8 Horror Movies With Incredible Hidden Messages You Totally Missed
3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Go Vegetarian!
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a revelation of the horror genre, inspiring slasher movies and iconic villains in heaving, sweaty waves since its release in 1974. And whilst it's responsible as the bloody grandaddy of many gory movies we've come to know and love over the years, it's also a tentpole of... the animal rights community. Wait, what?
It's been posited that the film puts its characters into the shoes of animals sent to the slaughterhouse, experiencing the ingrained fear that the creatures subjected to industrial agriculture would in their final moments. It's not even that far fetched a reading when you consider the film's premise, boiled down to its core from the first death on screen. This is where we see a man enter a seemingly safe house with no idea what's waiting for him on the other side, receiving the blunt end of a hammer before being cut up into bite sized chunks.
Of course, the Sawyer family used to run a slaughterhouse, and they enact these practises on the victims that come onto their land. Meat hooks are undoubtedly an integral part of the Texas Chainsaw experience, as is consuming the people they kill later in the film as Sally watches on in horror.
The victims of this movie are the terrified animals we consume every day. Makes you think twice about a steak when it's a human leg, right?