How Tobe Hooper got the idea for ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’
Characterised by its grizzly take on a summer set film, horror master Tobe Hooper’s junior feature The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released in 1974 to immediate criticism and censorship. Its plot follows a gang of American teens driving through Texas who have their whole trip turned down after picking up a troubled high jacker, leading to a run-in with a spiteful family of inbreds who have a taste for blood. One family member, Leatherface, picks the teens off one by one with a range of weapons, such as a chainsaw.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre features a now infamous horror cast of Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow and Gunnar Hansen and lightly borrowed details from the murders of Ed Gein in its $140,000 budget story. Hooper’s film grossed over $30 million at the box office, beating initial reviews condemning its despicable and bloody presentations, and went on to become one of horror’s most influential and acclaimed works. It’s mostly recognised for being remembered as one of cinema’s most gory and sickening and yet there isn’t a single drop of blood in this 1974 classic. Everything is sacredly gifted purely to the imagination after audiences do see victims knocked out and pulled behind metal doors to meet an unseen gruesome fate.
It is this inventive depiction of physical horror at the hands of a cannibalistic serial killer that situates Hooper’s work as one of horror’s best, placed alongside the culturally and politically significant 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead by director George A. Romero. The film also predates John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher classic Halloween which also presented a brutal serial killer without showing any blood and instead relying on masterfully directed suspense, going on to be named one of the most influential horror films ever made.
Subsequently, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre appears on every and any list proposing the greatest and scariest horrors, such as Bravo’s 2004 miniseries The 100 Scariest Movie Moments where it came in at number 5 between Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) at 6 and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho at 4. This appearance came with feathered praise from other horror directors and celebrity fans, including Peter Jackson, known for the actually gory Braindead and Rob Zombie, responsible for House of 1000 Corpses (2003) and heavily influenced by Hooper’s film. Director Hooper also features in the miniseries where he explained how he came up with the concept for such a disturbing and thrilling feature.
“I was shopping mall and the crowds were closing [in] and I was wondering: ‘how the hell can I get out of here?’” Hooper explained in a talking head. “As I had that thought I found myself standing in the hardware department, my focus from the crowd racked focus and their clothes on and there’s this display of chainsaws.”
Essentially, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was conceived by the director needing to get out of a hectic shopping mall as quickly, and as bloodily, as possible.
According to John W. Borden in his 2004 text Return of the Power Tool Killer, Hopper found additional inspiration for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the startlingly “lack of sentimentality and the brutality of things”’ that he picked up on whenever he watched the local news. Borden writes how the graphic coverage was epitomized by “showing brains spilt all over the road.” This prompted the horror filmmaker to conclude that “man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film”.
This minor moment during a trip to the mall combined with a reaction to the news’s structure unexpectedly resulted in one of horror’s most infamous and expanding franchises, grossing over $252 million at the worldwide box office and currently consisting of 9 installments. Its timeline has since become convulsed and hectic, with prequels to remakes and sudden recon sequels that disregard the entire franchise coming up behind the original chronologically after nearly 50 years tampering with audiences’ understanding.