Analysis of Opening Sequences; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre titles open with woman cutting dead meat within a dark room with dead animals hanging from the ceiling. This creates a dark atmosphere and makes the audience unnerved, as the images are unpleasant and somewhat unfamiliar. The traditional horror icons include blood, the dead bodies, these images are used introduce the audience to the genre of the film. The woman then screams in pain and dies whilst giving birth to a facially disfigured baby. This toys with the audience’s morbid fascination and makes them want to watch more even though it disturbs them.

The titles roll alongside the dramatic music, which has a slow heart beat noise. The titles are written in a typewriter font. Whilst the titles are shown images of a disfigured child, dead animals, and a child killing animals are shown. The images are shown very close up, with dim lighting, which is unsettling for the viewers as it sometimes unclear to see so the audience has to focus and some images are shocking, and repulsive, this enables the audience to react with the film. Images of a warehouse full of hanging, blood dripped butchery equipment, in the middle of a deserted land, introduce the eerie setting to the audience.

There are also images of a man with very bloody hands and covering his face with a rag, who is told by another male that “its ok Hewitt you don’t have to be pretty to work in a slaughter house” showing the audience the possibility the man is the boy in the images with the disfigured face, this may also create a tense feeling for the audience as they are unable to see the mans face properly, therefore they are left imagining repulsive faces which could look like the man named Hewitt’s face.

Newspaper cut outs are shown with headlines such as “Texas Town Dies”, which tells the audience the setting of the story, is very desolate. This is proved again when the titles end and an establishing shot shows a large remote house surrounded by large spacious dry and deserted land. This makes the audience feel the eerie atmosphere of the film as it shows it is isolated aloneness.