Saleem’s Annual Horror Scene Gallery #3: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

 Movie Title:

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Movie Scene: 

Police Documentary Footage of Leatherface

Following up on my Halloween Season annual event where I share my favorite horror movie scenes up until Halloween night is another cinematic treat. Tonight’s choice is the 2003 remake of the horror classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A criminally underrated and forgotten horror remake that actually ended up doing a pretty solid in honoring the original film’s tension filled tone. 

The scene (or rather a combination of two scenes playing at the beginning and ending of the film) that I’d like to present here is the documentary segment where the film decides to cleverly tap into the real world misinformed and controversial incident lurking behind its “Inspired by a True Story” label. Back in those days, there were many like myself who weren’t entirely sure how much of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre story was accurately depicting real events or how much was drastically exaggerated for shock value. So, sitting there in the theaters watching as the story wraps up and the final girl barely gets away to then transition into what is presented to us as being “real documented police evidence of the crime scene” was unexpected. There was an immediate “Wait a minute! Am I?…Am I about to see real footage of the Texas Chainsaw incident? Should I be watching this?!” It was both exciting in that morbid curiosity type of way, but also equally scary because of what I might actually see considering the utter brutality of the "fictional movie". 

The film turns back into this grainy black and white footage continuing the police walkthrough segment that played at the beginning highlighting the killer’s basement. It was such a chilling experience in of itself just watching this police officer being followed by a camera man documenting the work space or living quarters of the so-called real Leatherface pointing out disturbing environmental evidence. The fact that the audience can connect what he’s pointing out to the cameraman to the messed up and brutal stuff that happens in the film was pretty clever. The aged grainy look of the footage and static heavy audio also made it look and feel authentic enough for people who completely had no clue of the real incident to easily buy into it. And whether or not you were fooled at the time, there was no question at all to how effectively suspenseful it was just following this police officer archiving Leatherface’s lair. 

Where things go from suspenseful to frightening is when the officer starts to venture deeper into the basement leading to Leatherface viciously ambushing the two from behind a dark room littered with hanging chains. Just the audio alone of the screams heard from the two people and the bizarre animalistic growl from Leatherface was unsettling enough. However, it’s the imagery of Leatherface attacking the cameraman where you can barely make out brief flashes of his face and body that sent chills down my spine. That creepy final light exposed freeze frame of the mask and the documentary narrator saying that this is the only known image of Leatherface was such an unsettling way to end the film and made the character so much more scarier than he was previously portrayed. It also lead to tons of moviegoers like myself immediately doing research on our early 2000’s era desktop computers for whether or not what we saw was fact or fiction. We were freaked out and equally intrigued, and for a 2003 remake of an iconic 70’s slasher…that’s high praise.