THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) (50th Anniversary Chainsaw Edition 4K UHD Review)

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) 

50th Anniversary Chainsaw Edition 

4K UHD + Blu-ray + VHS 

Label: Dark Sky Films

Region Code: Region-Free (UHD), A (BD)

Rating: R

Duration: 83 Minutes 23 Seconds 

Audio: English Dolby Atmos (True HD 7.1), DTS-HD MA 1.0 Mono, 2.0 Stereo, 7.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: Dolby Vision HDR 2160p UHD Widescreen (1.85:1) 

Director: Tobe Hooper 

Cast: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Allen Danziger, William Vail, Jim Siedow, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal 

When I was just barely in the double digits my parents rented a laser disc player (what's that, right kids?) and a few scary movies movies and one of them was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and the other was the erotic demon shocker Mausoleum (1988) starring the fabulous demon-boobied Bobbie Bresee, which is the namesake of this here blog. They wouldn't let me watch  the flicks with them but that night our house was filled with the sounds of chainsaws and screaming - and I knew I had to see what I'd missed. The next day I found myself home alone with the laserdisc player still hooked-up to the TV ...and one thing led to another, and I treated myself to a terrifying and weirdly erotic double-feature of TCM and Mausoleum, an event that has seared it's images into by brain ever since. I popped in the laserdisc and from the very first frame of TCM I found it unsettling, filling me with an unease with that image of the sun baked armadillo dead on the side of the road, it was a harbinger that I was about to endure something awful. Layered on top of sickening images of the disinterred corpses creepily staged at a cemetery with that  unsettling flash photography I found I was a bit nauseated just a few minutes into it.

Enter a group of twenty-somethings travelling cross country in a Volkswagen bus, we have Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns, Eaten Alive) and her paraplegic brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain, Race with the Devil) travelling across the backroads of Texas with friends Jerry (Allen Danziger, Eggshells), Kirk (William Vail, Mausoleum), and Pam (Teri McMinn), to visit the grave of the Hardestys' grandfather which may have been desecrated following the the macabre acts of vandalism mentioned previously. Along the way they have the unfortunate urge to pick-up a very strange looking and weird acting hitchhiker (Edwin Neal, My Boyfriend's Back) who has prominent birth mark on his face, which I thought was blood as a kid - I kept thinking why would they pick-up someone with blood on their face? Once inside things get weird fast, the hitchhiker goes on about the joy of killing cows at the slaughterhouse and how tasty his brother's homemade head cheese is before he takes Franklin's pocket knife and slices open his own palm! Watching this for the first time I quickly realized I was seriously in over my head, totally out of my depth in the deep end of a truly unhinged fright flick. Now everyone in the van, and me watching at home, are on edge of their seat and panicked by this act of self mutilation, then suddenly the nut grabs Franklin and slices open his arm before being thrown out the van. Running alongside the van as it speeds off he smears his blood on the van and the group continue on, shaken by the experience. Arriving at the cemetery they confirm that their grandparents graves have not been disturbed and head off to check out the now abandoned Hardesty family farmhouse. Before arriving and they realize they are running on fumes and top off at a gas station only to be told they are out of gas and that the fuel truck won't arrive until the next day. With the Hardesty farm house just a few miles away they decide to make the short trip of it and return to the gas station later that night to refuel. 

At the house Kirk and Pam wander off to a swimming hole rumored to be nearby while Sally and Jerry explore the dilapidated house leaving poor wheelchair bound Franklin on his own, frustrated that he is unable to navigate the crumbling home. Early on it's established that Franklin iis an annoying shit, but he takes it to the next level at the house. Unable to follow his sister he's left on his own to complain while giving disapproving raspberries in the direction of his sister. The poor bastard is a handicapped and you would think you might have some sympathies for him, and as I get older and more feeble I do, but he is such an unlikable character who seems to want to wallows in his own self pity that he comes off as more pathetic than sympathetic. 

Pam and Kirk never do find the swimming hole but they do come across a neighboring home on the edge of the property after they hear a gas-powered generator humming away in the distance. The curious Kirk enters the home in hopes of bartering for gasoline and unexpectedly meets one of the inhabitants - a  hulking figure wearing a dead-skin mask, Leatherface (Gunnar Hanson, Mosquito), who bashes in his skull with a mallet. The encounter happens real quick and before you know what's happening Kirk is dead on the floor, his legs creepily twitching away, before being dragged and disappearing behind a sheet metal door. 

