Details

Release year: 1974

Storyline

Five friends head out to rural Texas to visit the grave of a grandfather. On the way they stumble across what appears to be a deserted house, only to discover something sinister within. Something armed with a chainsaw.

Top credits

Directors

Tobe Hooper

Writers

Cast

Marilyn Burns — Sally
Edwin Neal — Hitchhiker
Allen Danziger — Jerry
Paul A. Partain — Franklin

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Did you know

• There were lines of gibberish written in the script for Leatherface. Tobe Hooper would sit with Gunnar Hansen and tell him what the lines meant, and the actor had to figure out a way to say that without actually speaking. In the scene where the Old Man comes home and starts yelling at Leatherface about the door, Hansen remembers a take where he communicated a little too verbally. Hooper told him "there was too much intelligence in the character," and the shot was redone. "My one chance to have a line," says Hansen.

• Marilyn Burns, whose character was chased by Leatherface through the undergrowth, actually cut herself on the branches quite badly, so a lot of the blood on her body and clothes is real.

• Gunnar Hansen recalls shooting the sequence where they cut Sally's finger and try feeding the blood to Grandpa. The tube that shot the fake blood kept clogging, and, finally, after several takes without the tube working right, Hansen simply sliced Marilyn Burns' finger open. "And the reason was," he explains, "at this point, we were insane." He proceeds to explain his only desire at that point in shooting was to get the film done. He didn't care about his fellow actor's well-being, and this sequence was shot in the back-end of a 27-hour work day. He also notes there isn't much acting going on in the dinner scene.