#The texas chain saw massacre 1974 story skin

Thankfully the 1970s was a different era entirely. Though her performance may go down in the history books of horror cinema, such a similar act on a modern film set would cause multiple lawsuits and would likely end in the termination of several careers. As Burns remembers: “When I was crazy at the end of the movie, laughing hysterically, that wasn’t acting…That was me, having to go back and do it one more time.” Marilyn Burns, after suffering from mental torture and physical violence on the film, was relieved once filming was finally complete, though recalls being told the night before that she needs to return to the set for one more day due to a problem with a previous shot. Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, eventually got so impatient that he shockingly sliced the finger of the actress for real, before exposing the cut to the saliva of actor John Dugan, who played the elderly grandfather. The issue came, however, when the prop knife which contained a tube of fake blood malfunctioned on set, forcing multiple failed takes of the scene. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre opens ominously, with a scrolling intertitle and a narrator who in the honeyed tones of a newscaster evokes a tragedy which befell. It was during the same torturous dinner scene that Sally, played by Burns, was supposed to have her finger cut by Leatherface so that her blood could be ‘drank’ by the family’s wrinkled older member. The story behind the camera of Tobe Hooper’s film, however, was far more problematic than its success would suggest, with the production being constantly hampered by both extraneous circumstances and the directors own eccentricities. Made for only $140,000, it was a massive commercial success that would slowly collect a strong critical backing, particularly as it became the influence for the slasher movies of the early 1980s, providing a template for how such films should be made. He credited the graphic coverage of violence by San Antonio news outlets as one inspiration for the film 8.

Taking place mostly in a rank farmhouse, Hooper’s film well creates a diabolical atmosphere that supports the strange, vile origins of the cannibalistic family that lie at the film’s core. Sally Hardesty, her paraplegic brother Franklin, and their friends, Jerry, Kirk, and Pam visit the grave of the.

#The texas chain saw massacre 1974 story skin

It’s a disgusting trip into the darkest depravity that features horror icon ‘Leatherface’ donning a mask of human skin to slaughter his victims, though not until he and his family have toyed with their fear. Its one of the greatest, most alarming sequences in the history of horror films, springing upon the audience with brief warning and gut-wrenching menace.

The dirt and stench of the Texan outback resonate through the celluloid of Tobe Hooper’s classic 1974 slasher film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.