This one I came to late, long after I’d seen enough teen slashers to know I generally loathe them—in my opinion they fake at being counterculture, when they are morality tales in different garb—and it disturbed me, as it is like you said, a fairy tale for the post-Manson/Ed Gein world. It seemed beyond morality, except for the general “don’t stray from the path” narrative that has been in our tales since the beginning. I can see the door slam shut behind Leatherface as he drags a body into the abattoir even now, and I’ve watch it exactly once. You say it well, it is a story of archetypes and works on that level, the deepest one, with its grimy facade of gore masking the fairy tale colors of the forest, the red cape, the wolf’s grizzled mane.
This one I came to late, long after I’d seen enough teen slashers to know I generally loathe them—in my opinion they fake at being counterculture, when they are morality tales in different garb—and it disturbed me, as it is like you said, a fairy tale for the post-Manson/Ed Gein world. It seemed beyond morality, except for the general “don’t stray from the path” narrative that has been in our tales since the beginning. I can see the door slam shut behind Leatherface as he drags a body into the abattoir even now, and I’ve watch it exactly once. You say it well, it is a story of archetypes and works on that level, the deepest one, with its grimy facade of gore masking the fairy tale colors of the forest, the red cape, the wolf’s grizzled mane.