Seeing THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, twenty-five years later, is like ripping open the sarcophagus from which come ALL modern horror movies. And MASSACRE, which is now available once again in an excellent DVD edition, STILL scares the shat out of even today's jaded audiences. MASSACRE eschews plot and character development in terms of as much a pure sensory experience as can be put on film. After reports of graverobbing and necrophilic mutilation, a group of young people head out to see if any of their departed grandparents were among the ones desecrated. Along the way, they pick up a deranged hitchhiker -- he doesn't last long with them after slicing himself open with a razor and laughing -- and wind up being forced to stop for gas. Then they make the mistake of wandering over to a nearby house... and to say any further than that, of course, would be sacrilege. See it for yourself. Though the story has been ripped off by so many other horror movies that to run through it seems a cliche. But amazingly, when you experience the original for the first time, all of that just vanishes. The original blows everything else even remotely like it so far off the screen, it's astonishing. The imitators can get the words, but not the music. Surprisingly, MASSACRE is not that gory a movie. Gore is not frightening, and this is where most modern horror movies trip up: they're not really out to scare anyone, but rather MORTIFY them. What's genuinely frightening about MASSACRE is the setup as much as the payoff, the atmosphere and the primal dread of the goings-on, and the sense that whatever we are seeing now, there are far, far worse things lingering offscreen. Like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and HALLOWEEN -- two other genuinely horrific films -- it is shot in a flat, spare, almost documentary-style fashion, but at the same time is breathtaking to look at. The shots of the house steeped in the orange sunset, or the roomful of bones, have a raw beauty that no other movie like it has been able to imitate. On a nickle-and-dime budget, they achieved what movies costing a hundred times as much can't even come close to. If the movie has a flaw, it's that it ends so abruptly. It needed a third act, another round of happenings, to make what came before seem more complete. But what it does achieve is astonishing. Horror movies today, for the most part, aren't frightening. They're too sly and knowing to have any real elemental dread in their veins. Something like MASSACRE serves as a reminder of what movies like SCREAM or even FRIDAY THE 13TH wish they were. But of course that's just one shapes opinion.....THE SHAPE 