The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

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This article is about the 1974 movie. For the other movies named Texas Chainsaw Massacre, see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (film series).

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The original movie poster
Directed by	Tobe Hooper
Produced by	Tobe Hooper Lou Peraino
Written by	Kim Henkel Tobe Hooper
Starring	Marilyn Burns Gunnar Hansen Edwin Neal Allen Danzinger Paul A. Partain Jim Siedow
Music by	Wayne Bell Tobe Hooper
Distributed by	Bryanston Distributing Company Blue Dolphin (UK)
Release date(s)	October 1, 1974
Running time	83 min.
Language	English
Budget	$83,532 (estimated)
Followed by	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2
IMDb profile

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (sometimes written as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) is an independent low-budget horror film influential classic made in 1973 (released in 1974) by director Tobe Hooper. It concerns a family of cannibals in rural Texas, who abduct customers from their gas station, and their attempts to cannibalize them.

Produced on a budget of just $140,000, the film grossed $30,859,000 at the U.S. box office, making it one of the most successful independent films in cinema history.^[1] The financing for this film came from the profits of Deep Throat, a previous film the production company had financed.

An "ultimate edition" DVD for the film has recently been released by Dark Sky Films.^[2]

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 Response 2 Plot 3 Cast 4 Connection to actual events 5 Cultural references 6 Trivia 6.1 Production 6.2 Leatherface 6.3 Release 7 DVD Release 7.1 Region confusion 8 Alternate versions 9 Additional films 10 References 11 External links

[edit] Overview

It is often considered a prototype of the slasher film sub-genre. Despite its grisly and unsettling subject matter, the film—like John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)—does not rely so much on explicit gore to generate terror in the audience as on pacing, suspense, the deserted location and dramatic tension. Its sequels and the imitations it spawned have been much bloodier and more graphic. The movie is also known for experimenting with scenes shot in daylight, something that was rarely done before in horror movies. Tobe Hooper originally wanted an MPAA "PG" rating for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (there was no "PG-13" at the time).

The film was banned in the United Kingdom (1974-1999), but was subsequently issued on video. It has also been banned in France (1974-1984), Germany, India and Romania. It also wasn't released in Australia until the early 1980s, due to distributing delays.

The film was originally entitled "Headcheese", but was changed at the last minute. Alternate titles included "Leatherface" and "Stalking Leatherface".The official title of the original film writes 'Chain Saw' as two words (contrary to some posters and DVD covers), while the sequels and the remake use the compound 'Chainsaw'.^[3]

While the film was financially a great success, the production team that made the film saw only a very small fraction of the profits. This was a result of the film's ownership residing with the film's financial backers who managed to hide a significant percent of profits from the production company^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Response

The documentary feel has helped with the film’s success. The film opened to large amount of controversy, but despite this, it became a smash hit in the United States. The film is also considered the progenitor of the genre, predating both Halloween and Friday the 13th. It has received much praise from critics, mainly because its gritty and unsettling background that made it seem real. The Museum of Modern Art purchased a print of the film for its permanent collection. Critics have called it one of the scariest movies ever made.^[4]

[edit] Plot

The year is 1973. An unknown vandal has constructed ghoulish sculptures out of human remains from the graveyards in a small Texas town. A group of college students, two girls: Sally and Pam, and three boys: Jerry, Kirk and Sally's wheelchair-bound brother Franklin are heading through the back roads of Texas en route to the grave of Sally's grandfather, one of those believed vandalized. A vile smell alerts them to the presence of a nearby slaughterhouse, and Franklin tells them about it. Against their better judgement, they stop for a hitchhiker, who acts crazily, cutting his hand open with Franklin's pen knife and subsequently slashing Franklin's arm with a straight razor before the others manage to eject him from the vehicle. He also takes a Polaroid Picture of them, and when it develops, he asks for two dollars for the picture. They refuse and he lights the picture on fire. Also, in a bizarre moment, he smears his bloody hand on their van before they can drive away.

They stop at a gas station, but the owner tells them that the tanks are empty. The girls go in for some sodas as Franklin tells the owner that they are going to his grandfather's old place. The man seems to want to discourage them from going to the house, giving them a subtle warning that the locals don't like strangers intruding on their property. After buying some barbequed food, they leave and go to the old house anyway.

