Texas Chainsaw Massacre Description
A quiet summer drive ends in violent tragedy when several youths encounter a chainsaw-wielding psychopathic killer and his demented family. This gruesome, though darkly comic, tale of terror is purportedly based on a true story (the Ed Gein killings, that is, which actually occurred in Plainsfield, Wisconsin). John Larroquette narrates, unaccredited. Three sequels.

The granddaddy of all splatter films. Five teenagers driving through rural Texas stumble onto an old farmhouse which turns out to be inhabited by a ghoulish family of mass murderers. Chainsaws and meat hooks are the tools of these white trash psycho-killers' trade -- they decorate their home with human bones, skin and other gruesome relics, supplementing the body count with corpses from the local graveyard when fresh victims are scarce. It looks like curtains for certain for the teen travelers trapped inside this house of horrors -- unless one scantily-clad female can elude the power tools and survive the night of terror intact.

Theatrical Release: October 1974.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE was director Tobe Hooper's first feature film.

Estimated budget $350,000.

Featured songs by Roger Bartlett & Friends, Timberline Rose, Arkey Blue and Los Cyclones.

This low-budget exploitation horror film became a cult hit and favorite midnight movie. It spawned hundreds of imitators and helped define the splatter genre by introducing such standard features as the house of terror where innocent victims meet horrible ends and the girl in peril who survives the mayhem to become the heroine.

The film was loosely based on the real-life crimes of Ed Gein, which also inspired Hitchcock's "Psycho."

"My family's always been in meat." -- Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal)

"...CHAINSAW is one of the scariest movies of all time..."

"...Tobe Hooper's horror classic remains as sharp as ever..."

"Few horror films can match the unflinching, sadistic force of this low-budget 1974 triumph..."