Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is our episode
Speaker 2: right before Halloween episode. You're in Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, big CoA here obviously. Yeah, I mean hopefully parents
Speaker 3: aren't gonna click on this if they're young children in
Speaker 3: the car, because it'll probably be Texas chainsaw mask or
Speaker 3: something or other in the title.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not gonna be like how ponies work, right,
Speaker 2: I don't want to trick anybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so CooA about that. Obviously, it's gonna have some
Speaker 3: pretty gruesome material in it. But also because we're gonna
Speaker 3: be talking a lot about this movie and we're gonna
Speaker 3: go over the plot and everything. So if it's kind
Speaker 3: of a spoiler situation where you don't want to hear
Speaker 3: about it and you haven't seen it somehow, then tune out.
Speaker 3: Some people like to know what happens before they go
Speaker 3: into a horror movie.
Speaker 2: You know, Yes, but that's a that's a great spoiler alert.
Speaker 2: If you haven't seen it, go watch it it. Like
Speaker 2: people use the word masterpiece about this movie a lot,
Speaker 2: and like not just fans of the film, like sickos,
Speaker 2: like critics, like academics who teach film appreciation, like it
Speaker 2: is a really, really good movie, whether you like horror
Speaker 2: movies or not, because the key to this is if
Speaker 2: you get scared at horror movies, approach it like it's
Speaker 2: a dark comedy, and it will make sense to use
Speaker 2: a dark comedy, and you will probably laugh out loud
Speaker 2: in a couple of parts. So it can be taken
Speaker 2: both ways, and sometimes in some parts of this both
Speaker 2: ways at the same time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, see that. I've never understood that take, because I
Speaker 3: don't see any dark comedy that notions about it whatsoever.
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's one of the most
Speaker 3: terrifying movies I've ever seen, if not the most terrifying.
Speaker 2: Well, you and Rex Reid feel the same way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every time I see it, and I just saw
Speaker 3: it for the first time a few years ago finally,
Speaker 3: and it's just it's so disturbing and unsettling every single time,
Speaker 3: even though I know it's coming.
Speaker 2: I watched it again last night and yeah, so when
Speaker 2: it finished, when it cuts at the end and goes
Speaker 2: see the credits, I literally said out loud, that is
Speaker 2: a great movie, and you me. I was sitting there
Speaker 2: by myself watching it. I said it out loud. It
Speaker 2: just took it out of me. And I had never
Speaker 2: watched it as a comedy before either. I'd never even
Speaker 2: turned up that anybody considered it a comedy or a
Speaker 2: dark comedy. But going into it knowing that I definitely
Speaker 2: found some spots here or there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't do. You know what I said at
Speaker 3: the end last night out loud by myself, what Jerry's
Speaker 3: gonna have to beat it? But it has that famous
Speaker 3: just abrupt ending and cut to black. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: curled up on my couch and I just said, this
Speaker 3: movie like every time, it gets me in a place
Speaker 3: where I'm just like, like if there was a camera
Speaker 3: on my face while I'm watching it, it's just my face.
Speaker 3: It just gnarled up the whole time, Like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: it's just so disturbing.
Speaker 2: I think me and a lot of people would love
Speaker 2: to watch a reaction video of you watching just that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Texas Chainsaw Masker.
Speaker 3: A camera trained on my face for eighty three minutes exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it is just eighty three minutes. It's not
Speaker 2: even an hour and a half of your time, you know,
Speaker 2: like you just watch it, breeze through it and say
Speaker 2: that was a great movie, or what you said at
Speaker 2: the end. And let me ask you this, Can you
Speaker 2: think of another horror movie that makes you feel like
Speaker 2: that whenever you watch it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean there's quite a few movies that are
Speaker 3: still disturbing to me, but this one takes the cake
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 2: Wow. So yeah, if you haven't seen Texas Chainsaw Masker
Speaker 2: and you have any kind of curiosity, I strongly urge
Speaker 2: you to pause this and go watch it and come
Speaker 2: back whatever, it doesn't matter. I think you can still
Speaker 2: appreciate this episode, don't you. Because it's not just about
Speaker 2: the movie itself, it's about how it was made.
Speaker 3: Because, yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Was an independent picture. It's one of the most successful
Speaker 2: independent films of all time. Yeah, and it was made
Speaker 2: by students of film, literal students of film who loved
Speaker 2: making movies, and they made again, a masterpiece is what
Speaker 2: a lot of people call it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And we're going to get to the plot
Speaker 3: and go through that, as we said, but even I
Speaker 3: just want to say, even the beginning, that first thirty minutes,
Speaker 3: before they even set foot inside the bad house. That's
Speaker 3: all just the way it's shot and laid out, and
Speaker 3: the sound, it's just all disturbs. It disturbs me. It's
Speaker 3: a no end, I know.
Speaker 2: And to think like that it was shot by a
Speaker 2: twenty three year.
Speaker 3: Old I know.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about this. Let's get into the nuts
Speaker 2: and bolts of how the whole thing came about. How
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we can only start with director Toby Hooper,
Speaker 3: who apparently was inspired by a few different things to
Speaker 3: come up with this movie. One pretty obviously is ed Gein,
Speaker 3: who's a serial killer who we have not covered yet.
Speaker 3: At some point we'll probably get into the skin suit
Speaker 3: making crimes of ed Gin. Right, we did ed I
Speaker 3: think it's Geen, isn't it. We did a whole episode.
Speaker 2: We did a whole episode on mister Gean.
Speaker 3: The technic we did.
Speaker 2: We did. It wasn't the best, so I can see
Speaker 2: how you wouldn't remember it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: I thought we just put him in something else. Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll scratch that. Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he appeared in some episode, but we ended up
Speaker 2: making a whole episode about him.
Speaker 3: I see it now, ed Gan the serial Killers, serial killer. Yes,
Speaker 3: it had to be your title. That's good.
Speaker 2: I think it was. But ed Gen he wasn't just
Speaker 2: the inspiration for leather face from Texas Chainsaw Masker. And
Speaker 2: the reason why is if you're not familiar with ed
Speaker 2: Gean he wore skin suits. He was also the influence
Speaker 2: for a character Buffalo Bill and Sid to the Lambs,
Speaker 2: and he inspired the movie Psycho. Not like Norman Bates
Speaker 2: bears any resemblance to him whatsoever, aside from the whole
Speaker 2: cross dressing thing, I guess is what inspired it, but
Speaker 2: more of the fact that there was someone out there
Speaker 2: who was capable of doing these things inspired a movie
Speaker 2: that about Norman Bates, who was capable of doing horrible
Speaker 2: things too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that was the first thing. The second thing
Speaker 3: was he had a friend, Toby Hooper did the director,
Speaker 3: who was a doctor or I guess a med student
Speaker 3: at the time, who said that he had removed the
Speaker 3: face of a cadaver and wore it as a Halloween mask.
Speaker 3: So there's one for your nightmares.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even if he hadn't done that, to be telling
Speaker 2: people that you had done that, ye'd be serious about it.
Speaker 2: That's pretty nuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then the last thing was Toby Hooper was
Speaker 3: apparently Christmas shopping at a Montgomery Ward store one time,
Speaker 3: and it was just really, really crowded, and I get
Speaker 3: the sense that he was having a bit of a
Speaker 3: panicky trying to get out of there, and saw some
Speaker 3: chainsaws on display, and it was like, I'd be great
Speaker 3: if I could grab one of those and just cut
Speaker 3: my way out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So he'd put all those things together. They
Speaker 2: came together end of nineteen seventy two, beginning of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three into this story that that just kind of
Speaker 2: clicked in his head. I also saw that Hansel and
Speaker 2: Gretel form some like loose influence on the.
Speaker 3: Whole thing, too.
Speaker 2: Sure, But he got together with a friend of his
Speaker 2: name Kim Henkel, and he and Henkel wrote the script together.
Speaker 2: They met Toby Hooper's house. They would map out the
Speaker 2: story arc on the floor, and then Kim Henkel would
Speaker 2: go in and type some pages and come back after
Speaker 2: a few and read it all to Toby Hooper and
Speaker 2: get a thumbs up or down, and then they'd continue on.
Speaker 2: And they wrote the script fairly quickly from what I understand,
Speaker 2: and they had some working titles for it that fortunately
Speaker 2: they did not go.
Speaker 3: With Yeah, and you know, one of the reasons it
Speaker 3: went quickly is because after that first half hour, there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of dialogue aside from like you know,
Speaker 3: Pam Pam and then Sally Salie and then the dinner scene.
