It is absolute drunken nonsense with zero subtext whatsoever, and this sheriff has nothing to do with Sally’s story. It’s he who laughs knows better.” If you’re reading this line thinking, “What the hell does any of that gibberish mean? What relevance does that bear to the narrative?” The answer is nothing and everything. The town sheriff is a lazy drunk who at one point falls over and begins mumbling to the camera, “Things they know about don’t tell about. The depiction of Texans is not particularly flattering. It’s sitting upright, and as Hooper pulls the camera back a little further, it’s revealed that the corpse has been impaled on a headstone with another person’s head being held in its lap.Įven at the very start of the picture when the teens first step out of the van, Hooper lets us know this story is not going to end well. This body appears to be several years old, completely decayed, dripping embalming fluid from its mouth, and oddly enough, it isn’t lying peacefully in a casket like a body should be. Not a fresh corpse buried a few days ago. Suddenly, a corpse makes an appearance on the screen. Hands, teeth, severed arms, all flashing by in a matter of seconds, accompanied by a heart-stopping, high-pitched, screeching noise almost like that of someone taking a picture of the macabre images. It seems to remain black longer than you’d expect, and without warning, our eyes are assaulted by blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shots of skeletal remains. But there’s something different about this delay. Following a deeply unsettling narration prologue delivered by John Larroquette, we the audience are treated to nothing other than a pitch-black screen. Right from the unforgettable opening shot, director Hooper sets the tone for his narrative. And this never would’ve started, there would be no Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, without the groundbreaking endeavour of Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s 1974 masterpiece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ! There’s always going to be something endlessly horrifying and all-too-realistic about a large murderer wearing a mask and carrying a weapon as they chase their victims into the night. ![]() But the one type that always fascinated me the most, that served as my introduction to the genre at 3 years old, is the slasher subgenre. You can contribute using so many disparate ingredients: monsters created in a lab by an overambitious scientist, boogeymen hiding under a little vulnerable child’s bed or in their closet, a tormented teenager discovering a dormant telekinetic ability that enables them to exact vengeance on those who’ve wronged them. That’s one of the things I love and cherish most about horror: it’s the most variegated medium of film ever created. Every discernible horror aficionado understands that the horror genre contains a multitude of subgenres.
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