"Actor: Allen Danziger"

• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: 40th Anniversary Restoration - 2 Disc Standard Edition | Blu Ray | (17/11/2014) from £29.99   |  Saving you £-10.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Lifeforce, Salem's Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it's also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it's blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration for Psycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they're held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented cannibalistic family, including a character known as Leatherface who maniacally wields one helluva chainsaw. The movie's powerful sense of dread is heightened by its grainy, semi-documentary style--but it also has a wicked sense of humour (and not that camp, self-referential variety that became so tiresome in subsequent horror films of the 70s, 80s and 90s). OK, in case you couldn't tell, it's "not for everyone", but as a landmark in the development of the horror/slasher genre, it ranks with Psycho, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. --Jim Emerson

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre | DVD | (08/06/2009) from £15.92   |  Saving you £-9.93 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre | DVD | (02/10/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre | DVD | (22/05/2000) from £17.98   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.06%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Terrifyingly dark and based (very loosely) on factual events, this controversial, brilliantly atmospheric, occasionally darkly funny film tells of the tragedy that befalls a group fo five teenagers one summer afternoon.

• Texas Chain Saw Massacre - The Shocking Truth | DVD | (24/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Lifeforce, Salem's Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it's also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it's blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration for Psycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they're held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented cannibalistic family, including a character known as Leatherface who maniacally wields one helluva chainsaw. The movie's powerful sense of dread is heightened by its grainy, semi-documentary style--but it also has a wicked sense of humour (and not that camp, self-referential variety that became so tiresome in subsequent horror films of the 70s, 80s and 90s). OK, in case you couldn't tell, it's "not for everyone", but as a landmark in the development of the horror/slasher genre, it ranks with Psycho, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. --Jim Emerson

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Special Edition | DVD | (10/03/2003) from £27.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  The 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre adheres to the pure-and-simple slasher-movie formula: introduce a gaggle of sexy young people, make vague gestures to distinguish them--Jessica Biel wants to get married and doesn't like pot, so she's our moral compass--then start hacking them to pieces one by one. The visual palette includes grimy crucified dolls, fly-specked pig carcasses, body parts floating in murky jars, a tobacco-chewing redneck sheriff and many slender beams of sunlight cutting through dank, dusty interiors. The camera lovingly photographs Biel's tank-topped bosom and sculpted abs as she's running in terror from a bloated, chainsaw-wielding, human-skin-wearing maniac. This remake lacks the macabre comedy of the original; it's all about the nauseating sensation of waiting for something to jump out of the dark. --Bret Fetzer