unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose … and yet it’s well-made, well-acted, and all too effective.” Steve Crum of Dispatch-Tribune Newspapers criticized the film, describing it as “cultish trash that set new low standards for brutality”. In his 1976 article “Fashions in Pornography” for Harper’s Magazine, writer Stephen Koch described The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as “unrelenting sadistic violence as extreme and hideous as a complete lack of imagination can possibly make it”. Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle called the film “a backwoods masterpiece of fear and loathing, Texas style.”
Thirty-six years later, some critics called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre one of the scariest movies ever made. Mike Emery of the Austin Chronicle said that the film was “horrifying, yet engrossing … But the worst part about this vision is that despite its