Speaker 3: You're going to get some more, but there's there are
Speaker 3: long stretches where it's just you know, a lot of action.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you mentioned the alternate titles. Head Cheese was
Speaker 3: one which does make an appearance in the movie, and
Speaker 3: the dinner scene, I believe, and then Leatherface was one
Speaker 3: of the titles that would go on to be the
Speaker 3: title of the twenty seventeen prequel.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's just called leather Face. Which I haven't
Speaker 3: seen any of those, by the way.
Speaker 2: Neither of I. I've only seen the first one and
Speaker 2: I saw the second one.
Speaker 3: I didn't see that. I don't think I care to
Speaker 3: see any of the rest of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you're into the first one, it
Speaker 2: might not make sense to see the second one because
Speaker 2: it's such a departure. But yeah, it's still if you
Speaker 2: take that as an actual comedy, which it is, it's
Speaker 2: kind of fun on its own.
Speaker 3: I might see that one, but I definitely am not
Speaker 3: interested in the prequels and the reboots and the remakes
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Well, so the A twenty four just announced last month
Speaker 2: that they're rebooting Texas Chainsaw Masaker. Would you see those?
Speaker 3: Well, they they're almost across the finish line. Apparently they're
Speaker 3: in the pole position to win the bid as of
Speaker 3: like a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, you'd.
Speaker 3: Be interested to know that one of the other bidders
Speaker 3: was Oz Perkins and some other people. Oh yeah, your guy,
Speaker 3: and then Taylor Sheridan oddly put in a bid on
Speaker 3: the film and TV rights. But it looks like A
Speaker 3: twenty four is in the pole position and they're talking
Speaker 3: about a TV series.
Speaker 2: So I would watch that, Okay, I would too for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they came up with the script and it was
Speaker 2: they never actually came up with the title themselves. There
Speaker 2: was a guy named Warren Scarin who came up with
Speaker 2: the title Texas Chainsaw Masker. One of the great titles
Speaker 2: of all time. Oh yeah, and it's forwards if you
Speaker 2: want to be pedantic about it. Saw they have it
Speaker 2: as two words for some reason. And Warren Scarin would
Speaker 2: play a bunch of really important roles over the course
Speaker 2: of getting this movie made. And he was in a
Speaker 2: position too because he was Texas's first film commissioner. He
Speaker 2: also apparently was an investor in the film too, and
Speaker 2: he was a friend of a mutual friend between him
Speaker 2: and Kim Hankel, who would go on to become the
Speaker 2: production manager for the movie. Ron Boseman and Scarin also
Speaker 2: scared up the first investor, who was a former Texas
Speaker 2: legislator state legislator named Bill Parsley, who also apparently fancied
Speaker 2: himself a movie producer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and technically it's five words if you count the
Speaker 3: word the because the first one was the Texas chainsaw massacre.
Speaker 2: So you out pedanticked my own pedanticness.
Speaker 3: Well, because I knew we'd hear from somebody. Okay, So
Speaker 3: who was the last.
Speaker 2: Person you named, Ron Bo Bill Parsley.
Speaker 3: Or Bill Parsley. Yeah, so he you know, they came
Speaker 3: up with a few different budgets. The first one, you know,
Speaker 3: it was like, hey, what can we get, what can
Speaker 3: we make it for, and what could we really make
Speaker 3: it for if we just you know, kind of didn't
Speaker 3: have much and still had to do it. And that
Speaker 3: was sixty grand was like, hey, that'd be awesome. It's
Speaker 3: about three hundred and eighty eight grand a day. Forty
Speaker 3: grand was the mid level, and twenty grand was the
Speaker 3: small budget that they still thought they could make it with,
Speaker 3: even though it would have to be black and white.
Speaker 3: I could see this in black and white like a
Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead, But there are so many
Speaker 3: great color shots in this movie, like those green eyes
Speaker 3: of Sally that are so key in the in the
Speaker 3: third act, and the sunrise shot at the end. You
Speaker 3: know you'd lose all that.
Speaker 2: Oh, speaking of third acts, I watched Thirty Days of
Speaker 2: Night again, that vampire movie. Have you ever seen it,
Speaker 2: Josh Hartnett.
Speaker 3: I don't think I saw that one.
Speaker 2: It's not bad, but I thought of you because they
Speaker 2: show like this metal crushing like trash compactor in the
Speaker 2: first like ten minutes, and I thought, show a metal
Speaker 2: crushing trash compactor, and act one you're gonna use it?
Speaker 2: And act three and sure, yeah they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a classic classic move.
Speaker 2: So they actually got their high, their pie in the
Speaker 2: sky high end budget of sixty grand. Most of it
Speaker 2: came from Bill Parsley, but there were a couple of
Speaker 2: other investors that got cobbled together, and ultimately, by the
Speaker 2: time the thing had its final cut, it was up
Speaker 2: to three hundred grand. But even that was a paltry
Speaker 2: amount of money even in the mid seventies, Like this
Speaker 2: is peanuts as far as making a movie is concerned.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, not too bad. I'll take issue with
Speaker 3: pe nuts. I mean, Rocky was made for one point
Speaker 3: one million, and the average was four million even back then.
Speaker 3: But I guess I've known friends who have made movies
Speaker 3: these days for a lot less than that. So it's
Speaker 3: I know people that would be very happy with three
Speaker 3: hundred grand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're not using film stock, and I'll bet
Speaker 2: that eats up a ton of budget. Yeah, well, how
Speaker 2: about this, can we agree on brazil nuts?
Speaker 3: Brazil nuts sounds good?
Speaker 2: Okay. So one of the ways that they cut cost
Speaker 2: Chuck was to hire no name actors like inexperienced actors,
Speaker 2: and ultimately the way it would wash out, that would
Speaker 2: make the whole thing that much more realistic, which is great.
Speaker 2: These were people who might have been drama students taking
Speaker 2: film classes at UT Austin. Some of them were just
Speaker 2: Austin locals. And the other way that they cut costs
Speaker 2: was to get these casts, or this cast of no
Speaker 2: name actors who were already being paid brazil nuts at
Speaker 2: best peanuts, probably maybe even just the pa part of
Speaker 2: pe nuts, to defer even that amount, most of it
Speaker 2: until after the film got made, and they agreed to it.
Speaker 2: And they put together a cast of ten plus a
Speaker 2: few extras, and the only one who had any experience
Speaker 2: whatsoever was a guy named Jim Seadow seat ower Sideow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he played the cook and one of the three
Speaker 3: brothers in the Sawyer family. Marilyn burn to Sally. She
Speaker 3: had also been in a couple of things. She was
Speaker 3: in Robert Altman's Brewsters McLeod and she was actually cast
Speaker 3: as a lead in a movie, in a movie called
Speaker 3: Love and Molly that would have been before this, But
Speaker 3: she was replaced by Susan Sarandon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she ended up being the body double for Sarandon.
Speaker 3: And that one, I think it was a bitter pill.
Speaker 2: I'm sure for sure. So Jim sidew was he was
Speaker 2: his experience was a radio soap opera actor, So that
Speaker 2: was the experience he had. And from what I could tell,
Speaker 2: he was the only SAG member. And then there's a
Speaker 2: non on screen I guess off screen is how you
Speaker 2: put it. If you have brains appearance by a guy
Speaker 2: named John Lara Keett. If you're a night Court fan,
Speaker 2: and even if you're not, you're probably still familiar with
Speaker 2: John Lara Keett.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know this was John Larrocatt. Of my
Speaker 3: first two viewings of this, I had no idea until
Speaker 3: you've sent this along, So I don't know. I guess
Speaker 3: I didn't stay through the credits because I was always,
Speaker 3: you know, cowering in a corner or something.
Speaker 2: Turn it off, turn it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did not know that was John Larrocatt. That's the
Speaker 3: first thing he ever did in the film business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't know that either. I ran across it.
Speaker 2: I also ran across that he was friends with Toby
Speaker 2: Hooper and he did it as a favor. Apparently it
Speaker 2: took an hour of his time to record it, and
Speaker 2: Toby Hooper paid him in pot and John Learri Kett
Speaker 2: apparently confirmed that to none other than Parade Magazine years later.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: So you want to talk about the plot and then
Speaker 2: get into how they made this thing after that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Should we take a break first or should we
Speaker 3: do the plot first?
Speaker 2: No, it's a good idea.
Speaker 3: Let's do a break all right, Well, everyone, brace yourselves, go,
Speaker 3: you know, chill out, do some yoga, maybe meditate, and
Speaker 3: then we'll tell you the plot of Texas Chainsaw Maaska
Speaker 3: right after this.
Speaker 4: Joke mad Josh stuff.
Speaker 5: You should know.
