the texas chain saw massacre the rolling stones

#The texas chain saw massacre the rolling stones skin

Though the real crimes of Ed Gein did influence Hooper and Henkel in their writing, the idea that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is itself based on a true story is something that grew out of the marketing of the film. It wasn’t until a week before shooting was set to begin that the eventual title arrived, suggested to Hooper and Henkel by Warren Skaaren, then head of the Texas Film Commission, who’d helped the project get financing. Then it was changed to the menacing working title of Leatherface. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL TITLE.Īfter inspiration struck, Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel hammered out a script over several weeks and gave it the eerie title Head Cheese (named for the scene in which the hitchhiker details the process of how that particular pork product is made). We decided Leatherface would have a different human-skin mask to fit each of his moods.” 3. And he went into the morgue and skinned a cadaver and made a mask for Halloween. I remembered that he’d once told me this story about how, when he was a pre-med student, the class was studying cadavers. The idea actually came from a doctor I knew. We changed that to the character who eventually became Leatherface. “Before I came up with the chainsaw,” Hooper said, “the story had trolls under a bridge.

#The texas chain saw massacre the rolling stones skin

The idea of a mask made of human skin actually came to Hooper far more directly, and creepily. Leatherface, the chainsaw-wielding maniac who would go down in history as one of horror cinema’s greatest villains, shows obvious Ed Gein influence thanks to his mask crafted from human skin, but Gein was not the character’s only precursor. LEATHERFACE IS ALLEGEDLY BASED ON A REAL PERSON HOOPER KNEW. The hitchhiker, the older brother at the gas station, the girl escaping twice, the dinner sequence, people out in the country out of gas.” 2.

“I did a rack focus to the saws, and I thought, ‘I know a way I could get through this crowd really quickly.’ I went home, sat down, all the channels just tuned in, the zeitgeist blew through, and the whole damn story came to me in what seemed like about 30 seconds. I just kind of zoned in on it,” Hooper told Texas Monthly. 'There were these big Christmas crowds, I was frustrated, and I found myself near a display rack of chain saws. According to Hooper, though, the light bulb moment that really ignited the film came at a department store during the Christmas 1972 shopping rush. The inspirations for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are surprisingly diverse, ranging from director and co-writer Tobe Hooper’s attempt to make a modern retelling of Hansel and Gretel to real-life Wisconsin murderer and corpse defiler Ed Gein. IT WAS INSPIRED BY A CHRISTMAS SHOPPING CROWD. From marathon shooting days to flying chainsaws to mafia money problems, here are 20 facts about one of the greatest slasher films of all time. Not bad for a little film that drove the cast and crew insane during production. More than four decades after its release, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre still shocks and thrills audiences with its realistic imagery, unhinged tone, and “based on a true story” marketing-and its status as one of the ultimate cult classics shows no signs of fading. Braving blistering temperatures, on-set injuries, and a shoestring budget, they produced one of the most terrifying motion pictures ever made.

In the summer of 1973, newbie director Tobe Hooper-who passed away on Augat the age of 74-and a group of unknown actors ventured out into the Central Texas heat to make a horror movie.