Schlingensief makes it quickly clear that he is not dealing in subtlety. He isn’t interested in crafting a roller coaster that is subtextually about bigger things. No, he tells the audience what the film is about in gory detail - literally. The German Chainsaw Massacre is about capitalism as cannibalism and the point is illustrated by having people’s heads smashed in with rocks, human bodies chopped into pieces, and flesh consumed in stomach-churning close-ups. Sometimes you need to see the horror right in front of you. It’s not thrilling, nor is it pleasant, but it’s absolutely necessary.
The great magic trick The German Chainsaw Massacre pulls is that it forces the viewer to unconsciously compare it to its Texas predecessor. It’s impossible not to when both films have similar titles, feature cannibal families, and the gnashing of power tools. The expectations of the genre come into play and a viewer wonders who will survive and how they’ll escape, completely unaware, that there is no escape and that survival may be the worst punishment of all.
The closest audience surrogate in German Chainsaw is Clara (Karina Fallenstein) who is trying to escape East Germany to meet up with her lover in West. Often times, horror survival films like to present an innocent figure and force them to turn into the same monster they’re fighting in order to survive, like in The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but in this case, Clara is monster from frame one. Her knife rises up in slow motion, her partner's face stretches into a scream of terror, and the blade descends into his flesh, instantly labeling Clara’s with the role of a merciless killer. She is no different from the cannibal family she meets on the road. There’s no final girl to root for in The German Chainsaw Massacre. There’s no clash between the monsters and the innocent. Everyone is guilty and they can only swirl around in a spiral of gruesome destruction. The screams are constant and will never end.
Tobe Hooper used to say he was disappointed that no one realized The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a dark comedy, so when he got to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, he put it all out in the open. He filled the film with over the top gore and excess to let people know that this was all a pitch black joke. The German Chainsaw Massacre has all the gore of Texas Chainsaw 2, but unlike Hooper, Schlingensief never safety nets his creation in the detached 80’s style Hooper utilized in Texas Chainsaw 2. German Chainsaw is harshly shot on like an industrial video on 16mm. There are no self-conscious flourishes. The viewer is never allowed to distance themselves from what they’re seeing on screen. That’s not to say that The German Chainsaw Massacre is dour experience, because it is humorous in its own way, but it's the kind of laughs that get caught in your throat. It’s funny because it’s over the top and unrelenting, until those attributes are magnified to the point of nausea, and they either become funny again or twist back into horror. It makes the satire cut deep, because there’s nothing to hold onto, and reality is nothing but a neverending nightmare.
Justin Decloux is the director of Impossible Horror and co-founder of the Laser Blast Film Society, who are co-presenting GOETHE FILMS series "Christoph Schlingensief: Approach those you fear". He hosts the podcasts The Important Cinema Club and Loose Cannons and runs Film Trap.
Image: courtesy Filmgalerie 451
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