The tension and off-kilter unease builds, until in broad daylight, Leatherface just appears, no warning, no build-up or creepy music needed. And with that, the characters are in the midst of a nightmare. Halloween may be more tense, and Elm Street may literally take place within nightmares, but Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a nightmarish chase through hell.
Unlike other slasher movies, the horror here isn't the invasion of the killer and evil onto the banality of normal life. It's everyday people suddenly finding themselves in a gruesome insane nightmare so far removed from normalcy. TCM does it better than many other movies I've seen. One hammer blow to skull and slamming door, and suddenly the movie becomes a slaughter, a rush of meathooks in backs and hammers to skulls and chainsaw eviscerations and skeletal tapestries and dismembered limbs and cannibalistic mockery of your everyday family dinner.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't gory or that bloody by today's standards, in fact it barely shows any gore or blood, but you still feel all of it thanks to the sheer physical brutality of Leatherface, the sound effects, and the characters' acting. The twitching body after hammer to the head is more disturbing than any shot of a crushed face or spraying blood could be.
