Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Based on a True Story??

One of my closest friends, Chrissy L, and I had a "mommies' evening out" a couple of days ago at the mall. We had a blast!

Our evening was topped of by the opening night viewing of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning". We had been really looking forward to watching this prequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (TCM) for the past 3-4 weeks, and the movie definitely gave enough chills to go around. It actually turned out to be MUCH more gruesome than both the original and the 2003 remake. Almost intolerably so.

As Chrissy and I were leaving the theatre, we had a brief discussion about how factual we thought the movie actually was. "Based on true events" is shown on-screen right after the opening credits. During our discussion, Chrissy informed me that the Buffalo Bill character from "Silence of the Lambs" is based on the Leatherface character from TCM. I was anxious to find out even more once we left the theatre. Was there ever a real chainsaw-wielding maniac in Texas? What about the family of inbreds that live in that oh-so-creepy house, and that were into cannibalism...fictional? Here's what I was able to determine in a nutshell:

• There was never a Leatherface, at least, not in the way he was depicted in TCM.


• There was a farmer in Wisconsin named Ed Gein that was found guilty of murdering two women in 1957; They were shot to death.


• Ed Gein was most accurately depicted in 1960's "Psycho". (See BBC for more info).


• According to Gunnar Hansen, the actor who depicted Leatherface, Tobe Hooper (writer/director of TCM) completely made up the idea to use a chainsaw as the killer's weapon of choice. Click here for more info.


• Most of the remains found in Gein's home were result of grave-robbing that Gein and an accomplice carried out, meaning that most if not all of the remains in Gein's home were from individuals that were already dead before Gein even got near them.

Based on the above, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is purely fictional. And I'm guessing that no one can fight the screenwriters on the "based on true events" or "inspired by a true story" statements; many of the events in the movie have actually happened, just not in the manner or order that the movie states.