A teenage girl, her wheelchair-bound brother and a few friends intend to spend a brief holiday in the family's rundown old summer house. In need of petrol, a nearby home seems an obvious source, but the neighbours aren't too friendly.

Based (very loosely) on the serial killer Ed Gene's brutal crimes, the story couldn't be simpler. One by one the kids wander into a neighbour's house and suffer a grizzly demise at the hands of Leatherface (Hansen), the only iconic horror psychopath whose threatening presence is undiminished by the over-exposure of his image in the popular media. But he's not the only psychopath in the film. Unusual (though not exclusive) is the use of an entire family as murderers. It might seem excessive, but it's perfectly in tune with the rest of director Tobe Hooper's extreme and uncompromising vision, creating a numerical balance between the hunter and hunted (briefly anyway). But much more importantly, it announces, with authority, that there are places in America where inbred, deviant crackpots like this can carry out full lives in a structured social order. Escaped lunatics or serial killers must either remove themselves from society or conceal their true nature. Here Hooper creates a functional, open group, but so far removed from our idea of society as to have no awareness of its basic rules; therefore they have none of the weaknesses inherent in other killers such as the need to remain unidentified or to kill someone specific. But that's just one aspect of a much undervalued film, one that stands somehow alone, not really part of a particular cycle of horror movies, and though influential, not really responsible for starting one. Regardless of its technical deficiencies, it's still the most harrowing and terrifying film ever made.

The cons:

It was made in ‘74, before people had ‘seen everything’. I’m a gore enthusiast, so personally I could have used a bit more of the gore seen in movies today — but like I said, ‘twas 74, so what are you gonna do.
As usual, there were a few “What the fuck are you doing, you dimwit, go out the door, not up the stairs” type moments, but actually not too many. At the end, Sally is running to the road, being chased by Leatherface. A truck stops for her, and the driver gets out. Sally and the driver get in the truck just as Leatherface comes to it — but here’s where it gets stupid. Instead of driving away in the truck, Sally and the driver decide to hop to the other side and get out the other door so they can run for their lives again.
It was a bit cheesy. Honestly, the famous dinner scene didn’t do it for me, particularly with the flashing scenes of Sally’s eyes.
Leatherface lost a bit of scariness for me when he talked.

The pros:

The movie had a very real-life atmosphere to me. Most horror movies have a very set-up-for-fear-and-murder atmosphere right from the start, but this one didn’t. When the first guy got killed, it broke the atmosphere, but as soon as the scene switched back to Sally and Franklin, it was back to a mediocre trip to an old house, not a slaughter.
The characters were characters. Sure, there wasn’t much time for development or getting attached, but they weren’t a bunch of horny, bland teenagers. They felt (relatively) like real people.
The movie just feels like a classic. I don’t know why.
Sally can scream. Her panicked acting was very good, and her character, except for the moment I mentioned, wasn’t as dumb as most horror movie characters. There was one point, where Leatherface was killing Franklin, where she just stood there and screamed instead of running, but she can get away with it because people go into shock and all that.
TCM was partially inspired by the Ed Gein murders, and I didn’t see that much in the remakes, so I was a little confused until I saw this. I loved the touches in the house, like the chair with real arms, the faces on the light over the dinner table, etc. It added so much.
Grandpa!

Comparison to the remake

Things I liked better in the remake:

The gore, of course.
I preferred the portrayal of the family in TCM: The Beginning, particularly the father. I thought it was much more disturbing than the original.
I preferred the dinner scene in The Beginning. I am prepared for judgement on this.
The remakes aren’t so…. ’70s. Obviously.

Things I liked better in the original:

The characters
Leatherface’s mask
The decoration of the house, like I mentioned earlier
The real feel to the atmosphere. I got the same unsettled feeling watching this movie as I got while reading about the Ed Gein murders for the first time. When I saw the remake(s) I just felt like I was watching a movie. Knowing this kind of thing really happened made it rather unsettling.