Is Texas Chainsaw Massacre based on a true story?
Leatherface and his trusty chainsaw are back to cause more carnage in Harlow – but is he based on a real figure?
In the near 50 years since Tobe Hooper's terrifying horror flick The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was released, all sorts of sequels, reboots, and remakes have appeared – each pitting a new bunch of teenagers against the chilling flesh-wearing villain Leatherface.
The latest to do so is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was released on Netflix last week and sees a bunch of young entrepreneurs accidentally awaken the chainsaw-wielding serial killer for another gory murder spree.
As with the very first film in the franchise, the events in the new movie are presented as if they really happened – opening with a news report detailing the original murders – and so some fans are wondering if the film is based on true events.
Read on for everything you need to know.
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Is Texas Chainsaw Massacre a true story?
The relieving news is that thankfully the story is not really based on real events – so fans needn't worry about having to find themselves on the run from Leatherface any time soon.
However, there are a number of real cases that served as inspiration for the original movie and the creation of Leatherface, primarily that of serial murderer Ed Gein, who is suspected to have been behind several killings in Wisconsin in the mid-'50s.
There are a few common traits shared between Gein and Leatherface – most notably that both of them wore a human skin mask and that they kept gruesome mementos in their homes – however, Gein never used a chainsaw, instead shooting his victims with a pistol.
Gein was also reportedly the inspiration for two other iconic cinema villains – Psycho's Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs – while there are also references to him in American Psycho.
Kim Henkel, who co-wrote the original film and serves as a producer on the new one, previously explained how he " definitely studied Gein" but said that there was another murderer, Elmer Wayne Henley, who served as inspiration.
"I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne said, 'I did these crimes, and I'm gonna stand up and take it like a man,'" he said in 2004. "Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters."
Meanwhile, the addition of the chainsaw itself had its origins in a less grisly story – a Christmas shopping trip taken by Hooper in 1972.
Speaking to Texas Monthly in 2004, he explained: "There were these big Christmas crowds, I was frustrated, and I found myself near a display rack of chainsaws. I just kind of zoned in on it. 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. The hitchhiker, the older brother at the gas station, the girl escaping twice, the dinner sequence, people out in the country out of gas.”
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is currently streaming on Netflix. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the best TV series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, or visit our TV Guide.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
