The Legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2022) Movie Script
1
I kept anticipating, thinking to myself,
"Oh, it's coming! It's coming!"
Basically, when it came out, the world
wasn't ready to taste this massacre.
I saw it on an old VHS, of course! At
the time it was the only way of seeing it.
It's true, the story is relatively simple.
But I'm someone who
thinks that a great script
does not necessarily make a great film.
It's so simple that we, as viewers,
feel it in our own flesh and blood.
These characters represent us and through
them we feel the sense of dread and danger.
This apparent simplicity
is film's greatest strength.
Because on paper the film
is almost like a true crime story.
And it's populated by communities that
are completely remote from each other.
That stimulates a lot of fantasies around
what happens in those remote areas.
Tobe Hooper used to say it himself,
"The moment you left Austin,
you'd find abandoned villages,
dead towns, it's scary!"
He said the idea of being lost
in such a place terrified him!
They're not there thinking,
"Oh, we need the cool guy."
"We need the independent strong woman."
"We need a bimbo who is a bit dumb."
None of that!
You can feel that each actor
brings a personal touch!
Having a disabled person
as one of your lead characters
was extremely rare at the time.
A genuinely original aspect of this
is that he is very unlikeable.
- Oh, yeah. Yes!
- He is horrible! Unbearable.
He's a complete asshole!
That's fairly unique.
Looking at it to think that one of
the main characters is such a dick!
What's interesting is that Tobe Hooper
portrays a completely dysfunctional family.
The hitch-hiker scene!
I remember as a kid,
that genuinely terrified me.
When he gets in the van
you hope he's going to be a nice guy.
- You think, "they're doing him a favour."
- The hitch-hiker is horrible!
I just remember he terrified me,
and then he slices his hand open suddenly.
I hadn't seen it coming at all.
I never knew what to expect next!
As spectators, from the very title
we expect that Leatherface
will be an unstoppable,
bloodthirsty monster.
Instead, we realise he is a kind of child
stuck in the body of an adult.
It is the South against the North.
The conservative mindset
against the free-birds.
The primitive versus the modern.
Rural environments against
technology, or technification,
the rural against the urban,
or basically education
against the lack of it.
One of the bigger risks
that Tobe had to take
was not having music.
It has this beautiful moment before
the guys arrive at the Sawyer house
and all the mayhem begins.
This is when...
with just a camera movement we see
a tree in which a clock hangs
and this clock is impaled by a big nail,
basically this small detail
tells us what's to come,
that these characters time is over.
What I like most is that everything,
and everyone, in the town is related.
As unveiled towards the end.
This is the origin of a common genre trope, where
everything connects at the end of the story.
The family gets together and we finally
understand their modus operandi.
The film is built on reaching a paroxysm.
It keeps going up and UP-
In that sense, it's not a rollercoaster.
It never goes down.
It just keeps going up and up
until it reaches the top...
where madness is triumphant!
They study things but basically
all film studies are based on things,
and movements, that are
already known, or established
but what happens when something new
comes in, breaking every rule they know?
The film critics won't know
what they are watching
as they aren't prepared.
I kept anticipating, thinking to myself,
"Oh, it's coming! It's coming!"
Basically, when it came out, the world
wasn't ready to taste this massacre.
I saw it on an old VHS, of course! At
the time it was the only way of seeing it.
It's true, the story is relatively simple.
But I'm someone who
thinks that a great script
does not necessarily make a great film.
It's so simple that we, as viewers,
feel it in our own flesh and blood.
These characters represent us and through
them we feel the sense of dread and danger.
This apparent simplicity
is film's greatest strength.
Because on paper the film
is almost like a true crime story.
And it's populated by communities that
are completely remote from each other.
That stimulates a lot of fantasies around
what happens in those remote areas.
Tobe Hooper used to say it himself,
"The moment you left Austin,
you'd find abandoned villages,
dead towns, it's scary!"
He said the idea of being lost
in such a place terrified him!
They're not there thinking,
"Oh, we need the cool guy."
"We need the independent strong woman."
"We need a bimbo who is a bit dumb."
None of that!
You can feel that each actor
brings a personal touch!
Having a disabled person
as one of your lead characters
was extremely rare at the time.
A genuinely original aspect of this
is that he is very unlikeable.
- Oh, yeah. Yes!
- He is horrible! Unbearable.
He's a complete asshole!
That's fairly unique.
Looking at it to think that one of
the main characters is such a dick!
What's interesting is that Tobe Hooper
portrays a completely dysfunctional family.
The hitch-hiker scene!
I remember as a kid,
that genuinely terrified me.
When he gets in the van
you hope he's going to be a nice guy.
- You think, "they're doing him a favour."
- The hitch-hiker is horrible!
I just remember he terrified me,
and then he slices his hand open suddenly.
I hadn't seen it coming at all.
I never knew what to expect next!
As spectators, from the very title
we expect that Leatherface
will be an unstoppable,
bloodthirsty monster.
Instead, we realise he is a kind of child
stuck in the body of an adult.
It is the South against the North.
The conservative mindset
against the free-birds.
The primitive versus the modern.
Rural environments against
technology, or technification,
the rural against the urban,
or basically education
against the lack of it.
One of the bigger risks
that Tobe had to take
was not having music.
It has this beautiful moment before
the guys arrive at the Sawyer house
and all the mayhem begins.
This is when...
with just a camera movement we see
a tree in which a clock hangs
and this clock is impaled by a big nail,
basically this small detail
tells us what's to come,
that these characters time is over.
What I like most is that everything,
and everyone, in the town is related.
As unveiled towards the end.
This is the origin of a common genre trope, where
everything connects at the end of the story.
The family gets together and we finally
understand their modus operandi.
The film is built on reaching a paroxysm.
It keeps going up and UP-
In that sense, it's not a rollercoaster.
It never goes down.
It just keeps going up and up
until it reaches the top...
where madness is triumphant!
They study things but basically
all film studies are based on things,
and movements, that are
already known, or established
but what happens when something new
comes in, breaking every rule they know?
The film critics won't know
what they are watching
as they aren't prepared.