Headcheese: A “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Retrospective — Introduction
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cannibals
On a campsite in France, years before I ever watched the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, my dad seemed to decide it was time to explain to me what cannibalism was.
At the time, my main references for horror were Goosebumps and the still excellent Treehouse of Horror instalments of The Simpsons so I’m not sure what made him decide that would be the night. Charitably, I can imagine that I might have asked him — the Nightmare Cafeteria story in Treehouse of Horror V of course centres around the teachers of Springfield Elementary deciding to eat the students — and he certainly provided a thorough explanation.
He explained to me in depth the Stephen King story Survivor Type in which a marooned surgeon begins eating his own body parts as he awaits rescue, though I think did wait until at least a few years after this evening to actually lend me a Stephen King book.
Following this, he regaled me with the life of Hannibal Lecter: taking me through his early years being forced to cannibalise his sister (more chilling in my dad’s telling than in the fairly mediocre Hannibal Rising, I found) to his murder spree and dinner parties, ending with his incarceration and escape from justice. I’m not certain he took great enough pains to specify to me that Hannibal Lecter was not real.
Finally, he explained to me The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which is where the seed of my interest in this franchise was planted. He did only really offer a gist of most of the plot — though to be fair, plot probably isn’t the most crucial aspect of the film — but when it came time to describe the climax of the film, he went into great detail. I remembered him acting out the family dinner where “Grandfather” is goaded by his younger relatives into trying to relive his glory days — by trying and failing to bash in the head of Sally over a bucket.
These were the only stories that my dad covered that evening, but they made a lasting impression. In the immediate aftermath, I had a waking nightmare where the walls of my bedroom appeared to be dripping with blood. Another vivid nightmare I believe to be inspired by those stories was my dad on a slab, and a man approaching him with a hook and hammer. Of course, I didn’t have the imagination or experience for my subconscious to conjure much viscera, but the dread was there. Having not actually seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the sinister cannibal in my nightmare instead looked exactly like Jim Carrey as Count Olaf.
At this point, I would like to make clear that I don’t believe my dad traumatised me with his detailed account of fictional cannibals who for all intents and purposes seemed real to me — rather, I like to think he just did me the favour of introducing me to the genre of horror. Perhaps a few years too early. Anyway, where was my mum during all this? She must shoulder some of the blame.
When I eventually watched The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its entirety, I had the rare pleasure of encountering a so-called genre classic which lived up to its mammoth reputation — it was scary, it was thrilling, it was surprisingly funny, and it truly seemed like a labour of love. I was enchanted and felt compelled to watch the rest of the franchise. I found, even as they devolve from scrappy to crappy, they remain one of the more interesting of the slasher franchises. Even at their best, these are messy films while at their worst they are outright terrible. That being said, there is an undeniable temptation to always tune in to see the ways in which filmmakers will contrive to create a massacre via chainsaw in Texas.
