

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre occurred in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Where Did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Take Place in Real Life? The real-life murderer Ed Gein is suspected to have taken several victims between 19. When Did Texas Chainsaw Massacre Happen in Real Life? The pervasive impression that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a true narrative contributed to the film’s unequivocal success, as did the utilization of true crime instances, which resulted in the formation of an iconic, vociferously popular horror franchise spanning five decades. Thus, the cannibal crew in Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a composite of several frightening real-life guys, which undoubtedly adds to the film’s terror. While Leatherface is seen throughout the film using a chainsaw, Gein shoots each of his victims with a handgun.
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He apparently wore a vest of female skin over his own, replete with connected breasts and female genitalia.

To satiate his yearning to be a woman, he began tanning the skins of the bodies he dug up to create corsets, leggings, belts fashioned from female nipples, and masks to create a “woman suit” and become his mother. Geil collected body pieces as keepsakes (and subsequently returned the remainder of the corpse to the grave), which led to his experimentation with necrophilia and human taxidermy.Īs with Leatherface, he moved into a run-down house that he crammed with his heinous “trophies.” In contrast to the film’s killer, Gein wore his victims’ skins for reasons other than a disfiguring skin condition.
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Hooper recounts watching the arrest and horrifying deeds of convicted serial murderer Elmer Wayne Henley splashed across San Antonio television screens, which served as inspiration for the insane family featured in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was conceptualized in response to the terrible actual crimes that emerged in postwar America alongside the advent of sensationalist, national news cycles. Despite the film’s suggestion that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a real narrative and the events truly occurred, the film, like most legends, has kernels of truth. “the Butcher of Plainfield.”ĭirector Hooper desired the fabricated material to address cultural and political debates about the government’s deception of the general people throughout the 1970s. While the film was billed as a “true narrative,” it was more accurately inspired by the real-life atrocities of Wisconsin-based serial killer and “body snatcher” Ed Gein-a.k.a. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.Although The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is ostensibly a work of fiction, the film is unmistakably based on a true story about a serial killer. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. "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.' Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man," Henkel recalled.


"I definitely studied Gein, but I also noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. Texas Chain Saw Massacre co-writer Kim Henkel, however, explained to Texas Monthlythat Gein wasn't alone in being a lurid muse. Leatherface was largely based on Gein, right down to the skin mask. Related: The 28 Best, Most Suspenseful Thrillers on Netflix Right Now Was Leatherface based on a real person? That said, Gein, like Leatherface, had a bizarre fixation with his mother that also partially inspired the Norman Bates character in Psycho. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre features the cannibalistic and murderous Sawyer family, but they aren't based on any one group of actual people. Was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre based on a real family?
