I re-watched Tobe Hooper/Kim Henkel's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on the big screen (thanks to an August 18, 2025, Chain Saw Day revival). As with my big-screen viewings of King Kong 1933, Jaws, Field of Dreams, Superman: The Movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Exorcist and Psycho 1960, the Texas Chain Saw re-release bestowed me an opportunity to re-experience a classic through a fresh lens.
In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's case, Hooper's ironic use of idyllic bridging surfaced in a more potent way, but it's also the character buildup that struck me as stronger during this viewing, in particular Paul A. Partain's Franklin Hardesty, who acts, for all intents and purposes, as the story's Cassandra.
The character has been long criticized for his persistent moaning (heck, even Hooper acknowledged the troubling trait), but unlike the movie's other doomed youths, Franklin anticipates the horror that's to come. His concerns should be heeded, and if they were, the kids may have survived the outcome: i.e. Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen)'s unbridled assaults.
Franklin's insight surfaces when his companions decide to pick up Edwin Neal's Hitchhiker (aka "Nubbins" in Hooper's 1986 sequel). It's Franklin, through an exchange regarding slaughterhouse practices and the fine formulation of head cheese, who exposes the passenger's dark side, not only in respect to the procedural death of livestock, but by projecting the human carnage in wait. After the Hitchhiker cuts Franklin and flees, the latter frets over the former's possible return (that he might track their van, as he's branded it in blood). As we discover, Franklin's fear is warranted, for the Hitchhiker does, in fact, link to the broadcast reports the youths have heard on the radio, regarding local graverobbing.
Franklin's affable sister, Sally (Marilyn Burns) visits their grandfather's grave, finding it unscathed, but then she and Franklin venture with the group to his now decrepit home. Once there, Franklin is left to its lower quarters, due to his wheelchair confinement. He hears the others laughing upstairs, which in light of the Hitchhiker encounter, irritates him, for he's drawn to the estate's ominous ambiance, including a set of bone sculptures, one on the floor and one dangling overhead. He calls out to his companions to reveal the unsettling signs, but again, his trepidation falls on deaf ears.
The real kicker comes that night, after Pam (Teri McMinn), Kirk (William Vail) and Jerry (Alan Danzinger) have gone missing. Sally, despite the daunting darkness, wants to venture into uncouth terrain to find them. Franklin begs her not to, fearful that if they depart the area, they might get lost (leaving open the chance that their friends could return and not find them there). Sally disagrees, leaving Franklin to play the good brother and accompany her. This precipitates the siblings' encounter with Leatherface, though it's easy to infer they were already destined to meet the aggressor, but again, it's Franklin's apprehension that taps his arrival.
Indeed, Franklin's whining might prove annoying to some, but perhaps the annoyance is more a consequential reminder of those times when we, too, warned others of something bad, only to be ignored. In other words, Franklin's prophetic inclusion in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre gives the fable a Greek-tragedy context, informing us that, through his quivering eyes and tremulous, "unheard" voice, he is us: something to consider (and take to heart) when (re)experiencing this macabre masterpiece.
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