The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

52. 1974 - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Sally
Bryanston Distributing Company

Honourable Mentions: The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Young Frankenstein

1974 is in contention to be one of the greatest years in film history, so any film that ends up topping that year is also in contention to be one of the greatest films ever made. While the aforementioned honourable trio are all masterpieces in their own way, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is more akin to a force of nature - a film that inspires and horrifies in equal measure, the former because of its guerrilla ingenuity and technical beauty, and the latter due to the sheer visceral quality of its imagery.

Many will make the argument that The Godfather Part II is the definitive picture of the 1970s, but Texas Chain Saw is that and so much more. It's a Vietnam-era treatise on the trauma of the Cold War generation, a rattling death howl on the inexplicable nature of the decade's violence, and finally, a cathartic return to endurance despite it all.

All of this, accomplished with a few thousand dollars and a relatively meagre cast and crew, makes it all the more incredible.

 
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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.