The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: A Horror Classic

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a 1974 independent horror film created by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel. The story follows a group of friends who, while visiting an old family home in rural Texas, fall prey to a cannibalistic family, with only one survivor escaping the ordeal. Among the killers is Leatherface, a former butcher and intellectually-impaired man who wears masks made of human skin and uses a chainsaw as his signature weapon.

The film was the first installment in a long-lasting franchise and remains the most successful (by return on investment) in the series. Produced on a modest budget of around $140,000 and featuring mostly unknown actors from Texas, the film became a major commercial success, grossing more than $30 million domestically. Despite its limited onscreen violence, the film was banned in several countries. The British Board of Film Censors, which initially banned the film in Britain, relented in 1999, and admitted that “there is no explicit sexual element in the film, and relatively little visible violence. The film is widely regarded as one of the most influential horror movies of all time, established a cult following among horror fans, and influenced generations of filmmakers, particularly in the slasher subgenre. The film is also credited with pioneering the use of power tools as movie murder weapons and portraying killers as masked, remorseless murderers. Leatherface has become a popular culture icon, and the film is recognized as a horror classic.

Hooper and Henkel struggled to find investors to help finance the film. In 1973 Warren Edward Skaaren, head of the Texas Film Commission, met with potential backers to discuss the project. He played a major role in securing $60,000 in initial funding, $40,000 of which came from Texas Tech University Vice President Bill Parsley. Parsley's attorney, Robert Kuhn, contributed $9,000, while Henkel's sister Katherine, a college student at the time, invested $1,000. Another $10,000 came from Richard Saenz, a client of one of Kuhn's associates.

Before the title was finalized, several other names were considered for the film. It was initially intended to be called Saturn in Retrograde, a reference to the script's astrological themes, which were muted in the final film. This was followed by the proposed title Head Cheese, which alluded to the film’s cannibalistic elements. It was then changed to Stalking Leatherface and later shortened to simply Leatherface. A week before principal photography began, the final title was settled as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Skaaren claimed to have originated the film's title. "Chain Saw" was written as two words in the original title, as registered with the United States Copyright Office, while later installments in the franchise spelled it as one word.

The film was shot on 16mm and blown up to 35mm. The cast was mostly comprised of unknowns (save for John Henry Faulk in a small role). It included Marilyn Burns as survivor Sally Hardesty, Edwin Neal as the hitchhiker, and Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface. The film marked the debut of John Larroquette, who went on to a lengthy career in television. The movie was primarily filmed at a farmhouse in rural Williamson County, which served as the home of Leatherface and his family. In 1998 the house was relocated to Kingsland, where it operated as a restaurant. The cemetery featured in the opening scene is the Bagdad Cemetery in Leander, and The Gas Station is located in Bastrop and serves as a restaurant. The dirt road featured in the film's final scene is situated in Round Rock and is now surrounded by modern development. Many of these locations have become popular tourism sites for horror movie enthusiasts.

Due to the film's limited budget, the cast and crew faced difficult working conditions and a lack of accommodations. The cast wore the same clothes for all of their scenes, and the directors scavenged the area for animal remains to decorate the set. Larroquette, who provided the opening narration, claimed that he was paid with marijuana. Most of the filming was completed within a condensed time frame of six weeks. Filming started in July 1973, with the cast and crew working seven days a week, often for up to sixteen hours a day. The extreme summer heat, with temperatures exceeding 100°F (38°C) with high humidity, posed significant risks to those on set. The heat also caused the meat and animal corpses on set to decay rapidly, forcing the cast and crew to take frequent breaks for fresh air between takes. Many cast members also sustained minor injuries during filming, including asphalt burns, bruises, and cuts.

During post-production, Skaaren secured a deal with Bryanston Distributors to distribute the film for $225,000 and 35 percent of the film’s profits. The film premiered at the Riverside Twin Cinema in Austin on October 1, 1974, and was released nationwide in the United States on October 11. Vortex, Inc., co-founded by Hooper and Henkel, owned half of the film's shares, while the other half belonged to Parsley's company, M.A.B., Inc. After the film's release, some of the actors claimed that they were unaware of this profit-sharing arrangement, which diminished their earnings. Furthermore, Bryanston failed to pay the production its full share of box office profits, and Kuhn represented the cast and crew in a fruitless legal battle to recover the money. Bryanston, facing obscenity charges for distributing its pornographic film Deep Throat (1972) across state lines, declared bankruptcy in 1976.

Despite its notorious reputation, the film featured limited blood and gore, instead relying on implication and auditory effects for dramatization. Hooper aimed to make the film accessible to a younger audience by limiting its graphic content and foul language, but it was still regarded as explicit, which initially shocked him. He hoped that the Motion Picture Association of America would assign the film a PG rating in its uncut form, but it was given an X rating. After several minutes were removed, the film was resubmitted and received an R rating.

Hooper claimed that, as a child, he was deeply affected when his family doctor shared a story about a Halloween mask made from a cadaver, and he cited this as an inspiration for Leatherface. Additionally, his sense for body horror was influenced by his mother having a lung removed. Hooper's motivation to film graphic content intensified after he saw how local news coverage in San Antonio was presented on television in a graphic and sensationalist manner. Hooper and Henkel drew on the crimes of serial killer Ed Gein to shape Leatherface. Henkel has also cited his interest in the Houston-area murders committed by Dean Corll, Elmer Wayne Henley, and David Own Brooks, which were in the news at the time the film was in production. They also drew inspiration from the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel,” wherein children are lured into a remote house to be eaten, and from the horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968). To create a realistic horror atmosphere, Hooper drew on his experience as a documentary filmmaker and incorporated a cinéma vérité style.

The inspiration for the chainsaw as the weapon of choice came to Hooper in a rather unusual manner. He recounted that the idea struck him in December 1972 while he was in the hardware section of a crowded Montgomery Ward store during a Christmas shopping frenzy in Austin. "I was frustrated, and I found myself near a display rack of chain saws [sic]. I just kind of zoned in on it. I did a rack focus to the saws, and I thought, 'I know a way I could get through this crowd really quickly,'” Hooper recalled. He claimed that, after arriving home, the entire story came to him in a matter of seconds. It is also possible that he had been influenced by the climactic chainsaw scene in Last House on the Left, a 1972 exploitation film.

The movie's plot is fictional, but it was marketed as being based on a true story, a tactic highlighted in its promotional poster and opening narration. The decision to market the film as a true story was intended to captivate the audience, but it was also a response to the sociopolitical climate of the 1970s and reflected public skepticism toward the Richard M. Nixon administration and the media in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, the economic recession, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. The film has been a subject of widespread critical analysis and commentary, with discussions exploring its themes relating to vegetarianism, familial dysfunction, violence against women, the displacement of rural workers in the face of industrial capitalism, hippie culture, and the clash between the rural South and the urban middle class.

The film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975 and again in 2014. In 1981 the Museum of Modern Art in New York added the film to its permanent collection. In 2024 the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry.