The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Encyclopedia
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 American independent horror film directed and produced by Tobe Hooper
, who cowrote it with Kim Henkel
. It stars Marilyn Burns
, Paul A. Partain
, Edwin Neal
, Jim Siedow
, and Gunnar Hansen
, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the hitchhiker, the proprietor, and Leatherface
, the main antagonist. The film follows a group of friends who fall victim to a family of cannibals while on their way to visit an old homestead. Although it was marketed as a true story to attract a wider audience and as a subtle commentary on the era's political climate, its plot is entirely fictional; however the character of Leatherface and minor plot details were inspired by the crimes of real-life murderer Ed Gein
.
Hooper produced the film for less than $300,000 and used a cast of relatively unknown actors drawn mainly from central Texas, where the film was shot. The limited budget forced Hooper to film for long hours seven days a week, so that he could finish as quickly as possible and reduce equipment rental costs. Due to the film's violent content, Hooper struggled to find a distributor. Louis Perano of Bryanston Pictures
eventually purchased the distribution rights. Hooper limited the quantity of onscreen gore in hopes of securing a "PG" (Parental Guidance) rating, but the Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) rated it "R" (Restricted; children under 17 require a parent or guardian). The film faced similar difficulties internationally.
Upon its October 1974 release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was banned outright in several countries, and numerous theaters later stopped showing the film in response to complaints about its violence. While it initially drew a mixed reception from critics, it was enormously profitable, grossing over $30 million at the domestic box office. It has since gained a reputation as one of the most influential horror films in cinema history. It is credited with originating several elements common in the slasher
genre, including the use of power tools as murder weapons and the characterization of the killer as a large, hulking, faceless figure. The popularity of the film led to a franchise that continued the story of Leatherface and his family through sequels, remakes, comic books, and video games.
) and her brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain
), travel with three friends, Jerry (Allen Danziger
), Kirk (William Vail
), and Pam (Teri McMinn
), to visit the grave of the Hardestys' grandfather to investigate reports of vandalism and grave robbing. Afterwards, they decide to visit an old Hardesty family homestead. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal
) who slashes both himself and Franklin with a straight razor before the group forces him out of the van. They stop at a gas station to refuel, but the proprietor (Jim Siedow
) tells them that the pumps are empty. They continue towards the homestead, intending to return to the gas station once the fuel has been delivered.
When they arrive, Franklin tells Kirk and Pam about a local swimming hole and the couple head off to find it. Instead they stumble upon a nearby house. Kirk calls out, asking for gas, while Pam waits on the front steps. After Kirk receives no answer, he discovers that the door is unlocked and enters the house, where Leatherface
(Gunnar Hansen
) appears and kills him. Pam enters soon after and finds the house filled with furniture made from human bones. She attempts to flee, but Leatherface catches her and impales her on a meathook. Jerry heads out to look for Pam and Kirk at sunset. He finds the couple's blanket outside the nearby house. He investigates and finds Pam, who is still alive, inside a freezer. Before he can react, Leatherface kills him and stuffs Pam back into the freezer.
With darkness falling, Sally and Franklin set out to find their friends. As they near the neighboring house and call out, Leatherface lunges from the darkness and kills Franklin with a chainsaw. Sally heads toward the house and finds the desiccated remains of an elderly couple in an upstairs room. She escapes from Leatherface by jumping through a second-floor window and flees to the gas station. Leatherface disappears into the night. The proprietor calms her with offers of help, but then ties her up and forces her into his truck. He drives to the house, arriving at the same time as the hitchhiker, who turns out to be Leatherface's younger brother. When the pair bring Sally inside, the hitchhiker recognizes her and taunts her.
The men torment the bound and gagged Sally while Leatherface, now dressed as a woman, serves dinner. Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring an old man, "Grandpa" (John Dugan), from upstairs to share the meal. During the night they decide Sally should be killed by "Grandpa". He tries to hit her with a hammer, but is too weak. In the ensuing confusion, she breaks free, leaps through a window, and escapes to the road. Leatherface and the hitchhiker give chase, but the latter is run down and killed by a passing semi-trailer truck. Armed with his chainsaw, Leatherface attacks the truck when the driver stops to help. The driver hits him in the face with a large wrench. Sally escapes in the back of a passing pickup truck as Leatherface waves the chainsaw above his head in frustration.
was working as an assistant film director at the University of Texas at Austin
and as a documentary cameraman. He had already developed a story involving the elements of isolation, the woods, and darkness. He credited the graphic coverage of violence by San Antonio news outlets as one inspiration for the film and based elements of the plot on serial killer Ed Gein
in 1950s Wisconsin
; Gein inspired other horror films such as Psycho
(1960) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). During development, Hooper used the working titles of Headcheese and Leatherface.
Hooper has cited changes in the cultural and political landscape as central influences on the film. His intentional misinformation, that the "film you are about to see is true", was a response to being "lied to by the government about things that were going on all over the world", including Watergate
, the 1973 oil crisis
, and "the massacres and atrocities in the Vietnam War
". The "lack of sentimentality and the brutality of things" that Hooper noticed while watching the local news, whose graphic coverage was epitomized by "showing brains spilled all over the road", led to his belief that "man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film". The idea of using a chainsaw as the murder weapon came to Hooper while he was in the hardware section of a busy store, contemplating how to speed his way through the crowd.
Hooper and Kim Henkel cowrote the screenplay and formed Vortex, Inc. with Henkel as president and Hooper as vice president. They asked Bill Parsley, a friend of Hooper, to provide funding. Parsley formed a company named MAB, Inc. through which he invested $60,000 in the production. In return, MAB owned 50 percent of the film and its profits. Production manager Ron Bozman told most of the cast and crew that he would have to defer part of their salaries until after it was sold to a distributor. Vortex made the idea more attractive by awarding them a share of its potential profits, ranging from 0.25 to 6 percent, similar to mortgage points
. The cast and crew were not informed that Vortex owned only 50 percent, which meant their points were worth half of the assumed value.
and Jim Siedow
. Involvement in the film propelled some of them into the motion picture industry. The lead role of Sally was given to Marilyn Burns
, who had appeared previously on stage and served on the film commission board at UT Austin while studying there. Teri McMinn
was a student who worked with local theater companies, including the Dallas Theater Center
. Henkel called McMinn to come in for a reading after he spotted her picture in the Austin American-Statesman
. For her last call-back he requested that she wear short shorts, which proved to be the most comfortable of all the cast members' costumes.
Icelandic-American actor Gunnar Hansen
was selected for the role of Leatherface. He regarded Leatherface as being mentally retarded and having never learned to speak properly. To research his character in preparation for his role, Hansen visited a special needs school and watched how the students moved and spoke.
