What's it about? A brother and sister take their friends to visit the farmhouse of their deceased grandmother out in the Texan countryside and pick up a strange hitchhiker along the way. Before long they discover a dark and morbid family living next door who feed off humans, including Leatherface, a mute, lumbering giant wearing a leather mask with a penchant for dispatching his innocent victims with a chainsaw.What makes it groundbreaking? Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre can be seen as perhaps the first true slasher movie of the decade, introducing horror fans to the use of power tools as effective weapons for carnage which would persist throughout the genre in the years to come. Its semi-documentary style was also hugely influential on movies to follow, but it is perhaps Leatherface himself who influenced other films the most - a truly iconic horror movie villain if ever there was one.
