michael Meyers or Jason Voorhees, it isn’t entirely difficult to imagine someone as deranged as Leatherface actually going out to kill people with a chainsaw and then doing unspeakable things to their bodies. This is thanks to the naturalistic feel of the murder scenes.
Chainsaw Massacre isn’t over-the-top gory, or a mess of blood splatter either. It’s often suggestive, with sound playing a heavier role than it’s given credit for. The horror Hooper goes for settles on a more macabre sense of violence. It is ghoulish and taboo rather than explicit. It makes Leatherface feel even more dangerous than some of his fellow slashers. He’s just more real. This allowed Hooper to establish an American variation of violence, one that initially reflected on the state of things as the Seventies rolled on and the Counterculture started to fade.
One last point. The fact Leatherface is part of a family that features heavily in the movie as well also allowed Hooper to comment on the corruption of the American family, especially in terms of how they can pass evil down from one generation to another. This point is so important that I’d argue that a Leatherface movie without the familial element robs the character of some of its essence. Killing is a family enterprise in the world of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and its expression in the film inspired future storytellers to consider what they wanted their violence to speak to.
Tobe Hooper’s horror classic earns its spot in the National Film Registry by expanding on the language of horror. Simply put, it changed the genre. Horror history has a necessary stop in 1974 because of it. Horror looks different because of it. And the culture of horror changed forever because of it. Goes to show that a chainsaw can be a great vehicle for criticism and female agency on top of being an excellent tool for removing someone’s face.