, where the La Frontera
development is now located. The small budget and concerns over high-cost equipment rentals meant the crew filmed seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day. The environment was humid and the cast and crew found conditions tough; temperatures peaked at 110 °F
(43 °C) on July 26. Hansen later recalled, "It was 95, 100 degrees every day during filming. They wouldn't wash my costume because they were worried that the laundry might lose it, or that it would change color. They didn't have enough money for a second costume. So I wore that [mask] 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month."
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was mainly shot using an Eclair NPR
16 mm camera with fine-grain, low-speed film that required four times more light than modern digital cameras. Most of the filming took place in the farmhouse, which was filled with furniture constructed from animal bones and a latex material used as upholstery to give the appearance of human skin. The house was not cooled, and there was little ventilation. The crew covered its walls with drops of animal blood obtained from a local slaughterhouse. Art director
Robert Burns drove around the countryside and collected the remains of cattle and other animals in various stages of decomposition, with which he littered the floors of the house.
The special effects were simple and limited by the budget. The on-screen blood was real in some cases, such as the scene in which Leatherface feeds "Grandpa". The crew had difficulty getting the stage blood to come out of its tube, so instead Burns's index finger was cut with a razor. Burns's costume was so drenched with stage blood that it was "virtually solid" by the last day of shooting. The scene in which Leatherface decapitates Kirk with a chainsaw worried actor William Vail (Kirk). After telling Vail to stay still lest he really be killed, Hansen brought the running chainsaw to within 3 inches (8 cm) of Vail's face.
. Sources differ on the film's final cost, offering figures between $93,000 and $300,000. A film production group, Pie in the Sky, provided $23,532 in exchange for 19 percent of Vortex. This left Henkel, Hooper and the rest of the cast and crew with a 40.5 percent stake. Warren Skaaren
, then head of the Texas Film Commission
, helped secure the distribution deal with Bryanston Pictures. David Foster, producer of the 1982 horror film The Thing, arranged for a private screening for some of Bryanston Pictures' West Coast executives, and received 1.5 percent of Vortex's profits and a deferred fee of $500.
On August 28, 1974, Louis Peraino of Bryanston agreed to distribute the film worldwide, from which Bozman and Skaaren would receive $225,000 and 35 percent of the profits. Years later Bozman stated, "We made a deal with the devil, [sigh], and I guess that, in a way, we got what we deserved." They signed the contract with Bryanston and after the investors recouped their money (with interest)—and after Skaaren, the lawyers, and the accountants were paid—only $8,100 was left to be divided among the 20 cast and crew members. Eventually the producers sued Bryanston for failing to pay them their full percentage of the box office profits. A court judgment instructed Bryanston to pay the filmmakers $500,000, but by then the company had declared bankruptcy. In 1983 New Line Cinema
acquired the distribution rights from Bryanston and gave the producers a larger share of the profits.
's Halloween
, which grossed $47 million.
Hooper reportedly hoped that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would give the complete, uncut release print
a "PG" rating due to its minimal amount of visible gore. Instead, it was originally rated "X". After several minutes were cut, it was resubmitted to the MPAA and received an "R" rating. A distributor apparently restored the offending material, and at least one theater presented the full version under an "R". In San Francisco, cinema-goers walked out of theaters in disgust and, in February 1976, two theaters in Ottawa, Canada, were advised by local police to withdraw the film lest they face morality charges.
After its initial British release, including a one-year theatrical run in London, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was initially banned on the advice of British Board of Film Classification
(BBFC) Secretary Stephen Murphy, and subsequently by his successor, James Ferman
. While the British ban was in force the word "chainsaw" itself was barred from movie titles, forcing imitators to rename their films. In 1998, despite the BBFC ban, Camden London Borough Council
granted the film a license. The following year the BBFC passed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for release with an 18 certificate (indicating that it should not be seen or purchased by a person under 18), and it was broadcast a year later on Channel 4
.
The Australian Classification Board
refused to classify the 83-minute version of the film in June 1975; the board similarly refused classification of a 77-minute print in December that year. In 1981, an 83-minute version submitted by Greater Union Organization
Film Distributors was again refused registration. It was later submitted by Filmways Australia and approved for an "R" rating in 1984. It was banned for periods in many other countries, including Brazil, Chile, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and West Germany.
called it despicable and described Henkel and Hooper as more concerned with creating a realistic atmosphere than with its "plastic script". Roger Ebert
of the Chicago Sun-Times
said it was "as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises", yet praised its acting and technical execution. Patrick Taggart of the Austin American-Statesman
hailed it as the most important horror film since George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead
(1968). Variety
found the picture to be well-made, despite what it called the "heavy doses of gore". John McCarty of Cinefantastique
stated that the house featured in the film made the Bates
motel "look positively pleasant by comparison". Revisiting the film in his 1976 article "Fashions in Pornography" for Harper's Magazine
, Stephen Koch found its sadistic violence to be extreme and unimaginative.
Critics later frequently praised both the film's aesthetic quality and its power. Observing that it managed to be "horrifying without being a bloodbath (you'll see more gore in a Steven Seagal
film)", Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle
called it "a backwoods masterpiece of fear and loathing". TV Guide
thought it was "intelligent" in its "bloodless depiction of violence", while Anton Bitel
felt the fact that it was banned in the United Kingdom was a tribute to its artistry. He pointed out how the quiet sense of foreboding at the beginning of the film grows, until the viewer experiences "a punishing assault on the senses". In Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema, Scott Von Doviak commended its effective use of daylight shots, unusual among horror films, such as the sight of a corpse draped over a tombstone in the opening sequence. Mike Emery of The Austin Chronicle praised the film's "subtle touches"—such as radio broadcasts heard in the background describing grisly murders around Texas—and said that what made it so dreadful was that it never strayed too far from potential reality.
It has often been described as one of the scariest films of all time. Rex Reed
called it the most terrifying film he had ever seen. Empire
described it as "the most purely horrifying horror movie ever made" and called it "never less than totally committed to scaring you witless". Reminiscing about his first viewing of the film, horror director Wes Craven
recalled wondering "what kind of Mansonite
crazoid" could have created such a thing. It is a work of "cataclysmic terror", in the words of horror novelist Stephen King
, who declared, "I would happily testify to its redeeming social merit in any court in the country." Critic Robin Wood
found it one of the few horror films to possess "the authentic quality of nightmare". Based on 42 reviews published since 2000, the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes
reports that 90% of critics gave it a positive review, with an average score of 7.6 out of 10.
commented that it had "set a new standard for slasher films". The Times
listed it as one of the 50 most controversial films of all time. Tony Magistrale
believes the film paved the way for horror to be used as a vehicle for social commentary. Describing it as "cheap, grubby and out of control", Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times
declared that it "both defines and entirely supersedes the very notion of the exploitation picture". In his book Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film, David Hogan called it "the most affecting gore thriller of all and, in a broader view, among the most effective horror films ever made ... the driving force of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is something far more horrible than aberrant sexuality: total insanity." According to Bill Nichols, it "achieves the force of authentic art, profoundly disturbing, intensely personal, yet at the same time far more than personal".
