The Remastered Massacre: Should Horror Films be Digitally Restored?

In 1973, with a little budget and large ambition, film student Tobe Hooper headed to the Texan outback in the middle of July with an amateur film crew and unknown cast to shoot a little horror film. Through several production issues, Hooper shot vociferously, and everyone endured the harsh conditions of sweltering heat, long hours and unwashed costumes. Thirty two days later, shooting had finally completed and Hooper spent over a year working on the final cut. Several months were then spent hunting for a suitable distributor until 1974, when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hit cinema screens nationwide. 

Following a group of friends who fall victim to a family of grave-robbing cannibals, Hooper's film capitalises on the tales of Ed Gein and presents us with a disturbingly dysfunctional family including none other, than the infamous Leatherface. This, combined with the use of sound and clever cinematography, provided audiences with a surreal nightmare - a terrifying cinematic experience like no other. Upon its initial release, theatres received numerous complaints and the film was notoriously banned in several countries. Despite the notable lack of blood and gore, comments such as "This is about the sickest carnival of slaughter ever seen..." are representative of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's initial reception. But of course, people love to be scared witless and it is no surprise that, with the added notoriety, the film's eventual domestic gross was over $30 million. 

Over the years, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has not only acquired a strong cult status, but has also been added to the Museum of Modern Art, become the eighth highest-grossing horror franchise of all time and named by Sight & Sound as one of the most important movies ever made. It has an undeniable reputation of being one of the best horror films in cinema history and has originated several horror motifs that we are all familiar with today, namely the improper use of DIY tools. It has also provided us with one of the horror greats - Leatherface - who stands proudly alongside the likes of Freddy, Jason and Michael. 

As a "timeless milestone of terror whose sheer raw power remains undiminished to this day", The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's high standing and cultural impact has spanned over decades. It continues to do so as this year marks the film's fortieth anniversary and to celebrate, MPI and Dark Sky Films have released a remastered version of the original, which was unveiled at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas just yesterday. 

Terms such as 'remastered' or 'restored' are thrown about with great abandon these days, so what do they actually mean? As I understand it - although please feel free to correct me - remastering a film can simply mean creating a new digital master copy from an existing source, typically enhancing the quality in the process, by re-framing and improving the sound. Restoration on the other hand, is a labour of love and involves repairing physical problems with the original film, often digitally. Whether it is one or the other, here are the essential facts you need to know about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's resurface;

• The whole process has been overseen by Todd Wieneke of Dark Sky Films and took place at NOLO Digital Film in Chicago
• An ARRISCAN Film Scanner was used
• The film has received a brand new 4K transfer, which is roughly four times the original resolution
• Using the original 16mm/AB rolls, all 120, 960 original frames were scanned
• Over the course of five months and 40 hour work weeks, each frame was corrected, the colour and sound was enhanced and flaws such as scratches, film stains, chemical stains, dirt and torn perforations were eradicated

It was a hefty task for the NOLO institute, a painstaking process that engineer Boris Seagraves recalls; 

"There were hundreds, if not thousands, of instances where you’d find a splice mark cooked into the middle of a frame. Some frames would have close to two hundred dirt events on them. We also spent a lot of time stabilizing the image. When doing a digital scan of a conformed 16mm print with a splice at every cut, it can be tough to achieve the high standards we all aspire to in the era of digital cinema. What might have passed as acceptable in the 70′s looks jarring now. So we worked hard to smooth out the tremors that almost inevitably occur when scanning this type of film element. There were tears in the film that we had to digitally rebuild from adjacent frames. There were tens of thousands of things we were dealing with...This film probably needed the most restoration of any project we've done".

Whether remastered or restored, the above proves that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has been given a little bit of a face lift. I can't help but feel however, that the debate here is not surrounding the correct technical term for the process, but whether in fact the process is necessary at all. Using Hooper's classic as an example, perhaps we should question whether horror films need to be digitally restored? Admittedly, recent restorations of other classics such as Jaws or Phantom of the Paradise (discussed in a previous article) have been a sure-fire hit and look bloody magnificent, but what about the grimier, grizzly frights from the 1970s? Shouldn't they stay that way? 

First, let’s establish a little context. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, America was a place of severe social, cultural and political unrest. Unemployment was rife, there were massive fuel shortages, race riots, Watergate and the assassination of figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy. The Vietnam War took centre stage, leading to mass trauma, Napalm attacks and events such as the Kent State shootings in which government troops fired on American students who were protesting against the war. Every day, America was faced with death, depression, and the startling realisation that perhaps, they weren't the good guys after all. 

During this time, young filmmakers were eager to depict their thoughts, feelings and experiences of living in such a nation, let down by the perils of flailing humanity. After the success of Psycho, the horror film had already moved firmly away from its supernatural scares and placed the threat within the family. However, Wes Craven was arguably the first young, American director to truly exhibit such angst and disdain toward the human condition, with the controversial The Last House on the Left. Directly influenced by Vietnam footage, Craven created a film that possessed overt brutality and sadism, intrical to its socio-cultural context. Two years later, and Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre generated a similar sort of message, influenced by the tales of Ed Gein and the current American condition - that we are all capable of masochism, sadism and unsavoury things. 

So what's this all got to do with digital restoration I hear you ask? Well, taking budgetary restraints and technological capabilities as a given, the aesthetics of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre also possess a deep, metaphysical significance. Each frame exhibits a dirty, grainy, scuzzy quality that is undeniably connected to the film, and nations, tone of unrelenting nihilism. Every grain and any scratch, perforation or stain inadvertently adds to other aesthetic choices, such as the use of low lighting and erratic editing, or Daniel Pearl's claustrophobic framing of the Texan landscape. To put it simply, these imperfections add to the essence of the film, an essence that may well in-part be lost, if replaced with a clean and pristine sheen. 

Of course, there is every chance that this remaster or restoration of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre could be brilliant. A little biased, perhaps, but Wieneke explains; "I've seen the film literally frame-by-frame and I’m still hearing and seeing things I never noticed before…it just adds a whole different level.” Similarly, NOLO Colourist Michael Matusek adds, “This 4K scan delivers such an intense reality that it feels like you’re really seeing through the film to the actual world behind it". Indeed as they exclaim, it is a possibility that this new version may open our eyes to a whole new level of appreciation for the film. It may fall in line with other, recent restorations in looking better than ever expected. Hooper, the man himself, also seems on-board and impressed with this recent technological feat; 

"I haven’t seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the big screen for many, many years. This 40th anniversary restoration is absolutely the best the film has ever looked. The colour and clarity is spectacular, displaying visual details in the film that were never before perceptible. The newly remastered 7.1 soundtrack breathes new life and energy into the film. I am very much looking forward to audiences experiencing this film as they never have before".

And there's the kicker, the main argument in favour for any restoration of any horror film - the chance to see it on a big screen. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fans have been promised a limited, cinematic release of this recent restoration in the summer months (an official date is not yet confirmed) and that is something to celebrate. Yes, an essence of the film may be lost when replaced with certain cleanliness, but to have Leatherface come at you with his chainsaw, or to hear the infamous slam of that metallic door echo throughout the auditorium, is an opportunity that any horror fan would happily endure, I'm sure. 

What are your thoughts on the digital restoration debate? Do you think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre should have been left alone? Or are you looking forward to seeing a clean-cut version? Post a comment!