With the squealing Leatherface playing the role of a massive, hulking pig, the film horrifically reversed the equation, hitting us all over the head – whether we realized it or not – with a scathing indictment of the meat industry. With The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, however, Tobe Hooper completely flipped the script, showing slaughterhouse techniques being carried out not on animals, but rather on humans. Most of us have been raised to view non-domesticated animals as little more than food for us to eat, and so when watching a video of pigs being sliced open and hung on meat hooks, it’s unfortunately easy to pretend the animals have no feelings – and brush the nightmarish visuals off. Back in the early ’70s, the horrors of the industry weren’t as commonly known as they are today, and we have the internet and various documentaries to thank for taking us into those buildings and showing us what goes on inside.īut despite how horrifying that real-life slaughterhouse footage is, there’s a certain disconnect that many feel upon watching it.
Whether originally intended or not, Hooper’s horror classic exposed the meat industry in a way that was ahead of its time and is still, to this day, more impactful than perhaps anything else. Because movies don’t get much more pro-vegetarian than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. “People shouldn’t kill animals for food,” Pam responds when Franklin begins talking about the slaughterhouse, and though one could easily write off the line of dialogue as the viewpoint of a fictional character, it’s clear to me that Pam’s condemnation of the meat industry is one shared by Tobe Hooper himself.
In one of cinema’s most downright terrifying moments, Leatherface bashes Kirk over the head with a mallet, and much like the cattle at the slaughterhouse, an additional blow is required to finish him off. Those who have seen the film will realize upon re-watching it that Franklin’s monologue is Hooper’s sick tease of what’s to come, and Kirk’s death scene in particular plays out exactly the way Franklin foreshadows. He talks about sledgehammers being used to bash in the brains of cattle, grossing everyone out by noting that it typically takes more than one shot to do the job.
The texas chain saw massacre hooks full#
Early on in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Sally and friends pass by the local slaughterhouse on the way to their unfortunate fates, and Franklin entertains the van full of hapless victims with stories about what goes on inside the building.
0 kommentar(er)
