August 2024
Twice The Horror: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
When Daniel Pearl, ASC set foot on the set of co-writer and director Tobe Hooper’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, he was just 23 years old. “It’s a pretty outrageous number by today’s standards,” he says now, “but in 1973, it was ridiculously young!” A scrappy film made on an estimated $80,000 budget, Texas Chain Saw would go on to become a horror classic and launch a franchise — as well as Pearl’s career. Today, 50 years after its release, the 1974 movie stands alongside such titles as The Exorcist and The Shining as one of the scariest films of all time. Pearl recalls that Hooper noticed his work while interviewing editors for Texas Chain Saw. The shot choices in a Texas Department of Public Safety PSA caught his eye, and it...more
