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When police found Mrs. Worden, she was naked and slung from a meat hook in the basement. She had been gutted and dressed like a deer in hunting season.

On further investigation police discovered preserved body parts, human skulls and skeletons. They even found furniture fashioned from the remnants of once-interred corpses.

They couldn’t have known at the time, but Wisconsin police, searching the home of Ed Gein in 1957, were unraveling the definitive American nightmare.

Mild-mannered Gein had been a busy man by all accounts — raiding graves and skinning the bodies to make a female body suit, as well as for food and furniture.

The fact that he killed only one person is irrelevant. His real crimes were more unimaginable to the public consciousness.

Andrew's obsession with cult films began at midnight at the age of ten, and involved a bowl of popcorn, an old television set and John Carpenter's Halloween. Little has changed since then, besides age, the popcorn and the fact that he can now climb dark stairwells after a horror movie by himself. Andrew is a published writer of horror fiction, a screenwriter and a freelance journalist. His time is spent largely in pursuit of a truly original horror film. Failing that he has threatened to make his own.

He precedes Dahmer by at least 35 years, and yet he is the single foundation on which so many of America’s nightmares have been built — in cinematic terms it’s ‘Psycho’ (1960) ‘Deranged’ (1974), and ‘Silence of the Lambs’ (1988)

One youngster haunted by stories of Gein’s exploits, was Tobe Hooper, who would marry the memories of these stories and accounts of the Vietnam war to produce possibly the single most important American film in years — ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’.

Given the current climate of war and devastation, I think that TCM is more important a film than ever (discounting for the moment the inexplicable decision to remake the film in 2003).

Gein’s biographer, Harold Schechter, describes TCM as a “fairy tale, which has a great deal to do with the Vietnam War anxieties among the young”. It’s here that the film has the most impact.

At the time of its release, young Americans were already aware that their government was quite prepared to hastily train them, pack them into cartons and ship them off to the Far East, to die on the frontlines in countries they were never taught about in Geography.

TCM bottles the sentiments and sprays it on the audience, with the enthusiasm and single-minded purpose of an arsonist emptying the contents of a petrol can.

THE CULTDOMETER The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Dir: Tobe Hooper Starring: Gunnar Hansen, Marilyn Burns Why should I bother? For the meat hook scene alone it’s worth it – but if you’re looking for an intelligent, Hitchcockian approach to horror this is it. What others think of the film… " Joe Bob says - again and again - check it out.." - Joe Bob Briggs - What the film thinks of itself… "I knew it was special because I knew that there was nothing like it, but no, there was no way of anticipating that it would become a title as important as Gone With the Wind.." - Director Tobe Hooper - Cultdometer Rating: Fresh after all these years, raw and 150% cult – check it out.

It tells the story of a group of teenagers, packed in a green ‘Scooby Doo Mystery Machine’ van, on a day trip most of them will not remember.

A series of events leads them into the clutches of a Texas cannibalistic family, which does not take kindly to their presence in the house. It’s ‘Family Ties’ done the way Jeffrey Dahmer would have liked — it’s barbarism and wholesale slaughter, with a pinch of situation comedy.

In one of the film’s most blatant anti-war sentiments, the teens pass by a slaughterhouse where shots of the kids are interspersed with scenes of drooling, caged cattle, awaiting their fate. Their next meal of course is dubious barbeque from a dodgy garage fast food outlet. I didn’t say it was subtle.

At first glance the film is throw-away drive in fodder, but you can’t escape the barbaric undertones that are all too familiar to anyone with a passing acquaintance with CNN or Sky News.

As far as violence goes, Gein has a lot to answer for — he brought the idea to the fore that (in singer/songwriter Morrissey’s words) ‘Barbarism Begins at Home’. Extended to include the issue of war — gone was the idea that governments are there to serve us, it’s more of a case of governments being there to serve us up.

Each war gives us something new, another icon to be cold branded into the soft flesh of the collective psyche. World War One gave us Wilfred Owen and his feverish protest poetry, World War II gave us John Wayne. The Falklands yielded nothing, but further drove power from Maggie Thatcher’s clutching cadaverous hands. Vietnam gave us ‘The Deerhunter’, Nixon and political protests. The first Gulf War gave us CNN and OJ Simpson. The second Gulf war has given us Sky News, dead journalists and the biggest propaganda war since the media battle between Pepsi and Coca Cola.

After Vietnam, American film audiences were waking to the fact that the world they lived in was not quite as safe as they’d assumed. Like Gein’s neighbours, they became more guarded, yet intrigued by the nature of the beast uncoiling before them.

A reader asked me why I haven’t featured any articles lately about war, considering the war on Iraq is in full swing. It’s a good question and a hundred titles immediately sprang to mind — ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, ‘Kelly’s Heroes’, even ‘The Sound of Music’ for Christ’s sake.

And in as much as all of these films have much to say and different ways of saying them — the bottom line is that 'TCM' says it all, and it says it in such a way that you just have to sit up and take notice.

Films aside for a moment — the plight of Iraqi citizens, killed journalists and the soldiers engaged in fighting in their countries amounts to nothing. The war isn’t out there, at least not the war we can win. The frontlines are in our hearts and minds, the worlds we can change are those that we actually live in.

Sounds callous, but when the three-minute warning sounds, and the end of the world hangs over your head like a beckoning meat hook — who will be in your thoughts? The Iraqis?

I’ll just leave that with you…

'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' is available from THE VIDEO SHOP - 13 North Park Centre, 7th Avenue, Parktown North - Tel: 011 788 8613. Email: tebaldi@mweb.co.za. With a vast range of titles, especially rare and classic films and knowledgeable staff, THE VIDEO SHOP has just what you’re looking for. THE VIDEO SHOP is Cult de Sac’s video outlet of choice.

Cult de Sac Parting Shot

"I just can't take no pleasure in killing. There's just some things you gotta do. Don't mean you have to like it." – The Old Man

Last Week’s Meaningless Trivia Question:

Who played the role of in Pazuzu in ‘The Exorcist’? Has this person ever won an Academy Award? How did this person achieve the voice for the devil? And just to take up some more of your time — why did this person try to sue Warner Bros. when the film was released?

Answer: Mercedes McCambridge — she had won an Academy Award — she took up drinking and smoking again and was tied to a chair and tortured. She tried to sue Warner Bros because she wasn’t credited for the voice work.

This Week’s Meaningless Trivia Question:

Gunnar Hansen, the man behind the Leatherface mask, further explored the chainsaw lunatic syndrome in another film. What is it? And who is the ‘Scream Queen’ who stars alongside him in the picture?

Cult de Sac Avenues of Interest