Almost everybody dies — violently — in “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” But, against all odds, the classic horror movie is still alive and kicking, cutting, slicing and bashing 50 years later. The 1974 film, directed by Tobe Hooper, was made on a shoestring budget of $140,000.
And critics were not so taken with the cannibalistic nightmare when it hit cinemas on Oct. 1, 1974. The Post’s Archer Winsten hacked at the sick flick with his own chain saw.
“If there is any justice at all,” he wrote in this newspaper, “‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ now at showcase theaters, will win a swift kick as the worst picture of 1974, quite possibly the worst of the entire ‘70s.” So much for justice. The movie grossed a massive $25.
6 million its first year at the box office and this week was named by Variety as the best horror film ever made . Even more remarkable is that “Texas Chain Saw” was created by a group of young, inexperienced filmmakers and actors who were frequently high on pot, and generally laissez-faire about personal safety. “I had no idea how dangerous the chain saw really was,” wrote Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansen in his 2013 memoir, “ Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made The World’s Most Notorious Horror Movie .
” “I had never used one before.” Hansen’s Leatherface was, of course, part of a family of murderous psychopaths who terrorize a group of five teenagers in a remote part of the Lone Star State. The creepy character wears masks .