Leatherface has gained a reputation as a significant character in the horror genre, responsible for establishing the use of conventional tools as murder weapons and the image of a large, silent killer devoid of personality. Christopher Null
of Filmcritic.com said, "In our collective consciousness, Leatherface and his chainsaw have become as iconic as Freddy
and his razors or Jason
and his hockey mask." Don Sumner called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre a classic that not only introduced a new villain to the horror pantheon but also influenced an entire generation of filmmakers. According to Rebecca Ascher-Walsh of Entertainment Weekly
, it laid the foundations for future horror franchises such as Halloween
, The Evil Dead
, and The Blair Witch Project
. Ridley Scott
cited it as an inspiration for his 1979 film Alien
. French director Alexandre Aja
credited it as an early influence on his career. Horror filmmaker and heavy metal musician Rob Zombie
sees it as a major influence on his art, most notably his 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses
.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was selected for the 1975 Cannes Film Festival
Directors' Fortnight
and London Film Festival
. In 1976, it won the Special Jury Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in France. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film sixth on its 2003 list of "The Top 50 Cult Films". In a 2005 Total Film
poll, it was selected as the greatest horror film of all time. It was named among Time
magazine's top 25 horror films in 2007. In 2008 the film ranked number 199 on Empire
magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Empire also ranked it 46th in its list of the 50 greatest independent films. In a 2010 Total Film poll, it was again selected as the greatest horror film; the judging panel included veteran horror directors such as John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero
. In 2010, as well, The Guardian
ranked it number 14 on its list of the top 25 horror films. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was inducted into the Horror Hall of Fame
in 1990, with director Hooper accepting the award, and it is part of the permanent collection of New York City's Museum of Modern Art
.
in which female protagonists are subjected to brutal, sadistic violence. Stephen Prince comments that the horror is "born of the torment of the young woman subjected to imprisonment and abuse amid decaying arms ... and mobiles made of human bones and teeth." As with many horror films, it focuses on the "final girl
" trope—the heroine and inevitable lone survivor who somehow escapes the horror that befalls the other characters: Sally Hardesty is wounded and tortured, yet manages to survive with the help of a male truck driver. Critics argue that even in exploitation films in which the ratio of male and female deaths is roughly equal, the images that linger will be of the violence committed against the female characters. The specific case of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre provides support for this argument: three men are killed in quick fashion, but one woman is brutally slaughtered—hung on a meathook—and the surviving woman endures physical and mental torture. In 1977, critic Mary Mackey described the meathook scene as probably the most brutal onscreen female death in any commercially distributed film. She placed it in a lineage of violent films that depict women as weak and incapable of protecting themselves.
In one study, a group of men were shown five films depicting differing levels of violence against women. On first viewing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre they experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety; however, upon subsequent viewing they found the violence against women less offensive and more enjoyable. Another study, investigating gender-specific perceptions of slasher films, involved 30 male and 30 female university students. One male participant described the screaming, especially Sally's, as the "most freaky thing" in the film.
According to Jesse Stommel of Bright Lights Film Journal
, the lack of explicit violence in the film forces viewers to question their own fascination with violence that they play a central role in imagining. Nonetheless—citing its feverish camera moves, repeated bursts of light, and auditory pandemonium—Stommel asserts that it involves the audience primarily on a sensory rather than an intellectual level.
Critic Christopher Sharrett argues that since Alfred Hitchcock
's Psycho (1960) and The Birds
(1963), the American horror film has been defined by the questions it poses "about the fundamental validity of the American civilizing process", concerns amplified during the 1970s by the "delegitimation of authority in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate
". "If Psycho began an exploration of a new sense of absurdity in contemporary life, of the collapse of causality and the diseased underbelly of American Gothic", he writes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre "carries this exploration to a logical conclusion, addressing many of the issues of Hitchcock's film while refusing comforting closure".
Robin Wood characterizes Leatherface and his family as victims of industrial capitalism, their jobs as slaughterhouse workers having been rendered obsolete by technological advances. He states that the picture "brings to focus a spirit of negativity ... that seems to lie not far below the surface of the modern collective consciousness". Naomi Merritt explores the film's representation of "cannibalistic capitalism" in relation to Georges Bataille
's theory of taboo and transgression. She elaborates on Wood's analysis, stating that the Sawyer family's values "reflect, or correspond to, established and interdependent American institutions ... but their embodiment of these social units is perverted and transgressive."
In Kim Newman
's view, Hooper's presentation of the Sawyer family during the dinner scene parodies a typical American sitcom family: the gas station owner is the bread-winning father figure; the killer Leatherface is depicted as a bourgeois housewife; the hitchhiker acts as the rebellious teenager. Isabel Cristina Pinedo, author of Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing, states, "The horror genre must keep terror and comedy in tension if it is to successfully tread the thin line that separates it from terrorism and parody ... this delicate balance is struck in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which the decaying corpse of Grandpa not only incorporates horrific and humorous effects, but actually uses one to exacerbate the other."
and Vestron Video
. Just as the British Board of Film Classification had already banned the theatrical version, the BBFC banned the home version in 1984, amid a moral panic surrounding "video nasties
". After the retirement of BBFC chief Ferman in 1999, the board passed the film uncut on video (as well as film) with an 18 certificate
, almost 25 years after the original release. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released on DVD in October 1998 in the United States, and in May 2000 in the United Kingdom. An initial Australian DVD release in 2001 was followed by a revised version six years later. Dark Sky Films released a two-disc "ultimate" edition, featuring several interviews, restored audio and picture quality, and other extras including deleted scenes. Dark Sky Films released a Blu-ray version on September 30, 2008.
Shortly after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre established itself as a success on home video in 1982, Wizard Video released a mass-market video game adaptation for the Atari 2600
. In the game, the player assumes the role of Leatherface and attempts to murder trespassers while avoiding obstacles such as fences and cow skulls. As one of the first horror-themed video games, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre caused controversy when it was first released due to its violent nature; it sold poorly as a result, because many game stores refused to stock it.
The film was followed by two sequels, a remake, a film that straddles both those categories, and a prequel. The first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), was considerably more graphic and violent than the original and was banned in Australia for 20 years before it was released on DVD in a revised special edition in October 2006. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) was the second sequel to appear, though Hooper did not return to direct due to scheduling conflicts with another film, Spontaneous Combustion
. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
, starring Renée Zellweger
and Matthew McConaughey
, was released in 1995. While briefly acknowledging the events of the preceding two sequels, its plot makes it a virtual remake of the 1974 original. A straight remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
, was released by Platinum Dunes
and New Line Cinema
in 2003. It was followed by a prequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
, in 2006. A seventh film
is in production and scheduled for release in 2012.
