The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Masterpiece

There aren’t too many independent horror movies that make the British Film Institute’s 250 Best Films Ever Made list – AND – make an appearance in the teen comedy Summer School. That makes sense because there’s no other movie quite like The TCSM. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:44Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:53Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is our episode right before our Halloween episode. You're on Stuff You Should Know.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, big COA here, obviously. I mean, hopefully, parents aren't going to click on this if their young children are in the car because it'll probably be Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something or other in the title.

• 2:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's not going to be like, um, how ponies work.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  I don't want to trick anybody.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so COA about that, obviously, it's going to have some pretty gruesome material in it. But also, because we're going to be talking a lot about this movie and we're going to go over the plot and everything. So if it's kind of a spoiler situation where you don't want to hear about it and you haven't seen it somehow, then tune out. Some people like to know what happens before they go into a horror movie, you know?

• 2:48Josh Clark?

  Yes, but that's a great, that's a great spoiler alert. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. It like, people use the word masterpiece about this movie a lot. And like, not just fans of the film, like sickos, like critics, like academics who teach film appreciation. Like, it is a really, really good movie, whether you like horror movies or not. Because the key to this is if you, if you get scared at horror movies, approach it like it's a dark comedy. And it will make sense to use a dark comedy and you will probably laugh out loud in a couple of parts.

• 3:27Josh Clark?

  So it can be taken both ways and sometimes in some parts, this, this, both ways at the same time.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, that, I've never understood that take because I don't see any dark comedy, that notions about it whatsoever. I think it's, I think it's one of the most terrifying movies I've ever seen, if not the most terrifying.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  Wow, you and Rex Reed feel the same way?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, every time I see it. And I just saw it for the first time a few years ago, finally, and It's just, it's, it's so disturbing and unsettling every single time, even though I know it's coming.

• 4:02Josh Clark?

  I watched it again last night and it, yeah, so when it finished, when it cuts at the end and goes to the credits, I literally said out loud, that is a great movie. And Yumi was, I was sitting there by myself watching it and I said it out loud. It just took it out of me. And I had never watched it as a comedy before either. I'd never even turned up that anybody considered it a comedy or a dark comedy. But going into it, knowing that, I definitely found some spots here or there.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't. Uh, do you know what I said at the end last night out loud by myself?

• 4:35Josh Clark?

  What?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Jerry's gonna have to beep it, but it has that famous just abrupt ending and cut to black.

• 4:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  And I was curled up on my couch and I just said, jeez, this movie. Like every time it gets me in a place where I'm just like, like if there was a camera on my face while I'm watching it, it's just, my face is just gnarled up the whole time. Like, oh my God, it's just so disturbing.

• 5:02Josh Clark?

  I think me and a lot of people would love to watch a reaction video of you watching.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  Just that.

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  A camera trained in my face for 83 minutes?

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah. And it is just 83 minutes. It's not even an hour and a half of your time, you know? Like you just watch it, breeze through it and say, that was a great movie or what you said at the end. And let me ask you this, can you think of another horror movie that makes you feel like that whenever you watch it?

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's quite a few movies that are still disturbing to me, but this one takes the cake for sure.

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  Wow. So yeah, if you haven't seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre and you have any kind of curiosity, I strongly urge you to pause this and go watch it and come back, whatever. It doesn't matter. I think you can still appreciate this episode, don't you? Because it's not just about the movie itself. It's about how it was made because it was an independent picture. It's one of the most successful independent films of all time.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:00Josh Clark?

  And it was made by students of film, literal students of film, who loved making movies and they made, again, a masterpiece is what a lot of people call it.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we're gonna get to the plot and go through that, as we said. But even, I just wanna say, even the beginning, that first 30 minutes, before they even set foot inside the bad house.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  That's all, just the way it's shot and laid out and the sound. It's just all disturbs, disturbs me to no end.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  I know. And to think like that it was shot by a 23-year-old.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I know.

• 6:35Josh Clark?

  So, let's talk about this. Let's get, let's get into the nuts and bolts of how the whole thing came about. How about that?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we can only start with director Toby Hooper, who apparently was inspired by a few different things to come up with this movie. One, pretty obviously, is Ed Gein, who's a serial killer who we have not covered yet. At some point, we'll probably get into the skin suit making crimes of Ed Gein, right?

