A vanload of kids driving across the country run afoul of a crazed degenerate family of vicious redneck killers in remote rural Texas. That's it for the (admittedly slight) set-up, but the plot is basically inconsequential as this one's really all about creating and sustaining a supremely dark, grim, and unsparingly harsh mood that gets under your skin and makes you squirm like a hapless fish caught on a hook. Director Tobe Hooper's masterful talent for crafting a raw, rattling and uncompromisingly fierce intensity that slowly, yet surely builds to a nerve-wracking fever pitch in the harrowing last third (the infamous diner table sequence is particularly horrifying) has never been matched or surpassed in either any of the subsequent sequels or in the needless and atrocious overly graphic remake. Hooper's strong evocation of the bleak, dusty and desolate Texas backwoods projects a profound sense of dread and unease which never lets up for a minute. Moreover, Hooper's wise decision to keep the violence largely off-screen enhances rather than detracts from the film's alarming power to scare and disturb; this welcome and refreshing concession to the viewer's imagination ensures that the movie never deteriorates into a mindless and revolting bloodbath while still allowing the jolting outbursts of sudden brutal violence to retain their ability to startle the audience. The admirable refusal to provide some kind of explanation for why the horrific goings-on occur qualifies as another major asset; instead Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel merely present a stark and unwavering depiction of random gratuitous violence and unbridled savagery as if such horrible things happen all the time. This movie is further enhanced by a wickedly funny sense of black-as-coal gallows humor, with the loony hick clan -- the weary, bitter old man (marvelously played by Jim Siedow), unhinged hitchhiker (a deliciously batty portrayal by Edwin Neal), and the freakish, squealing, gibbering Leatherface (an astonishingly bestial and bloodcurdling Gunnar Hansen) -- serving as a strikingly grotesque caricature of your typical American family. Marilyn Burns makes for a fetching and pitiable luckless damsel-in-distress as Sally while Paul A. Partain contributes a memorably obnoxious performance as the extremely whiny, hateful and unsympathetic cripple Franklin. Kudos are also in order for the wondrous wealth of inspired macabre touches: a chicken in a birdcage, the armchair made out of human bones, and the aged grandfather (John Dugan in hideously wizened make-up) who drinks human blood. The spare, droning and dissonant experimental score by Hooper and Wayne Bell adds substantially to the picture's considerable unsettling impact. Daniel Pearl's grainy, but polished cinematography offers several smooth and sinuous tracking shots that are positively breathtaking to behold. Essential viewing.