ORIGINAL REVIEW:
(As posted on July 17th, 2007)
Tobe Hooper’s original American cannibal family classic still delivers the goods after three decades, three sequels, one remake, a sequel to the remake and countless imitators. ‘Saw will forever be one of the most innovative films of all time for several reasons. It was one of the first movies where all the characters existed for the sole purpose of being killed (as well as the notion of having the surviving “Last Girl” take on the killer during the last third of the movie). It was also one of the first horror films were the director used a gritty neo-documentary feeling to the film making the audience feel like they’re right in the middle of the action. But the best innovation TCM had was the implementing of power tools as a weapon of choice for the masked killer to dispatch his victims with. It also introduced the world to its most famous chainsaw wielding, transvestite cannibal. The one, the only Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen).
The plot is simple. A group of friends go to an abandoned house for an idyllic summer retreat and run afoul of family of cannibals.
Hooper sets up the death scenes with panache, and there’s not a single one that isn’t scary as hell. The meat tenderizer to the skull (complete with post traumatic muscle spasms). The infamous meat hook scene (with bonus surprise body hidden in the ice chest scare). The axe to the face. The gruesome paraplegic evisceration.
These scenes will make you jump and give you nightmares, but it’s the preceding scenes in which Hooper builds up the tension that makes it even tougher to watch. Consider the death of Pam (Teri McMinn). Her death on the meat hook and subsequent popping up in the ice chest, taken by themselves are pretty heart stopping. But let’s look how Hooper gets us there.
First there’s his Kubrickian tracking shot of her as she cautiously approaches Leatherface’s residence. Then the unsettling scene where she stumbles into the living room filled with feathers and furniture made from human bones (courtesy of Robert A. Burns’ excellent art direction). This is followed by Leatherface chasing her through the house until she runs out the door and quickly pulled back inside where her date with destiny (in this case a meat hook) awaits.
I believe this to be the best directed sequence in the whole film. Hooper bathes the interior of the house in dark beiges and ugly browns mostly using only the sunlight coming from the windows as lighting. When Pam is inside, she’s surrounded in ugly flesh tones and sickening semi-darkness and when she runs out the door, Hooper gives us a shot especially cruel to her predicament from outside looking in. I mean for a second, we actually think she’s going to escape. Momentarily the screen is filled with bright sunlight. She’s got to get out right? Wrong. Two seconds after she hits the door, Leatherface has grabbed her, bringing her back into the dingy, decaying, dark interior of the house. This scene is an exemplary example of how Hooper works over his audience (not to mention his cast). Slowly build the tension. Spring a surprise scare. Promise some escape or relief. Pull them back down into deeper into Hell. Repeat if necessary.
Or the introduction to the Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) who is picked up in the teen’s van and proceeds to cut himself before burning photographs and waving a straight razor around. Or the truly spinetingling scene where the Cook (Jim Siedow) wraps up Sally in a burlap bag, stashes her on the floor of his truck and repeatedly pokes her with a broken broomstick.
You know ‘Saw has always been accused of being a gory disreputable horror show but die-hard fans know better. There is very little in the way of blood and gore. The only real blood we see is in the meat hook scene and only AFTER the blood has already been sprayed on the wall (and a very modest amount I might add).
Marilyn Burns’ portrayal of Sally the only survivor, was the first real scream queen of the ‘70s. Whether being chased endlessly through the woods, jumping through not one but TWO windows or screaming her head off, Burns’ role would later be duplicated hundreds of times over by hundreds of actresses (mostly notably Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween), but never topped.
Like Psycho and Deranged (released the same year as ‘Saw) it was very loosely based on Ed Gein. Hooper and Co. pass the movie off as “fact” (with a little help of a narrator played by none other than a Before-He-Was-On-Night-Court John Larroquette), which some gullible souls bought into. (This was years before Blair Witch.)
The centerpiece of the film though is the family dinner sequence. Hooper’s grating score accompanied with ever tightening close-up of Burns’ eyeball while she screams at the top of her lungs will get under your skin even after repeated viewings. The tension of that scene, culminating when the Hitchhiker holds her head in a bucket while the seemingly zombified Grandpa drops his hammer ever closer to her noggin is almost unbearable to watch.
The final section of the movie after Sally’s escape from the house moves at a frenzied machine gun pace. The Hitchhiker getting ran over by the semi. The helpful trucker clobbering Leatherface with a wrench causing him to chainsaw his own leg. Sally hopping into a passerby truck seconds away from Leatherface’s slinging chainsaw. Leatherface’s frustrated whirling chainsaw dance on an open stretch of road.
These images will forever be burned into the retina of your mind long after the film is over.
Hooper went on to a career of as many ups (Poltergeist) and downs (Spontaneous Combustion, anyone?) starting with his next feature Eaten Alive (also with Burns).
QUICK THOUGHTS:
Watching this again, it’s still amazing how fast Tobe Hooper tosses the audience into the deep end of terror. From the off-kilter camerawork (the tracking shot of Pam walking from the swing to the house is still one of the GOATs) to the documentarian look and feel of the film, he puts the audience in the thick of the action and never lets up. Fifty years on, and it remains one of the quintessential horror films of all time.
4K UHD NOTES:
My god, this transfer is a thing of beauty. I was worried that if the film looked too good, it would rob it of its grindhouse aesthetic. Amazingly enough, this transfer finds a happy medium. It’s the perfect balance of sharper images and bolder colors (especially the nighttime blacks) while preserving the graininess that has always been a hallmark of the film. In short, any horror fanfic worth their salt needs to add this to their collection.
