This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Lifeforce, Salem’s Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it’s also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it’s blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration for Psycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they’re held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented cannibalistic family, including a character known as Leatherface who maniacally wields one helluva chainsaw. The movie’s powerful sense of dread is heightened by its grainy, semi-documentary style–but it also has a wicked sense of humour (and not that camp, self-referential variety that became so tiresome in subsequent horror films of the 70s, 80s and 90s). OK, in case you couldn’t tell, it’s “not for everyone”, but as a landmark in the development of the horror/slasher genre, it ranks with Psycho, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. –Jim Emerson

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A volatile, toxic potion of satire and nihilism, road movie and science fiction, violence and comedy, the unclassifiable sensibility of Alex Cox’s Repo Man is the model and inspiration for a potent strain of post-punk American comedy that includes not only Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), but also early Coen brothers (Raising Arizona, in particular), Men in Black, and even (in a weird way) The X-Files. Otto, a baby-face punk played by Emilio Estevez, becomes an apprentice to Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a coke-snorting, veteran repo-man-of-honour prowling the streets of a Los Angeles wasteland populated by hoods, wackos, burnouts, conspiracy theorists, and aliens of every stripe. It may seem chaotic at first glance, but there’s a “latticework of coincidence” (as Tracey Walter puts it) underlying everything. Repo Man is a key American movie of the 1980s–just as Taxi Driver, Nashville, and Chinatown are key American movies of the ’70s. With a scorching soundtrack that features Iggy Pop, Fear, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Suicidal Tendencies. –Jim Emerson

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This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Lifeforce, Salem’s Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it’s also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it’s blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration for Psycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they’re held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented cannibalistic family, including a character known as Leatherface who maniacally wields one helluva chainsaw. The movie’s powerful sense of dread is heightened by its grainy, semi-documentary style–but it also has a wicked sense of humour (and not that camp, self-referential variety that became so tiresome in subsequent horror films of the 70s, 80s and 90s). OK, in case you couldn’t tell, it’s “not for everyone”, but as a landmark in the development of the horror/slasher genre, it ranks with Psycho, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. –Jim Emerson

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