Kirk and Pam go to look for a swimming hole as Jerry, Sally, and Franklin stay behind. Kirk and Pam find the water is all dried up in the swimming hole, but the sound of a running generator attracts them to a small farmhouse nearby. Kirk hopes to barter with the occupants for some gas, and they discover something odd on the property: a large canvas hides a junkyard full of vehicles, most of them intact. Kirk knocks on the door to find that there seems to be nobody home. He finds a human tooth on the front porch and gives it to Pam, who reacts in disgust and goes to sit on a yard swing. Kirk continues to knock on the door, which drifts open. Hearing a strange, inhuman squealing sound, he runs down a hall and suddenly a large menacing figure with a mask of human skin looms out at him. "Leatherface" kills Kirk with a blow to the head from a sledgehammer, dragging the squirming body through the doorway, and slams a steel door shut with an ominous bang.

Pam gets restless and enters the house looking for Kirk. She goes into the dining room and falls into a nightmarish collection of body parts and bones from both humans and animals. She sees furniture made out of human limbs, a live chicken in a small cage hanging from the ceiling, strange decorations made out of skulls and bones. The floor is covered in bone fragments and chicken feathers. Pam slightly vomits and begins to go into hysterics, screaming for Kirk. She gets up and lurches into the hall, just as the steel door flies open and the large man bolts out at her. He chases her and catches her just as she reaches the front porch, dragging her kicking and screaming body back into the house. Leatherface takes Pam into the kitchen and hangs her on a meathook through her upper back. In agony and shock, Pam, still alive, is forced to watch as Leatherface casually dismembers Kirk's dead body with a chainsaw.

When Kirk and Pam don't return, Jerry goes looking for them and finds the same house. Finding the blanket left behind by Pam and Kirk, he goes inside to investigate. In the kitchen there is a large chest freezer, rattling convulsively. He opens it and finds Pam inside, turning blue. She suddenly sits upright in at attempt to escape, but Leatherface jumps out and kills Jerry with the sledgehammer. Jerry collapses on the kitchen floor, and Leatherface hurls Pam back into the freezer, locking her inside.

When Jerry doesn't return, Sally and Franklin argue about going to find him. They can't leave because Jerry has the keys to the van. Sally wants to go alone to find him because she can't manage Franklin's wheelchair through the brush, but Franklin insists on going with her. As they struggle through the dark trees, Leatherface jumps out and kills Franklin with the chainsaw. Sally runs away into black darkness, but Leatherface is right on her heels. Unwittingly, Sally flees to the very house where her friends have died. She locks the front door and runs upstairs, while Leatherface saws through the wooden door. In the attic, she finds two figures sitting in chairs, one of them a dead body and the other an extremely withered old man. When Leatherface breaks through the door and runs up the stairs after her, Sally jumps out a second-story window and lands on grass.

While Leatherface relentlessly pursues her, she runs all the way back to the gas station. When she gets there, the maniac appears to have disappeared, and she finds the man who owns the station still there. While he goes to get his truck so they can escape, Sally is fascinated by a smoke pit with interestingly shaped meat in it. When the man returns, he suddenly attacks Sally with a broom, putting a large burlap sack over her head and forcing her into the truck. As he drives away with Sally, he meets a figure in the road; it is the hitchhiker who was in the van with the kids earlier. He is the brother of Leatherface and the older man who captured her.

They take Sally inside and tie her to a chair. When they remove the sack she has a moment of utter horror when she and the hitchhiker recognize one another. Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring down the withered figure of "Grandpa", and in a truly horrifying moment, they slice open the tip of Sally's finger and force it into Grandpa's mouth, while he sucks on her blood. Sally is so overcome with disgust and panic that she faints.

She wakes up at the dinner table where food has been served to her, sausages that she now realizes contains the flesh of human beings. A discussion begins when the hitchhiker says that grandpa was the "best killer who ever was" at the local slaughterhouse. Sally realizes the end is near when they force her onto her knees and place her head over a metal bucket, and Grandpa tries in vain to bludgeon her with a mallet. The hitchhiker, who has been holding her down, gets anxious when Grandpa can't finish her off (Grandpa is too weak to hold the mallet or make a killing blow) and he makes a grab for the hammer. Sally breaks free and pushes the men out of her way, leaping wildly through the dining room window.