Pam hears the commotion and come inside looking for Kirk whom she assumes is playing a joke on her. While searching she enters a room blanketed in chicken feathers and eerie bone sculptures made from the carcasses of animals and what appear to be human bones and teeth. Realizing that she's stumbled into a waking nightmare she attempts to leave but Leatherface appears and snatches her up, impaling her on a meat hook! While she hangs there helpless and squirming Leatherface starts to carve-up Kirk's corpse with a chainsaw. 

As night sets in the group back at the Hardesty homestead begin to worry about Pam and Kirk, Jerry mounts a one-an search party and sets off into the night finding his way to the horror house, unaware of the nightmare that await him inside. While searching the house he hears a noise coming from a freezer, opening it he finds a wide-eyed Pam barely conscious, bug-eyed and still alive just as Leatherface brings a meat cleaver down upon his head. 

Now it's completely dark outside and siblings Sally and Franklin begin to quarrel like siblings do about what to do next, they decide to set off through a brush thicket in search of their friends when Leatherface emerges from the darkness with his fully-throttled chainsaw massacring Franklin as the hysterical Sally lets loose the first of many marathon screams sessions - it is a supremely effective kill. Every death onscreen in this move carries a visceral weight to it and that makes it so damn effective - it's a nearly bloodless film but it's brutal and nerve shredding. 

Sally escapes Leatherface and makes her way back to the gas station seeking the help of the the proprietor (Jim Siedow, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) who turns out to be the father of Leatherface and the Hitchhiker, of course. He sadistically beats her with a broom before tying her up and throwing her in sack. Siedow is absolutely unhinged in the role, he brings a lot of demented insanity to the character, it's an absolutely nightmarish encounter. He throws her in his truck and makes his way back to the farm house where the strange clan sit down for a family dinner with Sally featured as the main course. They wheel out the desiccated corpse of their Grandpa (John Dugan, Texas Chainsaw) who looks mummified until he gets a taste of Sally's blood and then he becomes a bit more animated. Apparently he was quite the killer back at the slaughterhouse and the family want him to do the dirty deed once more. They kneel the hysterical Sally over a large wash bin at Grandpa's feet as he limply attempts to smash in her brains in with a hammer. It's such a nightmare scenario and infused with the crazy energy of the demented cannibal clan and the shrill terror of Marilyn Burn's maddening screams, her duress is nerve-shattering, and the camera work which focus on the terror conjured in her tear-filled green eyes is quite effective.

While Grandpa swings away with the hammer to the cheers of the family Sally somehow manages to get away by leaping through a window pane of glass, sprinting for the main road with both Leatherface and the Hitchhiker just behind her. The film ends with a semi truck happening upon the bizarre scene with the Hitchhiker splattered on the road and Sally jumping into the bed of a passing pick-up truck laughing and screaming hysterically as Leatherface spins the chainsaw in the air in anger. 

I remember watching it for the first-time like it was yesterday, my nerves were shredded. I was alone, shaking and scared out of my mind and for some reason I loved it - it was at that moment I knew for sure  I loved to be scared. Subsequent viewing bare witness to the continuing power of TCM, a tightly crafted film with not an ounce of filler to it. Everything onscreen carries with it a weight that cannot be denied - it's a terror classic without equal.

Audio/Video: This edition offers the same transfer as the previous 4K UHD edition from Dark Sky, presenting the film on region-free 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Vision HDR10 infused 2160p UHD widescreen (1.85:1). The 4K scan comes from the 16mm source and looks authentically grainy and feels true to the original production and source. The 4K resolution offers pleasing fine detail and texture throughout without any compression issues, this is quite a glorious upgrade. 

The most obvious upgrades to my eyes comes by way of application of Dolby Vision HDR10 with it's wider color-gamut, green and reds are nicely plumped, and the black levels are deeper. I enjoyed the Dolby Vision HDR, which for the most part seems applied judiciously. Pam's red cut off shorts look fantastic, as does the green of Sally's eyes in the final scenes. Disc 2 is a Blu-ray, the previous 4K UHD did not have a Blu-ray, and this looks to be the exact same disc from the TCSM 40th Anniversary Blu-ray with new artwork, including the older transfer. 

