The sounds of Texas Chainsaw Massacre are almost as well known (and as well copied) as the film’s visuals.
The sounds? Really, Matt?
Yes, really.
Now, Tobe Hooper gets the full credit for the movie’s horrifying visuals, and it’s all deserved, but, the soundscape credit goes to the artist extraordinaire, Wayne Bell, and he deserves to be celebrated too.
If you never saw the 1974 original, maybe don’t. It’s unsettling. But for the opposite of the reasons people flock to bubble gum pop music, Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the dreadiest trouble-slung lopping of limbs you can experience in an hour and twenty three minutes. It set the bar for many of the slashers that followed. And, not just visually, because the score went on to influence composers, musicians, and sonic-stagers alike.
Some of the sounds are up close. Some are far away. Some are bowel-vibrating low, and others are ear-piercing high. Some sounds are found, like the radios playing music at various distances featured throughout the movie. Others are orchestrated, like the warbling echo chambers we repeatedly find ourselves in as the story progresses and then simmers in unsettling restlessness.
After binging our way through all sorts of scary movies this Halloween season, my wife and I ended on this movie, with its sounds, sending me searching for more. To be fair, she said “no more,” and isn’t sure she ever wants to watch this particularly movie ever again, but—I was utterly fascinated by just how viscerally evil the entire experience of the movie feels.*
Thank the gods for Thomas Hobbs being on the case. You have to read this quote at a minimum (but I also highly recommend his entire piece too). Hobbs sat down with Wayne Bell and sliced right to the core of the truth (my emphasis added):
“My job was to create this world that you don’t see, but it’s still a central part of building out the menace,” explains the veteran Wayne Bell, who masterminded The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s unsettling soundscapes and created its score in partnership with his “friend” Hooper. “It was about creating a musical tone so that when you’re watching these relatively mundane characters driving through the Texan countryside, there’s a feeling something dreadful is bubbling under the surface. There’s something mystical in it, for sure; the music could be perceived as nature taking its vengeance.”
Having worked for various local radio stations across central Texas, Bell was the perfect person to create the fuzzy van stereo transmissions that are a constant presence throughout the film. Jolly, banjo-based Hicksville jams are juxtaposed with a solemn newscaster warning listeners about graverobbers using decomposing corpses to create “grisly works of art” down at the local cemetery.
Bell’s father was an accomplished fiddle player, but because his dad was also blind, he didn’t get to experience images and music working in unison. Therefore, from a young age, Bell was taught by his dad the importance of instruments creating compositions so vibrant that they could conjure up whole scenes inside a listener’s head.
Bell’s father was…blind? And taught him the value of a sound conjuring entire images?
Even if you have one tool, or one mode of expression, just like Bell had when he was charged with coming up with the sound of the movie—how can you create a pervasive feeling that reaches into the entire experience of the audience.
You can write a sound.
You can write a movie.
You can write a feeling.
You can sing a sound or a movie or a feeling too. Or draw them. Or dance them. Or even power-point them!
The real point is, as Hobbs’ piece unpacks via Bell’s work, create to curate feelings.
*I don’t actually “like” that feeling, but I’m always fascinated by how something conveys a feeling this strong. I think it’s the producer fascination inside of me. Whenever I experience, or see others experiencing a strong and fully emotional reaction to something, whether it’s slasher-horror or rom-coms, dance-pop or sludge-metal, I just want to understand the markers and triggers evoking the emotions.
