Who never watched one of the nine movie versions of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Well, I only watched the 1974 movie version and let me tell you when I stomached it back in 1982, it scared the hell out of me as it was creepy, violent, and so believable.

*** WARNING THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MATURE AND GRAPHIC SUBJECT MATTER ***

It Was True Or Not

I was gullible back then and believed my friends when they told me it was a true story. As movie horrors connoisseurs, we have to wonder where these filmmakers get this type of terror-filled inspiration.

Again, for the longest time, I thought the Texas Chainsaw Massacre came from a true story of a group of unfortunate young people who met their demise in the hot backwoods of Texas, but alas I was wrong, well sort of I guess. Let me explain.

Why Leatherface

Yes, there are plenty of real-life horror stories of missing and murdered women and men throughout the United States, never to be seen again, but the film and leather-face got its inspiration from a truly evil and sadistic murderer named Ed Gein, a farmer from Wisconsin.

The movie marketed “a true story” to attract a broader audience, and it worked. Many of us know whom leatherface is yet never heard of the man who inspired the story behind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; real-life monster Ed Gein, known as the Butcher of Plainfield.

Ed Gein was the key inspiration for leatherface, but in what way? He engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism and murdered at least two women in the 1950s.

Ed Gein turned human skin into pieces of furniture such as trash cans, aprons, chairs, lamp shades, and skull bedposts. It went as far as where a pair of lips were, in fact, a window shade drawstring.

He also made corset, leggings, masks, and dresses from the skin of women he dug from grave sites. He also kept women’s sexual organs and noses in a box and liked to dress up in their skins and face’s pretending to be his mother.

One of the most repulsive items found was a belt made from women’s nipples. Reports say that he would rob graves and choose corpses that were similar of age and appearance to his mother.

Gein killed two women and suspected in the disappearance of four other people, in central Wisconsin, two men and two women, though none of the bones found around his farmhouse matched the missing four people.

Some say he killed many more, but he only confessed to the two murders. When the sheriff department walked into his farmhouse, they discovered the body of Bernice Worden decapitated and hanging upside down from her ankles.

Loosely Inspired

The filmmaker’s of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the actor who played leatherface told many fans that the story is not real, but fans declined to believe them. Instead, they refused to accept that the movie is fake keeping the story alive of a cannibalistic family that lived and killed in Texas.

It is a strange phenomenon when a movie, a fictional piece of untruth, is so ingrained in the public’s mind. It becomes a reality.

Ed Gein is the original leatherface. He was also the inspiration for Psycho‘s Norman Bates, Hannibal Lector, and Buffalo Bill of Silence of the Lambs.

Real-Life Horror

So, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is all made up, sorry folks, there was never a family of chainsaw killers and cannibals stalking and murdering young lost souls in the woods of Texas.

There is no “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Real life is more horrifying than any Hollywood movie. Texas alone has many real-life killers such as The Phantom Killer, Dean Corll, “The Candyman,” The Servant Girl Annihilator, and The Killing Fields Murderer to name a few.

As they say, everything is bigger in Texas and so is the legend of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Dora Esquivel
Dora Esquivel Author Website