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It’s an impressive feat to give one of the most revered horror writers in history the chills. Well, it turns out that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre did just that for Stephen King, as revealed in a recent confession from the author that gave the world killer clowns and a kid who could see dead girl ghosts.
In an interview with Variety, King recalled the first time he saw Tobe Hooper’s revved-up fearfest that even now still makes fans' blood freeze. The dirt and grit from this horrifying backwater tale stuck with the writer, who managed to get his own accidental private screening when he finally sat down to see it.
“I should say that I never saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre when it came out,” King recalled. “I saw it in 1982 in Colorado. I was a young father, and I was writing to stay ahead of the bill collectors. I was in the theater almost by myself. That’s when a movie really has a tendency to work on you, to get its cold little fingers under your skin.”
Considered one of the greatest of horror movies ever, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre shocked King for its realism, which was only aided by the version he remembered sitting through at the time. “It had that kind of washed-out ’70s look, for want of a better term. You could tell that this print had been around for a while, and it’s better for it, because it just looks fucking real,” explained King. “It works because there’s no artifice about it, there’s no buildup, there’s no character nuance. I mean, there are scenes in the graveyard … they’re not extras, they’re not Hollywood people at all. They look like they came from the nearest little Texas town. It’s fantastic.”
Admittedly, since then, the legacy of Leatherface and his messed-up family has had its ups and downs with sequels, reboots, and legacyquels not quite cutting the same way as the original. That might all be about to change, though, given that the rights for the IP are up for grabs and several creatives are keen to get their hands on the chainsaw and give it a swing themselves, including someone who has actually dabbled in King’s works recently.