• 7:02Josh Clark?

  We did. We did an episode on him.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I think it's Gein, isn't it? We did a whole episode?

• 7:07Josh Clark?

  We did a whole episode on Mr. Gein, the psycho.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  I didn't think we did.

• 7:11Josh Clark?

  We did. It wasn't the best, so I can see how you wouldn't remember it.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought we just put him in something else. Okay, we'll scratch that then.

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he appeared in some episode, but we ended up making a whole episode about him.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  I see it now. Ed Gein, Ed Gein, the serial killer's serial killer.

• 7:27Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  That had to be your title. That's good.

• 7:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think it was.

• 7:31Josh Clark?

  But Ed Gein, he wasn't just the inspiration for Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And the reason why is, if you're not familiar with Ed Gein, he wore skin suits. He was also the influence for the character Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. And he inspired the movie Psycho. Not like Norman Bates' bears, any resemblance to him whatsoever, aside from the whole... Crossdressing thing, I guess, is what inspired it, but more the fact that there was someone out there who was capable of doing these things inspired a movie that about Norman Bates, who's capable of doing horrible things, too.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that was the first thing. The second thing was he had a friend, Toby Hooper did, the director, who was a doctor, or I guess a med student at the time, who said that he had removed the face of a cadaver and wore it as a Halloween mask. So there's one for your nightmares.

• 8:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, even if he hadn't done that, to be telling people that you had done that and be serious about it, that's pretty nuts.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the last thing was Toby Hooper was apparently Christmas shopping at a Montgomery Ward store one time, and it was just really, really crowded. And he was, I get the sense that he was having a bit of a panicky moment trying to get out of there and saw some chainsaws on display. It's like, that'd be great if I could grab one of those and just cut, cut my way out of here.

• 8:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. So he put all those things together. They came together end of 1972, beginning of 1973, into this story that he, that just kind of clicked in his head. I also saw that Hansel and Gretel formed some like loose influence on the whole thing, too.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 9:09Josh Clark?

  But he got together with a friend of his name, Kim Henkel, and he and Henkel wrote the script together. They met at Toby Hooper's house. They would map out the story arc on the floor, and then Kim Henkel would go in and type some pages and come back after a few and read it all to Toby Hooper and get a thumbs up or down, and then they'd continue on. And they wrote the script fairly quickly, from what I understand. They had some working titles for it that fortunately they did not go with.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, one of the reasons it went quickly is because after that first half hour, there's not a lot of dialogue. Aside from like, you know, Pam, Pam? And then Sally, Sally? And then the dinner scene, you're gonna get some more, but there's there are long stretches where it's just, you know, a lot of action. But yeah, you mentioned the alternate titles. Head cheese was one, which does make an appearance in the movie.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  And the dinner scene, I believe. And then Leatherface was one of the titles. And that would go on to be the title of the 2017 prequel.

• 10:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  I think it was just called Leatherface, which I haven't seen any of those, by the way.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  Neither have I. I've only seen the first one and I saw the second one.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  I didn't see that. I don't think I care to see any of the rest of them.

• 10:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, if you're into the first one, it might not make sense to see the second one because it's such a departure. But it's still, if you take that as an actual comedy, which it is, it's it's kind of fun on its own.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  I might see that one, but I definitely am not interested in the prequels and the reboots and the remakes and stuff like that.

• 10:47Josh Clark?

  Well, so A24 just announced last month that they're rebooting Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Would you see those?

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Well, they they're almost across the finish line. Apparently they're in the pole position to win the bid as of like a couple of weeks ago.

• 11:03Josh Clark?

  Oh, OK.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  You'd be interested to know that one of the other bidders was Oz Perkins and some other people.

• 11:09Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Your guy. And then Taylor Sheridan, oddly, put in a bid on the film and TV rights. But it looks like A24 is in the pole position and they're talking about a TV series. So I would, I would watch that.

• 11:24Josh Clark?

  I, OK, I would too, for sure.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:26Josh Clark?

  So they came up with the script and it was, they never actually came up with the title themselves. There was a guy named Warren Scarron, who came up with the title Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the great titles of all time.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:39Josh Clark?