Speaker 1: Satisfaction.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're back when we're talking about the plot.
Speaker 2: And again you already gave a spoiler alert, but it's
Speaker 2: worth saying again if you haven't seen the movie and
Speaker 2: you want to go in fresh, don't listen to this part. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and maybe we'll shout we're done with the plot after
Speaker 2: we're done with it, so that everybody can put their
Speaker 2: headphones back on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think maybe we should read that narration since
Speaker 3: it's so short.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, go ahead, yeah, because it gets the point across.
Speaker 3: So it's sort of framed as a docu drama shot
Speaker 3: at in a lot of moments, very documentary style, and
Speaker 3: they set it up as if it's a real thing.
Speaker 3: So here's John Larrickett, well me as John Larrochette. The
Speaker 3: film which you were about to see is an account
Speaker 3: of the tragedy which befell a group of five views
Speaker 3: in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother Franklin. It
Speaker 3: is all the more tragic in that they were young,
Speaker 3: but had they lived very, very long lives, they could
Speaker 3: not have expected, nor would they have wished to see
Speaker 3: as much mad and macabre as they were to see.
Speaker 3: That day for them and a dylic summer afternoon drive
Speaker 3: became a nightmare. The events of that day were to
Speaker 3: lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre
Speaker 3: crimes in the annals of American history, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Speaker 2: Pretty great. That's a good John Larrachett too, by the way.
Speaker 3: Thanks. It indicates that they all die too, which was
Speaker 3: a nice little slide of hand because it makes the
Speaker 3: ending a little more surprising and suspenseful, I think exactly.
Speaker 2: And so you said it like, this is presented as
Speaker 2: a docudrama, so people are going into it not thinking
Speaker 2: it's a documentary that they're actually seeing real things, but
Speaker 2: that it's depicting an actual event that happened specifically on
Speaker 2: October eighteenth, nineteen seventy three. It says that's the date
Speaker 2: that this all happens. Yeah, it just happens over a
Speaker 2: one day period, so that in and of itself kind
Speaker 2: of was totally new, as we'll see as far as
Speaker 2: horror movies went. It was almost prefiguring the found footage
Speaker 2: genre like Blair Witch and stuff like that. And then
Speaker 2: the whole action starts. Everything's prompted by news that a
Speaker 2: cemetery in the middle of rural Texas, Central Texas has
Speaker 2: there been grave robbings going on. And not only grave
Speaker 2: robbings or they're just removing specific parts of bodies, they're
Speaker 2: also taking some of the bodies in basically making him
Speaker 2: into these really gruesome statues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a great way to open the movie.
Speaker 3: The opening shot and everything is just very disturbing to
Speaker 3: kind of get that ball rolling. And they are in
Speaker 3: a van traveling. They have space cleared out for the
Speaker 3: wheelchair for Franklin, and you know, it's like a sort
Speaker 3: of set the standard. But we've seen this so many
Speaker 3: times since then, like teenagers off, you know, having a
Speaker 3: good time going on a trip, maybe going camping or
Speaker 3: something like that. But they were sort of the first,
Speaker 3: you know, movie to do that kind of thing. It
Speaker 3: set that standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were the reason they were there. Was
Speaker 2: there Franklin and Sally's grandfather was buried at the cemetery,
Speaker 2: so they're going to check to see if his grave
Speaker 2: had been dug up, and they find that it's not.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: While they're there, they'll say, Hey, why don't we go
Speaker 2: check out grandfather's old homestead. We used to spend summers
Speaker 2: there once in a while. So the whole gang agrees
Speaker 2: to do that, but first they need gas, and they
Speaker 2: go to a gas station, a Rundown gas station slash
Speaker 2: barbecue pit that's owned by a man known as the Cook,
Speaker 2: who also would turn out to be Drayton Sawyer like
Speaker 2: who you mentioned before, one of the three brothers of
Speaker 2: this scary family. And it turns out they don't have
Speaker 2: any gas, which I've read was a big commentary on
Speaker 2: the gas shortages going on at the time. But the
Speaker 2: kids decide to head on to the what it turns
Speaker 2: out to be the abandoned Hardesty Homestead. Anyway, just look around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did you catch the name of the gas station?
Speaker 2: Yeah? W e Slaughter Barbecue.
Speaker 3: Well that was the restaurant. It was the Last Chance Gas.
Speaker 2: I did see that, Yes, I totally forgot.
Speaker 3: So I immediately thought of my last chance garage hat
Speaker 3: that I wore for many many years.
Speaker 2: Do you still have that thing?
Speaker 3: I have like four or five of them because I
Speaker 3: lost the original one in Austin, Texas. Oh wow, and
Speaker 3: at south By one year. And then I got a
Speaker 3: patch maker here in Atlanta to make me patches, and
Speaker 3: so I made like or four of them, but I
Speaker 3: just haven't more than those in a long time.
Speaker 2: I remember that very kind patchmaker replacing it. And since
Speaker 2: you lost in Austin, I'm now convinced that there is
Speaker 2: no way it wasn't a Texas Chainsawmascar fan who stole that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this Last Chance Garage, which was his
Speaker 3: own brand. But I thought Last Chance Gas was kind
Speaker 3: of fun.
Speaker 2: I now that I think about it. I've seen on
Speaker 2: Etsy vials of skin scrapings that say that you're they're
Speaker 2: you're skin scraping. So I wonder if it came from
Speaker 2: that hat. Probably, so it does ship out of Texas,
Speaker 2: it says, all right, there you have it. So anyway,
Speaker 2: this gas station's out of gas, and they head onto
Speaker 2: the abandoned house and just start exploring it. But before
Speaker 2: they get there, they pick up a hitchhiker and he
Speaker 2: turns out to be one of the sawyers too, but
Speaker 2: he plays this character so nuts. Yeah, he dances right
Speaker 2: along the edge of this is ridiculous. He's being ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's totally over the top, but it still manages to
Speaker 2: be more disturbing than like, come on, you know, oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's again completely unsettling. His name, by the way,
Speaker 3: they do have names. His name is Nubbins Sawyer, but
Speaker 3: he's kind of mainly known as the hitchhiker, and his
Speaker 3: very short ride is just full of disturbing things. He
Speaker 3: looks like he's got you know, blood on his face.
Speaker 3: He's kind of rambling incoherently. He takes out a or
Speaker 3: he I'm sorry. He grabs Franklin's sort of whittling pocket
Speaker 3: knife at one point and cuts his own hand in
Speaker 3: front of everyone's faces, which is terrifying, and then slashes
Speaker 3: Franklin I think with his razor that he has in
Speaker 3: his boot.
Speaker 2: H Yeah, and he's real squarely too, so he's moving
Speaker 2: around a lot, and he's like just doing all sorts
Speaker 2: of weird stuff. But once he slashes, like they're really
Speaker 2: put off by this guy. But once he slashes Franklin,
Speaker 2: they don't even fully stop. They just slow down and
Speaker 2: basically push him out of the van, yeah, and take off.
Speaker 2: So they go to the Hardesty Homestead. Franklin tells them
Speaker 2: that there's a swimming hole nearby, and this couple, Pam
Speaker 2: and Kirk, go off to find it, but they find
Speaker 2: that it's dried up. Yeah, And they're just kind of
Speaker 2: hanging out, and Kirk spies a house nearby and he thinks, hey,
Speaker 2: maybe they have some gas that we can get because
Speaker 2: the van's getting awfully low and they don't know where
Speaker 2: another gas station is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they go to this house. Kirk stupidly enters
Speaker 3: the house. He's kind of knocking on the door, and
Speaker 3: the door just you know, opens from him knocking, and
Speaker 3: he's the first to be killed. And it happens in
Speaker 3: such a brutally fast way when he goes down this
Speaker 3: straight hallway into this you know, it looks like another
Speaker 3: hallway off the entryway where they have animal skins and
Speaker 3: skulls and things on the wall, and he gets clubbed
Speaker 3: by a hammer very quickly. And the speed at which
Speaker 3: that happens, the speed at which you see leather face
Speaker 3: for the first time, whose name is Bubba, by the way,
Speaker 3: and then the ferocity and speed that he slams shut
Speaker 3: that metal sliding or is just terrifying.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, that's a hell of a way for the
Speaker 2: first person to get picked off to go.
