It’s a whole new era for movie aficionados these days, with entire catalogs of classics at their fingertips that they can watch on demand. That’s what’s giving new life to a legendary horror story fans were told was deeply disturbing so they had to find out for themselves: the 1974 cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Inspired by details surrounding the case of the Butcher of Plainfield, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was promoted as if it was based on true events, even though the movie’s main character Leatherface and only a few other facts are actually true. When a group of five friends run out of gas passing through Newt, Muerto County, Texas, they are forced to take to foot where they happen along an abandoned house that has a history with animal slaughter. Lucky them!
Imagine a family of cannibals and a man named Leatherface who wields a chainsaw, likes to cut up bodies, and fashion the skin into masks that he wears over his face! They don’t make movies like that anymore.
Although, Hollywood has tried. It has inspired the makings of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 in 1986, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III in 1990, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation in 1995, All American Massacre in 2000, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning in 2006, and Texas Chainsaw in 2013. Inspiring that many variations makes it a true cult legend, but none will ever be as good as the original starring Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danzinger, Paul A. Partain, and Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface himself.
It’s the kind of horror movie that fans think they want to see, but don’t know before they see it that it will crawl up under their skin and grip their psyche.
Movies these days are fitted with too many rules that need warnings like “intense depiction of very bad weather,” “salty language,” and “depicts a person smoking.” It’s hard to imagine what the warnings for this horror classic would be: “very bad demonstration of how to handle a chain saw,” “not the most ideal use of other people’s skin,” and “depicts people making very questionable decisions.”
The filming was so real, viewers could even feel the heat from the Texas weather.
It felt real because it basically was. It would have to be a real low-budget film set on looking like a low-budget film to replicate the look and feel this movie offered audiences back in the ’70s.
Streaming now across multiple platforms including Pluto, Tubi, Peacock, Plex, The Roku Channel, Vudu, and Amazon Prime Video, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will make horror fans feel like they’ve been ripped off all their lives.