My Friend Leatherface

We pulled into Bastrop around noon. This is a bad move: everyone knows you don’t go to a rundown gas station in small-town Texas unless you’re looking for trouble. We were, so we walked right in.

The Gas Station is the only major surviving site from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the 1974 low-budget classic by Austin director Tobe Hooper, who cast local unknowns in leading roles and filmed in rural areas near the city. An exploration of human savagery more artistic than its title implies, the film tells the tale of road-trippers who stumble upon a family of sadistic cannibals. It is visceral, violent, and at times, beautiful.

The final shot — masked killer Leatherface twirling his chainsaw in the haze of the rising sun, unpunished and unexplained — is cinematic poetry. A light so lovely, it makes the darkness feel worse. It is a very American story.

I was in Austin on book tour and I wanted to see The Gas Station. Now I could, thanks to an unexpected break. An NPR host had blown me off for the second time after making me wait for his call like a 1950s schoolgirl. I was annoyed but had hours to kill and knew just the place for killing.

My husband and I set off for Bastrop, letting the capital fade from view. Austin was unrecognizable from my last visit in 2018. Tech oligarchs had built a skyline of skyscrapers that loomed like landing pads for bad ideas. Driverless cars zipped through bitcoin-bathed streets. The conspiracy theorists work for right-wing think tanks and nobody there is slacking. On the outskirts lurks Tesla, where a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk rips through Austin’s famed weirdness and affordability.

I didn’t want to feel scared, so I headed to the site of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

* * *

Today The Gas Station is a barbecue joint that sells horror memorabilia. I had read it had items from the original Chainsaw, but that is no longer the case. They had them once, the owner said, but then the Californians ruined everything.

The Californians ruined everything is a phrase I was hearing a lot in Texas.

The owner explained that an entertainment corporation had forced them to transform their TCM pilgrimage site into a generic chop shop due to an alleged copyright infringement, despite the store’s connection to the original film. He spoke ...