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ; the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation...
, who cowrote it with Kim Henkel
Kim Henkel
Kim Henkel is an American screenwriter, director and producer.Henkel was born in Virginia and grew up in several small towns in South Texas. He started at the University of Texas at Austin in 1964 majoring in English and graduated in 1969...
. It stars Marilyn Burns
Marilyn Burns
Mary Lynn Ann Burns , better known as Marilyn Burns, is an American actress, best known for her roles in the horror cult films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , and Eaten Alive...
, Paul A. Partain
Paul A. Partain
Paul A. Partain was an American actor, perhaps best known for his role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as the "annoying" handicapped Franklin Hardesty.Partain was born in Austin, Texas...
, Edwin Neal
Edwin Neal
Edwin Neal is an American actor, perhaps best known for his role as the Hitchhiker in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or his role as Lord Zedd in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. He has been a top voice talent and actor for years appearing on screen and off in such diverse projects as The Lord of the...
, Jim Siedow
Jim Siedow
Jim Nash Siedow was an American actor, best known for his role of Drayton "The Cook" Sawyer in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.-Life and career:Siedow was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming...
, and Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Milton Hansen is an Icelandic-born actor and author best known for playing Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .- Early life:Hansen was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, and moved to the United States when he was five...
, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the hitchhiker, the proprietor, and Leatherface
Leatherface
Leatherface is the main antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-film series and its spin-offs. He wears masks made of human skin and engages in murder and cannibalism alongside his inbred family. He is considered by many to be one of the first major slasher film villains alongside Michael...
, the main antagonist. The film follows a group of friends who fall victim to a family of cannibals while on their way to visit an old homestead. Although it was marketed as a true story to attract a wider audience and as a subtle commentary on the era's political climate, its plot is entirely fictional; however the character of Leatherface and minor plot details were inspired by the crimes of real-life murderer Ed Gein
Ed Gein
Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein - July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes...
.
Hooper produced the film for less than $300,000 and used a cast of relatively unknown actors drawn mainly from central Texas, where the film was shot. The limited budget forced Hooper to film for long hours seven days a week, so that he could finish as quickly as possible and reduce equipment rental costs. Due to the film's violent content, Hooper struggled to find a distributor. Louis Perano of Bryanston Pictures
Bryanston Distributing Company
Bryanston Distributing Company is an American film distribution company that was very active during the early 1970s and was left dormant for almost thirty years...
eventually purchased the distribution rights. Hooper limited the quantity of onscreen gore in hopes of securing a "PG" (Parental Guidance) rating, but the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
(MPAA) rated it "R" (Restricted; children under 17 require a parent or guardian). The film faced similar difficulties internationally.
Upon its October 1974 release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was banned outright in several countries, and numerous theaters later stopped showing the film in response to complaints about its violence. While it initially drew a mixed reception from critics, it was enormously profitable, grossing over $30 million at the domestic box office. It has since gained a reputation as one of the most influential horror films in cinema history. It is credited with originating several elements common in the slasher
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
genre, including the use of power tools as murder weapons and the characterization of the killer as a large, hulking, faceless figure. The popularity of the film led to a franchise that continued the story of Leatherface and his family through sequels, remakes, comic books, and video games.
Plot
Sally Hardesty (Marilyn BurnsMarilyn Burns
Mary Lynn Ann Burns , better known as Marilyn Burns, is an American actress, best known for her roles in the horror cult films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , and Eaten Alive...
) and her brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain
Paul A. Partain
Paul A. Partain was an American actor, perhaps best known for his role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as the "annoying" handicapped Franklin Hardesty.Partain was born in Austin, Texas...
), travel with three friends, Jerry (Allen Danziger
Allen Danziger
Allen Danziger is an American actor, perhaps best known for his role as Jerry in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ....
), Kirk (William Vail
William Vail
Wlliam Vail is an actor best known for his role as "Kirk" in the 1974 American horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.-References :* * * http://www.bbcnewsamerica.com/tag/texas-chainsaw-massacre...
), and Pam (Teri McMinn
Teri McMinn
Teri McMinn is an American actress, known for her role as Pam in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .- Biography :...
), to visit the grave of the Hardestys' grandfather to investigate reports of vandalism and grave robbing. Afterwards, they decide to visit an old Hardesty family homestead. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal
Edwin Neal
Edwin Neal is an American actor, perhaps best known for his role as the Hitchhiker in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or his role as Lord Zedd in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. He has been a top voice talent and actor for years appearing on screen and off in such diverse projects as The Lord of the...
) who slashes both himself and Franklin with a straight razor before the group forces him out of the van. They stop at a gas station to refuel, but the proprietor (Jim Siedow
Jim Siedow
Jim Nash Siedow was an American actor, best known for his role of Drayton "The Cook" Sawyer in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.-Life and career:Siedow was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming...
) tells them that the pumps are empty. They continue towards the homestead, intending to return to the gas station once the fuel has been delivered.
When they arrive, Franklin tells Kirk and Pam about a local swimming hole and the couple head off to find it. Instead they stumble upon a nearby house. Kirk calls out, asking for gas, while Pam waits on the front steps. After Kirk receives no answer, he discovers that the door is unlocked and enters the house, where Leatherface
Leatherface
Leatherface is the main antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-film series and its spin-offs. He wears masks made of human skin and engages in murder and cannibalism alongside his inbred family. He is considered by many to be one of the first major slasher film villains alongside Michael...
(Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Milton Hansen is an Icelandic-born actor and author best known for playing Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .- Early life:Hansen was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, and moved to the United States when he was five...
) appears and kills him. Pam enters soon after and finds the house filled with furniture made from human bones. She attempts to flee, but Leatherface catches her and impales her on a meathook. Jerry heads out to look for Pam and Kirk at sunset. He finds the couple's blanket outside the nearby house. He investigates and finds Pam, who is still alive, inside a freezer. Before he can react, Leatherface kills him and stuffs Pam back into the freezer.
With darkness falling, Sally and Franklin set out to find their friends. As they near the neighboring house and call out, Leatherface lunges from the darkness and kills Franklin with a chainsaw. Sally heads toward the house and finds the desiccated remains of an elderly couple in an upstairs room. She escapes from Leatherface by jumping through a second-floor window and flees to the gas station. Leatherface disappears into the night. The proprietor calms her with offers of help, but then ties her up and forces her into his truck. He drives to the house, arriving at the same time as the hitchhiker, who turns out to be Leatherface's younger brother. When the pair bring Sally inside, the hitchhiker recognizes her and taunts her.
