I didn't feel that way about it, and to offer up an illustrating counter-example, one of the reasons why I think
Alien is a great Horror movie, as well as just one of the greatest movies of all time in general (as opposed to TCM) is the fact that it not only gives us the sensation of extreme terror in its scary moments, but also makes those moments more impactful by pacing itself well, giving us time to breathe in-between the scares, so the effect of them continues to be terrifying, as opposed to becoming numbing (like with Hooper's movie). Like, the chestburster scene is obviously one of the all-time great shocks in movie history, but if Ridley Scott had paced
Alien like TCM, then he would've tried to maintain that sense of extreme terror almost non-stop across the second half of his movie, which would've resulted in a much less effective experience, which is a mistake that Hooper failed to avoid with his film, IMO.
Just because Alien is also an excursion into a kind of claustrophobic terror, I think it is a mistake to be asking the two movies to be more similar as a way of making TCM better.
As accomplished and great and as unique a film as Alien is, it is in no way a formally daring film in the way that TCM is. And so for you to be asking Hoopers film to play more like Alien, is for you to ask it to not be exactly what makes it such a unique experience as well as such a uniquely visceral horror film.
It's often mentioned by the more astute critics out there (correctly), that what Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in its heart, is actually an outgrowth of experimental cinema. It really has more in common with Michael Snow's "Wavelength" then Tod Browning's "Dracula". Now if this particular experiment that it is doing doesn't work for you, I can get that. And I understand the reasoning you are laying out here (even though I would argue to my death that is a limited and ultimately wrong way to approach this movie). But to equate what Hooper has done here with a 'mistake' is to not be taking the film on its own terms. Terms that, for those that champion the film, are what make it one of the greatest (or simply
the greatest) American independent movie of all time.
For example, I imagine for some, they would view the scene where one of the characters stumbles into the 'trophy room' as being an example of Hooper's amateurism. The scene goes on endlessly as it pans across discarded bones and skulls and skin lampshades and all other manner of nightmare fuel. It zooms in. It pans across. It cuts to her screaming. It zooms in on more bones. Pans across. Over and over again. For critics the scene likely seems as if it goes on a few beats too long because, I imagine, they would argue it continues long past the point where we as an audience understand what is in this room. How many bones do we actually need to see. But what Hooper is doing here is he's elongating what is a single moment for this girl. The paralysis that grips her as she takes everything in. Sure, we as an audience understand the information in the frame long before the scene ends, but to understand how she interprets it, we need to continue on and on and on. Make it seem as if there is a whole universe of human remains for her to take in, in what may be the longest ten seconds of her life (which will also be the last few seconds of her life).
You can extend this approach to the pursuit of Sally. Yes, we as an audience understand what is happening to her. And most filmmakers are under the impression that this is enough. But to understand
her experience it must be pushed further and further and further past the breaking point. This is one of the essential ingredients of what makes TCM work. Its empathy towards the vantage point of the victims. It removes most of the thrill and excitement we generally might expect to engage us as we vicariously absorb mindless violence for our entertainment, and turns it into something that is gruelling, arduous, a torture to claw yourself to the end of. Breaking it up into bite sized portions is a disservice to the ugliness the film is depicting. A disservice to the whole point of the film.
Now, I've had my own struggles with canonized classics of the genre that are also deliberately unorthodox in their approach. I can't even recall how many times I had to sit threw Dawn of the Dead to appreciate the shagginess of its story. How Romero blends in so many disparate ideas into the film that it never really explores any of them terribly in depth, but by doing so, creates this panoramic view of this particular zombie invasion. It's not simply a story of surviving what is happening, but it is about the collapse of society and how everything in the world we know would be reordered. There is a good reason to not delve super in depth into any one of his mini-thesis' because by breaking it all up into what seems like tonal chaos actually accentuates the horror of a broken world. And for years and years and years I simply contended it was 'a mess'. And I was wrong, very wrong even though technically it very much definitely a mess. But it took me about seven watches to finally understand this.
So my advice to you is to barricade yourself in a room and watch nothing but Texas Chainsaw Massacre until you agree with me. No daylight. No sleeping. No water. Just this movie for decade upon decade until it breaks you in half.