How The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Reflected In Film

Many movies that are based on true stories are changed in one way or another, to make them more exciting for the audience. In the 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Sally Hardest, her brother Franklin and a group of friends go out to investigate her grandfather’s vandalized grave, they discover discover a group of murderous rejects living next door. After being attacked one by one, the group must try and escape the crazed chainsaw wielding, skin mask wearing, Leatherface. The real “chainsaw wielding, skin mask wearing” murderer was Ed Gein. Ed Gein murdered several women after his mother died of a stroke. With his victims skin he made various items, including lampshades, and even a full body suit that he wore around the house. After he was arrested, he spent the rest of his life in Central State Hospital for The Criminally Insane. In the film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director Tobe Hooper kept most events from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same but changed the things the main character did to make the scenes more intense.

One example from the film is, the main character, “Leatherface”, wore a skin mask after he murdered his victims. In real life, he, “Gein admitted to police that not long after his mother died, he began to craft a "woman suit" made from the skin of those dead bodies. He claims he did it so that he could become his mother and quite literally crawl into her skin whenever he wanted” (Cahill). Also, there was no change between the house used in real life and in the film, “Perhaps the most recognizable similarity is the film's house, whose gruesome content was similar to that found in Ed Gein's home in 1957” (“THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE”). The similarities between the movie and real life events, allowed the film to really capture what happened in real