The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Who will survive and what will be left of them?
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Production
Budget
$83 532
Revenue
$30 896 376
Director
Scenario
Kim Henkel
Author
Composer
Producer
Actors
Marilyn Burns
Sally
Allen Danziger
Jerry
Paul A. Partain
Franklin
William Vail
Kirk
Teri McMinn
Pam
Edwin Neal
Hitchhiker
Jim Siedow
Old Man
Gunnar Hansen
Leatherface
Short description
Five young people travel through rural Texas by van to check on the grave of one of their grandfathers, which may have been vandalized. Along the way they pick up a hitchhiker whose behaviour turns threatening, and they force him out of the vehicle. Running low on fuel, they stop at the grandfather's old house and the neighbouring farm, where they are attacked one by one by members of a local family of slaughterhouse workers. Only Sally, travelling with her wheelchair-using brother Franklin, survives to flee.
Tobe Hooper directed, produced and co-wrote the film with Kim Henkel, making his feature debut. It is the first of 15 films he directed in chronological order, followed by Eaten Alive in 1976. Marilyn Burns plays Sally, with Paul A. Partain as Franklin, Allen Danziger as Jerry, William Vail as Kirk, Teri McMinn as Pam and Edwin Neal as the hitchhiker. Shot independently on a small budget and released in October 1974, it became a substantial commercial success, taking around 31 million dollars worldwide.
The film has had a long afterlife with audiences: on IMDb it holds 7.4 out of 10 from about 211,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3 out of 10 from roughly 4,000 votes. A critics' rating of 8.4 out of 10 from 91 reviews places it above those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The chase of Marilyn Burns by Leatherface turned out to be genuinely bloody: during the escape, the actress was badly cut by tree branches, so the blood on her clothes is real.
- The painting's original title was "Headcheese".
- According to Tobe Hooper himself, the idea for the film came to him while visiting a hardware store.
- The Sawyer family was modeled after serial killer Ed Gein.
- The film features a Poulan 306A chainsaw, but the label with the company name was removed from the product just in case to avoid lawsuits.
- As a sound backdrop, the director used a recording of the screams of livestock being sent to the slaughterhouse.
- The film was shot in chronological order and took 32 days to film.
- One of the least gory horror films in the history of cinema. This was because the director, screenwriter, and producer Tobe Hooper planned to make a "PG" rated film (parental guidance suggested), without emphasizing violence and corresponding language, completely excluding nudity and, rather, hinting at horrors than showing them on screen in close-up. All this made the film even more frightening, and it received an "X" rating (persons under the age of 17 are not admitted to screenings). Hooper later encountered similar problems with the sequel.
- The script for the character of Leatherface, played by Gunnar Hansen, was written with complete nonsense as dialogue, and Tobe Hooper had to explain to the actor in detail what his character meant in each case, while the actor had to figure out how to convey it without using words.
- Due to the brutality of the script, Gunnar Hansen initially refused the role of Leatherface. He was persuaded to accept it by Marilyn Burns, the actress playing Sally, who was his girlfriend at the time.
- After spending some time in the makeup chair, John Dugan, who was cast as Grandpa, decided he didn't want to be made up anymore, which meant all the scenes with him had to be shot in one day while he still had his makeup on. The entire filming process took 36 hours (including 5 hours for makeup application), and it all happened in the heat of summer, when the temperature outside approached 40 degrees Celsius (and sometimes exceeded it). A significant amount of time was spent filming the dinner scene, where Dugan's character was, so to speak, 'dressed to the nines' while being in a room with animal carcasses and spoiled food (without air conditioning or fans). During filming, some members of the crew felt sick from the stench.
- According to Gunnar Hansen, he didn't get along with Paul A. Partain, who played Franklin, during filming. Several years later, they met again, and Hansen realized that Partain had simply stayed in character even when not on camera during the filming of 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'. They became friends then and remained friends until Partain's death.
- According to Edwin Neal (who played the hitchhiker), representatives of the Texas Highway Patrol thanked him for an 18% decrease in crime, as viewers had clearly absorbed the film's main message, which was not to pick up hitchhikers on the side of the road.
- When the film was first released, it was so scary that many viewers didn't even make it to the end of the preview screening.
- The film's budget was so small that Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, had only one shirt. He wore it for four weeks straight – in the middle of a scorching Texas summer. By the end of filming, the smell emanating from the shirt was so strong that the rest of the crew couldn't be near Hansen (or eat near him during breaks).
- During filming, the entire Sawyer family posed for a photo in front of the house, but a German reporter stole the shot from the set. He took the photo home, and it was later used to print posters for the film's initial release in West Germany.
- Leatherface's mask severely limited his vision, and during filming, Gunnar Hansen regularly bumped his head on door frames, etc., due to his height (around two meters) and heels (another 7 cm).
- Tobe Hooper heightened the atmosphere and added tension to what was happening on screen, in particular by shortening scenes immediately preceding violent ones by a few frames, or by abruptly shifting the shot to Leatherface on the right when something was happening on the left side of the frame. Cinematographer Daniel Pearl spoke about this later.
- Serial killer and necrophile Ed Gein (who, to some extent, served as the prototype for Leatherface) wasn't entirely a serial killer, as he killed only two women. He was primarily a grave robber. He stole body parts – exclusively female – from various graves. He kept some parts at home in the refrigerator, and made clothing from the skin of one corpse, which he then wore.
- Once, Marilyn Burns took clothing from the set to launder. Returning to the washing machine where she had loaded the clothes, the actress discovered that the shirts had been stolen. Fortunately, another shirt was found for sale at the store where they were purchased – though it was a size larger. There were no other options, so the actress bought the shirt and wore it for the remainder of filming. Soon, the shirt became so saturated with fake blood that it simply hardened.
- Most of the actors had never met Gunnar Hansen before, let alone seen him in costume for the role, until filming their first scene with him (which was also his last).
- In the scene where Sally tries to give her grandfather blood, the actress's finger was simply cut, as the fake blood was thickening quickly, and it was already the end of a 27-hour workday.
- During the famous chase scene, Gunnar Hansen, the actor playing Leatherface, was instructed to portray anger and frustration. He realized that stomping his feet wouldn't convey the necessary emotions, and began swinging the chainsaw.
- The final shot featured Leatherface sawing his own leg with a chainsaw. The actor's leg was protected by a metal plate, over which a piece of meat and a bag of fake blood were secured. The actor genuinely screamed in pain because the plate quickly heated up from contact with the chainsaw and began to burn his leg.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