  And it's four words. If you want to be pedantic about it, chainsaw, they have it as two words for some reason. And Warren Scarron would play a bunch of really important roles over the course of getting this movie made. And he was in a position to, because he was Texas's first film commissioner. He also apparently was an investor in the film too. And he was a friend of, a mutual friend between him and Kim Henkel, who would go on to become the production manager for the movie Ron Bozeman. And Scarron also scared up the first investor, who was a former Texas legislator, state legislator named Bill Parsley, who also apparently fancied himself a movie producer.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and technically it's five words if you count the word "the", because the first one was "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

• 12:28Josh Clark?

  So you out-pedantic my own pedanticness?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Well, because I knew we'd hear from somebody.

• 12:33Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Uh, so who was the last person you named, Ron Bozeman?

• 12:37Josh Clark?

  Bill Parsley?

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Or Bill Parsley, yeah, so he, uh, you know, they came up with a few different, um, budgets. The first one, you know, it's like, hey, what can we get? What can we make it for? And what could we really make it for if we just, you know, kind of didn't have much and still had to do it? And that was 60 grand was like, hey, that'd be awesome. It's about 388 grand today. 40 grand was the mid-level. And 20 grand was the, the small budget that they still thought they could make it with, even though it would have to be black and white. I could see this in black and white, like a Night of the Living Dead, but there are so many great color shots in this movie, like those green eyes of Sally that are so key in the, in the third act.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  And the sunrise shot at the end, you know, you'd lose all that.

• 13:25Josh Clark?

  Um, oh, speaking of third acts, I watched 30 Days of Night again, that, that vampire movie, have you ever seen it? Josh Hartnett?

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think I saw that one.

• 13:36Josh Clark?

  It's not bad, but I thought of you because they show like this metal crushing, like trash compactor in the first, like 10 minutes. And I thought, show a, show a metal crushing trash compactor in act one? You're going to use it in act three and sure enough they did.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's classic, classic move.

• 13:55Josh Clark?

  Um, so they actually got their, um, high, their pie in the sky, high-end budget of 60 grand. Most of it came from Bill Parsley, but there were a couple of other investors that got cobbled together. And ultimately, by the time the thing had its final cut, it was up to 300 grand. But even that was a paltry amount of money, even in the mid 70s. Like, this is peanuts as far as making a movie is concerned.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, not too bad. I'll take issue with peanuts. I mean, Rocky was made for 1.1 million and the average was 4 million even back then. But I guess I've known friends who have made movies these days for a lot less than that. So it's, I know people that would be very happy with 300 grand.

• 14:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but they're not using film stock and I'll bet that eats up a ton of budget.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Well, how about this? Can we agree on Brazil nuts?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Brazil nut sounds good.

• 14:53Josh Clark?

  Okay. So one of the ways that they cut costs, Chuck, was to hire no name actors, like inexperienced actors. And ultimately, the way it would wash out, that would make the whole thing that much more realistic, which is great. These were people who might have been drama students, taking film classes at UT Austin. Some of them were just Austin locals. And the other way that they cut costs was to get these casts or this cast of no name actors who were already being paid Brazil nuts at best, peanuts probably, maybe even just the P part of peanuts.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:27Josh Clark?

  To defer even that amount, most of it, until after the film got made. And they agreed to it and they put together a cast of 10 plus a few extras. And the only one who had any experience whatsoever was a guy named Jim Seidell. Seidell or Seidell?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, he played the cook and one of the three brothers in the Sawyer family. Marilyn Byrne to Sally, she had also been in a couple of things. She was in Robert Altman's Brewster's McLeod and she was actually cast as a lead in a movie, a movie called Love and Molly, that would have been before this, but she was replaced by Susan Sarandon.

• 16:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and she ended up being the body double for Sarandon in that one, I think.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  The bitter pill, I'm sure.

• 16:14Josh Clark?

  For sure. So Jim Seidell was, he was, his experience was radio soap opera actor. So that was the experience he had. And from what I could tell, he was the only SAG member. And then there's a non-on-screen, I guess off-screen is how you put it if you have brains. Appearance by a guy named John Larriquette. If you're a Night Court fan, and even if you're not, you're probably still familiar with John Larriquette.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't know this was John Larriquette. Of my first two viewings of this, I had no idea until you've sent this along. So I don't know, I guess I didn't stay through the credits because I was always, you know, cowering in a corner or something.