Speaker 3: It's very fast and just all of a sudden, you're
Speaker 3: already disturbed because everything before it was so even Franklin,
Speaker 3: like every word out of his mouth is annoying and upsetting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should say Franklin. Among film appreciators and horror fans,
Speaker 2: he's almost universally despised, ye Franklin. Yeah, so yeah, it
Speaker 2: is because I was. I went into it again thinking
Speaker 2: how much everybody hates Franklin. I was like, he's not
Speaker 2: that bad. He's pretty bad, but there's still there's some
Speaker 2: redeeming qualities to him. But I don't want to just
Speaker 2: be contrarian, you know, now I'm with you. So Pam,
Speaker 2: who was with Kirk but is waiting outside on a
Speaker 2: swinging bench, starts deciding that Kirk's been gone too long
Speaker 2: and goes in after him. And she goes in, there's
Speaker 2: this classic shot dolly shot from the ground going upward,
Speaker 2: and it follows her going up to the house and
Speaker 2: it's just this amazing shot. Like anybody who knows anything
Speaker 2: about cinemas, like This is one of the best Dolly
Speaker 2: shots of all time. Again, a twenty three year old
Speaker 2: did this. And the reason they did is because the
Speaker 2: house just grows bigger and bigger, almost like it's gonna
Speaker 2: swallow Pam up. And I would never think about that
Speaker 2: if I hadn't read someone describing it. But that's exactly
Speaker 2: what it does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very creepy. It starts it goes under the swing,
Speaker 3: which is a nice little trick. Her backside is very
Speaker 3: prominently in frame, So I think at the time that
Speaker 3: was their version of selling something slightly sexy. Sure, but
Speaker 3: it's so foreboding and you get that blue blue sky
Speaker 3: and the clouds and that up angle shot of the house,
Speaker 3: like you said, and it's just it's a great, great shot.
Speaker 2: It is. So Pam goes in there and her fate
Speaker 2: is not met quite as quickly as Kirk. She stumbles
Speaker 2: into this room where, yeah, there's a live chicken in
Speaker 2: a bird cage meant for basically canary. So the chicken's
Speaker 2: almost stuffed in there. Yeah, there's feathers everywhere, there's bones everywhere,
Speaker 2: carcass is hanging everywhere, The couches and the chairs are
Speaker 2: all basically upholstered with bones and these weird but kind
Speaker 2: of in a strange way, beautiful designs. And you can
Speaker 2: just tell it's so nasty in there that she starts
Speaker 2: to gag and tries to get out, And as she's
Speaker 2: trying to get out, she meets leather Face and it
Speaker 2: goes downhill from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is equally as brutal. I mean, leather
Speaker 3: Face is I don't think we said it's like six
Speaker 3: four and how much did he weigh?
Speaker 2: Three hundred pounds?
Speaker 3: Yeah, very large dude sort of looks like a professional wrestler,
Speaker 3: but he's wearing a skin mask with other hair you
Speaker 3: know that's not his.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like almost a curly wig. That just that makes
Speaker 2: it so much worse too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So everything he does is just you know, brutal.
Speaker 3: I mean, clearly, as the movie he goes on, we
Speaker 3: realize that he's has, you know, some pretty severe cognitive issues,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not going to diagnose Bubba Leatherface, sure, but
Speaker 3: at any rate, he's he's terrifying. And the way he
Speaker 3: moves is just very sort of herky jerky, and the
Speaker 3: way he's so big, and the way he grabs her
Speaker 3: and brings her into that room. It's just it's all again.
Speaker 3: It's terrifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the other things that's terrifying that also
Speaker 2: gets across the fact that cognitively seems to be challenged,
Speaker 2: at least to some degree. They took away all of
Speaker 2: the dialogue that he had written for in the script,
Speaker 2: so he doesn't do anything but make weird sounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he kind of babbles at one point.
Speaker 2: Later he does. And then also if you pay attention,
Speaker 2: there's times where he's clearly talking, but they dub in
Speaker 2: a hog squealing. Yeah, and it's not supposed to be
Speaker 2: him him making a hog call, like, it's just like,
Speaker 2: that's what came out of his mouth, weirdly, and it
Speaker 2: happens so fast, and they don't make any kind of
Speaker 2: point to point it out that when you notice it,
Speaker 2: you're like, what the heck just happened. But it makes him,
Speaker 2: especially if you don't notice it, even creepier. I mean,
Speaker 2: the fact that he's wearing a mask made of a
Speaker 2: dead person's face is bad enough, but all the extra
Speaker 2: little details they put into it, the apron that he's wearing,
Speaker 2: which clearly demonstrates he's a butcher with that chainsaw all
Speaker 2: of the details they put together just make him one
Speaker 2: of the great horror film villains of all time.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and set the mold for the sort of
Speaker 3: non verbal mask wearing dudes to come, like Michael Myers
Speaker 3: and certainly Jason Voorhees for sure.
Speaker 2: So what happens to Pam?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Pam gets meat hooked immediately, She gets taken into
Speaker 3: this butcher room, impaled on a meat hook, but still living,
Speaker 3: and gets to watch we finally see the chainsaw fire
Speaker 3: up here for the first time. We get to see
Speaker 3: her boyfriend, you know, get it doesn't show it, and
Speaker 3: we'll talk about that later, but you see the leather
Speaker 3: face fire that thing up and kind of start to
Speaker 3: get to work on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like you said, Pam's still alive and she's
Speaker 2: umpaled on that meat hook just a few feet from
Speaker 2: where Kirk's body is on this table. That leather Face
Speaker 2: is now dismembering with the chainsaw. So as she's dying,
Speaker 2: she gets to watch that. And then I think it
Speaker 2: goes back to the homestead where Franklin and Sally and Jerry,
Speaker 2: who Sally's boyfriend, are still hanging out, and Jerry decides
Speaker 2: to go look for them, drawn into the same trap
Speaker 2: that Kirk and Pam fell for by looking for them,
Speaker 2: and he gets picked off too. His death happened so
Speaker 2: quickly that I actually thought for a second that he
Speaker 2: was going to come back, because I hadn't seen it
Speaker 2: in a while. Yeah, and then I realized, like, no,
Speaker 2: he just he got taken out with one one hammer swing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that all makes it pretty scary too, because
Speaker 3: there's not this big tense build up like a lot
Speaker 3: of modern horror. People are just just very kind of
Speaker 3: quickly and without regard.
Speaker 2: Which makes it seem like that's probably how it would
Speaker 2: be in that situation. It makes it more realistic, I think, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I've seen Jerry refer to as
Speaker 2: disco Stew across the internet, because he really does bear
Speaker 2: a resemblance to him, for sure.
Speaker 3: So he before he gets dispatched, though, he does open
Speaker 3: the freezer in the butcher room and sees that Pam
Speaker 3: is in there and sort of barely alive and kind
Speaker 3: of comes up, And that's right when he gets taken.
Speaker 2: Out for sure. So Jerry's gone, Kirk and Pam are gone,
Speaker 2: there's just Franklin and Sally left and they wait until
Speaker 2: nightfall until they just can't not look for their friends anymore,
Speaker 2: so they go chomping through the woods. And this is
Speaker 2: where Hansel and Gretel really kind of becomes clear. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Sally's pushing Franklin in his wheelchair basically overland, and as
Speaker 2: they're wandering kind of aimlessly through the woods, they come
Speaker 2: upon leather Face, who starts chopping Franklin up in his wheelchair,
Speaker 2: and Sally, realizing there's nothing she can do for her brother,
Speaker 2: takes off and this kind of chase through the woods
Speaker 2: that leads back to leads her to the Sawyer House,
Speaker 2: which she's not familiar with, so she goes in there
Speaker 2: looking for help, realizes this is not the place to
Speaker 2: find help, has to jump out a second story window,
Speaker 2: goes back to running through the woods, and then makes
Speaker 2: it to that original gas station slash barbecue pit, thinking
Speaker 2: she's found safety, and it turns out that's not the
Speaker 2: case at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's when it all comes together that Drayton
Speaker 3: is in on it. He's one of the family members.
