Gein robbed graves and used body parts to adorn his house or fashion furniture and crockery – even a “woman suit” made from stitched-together skin. The story was famously inspired by Ed Gein, a real-life necrophile and murderer from Plainfield, Wisconsin.
The whole story, which Hooper co-scripted with Kim Henkel, came to him in just 30 seconds: a gang of hippie kids drive through the deep heart of Texas, pick up a deranged hitchhiker, run out of fuel, and stumble across a strange house – home to a family of homicidal, cannibalistic maniacs. He fantasised about carving his way through the crowds of Christmas shoppers. Trapped in the hardware section of a crowded department store, his eyes fell to a chainsaw. The idea began when Tobe Hooper was out shopping at Christmas.
Now, Leatherface is back on Netflix for yet another massacre. So intense, that BBFC head James Ferman effectively outlawed it for 25 years – he believed that no cuts could lessen its horrifying impact.
Almost 50 years on, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is still profoundly terrifying – a simmering, stinking, sweltering abattoir of a horror experience. The effect is something that can’t be scripted. If we’d been comfy, if everybody had their own trailer, I’m not so sure you’d feel the horror in quite the way you do. “But I believe that the dire circumstances added to the film. “That meat was old, it was rotten, it was putrid, it was terrible,” says Pearl. Some – including cinematographer Daniel Pearl – say it went on even longer. The scenes had to be finished that night. b_,’” he said – before snapping back to reality.Īctor Jim Siedow, playing The Cook, the third brother, had to leave for another job the next day and there were just three prosthetic faces for Grandpa. Gunnar Hansen admitted losing himself among the carnage – “I remember thinking, ‘Kill. “Like it was some kind of scientific tenet that they are working on,” said Neal. Here were grown men, delirious in the early hours, debating the best way to hit Marilyn Burns over the head with a hammer. “It just got crazier and crazier and crazier,” he said, being interviewed in 1988. It was years before either Marilyn Burns or John Dugan – the 18-year-old actor wearing Grandpa prosthetics – learned the truth: he really had suckled on her blood.Īctor Edwin Neal – playing The Hitchhiker, demented runt brother of Leatherface – described the amphetamine-like effect of that shoot. Impatient, Gunnar Hansen craftily sliced her finger for real. A prop knife, designed to pump out fake blood, wouldn’t work. At one point she missed and stabbed herself with the syringe, almost embalming her own leg.įor much of the ordeal, Marilyn Burns – playing Sally, the lone survivor of the massacre (if you can call it surviving) and proto “final girl” – was tied to a chair, forced to scream for hours upon hours.Īt one point, Grandpa – the cannibal family’s ancient, as-good-as-dead patriarch – had to suck blood from Marilyn Burns’ finger. To prevent the dead animals from decomposing too rapidly, makeup artist Dorothy Pearl injected them with formaldehyde. “I was the smelliest element of the set,” admitted Hansen in a 2000 documentary. He’d been wearing it for a month, chasing twenty-somethings around with chainsaws and hammers for 12 hours a day. Actor Gunnar Hansen was banned from changing his costume. The stench was sickening – people heaved and dashed for fresh air between takes.Īdding to the stink was Leatherface himself – a pungent, acidic reek of weeks-old body odour.
The table was set with headcheese, an already stomach-churning meat-jelly made from head flesh, and actual animal carcasses – all rotting fast in the heat – while bones hung around the room, burning under the lights.
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The final act of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – a dinner appointment with Leatherface and family – was torture: 26 hours straight in 100 degrees-plus (“As hot as the devil,” said actor Jim Siedow) with the windows blocked out by black tar paper and tempers hitting boiling point.
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