Audio comes by way of Dolby Atmos (TrueHD 7.1) upgrade, plus we get DTS-HD MA Mono 1.0, 2.0 stereo and 7.1. I am a huge fan of the original mono mix but the Atmos track is quite nice, offering a terrifyingly immersive experience handling the extremes of the buzz of the chainsaw, blood curdling screams and ultra creepy sound design with aplomb. Notably, while the 4K UHD does not get the DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix from the 40th Anniversary Blu-ray, the accompanying Blu-ray does, but not have Atmos audio. 

The sole extras on the UHD and Blu-ray feature-film discs come by way of the four archival commentary tracks. We have Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper, actor Gunnar Hansen and cinematographer Daniel Pearl, Audio Commentary with actors Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain and art director Robert Burns, Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper Solo, and Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper, Daniel Pearl, editor J. Larry Carroll and sound recordist Ted Nicolaou. These are each fantastic and cover a lot of the same ground but each also offering bits and pieces exclusive to those commentaries, it's an exhaustive set of tracks that are well-worth a listen for die-hard fans.  

The third disc, a dedicated Blu-ray of bonus content is dripping with a heady a mix of new and archival extras. Archival stuff comes by way of the 83-min feature-length documentary The Legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This handsome talking heads doc features director Fede Alvarez (Alien: Romulus), filmmaker Jamie Blanks, Fangoria's Phil Nobile Jr., TCM remake director Marcus Nispel, Mick Garris and quite a few more waxing nostalgic on the terror classic, commenting on what made it so frightening and why it was a game-changer, I love these sort of talking heads docs wherein filmmakers and critics talk about how much they love a movie - it's a great watch even if it doesn't offered much new, aside from personal recollection of how terrifying the movie is.  We also get the 54-min The Cinefamily Presents Fiedkin/Hooper, with the late-great Friedkin interviewing the late-great Hooper on stage during a Cinefamily screening events and it's pretty great, Also included are the 16-min  Flesh Wounds: Seven Stories of the Saw; the 8-min A Tour of the TCSM House with Gunnar Hansen; the 17-min Off the Hook with Teri McMinn; the 16-min The Business of Chain Saw: An interview with Production Manager Ron Bozman Interview (16 min); 25-min of Deleted Scenes & Outtakes; the 16-min Grandpa’s Tales: An Interview with Actor John Dugan; the 11-min Cutting Chain Saw: An Interview with Editor J. Larry Carroll; 2-min Blooper Reel; 20-min Horrors Hallowed Grounds: TCSM; 6-min and Dr. W.E. Barnes Presents “Making Grandpa” (6 min) The last of the archival stuff comes by way of a Still Gallery, the 2-min 40th Anniversary Trailer, 4-min of vintage Trailers, 2-min of TV Spots; and 1-min of Radio Spots.

New and exclusive to this 50th Anniversary edition is the 14-min Hunters of Another Kind: The Merchandise of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with David Umhoff owner of Radar Licensing, Chase Anderson, owner of The Texas Chainsaw Museum, both speak about the collector's market, and how the fame rely changed when McFarland Tony Movie Maniacs line-up in the 90s, discussing the different Leathface masks used in the film. Also new is the 10-min The Film Which You Are About To See: The Restoration of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with Mike Matusek, owner of Nola Digital Film, cinematographer Daniel Pearl, editor/Producer Kim Henkel, they talk about shooting on 16mm under sweltering conditions, having to pump light into the scenes, doing what it took to get the shots. They talk about how it initially screened, distributed by mobsters, the release prints were lousy, and how New Line re-released it in 1981. They talk about stating true to Hooper's vision with the restoration, not straying from it. 

It's worth noting that the 4K UHD release from Second Sight Films in the UK has a couple of exclusive extras of their own that are not present here; that includes a 14-min Tobe Hooper Interview, an 8-min Kim Henkel Interview, Audio Commentary Amanda Reyes and Bill Ackerman, in addition to featuring the new The Legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doc, all of which are included on the Second Sight release, so if you're an extras junkie you might want to snag that edition, too. 