Speaker 3: He kidnaps her in a this Okay, this scene I
Speaker 3: could see is maybe being kind of funny. The broom
Speaker 3: attack when he's smacking her with the broom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if you know the little behind the scenes
Speaker 2: trivia that Jim Seadau did not want to do that
Speaker 2: he was basically forced to and goad it on to
Speaker 2: actually hit Marilyn Burns with the broomstick to make it
Speaker 2: look real. And if you know that, the first few
Speaker 2: hits are kind of tentative and he's almost looking like
Speaker 2: can I get away with this? And they clearly cut
Speaker 2: and then say like, dude, you need to actually hit her,
Speaker 2: and he does. And it's I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: fact that he didn't want to do it and then
Speaker 2: had to do it, there had to be some sort
Speaker 2: of transformation in his character that you can't quite put
Speaker 2: your finger on there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess I could see how that scene
Speaker 3: could come across his bunny a little bit. But again,
Speaker 3: it's so terrifying because the way she screams and the
Speaker 3: brutality of it all despite the weird broom thing. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: I couldn't come back to a place of laughing. There's
Speaker 3: just no way.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: So I'm glad you mentioned her screaming because, like you said,
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of dialogue in the second and
Speaker 2: third acts. But I can't imagine how many times they
Speaker 2: wrote Sally screams. Yeah, she screamed, maybe more than any
Speaker 2: other horror film victim in history. But fortunately for us,
Speaker 2: her scream almost has like a pleasing quality to it,
Speaker 2: and she has a huge range. It's not the same
Speaker 2: scream over and over again. There's one point where she's like, oh, like,
Speaker 2: it's like it's just a bunch of different screams. And
Speaker 2: she screams a lot. So she was very rightly and
Speaker 2: still is called a scream queen. She's one of the
Speaker 2: scream queens. But she screams a lot in this movie.
Speaker 2: But it it It doesn't get annoying, it's not grating,
Speaker 2: and it just makes the whole thing that much more terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't say annoying, but I kept wanting it
Speaker 3: to stop because it's so relentless, you.
Speaker 2: Know, sure it is. It is relentless, for sure.
Speaker 3: It's very upsetting. So she gets taken, you know, after
Speaker 3: the little broom fracas, she gets you know, bagged and
Speaker 3: taken back to the house. And this is where I mean,
Speaker 3: in a movie of disturbing scenes, maybe the most disturbing
Speaker 3: scene is the dinner scene for sure with the whole family,
Speaker 3: which is we don't really learn this here. I think
Speaker 3: we just sort of learned and later in other movies
Speaker 3: the relations. But it's three brothers, it's Bubba, Nubbins and
Speaker 3: Drayton and then Grandpa. What I wondered is about the parents.
Speaker 3: I guess that's explained maybe in prequels and stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have no idea because I haven't seen those.
Speaker 3: But there's a grandpa who it turns out was played
Speaker 3: by a nineteen year old in a face mask. Also,
Speaker 3: the grandpa doesn't speak, and it's just this macabre dinner
Speaker 3: scene where it just shows how this family of cannibals
Speaker 3: is so like, they're all just so disturbed. It's just disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. At one point, leather Face grabs Sally's finger and
Speaker 2: cuts it with a knife and then puts her finger
Speaker 2: in Grandpa's mouth so Grandpa can partake drinking her blood, right,
Speaker 2: and then so she's being tormented this whole time. This
Speaker 2: is a ten minute long scene at least depending on
Speaker 2: when you say it starts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where she's just.
Speaker 2: Being tormented and terrorized and mocked. Nubbins the hitchhiker is
Speaker 2: just mocking her. Please let me go, Yeah, and which
Speaker 2: makes so much worse, and then just the terror on
Speaker 2: her face. She sells it so well. But anyway, Grandpather,
Speaker 2: who's essentially immobile and just a couple of degrees away
Speaker 2: from catatonic. Yeah, they're like Grandpa used to be the
Speaker 2: best at killing people. He could kill him with one
Speaker 2: hammer blow. Let's let her let him kill her. So
Speaker 2: they actually drag her over to like a metal tub,
Speaker 2: lean her over it, her head over it so that
Speaker 2: she doesn't get blood everywhere, and give Grandpa the hammer.
Speaker 2: But he's so aged and so just withered, he can't
Speaker 2: hold the hammer, so he keeps dropping it out of
Speaker 2: his hand and it lands like in the tub next
Speaker 2: to Sally's head, over and over again, which, oh my god, dude.
Speaker 3: It's way scarier than if he had just hauled off
Speaker 3: and hit her with all of his strength.
Speaker 2: Wait, because it goes on for a minute or so.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's really disturbing.
Speaker 2: Finally she gets away, she goes through another window, and
Speaker 2: then we reached the end of the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just real quick. We should mention that leather
Speaker 3: Face has changed his attire for dinner and is wearing
Speaker 3: a dress and a new I guess woman's skin mask
Speaker 3: because it's all made up with this heavy, like you know,
Speaker 3: clown makeup, almost and that just makes it even more disturbing.
Speaker 2: Well, don't forget his lovely cravat too that he was wearing.
Speaker 2: That's right, So Sally's getting away. She runs out of
Speaker 2: the house. It's now sunrise daylight, which is a good
Speaker 2: sign for Sally at this point. Also the fact that
Speaker 2: she's the last person and she's still alive. You can
Speaker 2: start to think like maybe Sally's gonna get away. But
Speaker 2: she's running down the driveway and Nubbins catches up with her.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately for Nubbins, he doesn't really take her escape
Speaker 2: seriously and continues to mock her while he's chasing her.
Speaker 3: Well, he's slashing her back with that razor the whole
Speaker 3: time too.
Speaker 2: Which I didn't notice. That is that what it is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why she ends up such a bloody mess.
Speaker 3: I mean, besides everything else that happened to her.
Speaker 2: Gotcha. But she makes it to the end of the
Speaker 2: driveway to the main road with Nubbins right at her heels,
Speaker 2: and they run out into the street. Just as a
Speaker 2: mac truck. A tractor trailer essentially is barreling down the
Speaker 2: street and runs right over Nubbins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Nubbins has gone a little bit of trivia.
Speaker 3: The name on the side of the truck is black Maria.
Speaker 2: M hmm.
Speaker 3: I looked up to see if there was any significance
Speaker 3: and I didn't verify this, But there's no way it's
Speaker 3: a coincidence that Black Maria was the name of Thomas
Speaker 3: Edison's very first motion picture studio that he built.
Speaker 2: Oh, no, way, that's a coincidence. But also doesn't that
Speaker 2: go to show like what students of film these filmmakers were, that.
Speaker 3: They knew they totally Yeah, that had to be the
Speaker 3: case though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that they made an homage to Thomas Edison's
Speaker 2: first movie studio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty great. All right. So back to the movie,
Speaker 3: Nubbins has been run over. The truck driver obviously stops.
Speaker 3: A truck driver is played by ed g u I
Speaker 3: n n I guess Gwenn, but very close to Ed Geen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, by.
Speaker 3: Coincidence, I'm sure. And the truck driver is one of
Speaker 3: the weird heroes of this movie. He has no lines,
Speaker 3: he's in it for a couple of minutes. Only African
Speaker 3: American character in here, and in a spin on that
Speaker 3: trope that they're the first ones to die, he's actually
Speaker 3: the only guy that inflicts any damage on this family
Speaker 3: at all, because he runs over Nubbin right, and he
Speaker 3: gets a big pipe wrench when he's getting out of
Speaker 3: the truck and throws it at leather Face, which causes
Speaker 3: leather Face to fall down with the chainsaw, and the
Speaker 3: chainsaw like cuts into his own thigh.
Speaker 2: Which is probably the most brutal thing that they show
Speaker 2: in the entire movie. It's gross, like you can see
Speaker 2: the fat and his leg come out like bubble out
Speaker 2: of the wound.
Speaker 3: Oh God, blake fat.
Speaker 2: So Sally is still running around in the middle of
Speaker 2: the road here, and luckily a pickup truck comes by
Speaker 2: and she manages to jump in the back and now
Speaker 2: she's finally got away. But she's clearly lost her mind
Speaker 2: the way that she's reacting to it sinking in that
Speaker 2: she's gotten away, and Leatherface is not happy about this.
Speaker 2: He's very frustrated, and he shows it by swinging the
Speaker 2: chainsaw around wildly, hair whirling. You can tell he's just
Speaker 2: so mad and this is the only way that he
Speaker 2: can show it or get it out. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 2: swinging and swinging against the sunrise. And then, like you said,
Speaker 2: it just cuts to black.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and heard that shot of her in the back
Speaker 3: of that truck with the blood oliver and her madly cackling.
Speaker 3: It's it's the perfect ending and the abrupt ending, like
Speaker 3: it's so loud with that chainsaw. Yeah, and then to cut.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine what it was like in a theater
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy four. Yeah, when it cuts to black
Speaker 3: and it's just dead silent, Like, what the hell did
Speaker 3: that audience like do?
Speaker 2: Had I been there, it wouldn't have been dead silence,
Speaker 2: because I would have been like, that is a.
Speaker 3: Great hearingvie that would have said, what did I just want?
Speaker 3: Right by the way, pickup truck driver played by Perry Lorenz,
Speaker 3: who I think now is an Austin real estate developer.
Speaker 2: Okay cool. He was also the stunt driver I think
Speaker 2: for the truck.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean you can barely see him, but got to
Speaker 3: shout out Perry Lorenz.
