Actually, Hooper stated that the character in the fridge was indeed dead and that she was indeed twitching and moving after she was dead. The same way Kirk (the first guy who gets killed by leatherface) was twitching after getting hit in the head with a hammer.
Now to that overly negative rant you gave about the great TCM. Too make my response easier, I will quote segments of your statements and respond to them one by one.
"I cannot believe that so many movies have copied off such a bland, lifeless, slow moving, and dare I say, boring film."
Well, I'm glad to see you at least acknowledge teh fact that it was an innovative and inspiring movie for other directors. But this raises a question, if it's so bad, then why did so many other great horror directors integrate aspects of TCM into their movies, and why do all of them recognize it as one of the most creative and just plain best horror movies ever? The fact that so many other horror directors did use it as innovation, makes your arguement of TCM being a bad movie completely void.
"I understand that Hooper couldn't get enough of a budget to provide any decent gore in the film. And it makes sense. What studio is going to give a guy money to develop a movie which features wooden actors for characters that have 0 development and no one gives a crap wether they die or not. The film is, in every single aspect completely unrewarding. The fact that it got made at all is amazing."
Ah, well now it all makes sense, a horror movie has to have gore and blood in it to be good huh? Yeah, I guess that makes sense since so many movies relying on psychological aspects rather then gore suck. (the shining, night of the living dead, psycho). Yeah, they were all ruined because they didn't have a ridiculous amount of gore.
I'd like to ask you if you actually believe that statement you made, at least the part about the gore. If so, then you can wave bye bye to your credibility (not that you had much to begin with, seeing as your trying to bash a movie that is quite unbashable, considering it's importants to its genre.
The movie was purposely made with a minimum amount of gore, as evil dead said, gore is cheap, if he really wanted to put it in he could have easily. But as Hooper said, he wanted the audience to have to finish the violent acts they began to witness in their minds, thus making it even more disturbing since the mind can produce images far more terrifying then a movie screen. This is only part of the overwhelming psychological aspect of the film. It would have been very easy for him to rely on gore as a crutch, thus eliminating the use for actual creativity or psychological elements that are in the movie.
"In fact, in most cases, I truly wanted to the characters to die. I keep hoping that I'll see someone murdered because I'm so sick of listening to them. The wheelchair gimp for example. I wanted to kill him myself, but his chainsaw death was so anticlimactic I just wanted to strangle hooper for filming it such a slipshod manner. COMPLETE lack of pay off."
The characters weren't meant to be likeable, they were meant to be dumb and annoying, because they were supposed to be hippies, and hippies suck. Hooper knew this and made them annoying and hippi-like, which accounts for their annoyance.
It's funny you say "anti-climactic" because that was deliberately done as well. He wanted to make the movie as blunt and real as possible. And to do this, you can't build up tension for a death scene, otherwise, people will remember it's a movie and that it's not real. What he did by having people die off so quickly is create an atmosphere of completely surprise. You never really did know what was going to happen after you see the first guy die, because you know that this film maker is attempting to totally blind side you constantly by showing the deaths happen in a realisitic and honest manner. In real life, there is no loud pounding music building suspense when you are about to die. There is no distracting cat running by you, scaring you for a second, then making you feel better about the situation you are in when you realize thaty ou were just scared of a cat, only to be killed off in a predictable in generic manner by the real threat. He created actual tension, and actual surprise, without relying on cheesy gimmicks like hart pounding music or typical jump scares to do the work for him. Anyone who uses this aspect of the movie as a negative simply does not know anything about horror, period.
"Then, finally, when this loser of a girl (who DESERVED to die, by all rights) gets away, thanks to jumping in a truck while the first trucker who helped her is presumably killed, what does Leatherface do? He waves his stupid chainsaw around over his head for a few seconds.
Roll credits."
What should he have done? His brother was just run over by a truck and he is now alone with his other brother who will beat him for messing up. Had they showed anything else happen afterwards, like him going back into the house, or the aftermath, it would have ruined the whole feel of the movie. It was meant to feel like a documentary of sorts, and a documentary would end as soon as the story actually ends. Just as this one did.
While we're at it, lets talk about leatherface. Well actually, i see you didn't bash him at all, so that's good. Maybe that means you recognize him as the brilliant and creative character that he is. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you do in order to by pass the complete verbal spanking I would have to give you should you try to bash him.
Well, those are all the comments i felt should be corrected, I'll finish by saying that if you don't like TCM, that is fine. You are of course entitled to your opinion and I'm not at all trying to say everyone should love this movie or enjoy watching it. But, you should give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that whether you like it or not, it is a great, innovative, inspiration, unique and creative work unlike anything that has ever been made before. Something as innovative and something that is so widely recognized by horror fans and horrorfilm makers as greatness should show you that there is something in this film that is truley magnificant, even if you didn't care for it.