Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Ending Is The Best Kind Of Ending

thegamer.com:

The article contains spoilers for the endings of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Last of Us, The Thing (1982), First Reformed, The Graduate, and Birdman.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre would be a great horror movie without its final scene. But it’s the abrupt cut-to-black ending that cements its status as a genre all-timer.

For the first half of its 83 minute runtime, the film’s structure feels odd, slightly off. After a brief first encounter with a violent hitchhiker and a quick stop at a gas station/BBQ shack, the gang makes it to the creepy house around which the rest of the action will take place. It’s a pretty classic horror set-up. But unexpectedly, all but one of the kids gets picked off with 30 minutes left to go. The traditional slasher structure, as we know it today, has the killer slowly kill off their victims over the film’s full length, but Texas Chain Saw Massacre rushes through them like Leatherface and the filmmakers both have poor impulse control.

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All of that quick-paced carnage is designed to set up the breathless rush of the last half hour, a prolonged chase which finds proto-Final Girl Sally Hardesty going from the fire to the frying pan (which also happens to be sizzling up some human remains). The chase flags for a bit when Hardesty is captured by the cannibalistic Sawyer family, but she manages to escape. She continues running up until the film’s final scene when, just in time, she flags down a pickup truck, hops in the back, and narrowly escapes Leatherface with a second to spare. Covered in blood, she bursts into unhinged laughter. As the car drives away, Leatherface is stumbling around, chainsaw still running. We cut to credits.

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