Cutting into the Movies

Recently reccieved an email asking about a very famed and freaky movie. Before "The Last Broadcast", before "The Blair Withch Project" we had "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre". What bring this up is I recently received an email asking about this wonderful movie. Dear Freak_O_Pedia: My friends and I were discussing the great horror movies when someone claimed the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story. I went to the video store, and sure enough on the back of the box it said the movie was based on real events. I rented it. and after my friends and I watched it we got to wondering just how true this story is. Freak, help us out here. How loosely is the movie based on the real story? What are the facts? --Mike. I used to live in Texas my self and did much studying about it and the locatiuons used. Like most I thought the movie was of a real family of cannibles who sold human meat as jerky. That a poor group of kids stubbled upon this family and were killed by either being killed by being impaled on a meat hook or being chased down and cut up by a chainsaw, and that one poor female victim escaped to tell the tale. So I began my research in the area it supposed happened in the northern part of Texas, like between Dallas and Houstin. However none of the locations seemed to match. However locals are always so willing to tell you it did happen around there. Then one day as I traveled from San Antonio to Austin I began to see very familuar sites and locations. With enough luck I found the actual area used for filming, and the funny thing is there is actually a road out ther called Slaughter Rd. However this got me to wondering that it was supposed to happen up north but filmed in more the southern area...hummm..why? Yeah, I know they always do that in movies make one location be another, but it still got me wondering. So I began to dig even deeper into the whole story on the Chainsaw Massacre. If you're looking for me to tell you there really was a family of backwoods wierdos, including a goon in a mask called Leatherface..... um, sorry, but this isn't a 100% accurate reenactment of events, but I'm not telling you that director Tobe Hooper made the whole thing up. Hooper got the idea from a sensational 1957 murder case involving Wisconsin farmer Ed Gein. Gein's mother was a domineering Bible thumper who persuaded her son that all women were evil. He cared for his mother alone after she had a stroke, and when she finally died he nailed shut the rooms where she'd lived. One day Bernice Worden, proprietor of the town hardware store, vanished under suspicious circumstances. Clues pointed to Gein, who'd been hanging around the previous days. The sheriff drove out to Gein's farmhouse and found Worden's headless body hanging by the feet in the kitchen, eviscerated and dressed out like a deer. The head was in a cardboard box, the heart in a plastic bag on the stove. Elsewhere in the cluttered home authorities found ten skins from human heads, bracelets and chair seats made from human skin, a box of noses, the skin from a woman's chest rolled up on the floor, and much more. Under questioning Gein admitted to killing two women-- Worden & Mary Hogan, a 54-year-old saloon keeper who'd vanished in 1954. He said he got the other body pars from robbing women's graves. Later accounts painted Gein as a cannibal ans a necrophiliac, but a 1957 Time story specifically denied this, saying he perserved the remains just to look at. Gein's story made headlines all over the country, including an eight-page spread in Life magazine. After a hearing he was committed to a Wisconsin state hospital for the criminally insane. There's another classic horror movie this reminds me of, you got it, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Gein was also the source for the character in The Silence of the Lambs and gave rise to some lesser known movies as well. Way to go Ed! Shows you what a man can accomplish if he won't settle for upholstering the seats in leatherette. Now folks all over Texas will claim that it truly did happen in Texas. That it's all a true story and that the press give to much credit to Ed Gein. As for me I'm just glad I live in California. I know we have drive-by shooting and all but at least i know their not going to eat me. Sites to read more about this subject: http://www.angelfire.com/al3/bloodred http://www.edgeinthemovie.com/ http://www.geocites.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/6923/tcm.html http://www.houseof horrors.com/texas.html