The men torment the bound and gagged Sally while Leatherface, now dressed as a woman, serves dinner. Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring an old man, "Grandpa" (John Dugan), from upstairs to share the meal. During the night they decide Sally should be killed by "Grandpa". He tries to hit her with a hammer, but is too weak. In the ensuing confusion, she breaks free, leaps through a window, and escapes to the road. Leatherface and the hitchhiker give chase, but the latter is run down and killed by a passing semi-trailer truck. Armed with his chainsaw, Leatherface attacks the truck when the driver stops to help. The driver hits him in the face with a large wrench. Sally escapes in the back of a passing pickup truck as Leatherface waves the chainsaw above his head in frustration.
Development
The concept for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre arose in the early 1970s while Tobe HooperTobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 ; the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation...
was working as an assistant film director at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
and as a documentary cameraman. He had already developed a story involving the elements of isolation, the woods, and darkness. He credited the graphic coverage of violence by San Antonio news outlets as one inspiration for the film and based elements of the plot on serial killer Ed Gein
Ed Gein
Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein - July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes...
in 1950s Wisconsin
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
; Gein inspired other horror films such as Psycho
Psycho (1960 film)
Psycho is a 1960 American suspense/psychological horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. The film is based on the screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who adapted it from the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch...
(1960) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). During development, Hooper used the working titles of Headcheese and Leatherface.
Hooper has cited changes in the cultural and political landscape as central influences on the film. His intentional misinformation, that the "film you are about to see is true", was a response to being "lied to by the government about things that were going on all over the world", including Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, the 1973 oil crisis
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
, and "the massacres and atrocities in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
". The "lack of sentimentality and the brutality of things" that Hooper noticed while watching the local news, whose graphic coverage was epitomized by "showing brains spilled all over the road", led to his belief that "man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film". The idea of using a chainsaw as the murder weapon came to Hooper while he was in the hardware section of a busy store, contemplating how to speed his way through the crowd.
Hooper and Kim Henkel cowrote the screenplay and formed Vortex, Inc. with Henkel as president and Hooper as vice president. They asked Bill Parsley, a friend of Hooper, to provide funding. Parsley formed a company named MAB, Inc. through which he invested $60,000 in the production. In return, MAB owned 50 percent of the film and its profits. Production manager Ron Bozman told most of the cast and crew that he would have to defer part of their salaries until after it was sold to a distributor. Vortex made the idea more attractive by awarding them a share of its potential profits, ranging from 0.25 to 6 percent, similar to mortgage points
Point (mortgage)
Points, sometimes also called a "discount point", are a form of pre-paid interest. One point equals one percent of the loan amount. By charging a borrower points, a lender effectively increases the yield on the loan above the amount of the stated interest rate...
. The cast and crew were not informed that Vortex owned only 50 percent, which meant their points were worth half of the assumed value.
Casting
Many of the cast members at the time were relatively unknown actors—Texans who had played roles in commercials, television, and stage shows, as well as performers whom Hooper knew personally, such as Allen DanzigerAllen Danziger
Allen Danziger is an American actor, perhaps best known for his role as Jerry in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ....
and Jim Siedow
Jim Siedow
Jim Nash Siedow was an American actor, best known for his role of Drayton "The Cook" Sawyer in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.-Life and career:Siedow was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming...
. Involvement in the film propelled some of them into the motion picture industry. The lead role of Sally was given to Marilyn Burns
Marilyn Burns
Mary Lynn Ann Burns , better known as Marilyn Burns, is an American actress, best known for her roles in the horror cult films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , and Eaten Alive...
, who had appeared previously on stage and served on the film commission board at UT Austin while studying there. Teri McMinn
Teri McMinn
Teri McMinn is an American actress, known for her role as Pam in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .- Biography :...
was a student who worked with local theater companies, including the Dallas Theater Center
Dallas Theater Center
The Dallas Theater Center is a major regional theater in Dallas, Texas . It produces classic, contemporary and new plays. The theater was based in the Kalita Humphreys Theater, a building designed by famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, from 1959 to 2009...
. Henkel called McMinn to come in for a reading after he spotted her picture in the Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is an award-winning publication owned by Cox Enterprises. The Newspaper places focus on issues affecting Austin and the Central Texas region....
. For her last call-back he requested that she wear short shorts, which proved to be the most comfortable of all the cast members' costumes.
Icelandic-American actor Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Milton Hansen is an Icelandic-born actor and author best known for playing Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre .- Early life:Hansen was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, and moved to the United States when he was five...
was selected for the role of Leatherface. He regarded Leatherface as being mentally retarded and having never learned to speak properly. To research his character in preparation for his role, Hansen visited a special needs school and watched how the students moved and spoke.
Filming
The primary filming location was an early 1900s farmhouse located on Quick Hill Road near Round Rock, TexasRound Rock, Texas
Round Rock is a city in Travis and Williamson counties in the U.S. state of Texas. It is part of the metropolitan area. The 2010 census places the population at 99,887....
, where the La Frontera
La Frontera (Round Rock, Texas)
La Frontera is Round Rock's largest master-planned, multi-use commercial business-retail-housing center and is located at the northeast corner of SH 45 Toll Road and Interstate 35 in Round Rock, Texas within Williamson County, Texas. La Frontera is also located immediately across Interstate 35...
development is now located. The small budget and concerns over high-cost equipment rentals meant the crew filmed seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day. The environment was humid and the cast and crew found conditions tough; temperatures peaked at 110 °F
Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit is the temperature scale proposed in 1724 by, and named after, the German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit . Within this scale, the freezing of water into ice is defined at 32 degrees, while the boiling point of water is defined to be 212 degrees...
(43 °C) on July 26. Hansen later recalled, "It was 95, 100 degrees every day during filming. They wouldn't wash my costume because they were worried that the laundry might lose it, or that it would change color. They didn't have enough money for a second costume. So I wore that [mask] 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month."
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was mainly shot using an Eclair NPR
Eclair (camera)
Éclair was a film production, film laboratory and movie camera manufacturing company established in Épinay-sur-Seine, France by Charles Jourjon in 1907....
16 mm camera with fine-grain, low-speed film that required four times more light than modern digital cameras. Most of the filming took place in the farmhouse, which was filled with furniture constructed from animal bones and a latex material used as upholstery to give the appearance of human skin. The house was not cooled, and there was little ventilation. The crew covered its walls with drops of animal blood obtained from a local slaughterhouse. Art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
Robert Burns drove around the countryside and collected the remains of cattle and other animals in various stages of decomposition, with which he littered the floors of the house.
The special effects were simple and limited by the budget. The on-screen blood was real in some cases, such as the scene in which Leatherface feeds "Grandpa". The crew had difficulty getting the stage blood to come out of its tube, so instead Burns's index finger was cut with a razor. Burns's costume was so drenched with stage blood that it was "virtually solid" by the last day of shooting. The scene in which Leatherface decapitates Kirk with a chainsaw worried actor William Vail (Kirk). After telling Vail to stay still lest he really be killed, Hansen brought the running chainsaw to within 3 inches (8 cm) of Vail's face.
