In its skeletal outline, the plot is incredibly simple, and in fact clearly forecast in the po-faced voice-over by John Larroquette with which the film opens. Of course, in terms of horror, there can be no higher praise for Hooper's art. Rather, what caused Ferman such concern was something irreducibly, indefinably disturbing about the film's totality. When James Ferman, then director of the BBFC, announced that he was going to ban the film (indeed, it would remain unavailable legally in the UK, apart from brief screenings within the Greater London Council, until Ferman's departure in 1999), he also made it clear that he would not be dissuaded from his decision by the filmmaker's removal of any particular scene or scenes. So successful, however, was Hooper in prodding and pounding the imagination that viewers would take away from the film far more than they had ever actually witnessed.
#THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE HOOK MOVIE#
The result is a movie where unspeakably unpleasant acts tend to take place out of shot, and are conjured more by atmosphere and suggestion than by any voyeuristic explicitness. It might seem unimaginable now, but when Hooper was making his ultra-low-budget film, commercial considerations led him to consult closely with the MPAA, his intention being to produce a horror film that would meet all the criteria for a PG rating in the US. It is a status perhaps best summarised by the film's long and unhappy history with ratings boards and censors. Even before it spawned sequels, remakes and a thousand imitators, Hooper's original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was already three distinct films at once: the expected shocker evoked by the title and by the film's near-instant notoriety the masterwork of visual restraint (coupled with unhinged tension) that Hooper actually made and the no-holds-barred gorefest that Hooper magically gets viewers to imagine that they have seen. It may sound blandly reassuring, but there have been few utterances more misleading than this one at the very centre of Tobe Hooper's classic of southern discomfort.
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