Southern Discomfort: Clanking, Rattling, and Screaming in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Abstract

The article analyzes the role played by both the diegetic sounds and the music in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974). Resorting to some atonal score made of jarring notes coupled with diegetic sounds of the most bizarre sort (from the rattling of chainsaws to the cackling of encaged hens, without forgetting the screaming of the unyielding heroine), Tobe Hooper means to literally set the viewers’ teeth on edge. By counting on the sense of hearing more than on special effects, the director creates some kind of prolonged sticky red scream that still unsettles the most blasé spectators of today’s horror films.