The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is Tobe Hooper’s independent horror film about five young friends who run into a family of cannibals in rural Texas. Made for a tiny budget with mostly unknown local actors, and marketed, falsely, as a true story, it introduced Leatherface and became one of the most influential and most controversial horror films ever made. It shows surprisingly little gore. Its reputation comes from relentless sound, heat and panic, and from a raw, documentary-like look that still makes audiences feel they shouldn’t be watching.
At a glance
| Release date | October 11, 1974 (premiere in Austin, Texas) |
| Director | Tobe Hooper |
| Writers | Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper |
| Starring | Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen |
| Runtime | 83 minutes |
| Rating | R (MPAA), after cuts; first rated X |
| Budget | Disputed: commonly put at $80,000 to $140,000 (sources range from $93,000 to $300,000) |
| Box office | More than $30 million in the US and Canada |
| Franchise | The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (eight follow-ups, from 1986 to 2022) |
Plot summary
News reports of grave robbing in rural Texas bring Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain), who uses a wheelchair, out to check on their grandfather’s grave. They are traveling by van with three friends. The day goes wrong quickly. A disturbing hitchhiker cuts himself and then slashes Franklin before they throw him out, and the gas station they stop at has no fuel. While the group waits at the Hardestys’ abandoned family home, two of the friends wander off to a nearby farmhouse surrounded by old cars, hoping to trade for gasoline. They don’t come back.
The rest of the film follows the survivors as night falls and the farmhouse’s occupants come out: a hulking, silent man in a mask of human skin and the strange, bickering family he lives with.
Spoiler section: the ending
The masked man, Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), kills four of the five friends. Sally escapes to the gas station, but its owner turns out to be part of the family and takes her back to the house. There she is tormented at a nightmarish dinner with the hitchhiker, Leatherface and the near-dead “Grandpa.” At dawn she breaks free and runs onto the road. A passing truck hits the hitchhiker, and Sally escapes in the bed of a pickup truck, laughing hysterically, while Leatherface swings his chainsaw in the road as the sun rises.
Production and behind the scenes
Hooper was working as an assistant director at the University of Texas at Austin and as a documentary cameraman when he developed the story. He has cited San Antonio news outlets’ graphic coverage of violence as one inspiration. He also drew details from the Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, the same case that inspired Psycho (1960) and The Silence of the Lambs. The plot itself is largely fictional. Titles considered along the way included Head Cheese and Leatherface. Hooper has cited the era’s cultural and political upheaval as a central influence, and the film is often read as reflecting distrust after Watergate, the 1973 oil crisis and the Vietnam War.
Filming took place in the summer of 1973, mostly at an early-1900s farmhouse near Round Rock, Texas. The crew worked seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day, and temperatures peaked at 110 °F (43 °C). There was only one Leatherface costume, so it was never washed, and Hansen later said he wore it 12 to 16 hours a day for a month. The film was shot on 16mm, which gives it its grainy, newsreel feel. It went over its original $60,000 budget during editing. After investors and fees were paid, only about $8,100 was left to share among the 20 cast and crew members.
Release and reception
The Bryanston Distributing Company picked up the film, which premiered in Austin on October 11, 1974. It played nationally as a Saturday matinee, helped by its “true story” marketing, and from 1976 it was reissued to first-run theaters every year for eight years. It grossed more than $30 million in the U.S. and Canada and ranked 12th among the year’s releases at the box office. Hooper had hoped for a PG, because so little gore is shown. Instead it was first rated X and received an R only after several minutes were cut. The producers later sued Bryanston over unpaid profits, and when a court awarded them $500,000, the company had gone bankrupt.
Early reviews were mixed. The Los Angeles Times called it “despicable,” while Roger Ebert found it as “blood-soaked as the title promises” but praised its acting and craft. The Austin American-Statesman called it the most important horror film since Night of the Living Dead. It was chosen for the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. The UK refused to certify it uncut for years, and it was caught up in the 1980s “video nasties” panic. The British board finally passed it uncut with an 18 certificate after James Ferman retired in 1999. Today it holds an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Legacy and influence
Time said the film “set a new standard for slasher films.” It is also seen as a model for horror as social commentary, and Sally is often cited as an early “final girl.” It is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, it entered the Horror Hall of Fame in 1990, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2024. Hooper directed the darkly comic sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). The series has been rebooted several times since, notably with the 2003 remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and the 2022 legacy sequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022).
Trivia
- The opening narration was spoken by a young John Larroquette, who was reportedly paid in marijuana.
- Some of the blood on screen is real, including in the scene where Leatherface feeds “Grandpa.”
- Hooper has called it “a film about meat,” and he gave up eating meat while making it. Guillermo del Toro has said he became a vegetarian for a time after seeing it.
- The title uses “Chain Saw” as two words. Most of the later films spell it as one word, Chainsaw.
- In 1983, New Line Cinema took over the distribution rights from Bryanston and gave the producers a larger share of the profits.
- A restored version returned to the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2014, 40 years after the film’s release.
Related links
- Leatherface and Sally Hardesty (characters)
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (franchise)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
- Tobe Hooper (director) and Kim Henkel (co-writer)
- Marilyn Burns and Gunnar Hansen (cast)
- Psycho (1960) and The Silence of the Lambs, also inspired by the Ed Gein case