Speaker 2: So that's the movie. I mean, there's not that much
Speaker 2: more to it. Honestly, it was very bare bones, which
Speaker 2: I think again makes it that much more believable. And
Speaker 2: we need to take a second break. I say, we
Speaker 2: plug on and make this just one big, fat episode.
Speaker 3: What do you think, Yeah, we gotta do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're gonna take our second break and then
Speaker 2: we're gonna come back and you'll find out the bulk
Speaker 2: of the show is still to come.
Speaker 4: Chalk ad Josh stop.
Speaker 1: Should know.
Speaker 3: All right, So we're back. We know what happened in
Speaker 3: the movie. You know, hopefully if you came back and
Speaker 3: you didn't want it spoiled, this won't spoil too much
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we're done with the plot.
Speaker 3: But we need to talk about the making of the movie.
Speaker 3: The film was shot in just over well right out
Speaker 3: a month and thirty one days, mid July to mid August,
Speaker 3: in what are now suburbs of Austin and bass Drop
Speaker 3: and Round Rock. But I imagine then they were a
Speaker 3: little more rural than they are now. There was you know,
Speaker 3: weren't strip malls and stuff everywhere.
Speaker 2: No, they look pretty rural, pretty.
Speaker 3: Rural a little bit around aust than itself. Obviously, the heat,
Speaker 3: the conditions were brutal, like you know, one hundred degrees
Speaker 3: plus on the on the roads and in the streets
Speaker 3: and fields, and more than that inside the Sawyer house.
Speaker 3: M hmm, with what little film lighting they had, and
Speaker 3: it was it was a brutal experience. They had a
Speaker 3: Ford van that drove around the gear, had an old
Speaker 3: camper which was the hair and makeup trailer, and shot
Speaker 3: at basically at about six places overall.
Speaker 2: I counted five. So I've got the Rundown gas station,
Speaker 2: barbecue pitt, the abandoned house which is the hardest e homestead,
Speaker 2: the neglected cemetery, the dirt road, and then the Sawyer
Speaker 2: family house.
Speaker 3: Then you're in the van too. Baby.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's great man. You just blew my mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So basically six ish places, which is a great
Speaker 3: way to you know, write a cheap independent film, you know,
Speaker 3: as a just a little tip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were again they were on a shoe string.
Speaker 2: I suspect that the Ford van they used to carry
Speaker 2: the film equipment around was the same Ford van that
Speaker 2: the teenagers drive around in.
Speaker 3: I bet it was. That was my hunch.
Speaker 2: And they also apparently got some guff because the road
Speaker 2: scenes that they filmed, they did not get a permit.
Speaker 3: For Oh, I'm surprised he got a permit for any
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 2: Right, So, unfortunately for the cast and crew, most of
Speaker 2: the filming was done in the Sawyer House. And again,
Speaker 2: like you said, one hundred degrees outside, apparently in the
Speaker 2: house for our friends except in Liberia who used the
Speaker 2: metric system, that's thirty seven point eight degrees celsius.
Speaker 3: Which seems very cold to me.
Speaker 2: Right, And apparently it got ten degrees more than that
Speaker 2: inside the house. And because this film was inspired in
Speaker 2: part by egg Gean, the production designer Bob Burns used
Speaker 2: photos that were taken like crime scene photos taken in
Speaker 2: Egggan's house as inspiration for the set decoration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Toby Hooper himself said that the movie
Speaker 3: is about meat. Yeah, it's a case for veganism. Apparently
Speaker 3: he became a vegan during and you found out that
Speaker 3: Guillermo del Toro apparently became a vegan after seeing the
Speaker 3: movie as well. And I'm sure they're not the only ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you look out for that, all of
Speaker 2: the meat eating that's done in the movie is disgusting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The truck that runs over Nubbins is a cattle truck
Speaker 2: that is empty, which means it just is returning from
Speaker 2: having dropped off a bunch of cows at a slaughterhouse.
Speaker 3: They talk a lot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they talk about a slaughterhouse nearby. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: makes a lot of sense. And also not to mention
Speaker 2: that there's that live chicken, tons of carcasses hanging everywhere,
Speaker 2: lots of like sausages and stuff all over the house, skins, bones,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. It just it makes sense, like because
Speaker 2: if there's one word, it screams its meat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well Franklin's chewing on that looks like a raw sausage. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's pretty gross for a while. In that one scene
Speaker 3: where he's trying to get into his old grandparents' house,
Speaker 3: and the implication here is that these the Draytons are
Speaker 3: this is, you know, human meat that they're grinding up
Speaker 3: into sausage. It's never explicitly said, but I think that's
Speaker 3: what you're supposed to believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that's what the barbecue that they're selling.
Speaker 3: Is made from, too, right, Well that's what I mean.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So because Bob Burns is hanging actual meat around
Speaker 2: this house, and because it's one hundred and ten degrees
Speaker 2: in the house. The house started to smell wretchedly, so
Speaker 2: much so I saw from multiple sources that they would
Speaker 2: go outside between takes and throw up sometimes. Yes, at
Speaker 2: the very least they had to get out to get
Speaker 2: some air because it got gainy in there, terribly nasty
Speaker 2: just from the meat. But then you also throw in
Speaker 2: what the actors themselves must have smelled like, because they
Speaker 2: had one set of clothing. Yeah, and they had to
Speaker 2: wear it every day for the shoot, because this action
Speaker 2: takes place over just one day.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, usually when you shoot a movie of multiples
Speaker 3: of your clothes, so if something happen to them, obviously
Speaker 3: you can switch it out, or if they get stinky,
Speaker 3: you can switch them out. On a modern movie, they
Speaker 3: probably have like eight versions of the chainsaw. They had
Speaker 3: one chainsaw, so on a budget you just get one
Speaker 3: of everything. So they were very stinky. They had Bill Parsley,
Speaker 3: the you know, one of the early financiers, stopping by
Speaker 3: almost every day basically saying like when are you going
Speaker 3: to wrap this picture? Threatening to shut it down. They shot,
Speaker 3: you know, twelve to eighteen hours a day. One day
Speaker 3: they went for twenty six hours inside that house. Obviously
Speaker 3: they're blacking out the windows because most of it takes
Speaker 3: place at night in that house, which is you know,
Speaker 3: psychologically that's upsetting to a cast and crew for sure.
Speaker 2: Also, like this experience of just being treated like this
Speaker 2: during filming the cast itself, like in real life, like
Speaker 2: there was a lot of tension, a lot of squabbling
Speaker 2: and bickering and people just kind of being disgruntled, and
Speaker 2: that came through from other stuff. I've read that Toby
Speaker 2: Hooper was making that, like really beefing that kind of
Speaker 2: tension up to get more just angst out of his actors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally using that to his advantage, as every great
Speaker 3: manipulating director should.
Speaker 2: Sure he also isolated Gooner Hansen, who played Leatherface. I
Speaker 2: read that each of the actors who was dispatched by
Speaker 2: Leatherface met Gooner Hansen when they filmed their scene for
Speaker 2: the first time. Yeah, so that they couldn't get comfortable
Speaker 2: with him. And we're I mean again, like you said,
Speaker 2: six foot four, three hundred pounds and the chainsaw, it
Speaker 2: was a poolin and apparently it's one of their heavier ones,
Speaker 2: and he's just swinging this around like it's nothing. So
Speaker 2: clearly he was an intimidating person in real life, and
Speaker 2: again that was something Toby Hooper did to manipulate things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he stayed in character too, which is also
Speaker 3: means he's walking around either babbling or or not saying anything.
Speaker 3: I don't imagine they had a recording of a pig
Speaker 3: square ill to that he could just kind of play
Speaker 3: for fun as he walked around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, but it's uh, they were, they were. It
Speaker 3: wasn't a pleasant shoot.
Speaker 2: I also read that the guy who played Franklin, Paul Partain,
Speaker 2: stayed in character as well, and everyone hated him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so there was also physical suffering too. We talked about
Speaker 2: how Marilyn Burns was actually hit in the head with
Speaker 2: the broomstick to make it more realistic looking. Uh, she was.