Post-production
The production exceeded its original $60,000 budget during editingFilm editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
. Sources differ on the film's final cost, offering figures between $93,000 and $300,000. A film production group, Pie in the Sky, provided $23,532 in exchange for 19 percent of Vortex. This left Henkel, Hooper and the rest of the cast and crew with a 40.5 percent stake. Warren Skaaren
Warren Skaaren
Warren Skaaren was an American screenwriter and film producer. His notable writing includes: Batman , Beetlejuice , Beverly Hills Cop 2 and Fire with Fire . He was also credited as associate producer for Top Gun , for which he wrote a draft...
, then head of the Texas Film Commission
Texas Film Commission
The Texas Film Commission is a state agency of Texas, under the oversight of the Governor of Texas. Its headquarters are in Suite 3.410 in the Texas Insurance Building in Downtown Austin.-External links:*...
, helped secure the distribution deal with Bryanston Pictures. David Foster, producer of the 1982 horror film The Thing, arranged for a private screening for some of Bryanston Pictures' West Coast executives, and received 1.5 percent of Vortex's profits and a deferred fee of $500.
On August 28, 1974, Louis Peraino of Bryanston agreed to distribute the film worldwide, from which Bozman and Skaaren would receive $225,000 and 35 percent of the profits. Years later Bozman stated, "We made a deal with the devil, [sigh], and I guess that, in a way, we got what we deserved." They signed the contract with Bryanston and after the investors recouped their money (with interest)—and after Skaaren, the lawyers, and the accountants were paid—only $8,100 was left to be divided among the 20 cast and crew members. Eventually the producers sued Bryanston for failing to pay them their full percentage of the box office profits. A court judgment instructed Bryanston to pay the filmmakers $500,000, but by then the company had declared bankruptcy. In 1983 New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
acquired the distribution rights from Bryanston and gave the producers a larger share of the profits.
Release
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre premiered on October 1, 1974, in Austin, Texas, almost a year after filming concluded. It screened nationally in the United States as a Saturday afternoon matinée and its false marketing as a "true story" helped it attract a broad audience. For eight years after 1976, it was annually reissued to first-run theaters, promoted by full-page ads. The film eventually grossed more than $30 million in the United States and Canada ($14.4 million in rentals), making it the fourteenth-highest grossing film initially released in 1974, despite its minuscule budget. Among independent films, it was overtaken in 1978 by John CarpenterJohn Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
's Halloween
Halloween (1978 film)
Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film directed, produced, and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut and the first installment in the Halloween franchise. The film is set in the fictional midwestern...
, which grossed $47 million.
Hooper reportedly hoped that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would give the complete, uncut release print
Release print
A release print is a copy of a film that is sent to a movie theater for exhibition.-Definitions:Release prints are not to be confused with the other types of print used in the photochemical post-production process:...
a "PG" rating due to its minimal amount of visible gore. Instead, it was originally rated "X". After several minutes were cut, it was resubmitted to the MPAA and received an "R" rating. A distributor apparently restored the offending material, and at least one theater presented the full version under an "R". In San Francisco, cinema-goers walked out of theaters in disgust and, in February 1976, two theaters in Ottawa, Canada, were advised by local police to withdraw the film lest they face morality charges.
After its initial British release, including a one-year theatrical run in London, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was initially banned on the advice of British Board of Film Classification
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification , originally British Board of Film Censors, is a non-governmental organisation, funded by the film industry and responsible for the national classification of films within the United Kingdom...
(BBFC) Secretary Stephen Murphy, and subsequently by his successor, James Ferman
James Ferman
James Alan Ferman was an American television and theatre director. He was the Secretary of the British Board of Film Classification from 1975 to 1999....
. While the British ban was in force the word "chainsaw" itself was barred from movie titles, forcing imitators to rename their films. In 1998, despite the BBFC ban, Camden London Borough Council
Camden London Borough Council
Camden London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Camden in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London...
granted the film a license. The following year the BBFC passed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for release with an 18 certificate (indicating that it should not be seen or purchased by a person under 18), and it was broadcast a year later on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
.
The Australian Classification Board
Australian Classification Board
The Australian Classification Board is a statutory classification body formed by the Australian Government which classifies films, video games and publications for exhibition, sale or hire in Australia since its establishment in 1970. The Australian Classification Board was originally incorporated...
refused to classify the 83-minute version of the film in June 1975; the board similarly refused classification of a 77-minute print in December that year. In 1981, an 83-minute version submitted by Greater Union Organization
Greater Union
Greater Union, Birch Carroll and Coyle, Event Cinemas, Skycity Cinemas and Damodar Village Cinemas together form a chain of cinema multiplexes across Australia, New Zealand and Fiji...
Film Distributors was again refused registration. It was later submitted by Filmways Australia and approved for an "R" rating in 1984. It was banned for periods in many other countries, including Brazil, Chile, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and West Germany.
Critical response
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre received a mixed reaction upon its initial release. Linda Gross of the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
called it despicable and described Henkel and Hooper as more concerned with creating a realistic atmosphere than with its "plastic script". Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
said it was "as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises", yet praised its acting and technical execution. Patrick Taggart of the Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
The Austin American-Statesman is the major daily newspaper for Austin, the capital city of Texas. It is an award-winning publication owned by Cox Enterprises. The Newspaper places focus on issues affecting Austin and the Central Texas region....
hailed it as the most important horror film since George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
(1968). Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
found the picture to be well-made, despite what it called the "heavy doses of gore". John McCarty of Cinefantastique
Cinefantastique
Cinefantastique was a horror, fantasy, and science fiction film magazine originally started as a mimeographed fanzine in 1967, then relaunched as a glossy, offset quarterly in 1970 by publisher/editor Frederick S. Clarke...
stated that the house featured in the film made the Bates
Norman Bates
Norman Bates is a fictional character created by writer Robert Bloch as the central character in his novel Psycho, and portrayed by Anthony Perkins as the main antagonist of the 1960 film of the same name directed by Alfred Hitchcock...
motel "look positively pleasant by comparison". Revisiting the film in his 1976 article "Fashions in Pornography" for Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
, Stephen Koch found its sadistic violence to be extreme and unimaginative.
Critics later frequently praised both the film's aesthetic quality and its power. Observing that it managed to be "horrifying without being a bloodbath (you'll see more gore in a Steven Seagal
Steven Seagal
Steven Frederic Seagal is an American action film star, producer, writer, martial artist, guitarist and reserve deputy sheriff. A 7th-dan black belt in Aikido, Seagal began his adult life as an Aikido instructor in Japan...
film)", Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
called it "a backwoods masterpiece of fear and loathing". TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
thought it was "intelligent" in its "bloodless depiction of violence", while Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Dr Anton Bitel is a film critic, and an occasional tutor in Classics at the University of Oxford.Born in Australia, Anton obtained a Master's degree and Doctorate from the University of Oxford...
felt the fact that it was banned in the United Kingdom was a tribute to its artistry. He pointed out how the quiet sense of foreboding at the beginning of the film grows, until the viewer experiences "a punishing assault on the senses". In Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema, Scott Von Doviak commended its effective use of daylight shots, unusual among horror films, such as the sight of a corpse draped over a tombstone in the opening sequence. Mike Emery of The Austin Chronicle praised the film's "subtle touches"—such as radio broadcasts heard in the background describing grisly murders around Texas—and said that what made it so dreadful was that it never strayed too far from potential reality.
