Chainsaws in Popular Culture - Film

Film

Chainsaws have appeared in countless films being used for their intended purpose, but this rarely if ever is given a prominent role in the plot. More prominent however is portrayals of chainsaws as weapons or torture devices.

Despite chainsaws having been around since the 1930s, they were not seen used as a weapon in film until the 1960s, possibly due to Hays Code censorship restrictions on portrayals of graphic violence.

Among the earliest films to portray chainsaws as weapons are Dark of the Sun (1968) and The Wizard of Gore (1970). Wes Craven's 1972 film The Last House on the Left, would be referred to as “The original Chainsaw Massacre” in advertising campaigns during later re-releases.

In 1974, arguably the most famous and influential chainsaw use in a film was seen when Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released. The film, loosely based on famous murderer Ed Gein (though unlike the killers in the film Gein did not use chainsaws), would etch the chainsaw into the public mind as an object of gruesome terror, even though actual chainsaw to flesh contact was only seen once in the whole movie. It would be followed by a direct sequel, two standalone sequels and in 2003 a remake which would receive its own prequel. Following its release, many horror films, especially lower budget ones, began to incorporate chainsaw gore scenes, a trend which continues to the present day.

1987 would bring the next most famous horror film use of the chainsaw with Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II, where instead of being used from villains, this time is the hero the one who uses the power tool to fight the evil and set right what is wrong (The previous film also contained a chainsaw, but it was ultimately not used for violence). In the film's greatest sequence, protagonist Ash Williams attaches a chainsaw to his stump to replace a severed hand (which he had removed with said chainsaw), marking a point where the protagonist quit running from the spirits and chooses to fight. The chainsaw hand would have appearances in the film’s sequel, various spin offs and would be parodied often, symbolizing the will to fight things that (until the moment when the hero gets the mighty tool of power) were utterly undefeatable.

Due to the high level of gore associated with the chainsaws use as a weapon, appearances as such outside of the horror genre were uncommon. One notable one was in Brian De Palma's 1983 gangster film Scarface. The scene in question depicted a Colombian gangster dismembering another gangster to extract information.