Speaker 2: She did almost all of her own stunts from what
Speaker 2: I could tell. A woman named Mary Church was the
Speaker 2: only stunt she did was actually jumping out of the windows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bad wig in that shot, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: But when when Sally falls down over you know whatever,
Speaker 2: when she's running through mesquite and gets trapped in it,
Speaker 2: running through cockle burrs like that was actually Marilyn Burns,
Speaker 2: the actress, having to do that over and over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you get that sense too when she's freaking
Speaker 3: out in that long chase scene through the thick. It's
Speaker 3: terrifying and it looks like she's not enjoying things at all,
Speaker 3: as you know, So it comes really comes across on film, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because she gets stuck and she's like ah and has
Speaker 2: to pull herself out and yeah, I think she really did.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then you know the we mentioned in the
Speaker 3: plot the scene again this is a big spoiler. At
Speaker 3: one point her fingers cut at the dinner scene and
Speaker 3: it's put into the mouth of Grandpa to suckle her blood.
Speaker 3: Apparently the blood squib didn't work and they really cut
Speaker 3: her finger, and that nineteen year old grandpa kid and
Speaker 3: the face mask really drank her blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unknowingly apparently until after year.
Speaker 3: Good god.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that people point to is
Speaker 2: what made this movie so great? Was this the inexperience
Speaker 2: of these novice filmmakers. Yeah, we said that Daniel Pearl,
Speaker 2: the cinematographer, was twenty three. Toby Hooper apparently was the
Speaker 2: oldest at twenty nine. Yeah, and they had like documentary backgrounds.
Speaker 2: Daniel Pearl was he apparently caught Toby Hooper's eye from
Speaker 2: a Texas Department of Public Safety PSA, right.
Speaker 3: Like blood spills Red on the Highway kind of.
Speaker 2: Thing, Yeah, basically, except this is about a drug bust
Speaker 2: and Toby Hooper noticed, like, wow, that was shot really
Speaker 2: interestingly and who did that. That's how they came together.
Speaker 2: They made their own dollies out of wood, their own
Speaker 2: crane out of wood too, I believe. And then the
Speaker 2: editing too, gets a lot of credit for making the
Speaker 2: movie what it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like we said it's a trim eighty
Speaker 3: three minutes. You can thank Larry Carroll and Sally Richardson
Speaker 3: as the editors for just you know, like I kept mentioning,
Speaker 3: like the speed at which the kills happen and the
Speaker 3: abruptness in which they end and with the movie ends,
Speaker 3: like those are all just great editing decisions to like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's tough because you know they call it
Speaker 3: like losing your babies. You don't want to lose stuff
Speaker 3: you shot or the great line. But a good editor
Speaker 3: knows like no, tighter is better, shorter is better, and
Speaker 3: it helps create a lot of the unsettling feeling. I
Speaker 3: think by how quickly they cut away to stuff for sure.
Speaker 2: So they finally got it done. I think I said,
Speaker 2: three hundred grand is the highest I saw as an
Speaker 2: estimate for what they actually what the budget actually was.
Speaker 2: They got it done to eighty three minutes, they had
Speaker 2: the final cut. They have investors like breathing down their
Speaker 2: neck because remember they initially got eighty grand. The budget
Speaker 2: ended up being three hundred grand, So Toby Hooper and
Speaker 2: Kim Hankel kept having to go back and find new
Speaker 2: people to get them money. And over time a lot
Speaker 2: of different investors, including the cast and crew, owned that movie.
Speaker 2: They owned portions of it, and as true indie filmmakers,
Speaker 2: Kim Hankel and Toby Hooper watered down their own share
Speaker 2: to get the money to get the movie completed, and
Speaker 2: they ended up just with a seven and a half
Speaker 2: percent cut each. These are the guys who thought of
Speaker 2: and made the movie. They ended up with fifteen percent
Speaker 2: between them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I mean, we'll see, it made
Speaker 3: a ton of money, but how those things pay out,
Speaker 3: It just it never pays out like you think it would.
Speaker 3: Even though it was cheap to make and made a
Speaker 3: ton of money. That got creative accounting and in this
Speaker 3: case sort of mob accounting, right, because well, I guess
Speaker 3: we should say first, it did get picked up. The commissioner,
Speaker 3: Warren Scarn that we were talking about, the Film Commissioner
Speaker 3: of Texas shopped it around. You know, there weren't a
Speaker 3: ton of big movies being shot in Texas at the time,
Speaker 3: so it was sort of a you know, before Robert
Speaker 3: Rodriguez and Richard Linkladder put Austin on the map, Toby
Speaker 3: Hooper was first, so it wasn't like a big film scene,
Speaker 3: so it took the film commissioner to really champion it
Speaker 3: for distribution. Almost got bought by Columbia. Eventually was bought
Speaker 3: by the distribution company who put out Deep Throat, the
Speaker 3: famous porn and their name was Brianston Distributing Company.
Speaker 2: Yes, and their whole business model was based just generate
Speaker 2: as much publicity as you can. Negative publicity is just
Speaker 2: as good as positive, yeah, and then they would just
Speaker 2: promote the heck out of it, publicize all of this
Speaker 2: outrage and everything that the movie was getting. And the
Speaker 2: reason why is because they couldn't afford traditional marketing. As
Speaker 2: it worked out, it was basically a shell game house
Speaker 2: of cards, and like you said, it was a mobbed
Speaker 2: up movie distribution company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Brianston was owned by the Colombo crime family
Speaker 3: or you know members of that family, specifically Big Tony Perino.
Speaker 3: He also helped finance the part of this film and
Speaker 3: other of their films. And yeah, I think they distributed
Speaker 3: Dark Star from John Carpenter, which is a sci fi
Speaker 3: cult classic. But because it was mob connected, it was
Speaker 3: kind of one of those things where they knew that
Speaker 3: no one was going to see the money. They were
Speaker 3: probably owed. And I think, you know, some of them
Speaker 3: made a little bit of money, but the total even
Speaker 3: though it made well, we'll talk about the grosses, but
Speaker 3: I think a little over a quarter of a million
Speaker 3: bucks are a little under a quarter of a million
Speaker 3: bucks to dole out to everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the cast and crew was left with eighty
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars to split between them.
Speaker 3: So I mean it's not terrible.
Speaker 2: No, it's not great either. I mean, divide that by
Speaker 2: about twenty. Oh.
Speaker 3: I don't think those extras got much if anything.
Speaker 2: Okay, still so divided by ten because the crew was
Speaker 2: involved too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not saying they got paid a lot, but
Speaker 3: in today dollars, if that cast walked away with like
Speaker 3: five grand then, I mean, that's not terrible for an
Speaker 3: indie movie.
Speaker 2: Sure, the investors sued Brianston, and there was a judge
Speaker 2: who ruled like, yeah, you need to give them more
Speaker 2: money than that, and Brianston said, we would if we could,
Speaker 2: but we're bankrupt now, so see you guys later. Finally,
Speaker 2: New Line picked it up in nineteen eighty three and
Speaker 2: some real money started to flow in, but still not
Speaker 2: much trickled down to the people who actually made the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. One of the most startling facts of
Speaker 3: this whole podcast to me is it Toby Hooper was
Speaker 3: trying for a PG rating. Yeah, it was pre PG thirteen.
Speaker 3: The board the NPA basically said that meatthook scene, like,
Speaker 3: you can't have that in your movie at all and
Speaker 3: get a PG thirty get a PG rating Because he
Speaker 3: was like, how could I cut that scene in a
Speaker 3: way that gets it a PG And they're like they're incompatible,
Speaker 3: my friend.
Speaker 2: Right, and he responded with you come on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got an X rating instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah he did. He managed to lobby it down to
Speaker 2: an R because this is the time when you got
Speaker 2: an X rating, like you can kiss any success for
Speaker 2: your movie. Goodbye, unless, of course Brianston owns it, because
Speaker 2: we should say being distributed by Brianston wasn't a total
Speaker 2: like scam or a bust. They actually did do some
Speaker 2: good stuff. Like we said, they generated some really negative
Speaker 2: publicity and then publicized that they also made managed to
Speaker 2: get this film the year it came out into the
Speaker 2: Museum of Modern Arts permanent collection. You can believe they
Speaker 2: publicized that they also got it shown it can yeah,
Speaker 2: which is I mean we could say like that's actually
Speaker 2: some a couple of good things that they did for
Speaker 2: sure for the movie, which certainly remember this when it
Speaker 2: came out, it's going to be a drive in b
Speaker 2: movie slasher film, and before anyone knew what a slasher
Speaker 2: film really was, and then it would probably be gone
Speaker 2: in a month or two at best. And these things
Speaker 2: started to help make it like, Okay, maybe we should
Speaker 2: pay a little more attention to this, because at first
Speaker 2: the critics panned it, and then they started to see like, Okay,
Speaker 2: actually there's some really good cinematic stuff in here that
Speaker 2: we're overlooking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it grossed more than The Great Gatsby
Speaker 3: that year Chinatown Death Wish it took in in that
Speaker 3: year's dollars about twenty six million bucks and change. Eventually
Speaker 3: went on to gross one hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 3: in present day dollars, so it was a At one
Speaker 3: point it was known as the most successful independent film
Speaker 3: of all time money wise, right.
