Under the sweltering sun, a green van rumbles down lonely Texan roads. Blanketed by darkness, a spaceship drifts through the oppressive silence of outer space. Released five years before Alien (1979), Tobe Hooper’s nightmarish vision of American depravity and destruction illustrated how rural America could be just as unknowable and terrifying as a planetoid in the furthest reaches of the cosmos, its inhabitants as strange, unsettling and alien as a Xenomorph.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was banned in several countries, but its gruesome sights and sounds seeped through the collective imagination. It left a lasting impression on director Ridley Scott, who cited it as an inspiration for Alien.
