The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movies might have claimed to be "based on a true story,"
but the real-life history that inspired the series was a lot different than what was presented
on-screen.
The 1974 original was loosely based on Ed Gein — a criminal who also inspired films
like Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
But this is one case where history really is stranger than fiction.
Since the devil is in the details, here's where The Texas Chain Saw Massacre took liberties
with Gein's gruesome deeds.
Don't mess with...Wisconsin
If there was a competition for least geographically accurate biopic in history, Texas Chainsaw
would win every single time.
While the movie takes place in Texas, and it's right there in the title, the true story
that inspired the film happened over 600 miles away in the backwoods of rural Wisconsin.
Not only did real-life Leatherface Ed Gein never set foot in Texas, he never really left
his hometown.
Gein lived with his mother and spent his entire life in a small town called Plainfield, working
odd jobs to get by.
When his mom passed, he lived alone in her dilapidated house, surrounded by her possessions.
Needless to say, he couldn't have been further from small town Texas.
As for why the cinematic story was set in the Lone Star state, well, "Wisconsin Chain
Saw Massacre" doesn't really have the same ring to it.
More importantly, Texas was where writer-director Tobe Hooper was born.
And that wasn't the only personal experience that would inform a major shift for the screen
version….
No chainsaws
Leatherface's weapon of choice might be a chainsaw, but Ed Gein never used one.
Although he did tend to relieve corpses of their skin to make gross household items himself,
he did the deeds with just a knife.
Hooper chose to incorporate a chainsaw into his narrative because of his own experience
at a hardware store.
The director admitted that over the holidays one year he found himself in front of a display
of the power tools and had a brief daydream about grabbing one and slicing his way through
the crowds.
Thankfully, Hooper was a guy who made films about maniacs and psychopaths rather than
becoming one himself, so instead of revving up one of those power saws, he simply added
the idea to the Ed Gein-inspired flick he'd been working on.
The real body count
While the movie doesn't specify a time frame for its setting, the hippy wagon the kids
ride up in indicates they lived sometime around the Summer of Love.
But Ed Gein's crime spree began and ended decades before that.
He committed his first in 1954 and his last in 1957.
But the fudged dates weren't the only numbers that didn't add up to the truth, because Gein's
body count was also significantly lower than what was presented in the film.
In the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, there are five people who fall victim to Leatherface
and his terrible family.
That's a relatively short victim list by horror movie standards, but Ed Gein's body count
was even lower.
The infamous "Plainfield Butcher" was only responsible for slaying two women: Mary Hogan
and Bernice Worden.
It's what Gein did on the side that makes him so fascinating, and explains why his story
caught Hooper's eye.
After a stroke took his beloved mother's life, Gein went full Buffalo Bill.
He started reading up on German medical experiments and human anatomy.
He began dressing in his mother's clothes, and after a couple years of this, Gein started
digging up the corpses of women and turning them into furniture, then cutting off parts
for his collection.
There are echoes of this in Texas Chainsaw, of course.
The very first shot is of a mutilated corpse tied to a grave.
But while Leatherface and his family were cannibals who did some grave robbing on the
side, Gein was a grave robber who graduated to taking lives.
No survivors
Texas Chainsaw advertised itself under the tagline "who will survive, and what will be
left of them?" which implied that at least some of Leatherface's victims would survive
the film.
And one does.
Sally, the lone survivor, escapes.
She may be covered in blood and short on sanity by the end, but she's alive.
In this case, real life is far crueler than fiction.
For the women Gein encountered, there was no nail-biting escape, no speedy exit in a
truck while their attacker threw a well-choreographed chainsaw tantrum.
Those who encountered Gein never lived to tell the tale.
Both Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden met gruesome ends.
Hogan was shot in the back of the head while closing up her bar and dragged back to Gein's
farmhouse.
There she was butchered, her face turned into a mask for Gein to wear, a gory detail that
would later become part of Leatherface's costume.
If anything, Worden's loss was worse.
Unlike Hogan, she was later found , dis, and decapitated, with the remnants of her
body hanging from the rafters of Gein's barn and her face removed.
That discovery was grim, but there was some positivity to come of it.
Her son was a sheriff's deputy who had noticed Gein acting suspiciously around her store.
So, the moment she went missing, he pointed the finger at Gein, which meant they were
able to stop him before he could claim any more victims.
Gein confessed to police he liked to wear the flesh of slain women and dance around in
the moonlight — a detail that is somehow too horrific even for the Texas Chain Saw
Massacre.
The unhappy ending
Unlike the movie, in which Leatherface eludes capture, when Gein was caught, he didn't escape.
He didn't carve up other people in prison.
And he didn't get in a chainsaw duel with Dennis Hopper, as Leatherface does in the
so-bad-it's-bad Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which also claims to be based on "real events."
Gein's last victim was Beatrice Worden, and after he was caught, Gein didn't commit any
more atrocities in the remaining 30-odd years of his life.
This is probably because of where Gein spent those remaining years.
After his arrest in 1957, he was deemed unfit to stand trial and confined to psychiatric
care.
After being declared mentally competent in 1968 and tried for his crimes, he was found to
have been insane when the crimes took place and recommitted, this time to Mendota Mental
Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, where he remained until his final day in 1984.
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