Speaker 2: I think Rocky knocked it out a couple of years later,
Speaker 2: from what I understand, but it was definitely huge.
Speaker 3: Rocky knocked it out. You're sure it wasn't the TJ Wow.
Speaker 2: I didn't even mean to do that. The spirit of
Speaker 2: Jonathan Strickland just flowed through.
Speaker 3: Me, that's right. But yeah, you mentioned the critics. They,
Speaker 3: you know, they kind of got on board a little bit.
Speaker 3: Like rex Reid said, it was, you know, the most
Speaker 3: terrifying like me film he'd ever seen. Ebert said it
Speaker 3: was some kind of weird off the wall achievement. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine why anyone would want to make a movie
Speaker 3: like this, and yet it's well made, well acted, and
Speaker 3: all too effective.
Speaker 2: Right. But they still ultimately said they panned it, right,
Speaker 2: although I don't think rex Reid did. I think he
Speaker 2: might have given it a thumbs up, however he did that,
Speaker 2: But they would invariably say that it was blood soaked
Speaker 2: that it was gory and those that's just not true
Speaker 2: because if you watch the movie, there is very little blood,
Speaker 2: very little gore, and a lot of the violence is
Speaker 2: just implied it's not actually shown. Certainly, you don't see
Speaker 2: the meat hook go into Pam now, but you see
Speaker 2: her dangling from a meat hook, and that confused people
Speaker 2: at first. So people walked away thinking they just seen
Speaker 2: a ton of gore and blood and they hadn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's a good point. That the hammer
Speaker 3: blows are kind of shot from far away and very fast,
Speaker 3: and again, you know, you don't see blood spatter everywhere.
Speaker 3: There's just an overall like the NPA to just say,
Speaker 3: hey man, I don't care if we don't see one
Speaker 3: drop of blood. This gets an X for disturbing factor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I could see that too, And I
Speaker 2: mean it's a credit to Toby Hooper that he managed
Speaker 2: to get it reduced to an R. But yeah, you
Speaker 2: can imagine his disappointment making the film based on the
Speaker 2: idea that he was making it a PG movie. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just as naive as it gets really for a filmmaker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, And it really you know, like I
Speaker 3: said in our act one that really set a standard
Speaker 3: for films to come, slasher films, teenagers kind of driving
Speaker 3: through the woods and coming upon an abandoned, seemingly abandoned place.
Speaker 3: This was the first movie to do that stuff. Really
Speaker 3: like horror movies before this, A lot of them were
Speaker 3: the hammer movies, like the Gothic like Vampire and the
Speaker 3: Castle kind of stuff. The final Girl trope was either
Speaker 3: birth with this or which one Black Christmas?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Those two usually are the rivals for the first one, yeah.
Speaker 3: And the final Girl is obviously the trope where there's
Speaker 3: one girl left alive at the end, you know, the
Speaker 3: last either victim or one who survives. And those movies
Speaker 3: were both released in the same year and clearly didn't
Speaker 3: know about one another, So I give them the co lead.
Speaker 2: And like I said, over time, people started to especially
Speaker 2: film appreciate, started to see this as like a cinematic treasure,
Speaker 2: a masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino apparently listeded among six perfect movies,
Speaker 2: among the likes of Jaws, Exorcists, Young Frankenstein, and Back
Speaker 2: to the Future in any Hall like People. Apparently, Stanley
Speaker 2: Kubrick owned a thirty five millimeter print of it himself.
Speaker 2: That's kind of all you need to say right there.
Speaker 2: But maybe in spite of that, or because of that,
Speaker 2: or whatever, everyone agrees that you could never remake the
Speaker 2: Texas Chainsaw Masaker and capture the spirit of the original
Speaker 2: because of the way that it was hamstrung, all the
Speaker 2: different ways it was hamstrong, and the inexperience and naivety
Speaker 2: of the filmmakers, which also freed them up to take
Speaker 2: chances that an experienced filmmaker wouldn't take, like dubbing in
Speaker 2: a hog squeal instead of a voice for leatherface. At
Speaker 2: some point you put all that together, you just can't
Speaker 2: recapture that.
Speaker 3: No, you can't. Sometimes there's just a way you shoot
Speaker 3: a movie. You capture lightning in a bottle. I read
Speaker 3: The Dazed and Confused Oral History recently. That's a great
Speaker 3: book that was sort of a similar movie. Like that's
Speaker 3: why that was maybe the best movie about teenagers in
Speaker 3: high school of all time, because of the way they
Speaker 3: did it and the inexperience and like, you don't know
Speaker 3: what you don't know, And this movie is very much
Speaker 3: the same thing, like they've tried. There been countless sequels
Speaker 3: and remakes. I think it would have been like nine
Speaker 3: or ten of them now.
Speaker 2: If you want to count them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you know, none of them hold a
Speaker 3: candle to this. Most of them are not very good
Speaker 3: for my money. The thing that comes closest is Rob
Speaker 3: Zombie's House of one Thousand Corpses in Spirit and which
Speaker 3: was you know, this was a very big influence on
Speaker 3: that movie, obviously, But I don't think anything. And again
Speaker 3: I haven't seen these, but I've seen enough of them
Speaker 3: and read enough about them where it seems like none
Speaker 3: of them come close.
Speaker 2: I also see Wolf Cree and X as given high
Speaker 2: marks for being inspired by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and
Speaker 2: managing to do something worthwhile too.
Speaker 3: Wolf Creek is great. I don't think I know x X.
Speaker 2: It's part of the Maxine trilogy. X Girl and Maxine
Speaker 2: the first thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw those, Okay, I forgot it was called X.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Those are all good too.
Speaker 2: I've only seen X. Are the other two worth watching too?
Speaker 3: I think?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 2: Okay? And then so I think John Landis put it
Speaker 2: how impossible it would be to remake or capture that
Speaker 2: same spirit from the original Texas Chainsaw Masacre when he
Speaker 2: described the remake in two thousand and three, like a
Speaker 2: shampoo commercial kids at across.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a pretty sick burn.
Speaker 2: Wow, you got anything else?
Speaker 3: I got nothing else. I try to watch this every Halloween.
Speaker 3: I don't know why it took me so long to
Speaker 3: see it, because I had gotten into horror movies in
Speaker 3: the past, like twenty years more and more. It was
Speaker 3: just kind of hanging out there until a few years
Speaker 3: ago and I was like, wait a minute, I've never
Speaker 3: seen the granddaddy of them all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when you watch it, you said, wow, this
Speaker 2: is a great movie.
Speaker 3: I no, no, you know what I said.
Speaker 2: We got to watch it together. I want to just
Speaker 2: watch you watch.
Speaker 3: It, all right, we'll do it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, since Chuck agreed to let me watch him
Speaker 2: while he watches the Texas chainsaw massacre as it was
Speaker 2: predicted in two thousand and eight by Chuck Shredamis himself,
Speaker 2: I just triggered listener mail.
Speaker 3: This is from Tequarius. Hey guys, Nineteen years ago, when
Speaker 3: I was just thirteen, I was allowed to visit our
Speaker 3: local skating rink along with my uncle as an experience
Speaker 3: that stood out for my previous visits because that night
Speaker 3: was full of black culture left a lasting impact on me,
Speaker 3: and I would often jokingly think to myself, it must
Speaker 3: have been black night or something. After listening to your
Speaker 3: roller skating episode, I was astonished to learn that such
Speaker 3: events were actually a thing after the Civil Rights movement.
Speaker 3: I'm uncertain whether that night was a tradition that dated
Speaker 3: back to that time, but I like to think that
Speaker 3: it was and that I was a part of the experience.
Speaker 3: Thank you for helping me a black man make connections
Speaker 3: that I was completely unaware of. And he attached a
Speaker 3: photograph from that night that he took with his uncle
Speaker 3: and his friends. That was pretty sweet and a time capsule,
Speaker 3: and he said, have a great day, guys, and that
Speaker 3: is from Tiquarius. McMurray.
Speaker 2: Nice. Thanks to Quarius. That's a great one. I love
Speaker 2: that episode in part to that because I had no
Speaker 2: idea about that either. Yeah, same, that's awesome. If you
Speaker 2: have recently listened to an old episode and want to
Speaker 2: tell us what you think about it, Like Taquarius, we
Speaker 2: love that kind of stuff. You can send it off
Speaker 2: to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.