This Limited Edition (of 5000) 50th Anniversary Collector's Set arrives housed in a cool  custom created box that has new artwork and logos on all sides aside from the bottom, which is where the you can find what number of 5000 you got, my review copy was #1257. It's huge, standing 11" tall 15+" wide, and 9 3/4" deep. This opens from the top, tucked safely inside with molded Styrofoam inserts is plastic a replica of the iconic chainsaw from the film. The chainsaw itself arrives in two pieces, the housing and the blade, which snaps into slot to make it complete, the blade itself branded with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 50th Anniversary. It's pretty cool, modeled after the Poulan 245a model of chainsaw this collectible even features copies the strip of black electrical tape used to obscure the brand name of the chainsaw. Its not exactly a perfect replica but it's hella-cool, has some faux wear and tear painted onto it. When assembled the chainsaw itself measure 25" long, 9" wide, 9" tall. 

The housing of the chainsaw actually opens up to reveal the 3-disc 4K UHD/BD release with Slipcover with new artwork, and a wrap featuring the same artwork original poster artwork that adorned the 2023 4K UHD release.  But that's not though, there's also a VHS of the film with it's own unique artwork. I'm not really a scholar of the film's VHS history, but the artwork while looking quite vintage was not one I am familiar with. A word of caution, when extracting the VHs and/or 4K release be gentle, you have to apply pressure to the clips holding them in place, and to do so carelessly could potentially damage the O-Card and VHS sleeve. When you open the chainsaw housing it triggers the sound of a chainsaw, which was a nice touch. This Collectible 50th Anniversary Chainsaw Edition is strictly limited to 5000 pieces and each set is numbered. 

Is it worth $300? Well, I am not a huge collectible packaging collector to be honest, it's very cool though, but personally I would noy have splurged on it, so I do appreciate Dark Sky Selects sending this my way. I do however have some collector friends who are drooling over this thing. It's also worth noting that it's not just the deluxe chainsaw replica you're getting, you also get the VHS, the collectible box, a unique slipcover, and a couple of cool new extras, as well as all the archival stuff. It's the same A/V as the previous release from Dark Sky, there's no audio/visual upgrade, but we do get the new extras and cool packaging. To the right collector this is guaranteed to be a must-own Texas Chain Saw Massacre collectible. 

Special Features: 

Disc 1 (Feature Film - 4K UHD) 

- Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper, actor Gunnar Hansen and cinematographer Daniel Pearl

- Audio Commentary with actors Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain and art director Robert Burns

- Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper Solo 

- Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper, Daniel Pearl, editor J. Larry Carroll and sound recordist Ted Nicolaou. 

Disc 2 (Feature Film - Blu-ray) 

- Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper, actor Gunnar Hansen and cinematographer Daniel Pearl

- Audio Commentary with actors Marilyn Burns, Allen Danziger, Paul A. Partain and art director Robert Burns

- Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper Solo 

- Audio Commentary with director Tobe Hooper, Daniel Pearl, editor J. Larry Carroll and sound recordist Ted Nicolaou. 

Disc 3 (Extras -Blu-ray): 

- NEW! Hunters of Another Kind:  The Merchandise of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (14:28)

- NEW! The Film Which You Are About To See, The Restoration of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (9:57)

- Feature-Length Documentary: The Legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (82:45) 

- The Cinefamily Presents Friekdkin/Hooper: A Conversation About The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Between William Friedkin and Tobe Hooper (54:09)  

- Flesh Wounds: Seven Stories of the Saw (71:42) 

- A Tour of the TCSM House with Gunnar Hansen (8:03) 

- Off the Hook with Teri McMinn (17:02) 

- The Business of Chain Saw: An interview with Production Manager Ron Bozman Interview (16:26) 

- Deleted Scenes & Outtakes (25:23) 

- Grandpa’s Tales: An Interview with Actor John Dugan (15:48) 

- Cutting Chain Saw: An Interview with Editor J. Larry Carroll (10:47) 

- Blooper Reel (2:21) 

- Horrors Hallowed Grounds: TCSM (20:21) 

- Dr. W.E. Barnes Presents “Making Grandpa” (5:30) 

- Still Gallery (2:48) 

- 40th Anniversary Trailer (1:38) 

- Trailer 1 (1:42)) 

- Trailer 2 (1:30) 

- 3 TV Spots (1:40) 

- 2 Radio Spots (1:03)

Be forewarned, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 50th Anniversary Chainsaw Edition is not cheap and not for the faint-of-funds, this collectible set will set you back $300 available exclusively at https://selects.darkskyfilms.com/