10 Horror Movies That Fill You With Dread

Nearly 50 years and a dozen dire sequels later, it’s simply remarkable how little of its power the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre has lost. Made on a shoestring budget in 1974, Tobe Hooper’s early slasher masterpiece remains a stomach churningly gross piece of cinema.

The plot, such as it is, sees a group of ill-prepared kids out of gas on Texan back roads. They approach a rural house to seek help. Instead, they find a petrifying family of freaks and monsters who gleefully kill several of them before capturing series semi-hero Sally.

This film sets its tone of terror from the title on down. You know what you’re getting with this picture (well, sort of - there’s massacring, and chainsaws, but not combined), but that only enhances the fear factor. Hooper does everything he can to make what we see look like real footage, and the house of horrors is one of the genre’s great locations, with something foul around every corner.

Later entries to the canon tend to focus heavily on Leatherface, but the more we know about him, the less interesting he becomes. The original just takes us to a strange place, then hops back in the truck and leaves us there to our fate.