It has often been described as one of the scariest films of all time. Rex Reed
Rex Reed
Rex Taylor Reed is an American film critic and former co-host of the syndicated television show At the Movies. He currently writes the column "On the Town with Rex Reed" for The New York Observer.-Life and career:...
called it the most terrifying film he had ever seen. Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
described it as "the most purely horrifying horror movie ever made" and called it "never less than totally committed to scaring you witless". Reminiscing about his first viewing of the film, horror director Wes Craven
Wes Craven
Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...
recalled wondering "what kind of Mansonite
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
crazoid" could have created such a thing. It is a work of "cataclysmic terror", in the words of horror novelist Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
, who declared, "I would happily testify to its redeeming social merit in any court in the country." Critic Robin Wood
Robin Wood (critic)
Robert Paul "Robin" Wood was a Canada-based film critic and educator. He wrote books on Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, and Arthur Penn and was a member, until 2007, of the editorial collective that publishes the magazine CineACTION!, a film theory collective founded by Wood and...
found it one of the few horror films to possess "the authentic quality of nightmare". Based on 42 reviews published since 2000, the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 90% of critics gave it a positive review, with an average score of 7.6 out of 10.
Cultural impact
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is considered one of the greatest—and most controversial—of horror films, and a major influence on the genre. In 1999 Richard Zoglin of TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
commented that it had "set a new standard for slasher films". The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
listed it as one of the 50 most controversial films of all time. Tony Magistrale
Tony Magistrale
Anthony Samuel Magistrale is a Professor in English at the University of Vermont since 1983. He received a B.A. in 1974 from Allegheny College, and from the University of Pittsburgh an M.A. in 1976 and a Ph.D. in 1981. He has written several books about Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe.-References:...
believes the film paved the way for horror to be used as a vehicle for social commentary. Describing it as "cheap, grubby and out of control", Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
declared that it "both defines and entirely supersedes the very notion of the exploitation picture". In his book Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film, David Hogan called it "the most affecting gore thriller of all and, in a broader view, among the most effective horror films ever made ... the driving force of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is something far more horrible than aberrant sexuality: total insanity." According to Bill Nichols, it "achieves the force of authentic art, profoundly disturbing, intensely personal, yet at the same time far more than personal".
Leatherface has gained a reputation as a significant character in the horror genre, responsible for establishing the use of conventional tools as murder weapons and the image of a large, silent killer devoid of personality. Christopher Null
Christopher Null
Christopher Null is a film critic, columnist and former blogger for Yahoo! Tech, editor of Drinkhacker.com, and is the founder and editor in chief of Filmcritic.com.-Publications:...
of Filmcritic.com said, "In our collective consciousness, Leatherface and his chainsaw have become as iconic as Freddy
Freddy Krueger
Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...
and his razors or Jason
Jason Voorhees
Jason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th , as the son of camp cook-turned-murderer, Mrs. Voorhees, in which he was portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created by Victor Miller, with contributions by Ron Kurz, Sean S...
and his hockey mask." Don Sumner called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre a classic that not only introduced a new villain to the horror pantheon but also influenced an entire generation of filmmakers. According to Rebecca Ascher-Walsh of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
, it laid the foundations for future horror franchises such as Halloween
Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of ten slasher films, novels, and comic books. The franchise focuses on the fictional character of Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his older sister, Judith Myers...
, The Evil Dead
The Evil Dead
The Evil Dead is a 1981 horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi, starring Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, and Betsy Baker. The film is a story of five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a wooded area...
, and The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur footage. The film was produced by the Haxan Films production company. The film relates the story of three student filmmakers The Blair Witch Project is a 1999 American horror film pieced together from amateur...
. Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
cited it as an inspiration for his 1979 film Alien
Alien (film)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which...
. French director Alexandre Aja
Alexandre Aja
Alexandre Aja is a French film director who rose to international stardom for his 2003 horror film Haute Tension .-Personal life:...
credited it as an early influence on his career. Horror filmmaker and heavy metal musician Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the...
sees it as a major influence on his art, most notably his 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses
House of 1000 Corpses
House of 1000 Corpses is a 2003 exploitation horror film written and directed by Rob Zombie; it is his directorial debut. It was released in the United States on April 11, 2003 by Lions Gate Entertainment.-Plot:...
.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was selected for the 1975 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
Directors' Fortnight
Directors' Fortnight
Directors' Fortnight is an independent section held in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. The section was created in 1969 after the events of May 1968, in which the Cannes festival was canceled in solidarity with striking workers....
and London Film Festival
London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...
. In 1976, it won the Special Jury Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in France. Entertainment Weekly ranked the film sixth on its 2003 list of "The Top 50 Cult Films". In a 2005 Total Film
Total Film
Total Film is a British film magazine published 13 times a year by Future Publishing. The magazine was launched in 1997 and offers film, DVD and Blu-ray news, reviews and features...
poll, it was selected as the greatest horror film of all time. It was named among Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine's top 25 horror films in 2007. In 2008 the film ranked number 199 on Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Empire also ranked it 46th in its list of the 50 greatest independent films. In a 2010 Total Film poll, it was again selected as the greatest horror film; the judging panel included veteran horror directors such as John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
. In 2010, as well, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
ranked it number 14 on its list of the top 25 horror films. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was inducted into the Horror Hall of Fame
Horror Hall of Fame
The Horror Hall of Fame was an annual Oscars-style award show hosted by Robert Englund which honored the best horror films, television series, actors, producers and special-effects designers. It ran for three years from 1989 to 1991...
in 1990, with director Hooper accepting the award, and it is part of the permanent collection of New York City's Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
.
Themes and analysis
The underlying themes of the film have been the subject of extensive critical discussion; critics and scholars have interpreted it as a paradigmatic exploitation filmExploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
in which female protagonists are subjected to brutal, sadistic violence. Stephen Prince comments that the horror is "born of the torment of the young woman subjected to imprisonment and abuse amid decaying arms ... and mobiles made of human bones and teeth." As with many horror films, it focuses on the "final girl
Final girl
The final girl is a trope in thriller and horror films that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story...
