At 50, ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ Still Cuts Deep

The movies never recovered after “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” hit theaters in 1974. Focused on a family of cannibalistic, butcherous crazies living in a rural house of horrors, Tobe Hooper’s sleaze-oozing film rattled audiences and was banned in some places. It also inspired filmmakers to take horror in new, more brutal directions.

Fede Álvarez, director of the forthcoming “Alien: Romulus,” said that the “unapologetic savagery” of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” influenced his work.

“It’s a humbling reminder of how a hard dose of unsolicited anarchy onscreen is a key ingredient for any horror movie that hopes to endure the test of time,” he said.

Beginning Aug. 8, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will offer a weeklong run of the film timed to its 50th anniversary, and will follow that with a retrospective (Aug. 13-20) of Hooper’s other less shocking but still daring genre films from the 1980s, including “Poltergeist” (1982) and “Invaders From Mars” (1986).

MoMA didn’t dawdle in taking “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” seriously: It added the film to its collection two years after the movie came out.

“Its power hasn’t dimmed,” said Ron Magliozzi, a curator in MoMA’s film department and the organizing curator for the series. “It has matured.”

Four directors with films out this month recently shared their memories of seeing “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and explained how it inspired them. Their responses have been edited and condensed.

Eli Roth, “Borderlands” (in theaters Friday)

When I finally saw “Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” it was almost a letdown. I was expecting so much more violence. I’d already seen Juan Piquer Simón’s “Pieces,” and that film delivered the goods. You saw the chain saw cutting into the flesh, the camera never cuts away.

But “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” unnerved me in ways I didn’t expect. I didn’t know it was going to start with those solar flares, and the strange music that blurs the line between score and sound design. The actors didn’t feel like actors. I wasn’t scared by it. I wanted to live in it. It was a movie just dripping with mood and atmosphere, and it felt like it had been made by serial killers.

Maybe it was the boring gray, overcast, endless late-fall weather I grew up with in Massachusetts, but something about the Texas heat and the strange world of this Manson-like family living in a shack appealed to me. I was terrified that people could live this way, it seemed too real to be a movie.

The film endures because Tobe saw what was coming: men being replaced by machines, and the dreaded feeling of uselessness. What do you do with those skills when a machine replaces you?

Hollywood is currently facing that same problem with A.I. What happens when we’re no longer needed? What happens when a computer does it for us? What do we do with all of those ideas still in our head? Are we doomed to go crazy in our houses, turning them into slaughterhouses for our own creativity, writing ideas that no one will ever see because a machine has done it for us? It’s about the fear of becoming obsolete. We are now all the family in “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

Lee Daniels, “The Deliverance” (Netflix, Aug. 30)

It was wild. You didn’t know what to expect and you didn’t know what was coming at you. As a kid, I think the closest thing that was like it was “Night of the Living Dead” — massacres and blood and everything and anything. The gloves were off. I remember thinking that Tobe played into the fun elements of horror, where there was no fun in “The Exorcist.”

Tobe’s audaciousness inspired me as a filmmaker. It’s hard because executives will tell you what audiences want to see, but audiences want to see what you want to see. I don’t think you could get away with “Texas Chain Saw” today at a studio. Everyone is so politically correct. Tobe took chances. That’s what great filmmakers do: You’re bold in your thought processes, and you take major risks even if they don’t work. That’s why “Poltergeist” and “Texas Chain Saw” work: Crazy-ass things happen.

Paul Feig, “Jackpot!” (Amazon Prime Video, Aug. 15)

I have a strong memory of seeing “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles, with a completely packed audience. What threw me about it was how hyper-realistic the tone was, starting with that John Larroquette narration, and the fact that there’s no music, just the sound effects that sound like the inside of a slaughterhouse. The acting is all pretty raw. It skirted between having a B-movie vibe and a documentary vibe. That tone makes everything more scary. “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is not that far off from a found-footage film.

It’s also not far off from “The Office.” The cameras are loose, and it’s not precise. It feels real because it’s so messy. Audiences have gotten used to the style. All the videos we’ve been watching over the years on YouTube aren’t polished. It’s cats creating havoc and people falling down. It’s a garage-band ethos. It sounds cruel to say, but the idea of manipulating an audience that heavily into a giant emotion is what we do in comedy, too. After they scream, they laugh.

JT Mollner, “Strange Darling” (in theaters, Aug. 23)

I wasn’t born when the original “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” came out. My first experience with it was from stumbling upon a movie on late-night TV called “Terror in the Aisles,” hosted by Elvira. I was fascinated with it because my parents would not let me watch rated-R horror films. This movie showed clips from iconic horror films, and it was a way for me to get a little glimpse into all the movies I wasn’t allowed to see.

A scene from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” came on. It was quick but visceral: A woman in distress, standing in front of a sliding door. The door opens. Leatherface emerges, grabs the woman. She struggles but is no match for him. He’s like a wild animal, ferocious. He drags her into the room he came out of and slams the door shut, violently. That was it: narratively simple but deeply disturbing. It was more terrifying and impactful than any complete horror film I’d ever watched. Years later, when I finally saw the full movie, it didn’t disappoint.