HOW WE MADE THE WORLDS

MOST NOTORIOUS HORROR MOVIE

GUNNAR HANSEN

TEXT COPYRIGHT 2013

BY GUNNAR HANSEN.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without written permission
from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hansen, Gunnar, 1947

Chain saw confidential : how we made the worlds most notorious horror movie /
Gunnar Hansen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4521-1449-1
1. Texas chain saw massacre (Motion picture) 2. Hansen, Gunnar, 1947 3. Motion
picture actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PN1997.T4265H36 2013
791.4372dc23
2013014844

Photographs and film stills copyright Vortex, Inc.

Kim Henkel/Tobe Hooper. All rights reserved.
Used with permission.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre game image courtesy videogamecritic.com
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DESIGNED AND TYPESET BY LYDIA ORTIZ
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introduction
Once upon a time in 1973 some college students in Texas decided
to get together at a friends farm and make a movie. They had
never made one, but they figured it would be fun. And if they did
it right, they would all get rich. Especially if they made a film of
the horrific story that had been in all the Texas papersa series
of killings and mutilations by a cannibal family near Corsicana,
Texas, that had been exposed only days before, when a victim
escaped her would-be killers. (There are those today who say one
killer escaped and is still out there.)
With this story in hand, the filmmakers got some mob money,
slapped together an outline, and called it Stalking Leatherface. They
could work out the scripts details, they figured, as they went along.
Then they found a bunch of acting students itching to get rich, too.
Unfortunately, nothing went right during the shooting.
Everyone was incompetent and people hated each other. Most
were so stoned that later they remembered only that they had had
a lot of fun. The sensitive-poet teenager playing the lead killer
suffered terrible psychological damage from his role; he couldnt
act, so the director cut all his lines and put a mask on him.
Neighbors complained about disturbing events at the farmhouse.
The police came. People died. No one wanted their name on the
credits. The film was an inept, blood-soaked disaster. The director
had to prove to the FBI that it was not a snuff film.
Everyone hated the movie when it came out, except for a few
perceptive academics who could see past the chain saw to recognize
allegorical echoes of both the corrupting influence of the Viet Nam
war and the collapse of the American family. Oh, and also bourgeois
sexual repression.

INTRODUCTION

11

Then everyone got rich, and they lived happily ever after.
And that is how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre became the
Mother of All Splatter Movies.

None of this is true.

But if we pasted together all the tales and rumors about
Chain Saw, this is roughly the story we would end up with. It is
the accumulated myth of the making of The Texas Chain Saw
Massacre, one of the most notorious, reviled, and beloved horror
movies ever made.
So lets set the story straight.
There are a lot of questions to be addressed: Why is Chain
Saw so controversial? How did it enter the culture? How has it
influenced other movies? How could it become such a landmark
movie? Why is it so successful as a horror movie and yet so hated
by many mainstream film and social critics? And why did these
myths attach themselves to this movie?
To answer these questions, or try to, we must go back to Chain
Saws beginnings. So lets talk about how this movie got made,
who made it, what happened on the set day to day, and how the
actors and crew survived it. Lets talk about what these filmmakers
were trying to do, what they expected, and what they ended up
withand why. Lets talk about what the critics and audiences
said about the movie when it was released and how that reception
has evolved over the years.
Lets talk about what has made this movie what it is, what
horror is, what horror movies are, and how Chain Saw fits into
that puzzle. Lets talk about why some people dismiss it as a
bunch of crap, others consider it the greatest horror movie ever
made, and still others blame it for everything that is wrong with
American society and, of course, the corruption of its children.
The reason I want to talk about this movie is that I played
Leatherface, Chain Saws brutish, relentlessyet apparently
lovablekiller. Through an improbable series of events, one

12

INTRODUCTION

sweaty summer afternoon I found myself dancing on a Texas

hilltop, spinning a chain saw over my head, hell-bent on scaring
the bejesus out of the director. It had been a long trip getting to
that hilltop, and it has been a long trip since.
I remember the filming. Unlike many of those who claim to have
been involved with Chain Saw, I was actually there. And I have
had plenty of time to gather my thoughts about what happened
and about the significance of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Telling the true Chain Saw story is a bit like being a character
in Kurosawas Rashomoneach player has his or her own take
on what happened and what it means. And each of us has an
emotional interest in remembering the story a certain way. A
Chain Saw crew member once told a writer, I happen to know
the truthwhatever anybody says, thats fine, but I happen to
know the truth. Really? I have also heard other Chain Saw actors
tell stories about what I did on set that couldnt possibly be true.
Could they?
Memory is a bit flexible, but while each of us remembers the
same event differently, I know Im right most of the time. And
when we remember something, we really dont remember the
event itself. We remember the last time we remembered the event;
a psychologist once told me that. You can see how that hall of
mirrors leads to a kind of infinitely regressing truth, never quite
visible but somewhere in the background of that mirroror is it
this mirror?
Lets say, then, that this is what I remember of how it went,
reinforced by conversations with many of those other cast and
crew members who were there when we made the worlds most
notorious horror movie. Maybe the truth will lie somewhere
among these stories.
Besides, someone has to explain what happened.