" trope—the heroine and inevitable lone survivor who somehow escapes the horror that befalls the other characters: Sally Hardesty is wounded and tortured, yet manages to survive with the help of a male truck driver. Critics argue that even in exploitation films in which the ratio of male and female deaths is roughly equal, the images that linger will be of the violence committed against the female characters. The specific case of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre provides support for this argument: three men are killed in quick fashion, but one woman is brutally slaughtered—hung on a meathook—and the surviving woman endures physical and mental torture. In 1977, critic Mary Mackey described the meathook scene as probably the most brutal onscreen female death in any commercially distributed film. She placed it in a lineage of violent films that depict women as weak and incapable of protecting themselves.
In one study, a group of men were shown five films depicting differing levels of violence against women. On first viewing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre they experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety; however, upon subsequent viewing they found the violence against women less offensive and more enjoyable. Another study, investigating gender-specific perceptions of slasher films, involved 30 male and 30 female university students. One male participant described the screaming, especially Sally's, as the "most freaky thing" in the film.
According to Jesse Stommel of Bright Lights Film Journal
Bright Lights Film Journal
Bright Lights Film Journal is an online popular-academic film magazine, with a left-leaning critical orientation, based in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is edited and published by Gary Morris....
, the lack of explicit violence in the film forces viewers to question their own fascination with violence that they play a central role in imagining. Nonetheless—citing its feverish camera moves, repeated bursts of light, and auditory pandemonium—Stommel asserts that it involves the audience primarily on a sensory rather than an intellectual level.
Critic Christopher Sharrett argues that since Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's Psycho (1960) and The Birds
The Birds (film)
The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...
(1963), the American horror film has been defined by the questions it poses "about the fundamental validity of the American civilizing process", concerns amplified during the 1970s by the "delegitimation of authority in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
". "If Psycho began an exploration of a new sense of absurdity in contemporary life, of the collapse of causality and the diseased underbelly of American Gothic", he writes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre "carries this exploration to a logical conclusion, addressing many of the issues of Hitchcock's film while refusing comforting closure".
Robin Wood characterizes Leatherface and his family as victims of industrial capitalism, their jobs as slaughterhouse workers having been rendered obsolete by technological advances. He states that the picture "brings to focus a spirit of negativity ... that seems to lie not far below the surface of the modern collective consciousness". Naomi Merritt explores the film's representation of "cannibalistic capitalism" in relation to Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...
's theory of taboo and transgression. She elaborates on Wood's analysis, stating that the Sawyer family's values "reflect, or correspond to, established and interdependent American institutions ... but their embodiment of these social units is perverted and transgressive."
In Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
's view, Hooper's presentation of the Sawyer family during the dinner scene parodies a typical American sitcom family: the gas station owner is the bread-winning father figure; the killer Leatherface is depicted as a bourgeois housewife; the hitchhiker acts as the rebellious teenager. Isabel Cristina Pinedo, author of Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing, states, "The horror genre must keep terror and comedy in tension if it is to successfully tread the thin line that separates it from terrorism and parody ... this delicate balance is struck in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which the decaying corpse of Grandpa not only incorporates horrific and humorous effects, but actually uses one to exacerbate the other."
Post-release
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has appeared on various home video formats. It was first released on videotape and CED in the 1980s by Wizard VideoWizard Video
Wizard Video was a motion picture distribution company created by B movie veteran Charles Band, who would later go on to found Full Moon Features. They were best known for their VHS releases of Zombie 2, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I Spit on Your Grave...
and Vestron Video
Vestron Video
Vestron Video was the main subsidiary of Vestron, Inc., a home video company based in Stamford, Connecticut that was active from 1982 to 1992. It is considered to have been a pioneer in the home video market....
. Just as the British Board of Film Classification had already banned the theatrical version, the BBFC banned the home version in 1984, amid a moral panic surrounding "video nasties
Video nasty
"Video nasty" was a colloquial term coined in the United Kingdom by 1982 which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse and various religious organizations.While violence...
". After the retirement of BBFC chief Ferman in 1999, the board passed the film uncut on video (as well as film) with an 18 certificate
18 certificate
The 18 certificate is issued by the British Board of Film Classification to state that, in its opinion, a film, video recording, or game should not be seen or purchased by a person under 18 years old....
, almost 25 years after the original release. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released on DVD in October 1998 in the United States, and in May 2000 in the United Kingdom. An initial Australian DVD release in 2001 was followed by a revised version six years later. Dark Sky Films released a two-disc "ultimate" edition, featuring several interviews, restored audio and picture quality, and other extras including deleted scenes. Dark Sky Films released a Blu-ray version on September 30, 2008.
Shortly after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre established itself as a success on home video in 1982, Wizard Video released a mass-market video game adaptation for the Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
. In the game, the player assumes the role of Leatherface and attempts to murder trespassers while avoiding obstacles such as fences and cow skulls. As one of the first horror-themed video games, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre caused controversy when it was first released due to its violent nature; it sold poorly as a result, because many game stores refused to stock it.
The film was followed by two sequels, a remake, a film that straddles both those categories, and a prequel. The first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), was considerably more graphic and violent than the original and was banned in Australia for 20 years before it was released on DVD in a revised special edition in October 2006. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) was the second sequel to appear, though Hooper did not return to direct due to scheduling conflicts with another film, Spontaneous Combustion
Spontaneous Combustion (film)
Spontaneous Combustion is a 1990 film directed by Tobe Hooper. The plot of this science fiction horror film revolves around a young man with psychokinetic powers. Actor Brad Dourif plays the role of Sam, who learns that his parents were part of an atomic bomb experiment. As an adult, Sam discovers...
. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is a 1994 independent American comedy-horror film written and directed by Kim Henkel, and starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, both before they became mainstream stars...
, starring Renée Zellweger
Renée Zellweger
Renée Kathleen Zellweger is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire , and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary ...
and Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey
Matthew David McConaughey is an American actor.After a series of minor roles in the early 1990s, McConaughey gained notice for his breakout role in Dazed and Confused . He then appeared in films such as A Time to Kill, Contact, U-571, Tiptoes, Sahara, and We Are Marshall...
, was released in 1995. While briefly acknowledging the events of the preceding two sequels, its plot makes it a virtual remake of the 1974 original. A straight remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003 film)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a 2003 remake of the 1974 horror film of the same name. The 2003 film was directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay...
, was released by Platinum Dunes
Platinum Dunes
Platinum Dunes is a production company created in 2001 by filmmakers Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form. The company specializes in horror films, particularly remakes.Their website is part of Bloody Disgusting's site....
and New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
in 2003. It was followed by a prequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, a 2006 American slasher film, functions as a prequel to the 2003 remake of the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman and co-produced by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper , the film went into release in North America on October 6,...
, in 2006. A seventh film
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D is an upcoming 3D horror film directed by John Luessenhop and written by Debra Sullivan and Adam Marcus, with later drafts by Kirsten Elms and Luessenhop. It is the seventh film in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise and is a direct alternate sequel to the 1974...
is in production and scheduled for release in 2012.