1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was loosely inspired by a number of real-life events that caught the attention of Hooper. When I first read the part, I could see that nobody wanted this guy to be there. Why the discrepancy? The best protection, even still, is experience. But did “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” really happen? This is because Hooper was hoping for a PG rating so that the film could reach a wider audience (there was no PG-13 at the time) and was told by the Motion Picture Association of America that he could help his cause if he limited the amount of onscreen blood. In the end, the cast saw very little money for their work. On a further search of the property, authorities also found various human remains including a trashcan made out of a human skull, chairs covered in human skin, and skull bedposts. Even this guy had to be screened by the TSA on the security line. Couple kids were running around when they encountered a chainsaw … The scene in which Sally’s finger is cut so that her blood can be fed to Grandpa was supposed to rely on a very simple special effect. Allegedly because Bryanston’s owners—Joe and Lou Peraino—were members of the Colombo crime family. It’s hard to imagine anyone but the massive Gunnar Hansen, who passed away in 2015, behind the Leatherface mask in the original film now, but he was apparently not the first person cast in the role. Hansen himself ended up with the closest near-miss of the film, though: During the chase scene in which Leatherface pursues Sally through the woods at night, Hansen slipped and fell, sending the saw flying into the darkness. Nothing was found and on the records, it was concluded that the massacre Sally described did not happen. The dinner scene near the end of the film in which Sally (Marilyn Burns) is terrorized by Leatherface and his family is one of the most intense sequences in all of horror cinema. Where did the "REAL" Texas Chainsaw Massacre Happen? That said, Texas is a big state and, sadly, we do have our share of serial killers, wackos, and dysfunctional families. Ed took odd jobs but remained reclusive and unsuspecting. For example, when Jerry (Allen Danzinger) discovers Leatherface’s slaughter room and then meets the man himself, the scream he lets out is genuine. Nine months, a check for $28.45. There was no real Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For the role of Franklin, Sally’s wheelchair-bound brother who draws the ire of the audience when he grows angry with his more able-bodied friends simply because he can’t share in their fun, actor Paul Partain opted to take a very Method approach to his work. “At this point I was so crazy that I just wanted to get the film over with,” he later said. “I thought he was going to have a coronary,” she said. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a HUGE urban legend known by many people around the world. It was apparently the first time he had seen Hansen in full costume. Never mind flying under the radar. Ed was arraigned on November 21, 1957 where he pleaded “not guilty” by reason of insanity. After inspiration struck, Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel hammered out a script over several weeks and gave it the eerie title Head Cheese (named for the scene in which the hitchhiker details the process of how that particular pork product is made). Though it's easy to think of the film as a straight-up horror movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre also belongs to the New Hollywood movement … Learn the true story behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, and Silence of the Lambs. As he dragged the knife across Burns’s finger, Hansen was supposed to squeeze the bulb and pump the blood out to simulate the cut, but the tube kept clogging in take after take. His mother was overbearing. It just hit me that he was whiny.”. McMinn once recalled picking up a hitchhiker with a friend (which is ironic, given the film’s relationship to hitchhikers) and listening to him describe how scary the film was to her until she asked if he recognized her. “He announced that he was not sitting through it again,” Hooper said. “I’ve had people say ‘I knew the original Leatherface,’” Gunnar Hansen, who played the killer character, recalled. Sorry, there is/was no such person as "Leatherface", nor was there ever a real Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Texas or any other location in the world for that matter. The knife blade used in the scene was dulled by a piece of tape which also held a rubber tube attached to a “bulb” full of fake blood concealed in Hansen’s palm. The film went on to earn $12 million at the box office in its first year, according to Variety, but Bryanston ultimately claimed only about $1 million of that. Then, to capture the mental instability of the character, he went to an Austin mental hospital and studied the movements of the patients there, which he then incorporated into his performance. Augusta’s strict biblical teachings were extremely instrumental in shaping Ed’s attitude towards women. However, a quick check of that date reveals that the film had just wrapped four days’ prior, making it fairly difficult to base a film on an actual event that had yet to occur. 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