The sun is coming up as Sally runs down the driveway of the old house. Leatherface and the hitchhiker quickly emerge from the house to give chase, Leatherface's chainsaw revving behind her. Sally emerges onto the main road with the hitchhiker right behind her, pulling at her hair. Suddenly an eighteen wheeler comes up from behind and runs down the hitchhiker. The driver jumps out and is confronted by the frantic Sally, with Leatherface right behind her. They climb back inside the truck while Leatherface tries to cut the door open with his chainsaw, but he is unable to cut through the steel. Emerging out the other side, Sally runs while the driver throws a large wrench at Leatherface's head. He falls down and cuts himself, the chainsaw digging into his own leg. The driver runs out of sight as a smaller pickup truck pulls up from the other side of the road, and makes a U-turn as Leatherface gets to his feet again despite his injury. The pickup stops for a second, giving Sally enough time to jump in the back. She shrieks at him to "Go! Go! Go!" just as Leatherface reaches the bed of the truck, which pulls quickly away, leaving him there. Sally, who is now covered in blood and looking completely deranged, laughs hysterically to herself as the pickup drives away from the scene. Leatherface is left back in the road, waving and swinging his chainsaw in the air in a morbid, mad dance of frustration.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Marilyn Burns	Sally Hardesty
Allen Danziger	Jerry
Paul A. Partain	Franklin Hardesty
William Vail	Kirk
Teri McMinn	Pam
Edwin Neal	The Hitchhiker
Jim Siedow	Old Man
Gunnar Hansen	Leatherface
John Dugan	Grandpa

[edit] Connection to actual events

The film, like the films Psycho, Deranged, and The Silence of the Lambs, was loosely inspired by Ed Gein. Gein did wear human skin, but he acted alone and did not use a chainsaw. Although the film's opening would have one believe that the events are factual, it is merely a scare tactic, called the false document technique, to frighten the audience. Libraries in Burkburnett, Texas and nearby Wichita Falls regularly receive requests for copies of newspaper articles related to the false actual events. [5]

[edit] Cultural references

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has been spoofed countless times in many film and books. One such spoof was directed by Kevin Lynch and was entitled The Texas Lame Saw Massacre. Despite testing well, the movie never saw the light of day due to a injunction by Paramount Pictures.

Below is a partial list of this film's parodies that have reached video, TV or big screen:

• The movie Motel Hell (1980) is a parody of this film and other 1970s slashers.
• It was spoofed various times in the horror film series parody, Scary Movie.
• The movie Summer School featured two students who were fascinated with this film, and whose fascination was central to the story's climax.
• White Zombie referenced the film's tagline "Who will survive and what will be left of them?" on their album Astro Creep: 2000. The same tagline was used in TV-spots to promote the 2003 film Freddy vs. Jason.
• Leatherface is the name of a British punk rock band.
• Murder by Death has an album titled "Who will survive and what will be left of them?".
• On their debut album, the Ramones' song "Chain Saw" refers to the film.
• US death metal band Mortician have made several songs about the movie, including "Chainsaw Dismemberment" and "Hacked up for Barbecue". They also used samples from the movie in these songs.
• In the film American Psycho, yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman works out while the original 1974 film plays in the background. He later kills a prostitute with a chainsaw.
• In the film Freddy Got Fingered, the kids in the foster home are watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
• In Scream, one of the characters is referred to as "Leatherface".
• Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious both wore badges and t-shirts of the film. Sid wrote lyrics from "Helter Skelter" on his t-shirt, cross referencing the film with the Manson murders of 1969.
• In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle drives past a cinema which has the film advertised.
• Experimental metal band Dog Fashion Disco included Leatherface with a jester hat on as a promotional logo / shirt for their band at one point. Gunnar Hansen (who played Leatherface in the original) loved the idea and has been seen wearing the shirt.
• In an episode of 8 Simple Rules, to cover up something she shouldn't have been doing when her daughter asks her, Katey Sagal states that she's watching some "tear jerker" film on television, until the narrator states "we now return to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
• In the film Serial Mom, Matthew Lillard's character, Chip watches The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while working at a video store.
• In the film Idle Hands, Mick jokingly advances toward Pnub with an electric turkey carver, shouting "Look at me, I'm Leatherface!"
• In an episode of Friends, Joey is giving advice on what a woman should wear as a costume on Halloween, which is, he remarks “Leatherface, from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.
• One of the enemies in Resident Evil 4 slightly resembles Leatherface, wearing a burlap mask and wielding a chainsaw. He also screams in the same way Leatherface does when he swings his chainsaw.
• The song Chainsaw Buffet by Finnish band Lordi is about a family of chainsaw wielding cannibals.
• In 2003, Rob Zombie made House of 1000 Corpses which followed a similar storyline, wherein four kids embarked upon a trip to find a local legend named Dr. Satan, only to be abducted by a psychotic family.
• Punk band The Misfits have used the tag line "Who will survive and what will be left of them?" on T-shirts and posters.
• On an episode of Night Court, John Larroquette is cornered by a deranged woman, whose delusions are inspired by films. He quickly turns off the TV after hearing "We now return to 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'". This is somewhat of an in-joke as Larroquette did the opening narration for the film as well as the 2003 remake.
• In the Activision video game True Crime: Streets of LA, Nick Kang fights a Leatherface lookalike in the kitchen level. He has no chainsaw, but the bloody apron is there.
• In the '90's cartoon movie Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Hampton Pig's family picks up a deranged hitchhiker who suddenly goes beserk in the back seat, dons a hockey goalie mask & pulls out a chainsaw, and attempts to kill Plucky Duck; apparently, a composite spoof of Leatherface and Jason Voorhees.
• The experimental guitar player Buckethead has sampled the movie in several songs, such as Jowls on Monsters and Robots.
• In the video game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories there is a mission called The Portland Chainsaw Masquerade where the player must kill chainsaw wielding maniacs.
• The movie inspired a computer virus — The Chainsaw Worm infects LBNL 95 and 98 Windows systems. Once an infected system is rebooted it sends a message to the "alt.horror" newsgroup from the email address "hackedupfor@bbq.net" with "CHAINSAWED" as the subject and "WHO WILL SURVIVE? AND WHAT WILL BE LEFT OF THEM?" as the message. Appearances on the newsgroup (rare these days) are traditionally toasted by the regulars with a drink.
• In the Australian comedy, The Wedge, there is a character that portrays leatherface, but can never get his chainsaw going. He later falls in love with a girl wearing a kind of stocking over her head.
• On the Xbox 360 and PC Video Game "Condemned: Criminal Origins", a menacingly large female chef can be seen taunting and taking great delight in the prospect killing and eating Ethan while he investigates a derelict school, he finally has to face off to her while locked in the schools kitchen as she attacks him with a bloody meat cleaver and extremely high strengh, her clothes (bloody apron, large stature etc), choice of phrases ("I'm not crazy, I'm just hungry!" and "I'll put on the stove!") as well as the general setting (bodies being hanging on meathooks and pots and pans covered in blood) give the strong impression that this scene is a homage to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
• On the Xbox 360 game "Gears of War", a game achievement called "its a massacre!" may be obtained by killing 100 enemies with a chainsaw on online ranked matches, the title of the acheivement originates from the title of the movie "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

