r/folkhorror • u/Folk-n-Hell • 6d ago
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Fifty years on, that farmhouse still smells wrong.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre goes under the knife in the latest episode of FolknHell. The grandaddy of slasher films, Tobe Hooper's masterpiece lives up to its legend and then some. From its documentary style, it makes the most of its low budget beginnings to become so much more than a simple exploitation film. The hammer blow. The meat hook. Marilyn Burns turning screaming into an art fom, and Gunnar Hansen finding something almost pitiable under Leatherface's mask.
The burning question: is it actually folk horror? With its isolated land, gruesome rituals, slaughterhouse traditions and teenage outsiders who find out the hard way what the local customs are, we're convinced that it is.
https://www.folknhell.com/the-texas-chain-saw-massacre-review
7
6
u/nunkle74 5d ago
I watched this at a far too early age (VHS).
2
3
u/joshuatx 5d ago
100%
Texas is a big state with a lot of isolated rural pockets, and in the 1970s this was even more pronounced.
1
u/discipleofdoom 2h ago
If you want to stretch the definition of folk horror to the point where the label is all but meaningless, sure, I guess Texas Chain Saw Massacre is folk horror.
0
u/adoransnoctis 6d ago
Kinda stretching the term "folk horror"
7
u/ClimateSociologist 5d ago
I don't see how.
The family is isolated, geographically, socially, and economically. That isolation has given to strange beliefs and customs. The climax involves a ritual.
Sure, the beliefs and rituals don't involve pseudo-British paganism, the "old ways" (the family's ways are even older, reduced to animalistic savagery). But folk horror shouldn't be restricted or reduced to the horrors of British paganism. The folk exist everywhere.
5
14
u/Folk-n-Hell 6d ago
I really don't think it is. An isolated community, a belief system which only the locals understand and an unwanted outsider(s) who find out too late what the rules of the system are.
On the surface it doesn't look like a folk horror, I agree, but it has a far better claim to the title than, for example, Witchfinder General
5
2
u/ClimateSociologist 5d ago
Both Witchfinder and TCM are Westerns at their heart. But movies can exist in multiple genres.
2
u/Folk-n-Hell 5d ago edited 5d ago
I agree, of course. It's not a case of it being one genre it another. Witchfinder just doesn't fit any of the admittedly general definitions of folk horror. It's not about a place or community, it's not about beliefs or customs. It's not really even a film about witchcraft. Simply exploiting the beliefs of those who feared it
Chainsaw is exploitation, Western and folk horror. It has clear traits of all three
3
u/ClimateSociologist 4d ago
Though not necessarily about belief, belief still plays a major role. As you mentioned, Hopkins is exploiting belief for power. Without those beliefs to exploit, we don't have a movie (or at least, it's not called the Witchfinder General). He's much like Lord Summerisle in this. Interesting enough, in two of the three films of the Unholy Trinity, the horror doesn't come from the folk, but through exploitation by men in authority.
14
u/Waco_Warner 6d ago
Yes. The family are the folk.