Chain Reactions

Pioneering genre visionary Tobe Hooper was just 31 years old when he unleashed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on the world in 1974, and the mythic stature of the 16mm-shot, low-budget tour de force has only grown in the intervening decades. Hooper’s masterwork takes center stage in the expansive, deeply admiring documentary from director Alexandre O. Philippe that premiered at last summer’s Venice Biennale, timed to anticipate the original film’s semicentennial in October 2024. Philippe weaves together clips from the original film and its myriad influences and heirs from throughout film history, interspersed with a treasure trove of never-before-seen outtake footage and extended interviews with midnight movie aficionados and luminaries of the horror genre: directors Takashi Miike and Karyn Kusama, writers Stephen King and Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and comedian Patton Oswalt. Each expert-enthusiast helms one of the film’s five “chapters,” waxing rhapsodic with incisive critical insights, colorful historical anecdotes, and heartfelt personal accounts of drawing creative inspiration from Hooper’s genius—all of which amounts to a rich, multifaceted tribute to a towering masterpiece of American horror cinema. A Dark Sky Films release.