The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre and the sound of violence

Think of a canon­i­cal hor­ror film, and what will most like­ly spring to mind is a par­tic­u­lar piece of music. The threat­en­ing two-note motif in Jaws embod­ies the ter­ri­fy­ing pres­ence of the dead­ly shark more even than the sparse­ly-used mechan­i­cal mod­els; a com­bi­na­tion of synths and piano brings a per­vad­ing sense of men­ace to a qui­et sub­urb of Illi­nois in Hal­loween; the show­er scene and oth­er vio­lent moments in Psy­cho would be nowhere near as effec­tive were it not for the pierc­ing, dis­so­nant strings that accom­pa­ny them; and Mike Oldfield’s haunt­ing ​‘Tubu­lar Bells’ has become syn­ony­mous with pea soup.

But what about The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre? Its score, a low-bud­get, exper­i­men­tal work con­struct­ed by direc­tor Tobe Hoop­er and his musi­cal aide Wayne Bell, com­pris­es a com­plex lay­er­ing of per­cus­sive, organ­ic and elec­tron­ic sounds to cre­ate a chill­ing, unset­tling ambiance. It’s gar­nered praise over the years, but has nev­er come close to being absorbed into pop­u­lar cul­ture like the exam­ples list­ed above. It lacks their tune­ful catch­i­ness – you won’t find your­self irre­sistibly hum­ming it to your­self days lat­er. The empha­sis is instead on sub­tly shap­ing the atmos­phere, and of pro­vok­ing a feel­ing of dread and dis­ori­en­ta­tion that wash­es over the audi­ence despite often bare­ly even notic­ing its presence.

This music alone is enough to unnerve any­one, but it’s the use of sound emit­ted from on-screen objects and char­ac­ters that real­ly defines the son­ic land­scape of the film. For all the bizarre behav­iour of its char­ac­ters, The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre has a nat­u­ral­is­tic tone, with scares large­ly pro­duced by nat­ur­al, prac­ti­cal sound effects – the screams of its hero­ine, Sal­ly (Mar­i­lyn Burns), and the thun­der­ous roar of Leatherface’s (Gun­nar Hansen) chainsaw.

The chain­saw makes its first appear­ance dur­ing the killing of the film’s oth­er female char­ac­ter, Pam (Teri McMinn). Where­as two of the three male char­ac­ters are abrupt­ly killed-off with­in a mat­ter of sec­onds after encoun­ter­ing Leather­face via fatal blows from a ham­mer, her attack is lin­gered upon, as she is briefly per­mit­ted to run away scream­ing before being caught, while the butch­er on this occa­sion takes his time and indulges in sev­er­al revs of the chain­saw. The two nois­es com­bine to cre­ate a deaf­en­ing, hor­ri­ble wall of sound that the film will return to again and again lat­er on.

But it’s Sally’s blood-cur­dling screams that live longest in the mem­o­ry. From the moment she wit­ness­es her wheel­chair-bound broth­er being slaugh­tered (the only male char­ac­ter to die at the hands of the chain­saw, but whose own screams aren’t giv­en the same promi­nence as his onlook­ing sis­ter), the entire third act boils down to a straight­for­ward pur­suit as Sal­ly attempts to escape Leather­face and his equal­ly twist­ed fam­i­ly. Com­pared to the way the oth­er char­ac­ters are so swift­ly dis­patched, her ordeal seems to last an eter­ni­ty, and she lets out wild, pri­mal wails with such unceas­ing, rhyth­mic reg­u­lar­i­ty that is not only hor­ri­ble to lis­ten to, but exhaust­ing too. You could argue that these famil­iar hor­ror tropes of ​‘the final girl’ and ​‘scream queens’ are exploita­tive­ly misog­y­nis­tic, or that they are lib­er­at­ing­ly fem­i­nist, but either way there is no deny­ing the pow­er of Burns’ scream to elic­it feel­ings of prim­i­tive dread.

When relief final­ly comes and the film cuts to black after Leather­face man­i­cal­ly whirls his chain­saw around hav­ing seen Sal­ly escape, it’s star­tling just how over­whelm­ing the silence that fol­lows is. So sud­den is the change that the extreme silence only serves to empha­sise just how loud the relent­less cacoph­o­ny of chain­saw and scream­ing was, and the son­ic void as you watch the end cred­its and con­tem­plate what you’ve just seen is filled by those hor­ri­ble sounds ring­ing in your ears. Oth­er hor­ror movie scores might be skil­ful­ly com­posed to pro­voke feel­ings of unease and fear, but the tune­less, hor­ri­ble, real-world nois­es that make up the sound­track of The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre are a vital com­po­nent of this clas­sic, unique­ly uncom­fort­able view­ing experience.