TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. A COLLECTION OF REAL LIFE CRIMES.
Old and gruesome crime scenes have constantly been turned into fictional movie plots. By far, this seems to be my favorite.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre was marketed as a movie based on real life events. Thriller fans were left baffled by this fact because the story depicted in the movie was indeed grueling.
In this 1974 release, Sally Hardesty, her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin, and three friends travel to rural Texas to check on their grandfather's grave after reports of vandalism. Finding the grave intact, they decide to visit their old family home instead. Along the way, they pick up an erratic hitchhiker who soon traumatizes them and is forced out of the van. This is when they stumble upon a seemingly abandoned house. One by one, they are hunted down by Leatherface—a massive, masked man who wields a chainsaw—along with his entire deranged cannibalistic family.
What then were the real life crimes that shaped the making of this all time favorite thriller?
Dean Corll and Elma Wayne Henley ( The Houston mass murders).
In Texas, between the years 1970 and 1973, Corll and his teenage accomplices who obviously included Elmer Wayne Henley tortured and murdered at least 29 young people. (Yes, I said teenagers). In reality, Henley eventually shot Corll and led the police to the horrific crime scenes of their murders.
How does this get linked to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie you may ask? The backwoods, youth-targeting, chaotic violence of a twisted young killer under the influence of an older/familial depravity. Sounds familiar, right? Of course it is Leatherface! This particular theme was drawn heavily from the atmosphere of the Corll mass murders case!
The Ed Gein Plainfield Butcher case.
Ed Gein was a grave robber and murderer from Plainfield, Wisconsin. He was arrested in 1957 however after the Police searched Gein’s farmhouse and found human skin masks, chairs upholstered with human skin, and human skulls on all his bedposts.
Of course that sounds familiar. The idea of Leatherface’s chilling habit of wearing a mask made of human skin came directly from Ed Gein. (I mean, who wouldn’t borrow the idea of a chainsaw killer skinning his victims and sewing a mask made of human skin to cover his own face? (Award worthy if you ask me).
The Ed Gein final touch!
According to the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper, his core (and rather chilling) idea came from a mix of childhood stories he grew up hearing about Ed Gein. Apparently, in questioning, Ed Gein mentioned that he knew he was meant to be a butcher because at a particular time in 1972 while his family had gone Christmas shopping, the place was rather crowded and this angered him.
According to the childhood stories heard by Director Tobe, Gein stared at a display of hardware store chainsaws and thought about how to clear a path through the packed crowd fast by dicing away at everyone in his way (Literal chills).
However much it is true that the story of Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not inspired by cannibals, it is also true that it was a unification of cold and some of the most blood murder cases, some of the most grueling ones at that!