[edit] Trivia

[edit] Production

• Director Tobe Hooper claims to have got the idea for the film while standing in the hardware section of a crowded store. While thinking of a way to get out through the crowd, he spotted the chainsaws.

• The narrator at the beginning of the film is John Larroquette, famous for playing the Night Court character Dan Fielding.

• The dead armadillos in the first scene after the title sequence, and the nest of daddy longlegs in the abandoned house, were found by chance when location-scouting. Outtake footage shows the former scene would originally have involved a dead dog by the roadside.

• Actress Teri McMinn, whose character was hung up on a meat hook, was actually held up by a nylon cord that went between her legs, causing her a great deal of pain.

• When Leatherface is chasing Sally (Marilyn Burns) through the bushes, she actually cut herself badly on them, and a lot of the blood on her is real.

• During the dinner scene towards the end of the film, when Leatherface cuts Sally's (Marilyn Burns) finger, he actually does cut her finger. In frustration, Burns urged the actor to just cut her finger for real, just so they could get the shot over with.

• Hooper used a stunt double for Sally's leap through the window; all the same, Marilyn Burns actually hurt herself shooting the insert of her falling to the ground.

• A family was actually living in the house that served as the Sawyer family house in the later half of the movie.

[edit] Leatherface

• The creators wanted to make Leatherface talk, but Gunnar Hansen declined, thinking it would make him seem too human. Leatherface was intended to be a subhuman character who only spoke in gibberish, his "lines" in the script having side notes indicating what he was trying to say. Tobe Hooper allowed Gunnar Hansen to develop Leatherface as he saw fit (under his supervision). Hansen decided that Leatherface was mentally retarded and never learned to talk properly, so he went to a school for the mentally challenged and watched how they moved and listened to them talk to get a feel for the character.^[5]

• Leatherface's teeth were prostheses made especially for Gunnar Hansen by his dentist.

• The chainsaw used in this film was a Poulan 306A, with a piece of black tape covering the Poulan logo in order to avoid a possible lawsuit.

• Gunnar Hansen wore three inch heels so that he was taller than all the cast and had to duck to get through the doorways in the slaughterhouse. However, even in these lift-boots, Gunnar Hansen could run faster than Marilyn Burns, and thus had to do random things when chasing her through the woods in order to avoid passing her up (in one head-on shot he starts slicing up tree branches in the background).

• Gunnar Hansen hit his head on doorways and other objects several times during the shoot because the Leatherface mask severely limited his peripheral vision and the three inch heels made his 6'4" frame too high to clear all obstacles.

