While Leatherface remains a fictional character, The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre‘s true story is chillingly based on real events, including the ominous house that the cannibalistic family lived in. This all lends credence to the aura of fear that the film still embodies.

The iconic slasher is considered one of the most influential horror movies of all time, breaking new ground for the genre, including adding a large, hulking, faceless figure as the killer. The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre follows a young woman named Sally and her brother as they travel to an old family home in Texas with a few friends.

When stopping at the wrong house, the group finds themselves hunted by the terrifying Leatherface. The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre draws inspiration from several real-life events. Tobe Hooper specifically credits Ed Gein and Elmer Wayne Henley as the influence for Leatherface, and the true story of this serial killer is perhaps even more disturbing than The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre itself.

Ed Gein: The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre True Story Explained

Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre viewers can be forgiven for walking away from the iconic horror movie thinking it is based on a true story due to the opening narration, which states that the mᴀssacre is “one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history.”

This decision was a deliberate ploy by director Tobe Hooper, designed as a marketing tactic to attract a wider audience through campfire-style horror tales. He also wanted the misleadingly narrated information to respond to cultural and political discussions involving the government’s deceit towards the public during the 1970s.

Despite the film’s insinuation that The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre is a true story and the events happened, there are only shreds of truth within the movie, as with most legends. The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre was conceptually born from the shocking true crimes emerging in post-war America in tandem with the rise of sensationalist, nationwide news cycles.

Hooper recalls seeing convicted serial killer Elmer Wayne Henley’s arrest and shocking acts plastered over television sets in San Antonio, from which he drew inspiration for the psycH๏τic family depicted in The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre.

Yet the biggest inspiration behind The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre‘s events is the story of serial killer Ed Gein, whose crimes shocked an entire nation in the 1950s. Known as the “Plainfield Ghoul,” Ed had a history of wearing women’s clothes and mutilating corpses, displaying distinct ties to the final version of Leatherface’s character.

Gein also exhumed corpses from local graveyards, fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin, and confessed to killing at least two women. Like Gein, who was also the inspiration behind Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface has a penchant for wearing women’s clothes and mutilating bodies while also displaying a low IQ, which parallels the real-life serial killer.

Leatherface wearing other people’s skin emulates the sickening crimes of a notorious serial murderer. The pervading sense that The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre is a true story made the film an unqualified success due to the true-crime examples it uses and led to the creation of an iconic, vociferously popular horror franchise spanning over five decades.

What Was Fictional About Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre?

While The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre was loosely based on the Ed Gein murders, most of the movie is fictional, despite the “based on” тιтle card. The kids who show up and end up mᴀssacred by Leatherface and his demented family are not based on any of the victims that Ed Gein killed in his rampage.

The Sawyer family is also fictional, as Gein worked alone. The idea of the kids facing Leatherface was frightening enough. Adding in an entire family that wants to chop up these kids and sell them as meat is even more terrifying. Ed Gein was just one man, albeit an evil one.

Instead of basing the murders on what Ed Gein did in real life, The Texas Chain Saw Mᴀssacre was more influenced by movies like Psycho, which was also based on Gein and had a very different story. The idea of Sally escaping his rampage was also fictional, as Gein’s murders were never suspected until he killed Bernice Worden in 1957.

The “Real-Life” Connection Makes Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre Scarier

In an interview for the DVD’s special features, director Tobe Hooper added the “true story” тιтle card to The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre because he believed, at the time, that everyone was lying to the public, even the government, and this was part of the cultural landscape at the time as a result. Hooper said it represented the “brutality” of society.

This made the film scarier for many people, especially those living close to remote areas such as the one in the movie. Anyone driving through a small Texas town after watching Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre was sure to look at the old houses and feel a sense of dread. If this movie’s story really happened, could it happen in this town?

It is a similar cultural phenomenon that The Blair Witch Project offered fans two decades later. People who lived near forests or woods felt a sense of fear and dread because the movie claimed to be real. It made Blair Witch a mᴀssive hit, and Texas Chainsaw did it even better.

Are Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre Sequels Inspired By True Stories?

While the Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre and the house it involved were inspired by real life, most of the sequels followed up on the terror of Leatherface and his chainsaw. This was especially true when it came to The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre 2, which deviated completely from anything resembling the Ed Gein narrative.

With Dennis Hopper in the movie as a former Texas Marshall hunting the cannibalistic family down, this movie eschewed a lot of the scares for over-the-top gore and dark comedy, turning the terrifying first movie into an actual horror comedy. However, this was a sequel, so Leatherface was still based on Ed Gein, but it was no longer his story.

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre III brought the Sawyer family back in 1990. Here, the family stalked another family across the back roads of Texas. Again, this movie wasn’t based on any true story outside of Leatherface’s original inspiration. The fourth movie, Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre: The Next Generation, was an interesting addition, as it starred Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger.

There was a semi-true story inspiration here, with director Kim Henkel saying the Illuminati were controlling things behind the scenes, including driving Leatherface onto his murder sprees to provoke “transcendence“ (via Halloween Love).

In 2003, The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre arrived as a reboot of the original. Just like the first movie, this was also loosely inspired by the killing spree of Ed Gein, with Leatherface based on the Wisconsin-based serial killer.

That was followed by The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre: The Beginning, an origin story for the family that was not based on any real story, and then Texas Chainsaw 3D as another sequel. This led to a huge change, with Leatherface as another prequel.

This one was a story of how Leatherface was once normal before trauma drove him to madness, a theme that continued in the Netflix Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre sequel in 2022. While these are all, of course, spiritually influenced by Ed Gein via Leatherface as a character, the sequels aren’t “inspired by” him as the first was.

Other Iconic Horror Movies Inspired By True Stories

The Texas Chainsaw Mᴀssacre took liberties with the actual story it was inspired by, but showed how effective it can be to base a horror movie on real events. It puts the audience into a tense situation in which they are watching the events of the film unfold with the creepy idea that this might all have happened.

Since then, numerous horror movies have adapted true stories in various ways. The Silence of the Lambs is one of the rare Best Picture-nominated horror movies (and it won), seen as a masterpiece of the genre. It is also another film that draws on inspiration from the real-life serial killer Ed Gein.

Silence of the Lambs is based on another true story. Clarice Starling interviewing incarcerated killer Hannibal Lecter in the hopes of getting him to help her capture Buffalo Bill is inspired by the real FBI case to capture the Green River Killer. There are also horror movies that are more closely tied to the real events that inspired them.

Open Water is based on the real-life incident of two people being left behind accidentally following a scuba-diving excursion. The movie imagines the outcome of the events. David Fincher’s Zodiac is a look at the real Zodiac Killer and his crimes, with incredible attention to detail that makes it one of the most accurate movies based on a true story.

However, even movies that the audience knows could not possibly be true have started with some inspiration based on real life. Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is loosely based on the true Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy, a real instance of two lighthouse workers and a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly occurrence between them. However, Eggers’ take adds supernatural elements to his rich horror tale.

Likewise, the supernatural The Conjuring movies are based on the experiences of real people, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, but rely on the audience to believe in real demons and ghosts in order to buy into the “true story” aspect.

Sources: Halloween Love