The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Bryanston Distributing | Release Date: October 1, 1974 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
92
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Time OutTom Huddleston
As much as any surrealist arthouse flick, Texas Chain Saw feels like a nightmare made real, an inescapable but entirely authentic vision of pure hell. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
No other later horror film – and certainly none of the many sequels to this one – captured so well the strangeness of living through a long night of evil and emerging into bright sunlight, with its tacit promise of restorative justice or virtue, or just normality. Read full review
100
EmpireKim Newman
The film has outstanding sound effects, art direction and editing, and a clutch of effective, if necessarily, one-note performances. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineEric Henderson
What separates Texas Chainsaw Massacre from its predecessors is its anarchic, cynical hysteria—its bizarre and dark-as-hell gallows humor. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
The film never loses its intensity from the first moment Leatherface's sledgehammer drops. It's horror without a safety net: Survival isn't guaranteed for anyone, heroism and struggle are often futile, and as the old adage says, you can never come home again. Read full review
100
The GuardianDerek Malcolm
While nobody could seriously call it a work of art, it was in my opinion a quite formidable piece of directorial artifice, a horror comic brought to the screen with frenetic energy and life. Read full review
100
BBCTom Coates
Like any decent slasher movie, there's something unsettling about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that goes beyond the blood and gore. [4 star rating for DVD only] Read full review
100
Portland OregonianStan Hall
Tobe Hooper's 1974 masterpiece took the slasher flick to a freakier, nastier place and even today has the ability to mess with one's mind. Artfully documentarylike and shot under conditions that produced genuinely traumatized performances, the original "Massacre" eschews cheap thrills and attacks the psyche. Read full review
100
EmpireWilliam Thomas
The most purely horrifying horror movie ever made. Read full review
100
Film ThreatChris Parcellin
A black-humored, unflinching look at the Ugly American at his psychotic worst. And Tobe Hooper is at his best as a writer and director here. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMike Emery
Hooper's vision is horrid yet engrossing... But the worst part about this vision is that despite its sensational aspects, it never seems too far from what could be the truth. Read full review
100
SlateBryan Curtis
One of the most relentless scare pictures ever made. Read full review
100
IGNTodd Gilchrist
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre chopped up our expectations more than 30 years ago, and for that we will always remember - and be thankful that some experiences do stay up on the screen. Read full review
100
CineVueAdam Lowes
Four decades after its release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre still justifies its place in the pantheon of all-time horror greats. Read full review
100
The IndependentSophie Morris
Director Tobe Hooper trapped a suffocating depravity in TCSM that film-makers have struggled to copy ever since. Read full review
80
The DissolveNoel Murray
But it’s also edited so crisply, and shot with such an overpowering sense of decay, that it’s hard not to look on all the dismemberment and despair and think, “Man, that’s pretty.” Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
The picture gets to you more through its intensity than its craft, but Hooper does have a talent. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises -- a real Grand Guignol of a movie. It’s also without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. And yet in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective. Read full review
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