• Due to the low budget, Gunnar Hansen had only one shirt to wear as Leatherface. The shirt had been dyed, so it could not be washed; Hansen had to wear it for four straight weeks of filming in the Texas summer. By the end of the shoot no one wanted to eat lunch with Hansen because his clothing smelled so bad.

• The close-up of Leatherface cutting his leg on the chainsaw was the last shot to be filmed; the actor was wearing a metal plate over his leg, which was then covered with a piece of meat and a blood bag.

[edit] Release

The film was so effective, that people allegedly found the movie so horrifying that they walked out of sneak previews. The movie was also banned or delayed in many countries (due to the effectiveness), and where it was released, it was frequently edited. It was not released in Australia until the early 1980s, but it was never banned there. However, it was banned in the United Kingdom largely on the authority of then-BBFC secretary James Ferman, but saw a limited cinema release thanks to various city councils. Censors attempted to cut it for the purposes of a wider release in 1977 but were unsuccessful. It was released on videotape and CED disc in the 1980s by Wizard Video and Vestron Video, but banned in 1984 during the moral panic surrounding video nasties. In 1999, after the retirement of Ferman, the BBFC passed the movie uncut on cinema and video, with the 18 certificate, almost 25 years after its original release.^[6]

The film is also given a place at #2 as the second scariest film ever made by Entertainment Weekly, making it a runner-up to The Exorcist (1973). It is also ranked at #1 on Premiere Magazine's Top 10 Horror Films of All Time.

In 1983 Wizard Video Games released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a video game for the Atari 2600, although upon its release was very hard to get, as most shopkeepers and retailers refused to stock it. Those that did kept it hidden out of reach of children. The game was based on the ending, and the player acted as Leatherface, on a mission to hack down as many teens as possible before their chainsaw fuel ran out.

[edit] DVD Release

The film has been released various times on DVD, the first (in 1998) by MPI Home Video under license from Pioneer Entertainment, with the same Digital Video Noise Reduction transfer and special features as the 1996 Elite Entertainment letterboxed laserdisc (The commentary by director Tobe Hooper, director of photography Daniel Pearl, and actor Gunnar Hansen is introduced by Hooper for Elite Entertainment). The DVD was released several times by different companies in Region 1, Region 2 (Europe), Region 3 (Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan) and Region 4 (Australia, Central America, Mexico and New Zealand) in a Widescreen format. On September 26, 2006, more than thirty years after its release, a two-disc "Ultimate Edition" was released, featuring the following features:

• New high definition picture transferred from the original 16mm negative.
• Digitally remastered Mono and Stereo soundtracks and newly produced 5.1 Dolby Digital
• Feature-length Commentary by Tobe Hooper, Daniel Pearl and Gunnar Hansen
• Feature-length Commentary by Marilyn Burns, Paul A Partain, Allen Danziger and Robert A. Burns.
• 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth' Documentary
• 'Flesh Wounds' Documentary
• 'Dr W.E Barnes Presents Making Grandpa' Featurette
• 'The Shocking Truth' outtakes
• A Tour of the TCSM house with Gunnar Hansen
• Deleted Scenes and outtakes
• Still gallery
• Original theatrical trailers, TV spots and radio spots
• Limited edition steelbook packaging

[edit] Region confusion

There was some confusion surrounding the region of the Ultimate Edition DVD. Although many sites listed it as Region 1, as does the back cover art, the official Dark Sky Films site lists the DVD as Region 0. The website listing must be an error, because it has been confirmed on dvdcompare.net that it is Region 1.

[edit] Alternate versions

• Restored version released in 1998 on DVD includes outtake and alternate footage.

• The Swedish version removed the scene where Leatherface hangs the woman on a meathook. It has since been released fully uncensored on DVD.

• A scene was filmed but cut in which Pam and Kirk come across a campground outside the slaughterhouse where people were murdered, and Kirk finds a pocket-watch nailed to a tree. A scene was cut that explained one of the film's continuity errors: During the dinner scene, Leatherface gets up, goes into his bedroom, and fixes up his mask with makeup. In the original cut of the film, there was a closeup shot of Hitchhiker after he's hit by the truck.

[edit] Additional films

Sequels:

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)
• Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Remake:

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

A prequel to the 2003 remake:

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

Interquel:

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) at the Internet Movie Database
• Detailed film review with screencaps
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Visit to the Film Locations

Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series
Original series
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 • Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III • Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Remake series
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Characters
Leatherface • Sally Hardesty • Drayton Sawyer • Edward Sawyer • Chop Top • Sheriff Hoyt • Luda Mae Hewitt • Old Monty
Other
The Comics