Perhaps one of the most famous drive-in shockers was Director Tobe Hooper's 1974 THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE, now available on a Pioneer Special Edition DVD, complete with out-takes, pieces off the workprint, and an excellent audio commentary track by Hooper, his cinematographer, Daniel Pearl and star Gunnar Hansen. The gore is more implied than displayed, but it's CHAINSAW's unforgiving documentary style that grabs you and disturbs your dreams. Check out the neat Special Features on this incredible DVD. The out-takes have a raw look, the color is not yet timed, and all we get is the bare, hollow sound typical of un-mixed production sound. We see endless takes of human bone decoration that highlights the crazy cannibal house in CHAINSAW. There are many takes of the macabre cemetery bone statue, the image that opens CHAINSAW. The audio commentary tells us that Hooper and Pearl experimented by shooting the scene during different times during the day, to obtain different sunlit shooting schemes.
Review of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
