By JASON COMERFORD

Tobe Hooper’s seminal 1974 shocker still has no equal in unrelenting intensity, gratuitous remakes or no; Hooper’s subsequent career slowly flamed out in a downward spiral of excess, but there’s no denying his first film’s raw power. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a marvel of editorial technique and ferocious directorial energy, and its nightmare vision of heartland America gone terribly sour is still a galvanizing experience like no other.

Vital to its impact is the striking musical score Hooper co-composed with Wayne Bell; metallic, percussive elements rattle and scrape against each other, with booming steel drum strikes echoing hollowly underneath tape-manipulated clusters of sound (one particularly distinctive ratchet effect was sprinkled into the 2003 remake). The score offers up absolutely no familiar comforts – there’s not so much as a chord anywhere to latch onto, and it’s an essential element to establishing an anticipatory atmosphere in which the worst is always just about to happen. Even the end titles leave no respite, the score gnawing at you all the way down, a nightmare that never ceases.

As for a score release, it seems highly unlikely one will ever happen. A music master may never have existed to begin with; according to some reports, the score was at least partially improvised and recorded directly into the film’s sound mix, bypassing a separate musical recording altogether. It’s a shame, because Hooper and Bell’s hellish, unearthly soundscape cries out to be appreciated on its own.