• 16:54Josh Clark?

  Turn it off, turn it off.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, did not know that was John Larriquette. That was the first thing he ever did in the film business.

• 17:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I didn't know that either. I ran across it. I also ran across that he was friends with Toby Hooper and he did it as a favor. Apparently it took an hour of his time to record it and Toby Hooper paid him in pot. And John Larriquette apparently confirmed that to none other than Parade Magazine years later.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  So you want to talk about the plot and then get into how they made this thing after that?

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, should we take a break first or should we do the plot first?

• 17:28Josh Clark?

  No, it's a good idea. Let's do a break.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  All right, well, everyone brace yourselves, go, you know, chill out, do some yoga, maybe meditate. And then we'll tell you the plot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre right after this.

• 18:05Josh Clark?

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• 19:53Josh Clark?

  OK, so we're back. We're talking about the plot. And again, you already gave a spoiler alert, but it's worth saying again. If you haven't seen the movie and you want to go in fresh, don't listen to this part, OK?

• 20:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:03Josh Clark?

  And maybe we'll shout, we're done with the plot after we're done with it so that everybody can put their headphones back on.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think maybe we should read that narration since it's so short.

• 20:15Josh Clark?

  OK, go ahead. Yeah, because it gets the point across.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  So it's sort of framed as a docu-drama, shot in a lot of moments, very documentary style. And they set it up as if it's a real thing. So here's John Larriquette, well, me as John Larriquette. The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardisty and her invalid brother Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young, but had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected, nor would they have wished to see as much mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them, an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the

• 20:59Speaker 02

  most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• 21:05Josh Clark?

  Pretty great. That was a good John Lehrer cut, too, by the way.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Thanks. And it indicates that they all die, too, which was a nice little sleight of hand, because it makes the ending a little more surprising and suspenseful, I think.

• 21:17Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And so you said it like this is presented as a docudrama, so people are going into it not thinking it's a documentary, that they're actually seeing real things, but that it's depicting an actual event that happened specifically on October 18, 1973. It says that's the date that this all happens.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:34Josh Clark?

  It just happens over a one-day period. So that in and of itself kind of was totally new, as we'll see, as far as horror movies went. It was almost prefiguring the found footage genre, like Blair Witch and stuff like that. And then the whole action starts, everything's prompted by news that a cemetery in the middle of rural Texas, central Texas, there'd been grave robings going on. And not only grave robings, where they're just removing specific parts of bodies, they're also taking some of the bodies and basically making them into these really gruesome statues.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's a great way to open the movie. The opening shot and everything is just very disturbing to kind of get that ball rolling. And they are in a van, traveling. They have space cleared out for the wheelchair for Franklin. And, you know, it's like, it sort of set the standard, but we've seen this so many times since then, like teenagers off, you know, having a good time, going on a trip, maybe going camping or something like that. But they were sort of the first, you know, movie to do that kind of thing. It set that standard.

• 22:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they were, the reason they were there was their Franklin and Sally's grandfather was buried at that cemetery. So they're going to check to see if his grave had been dug up, and they find that it's not. But while they're there, they say, hey, why don't we go check out grandfather's old homestead? We used to spend summers there once in a while. So the whole gang agrees to do that. But first, they need gas. And they go to a gas station, a rundown gas station slash barbecue pit, that's owned by a man known as The Cook, who also would turn out to be Drayton Sawyer, like who you mentioned before, one of the three brothers of this scary family. And it turns out they don't have any gas, which I've read was a big commentary on the gas shortages going on at the time. But the kids

• 23:30Josh Clark?

  decide to head on to the, what it turns out to be the abandoned Hardesty homestead. Anyway, just look around.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did you catch the name of the gas station?

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, W E Slaughter Barbecue.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Well, that was the restaurant. It was the Last Chance Gas.

• 23:48Josh Clark?

  I did see that. Yes, I totally forgot.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  So I immediately thought of my Last Chance Garage hat that I wore for many, many years.

• 23:56Josh Clark?

  Do you still have that thing?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  I have like four or five of them because I lost the original one in Austin, Texas.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  And at South by one year, and then I got a patchmaker here in Atlanta to make me patches. And so I made like three or four of them, but I just haven't worn those in a long time.

• 24:12Josh Clark?

  I remember that very kind patchmaker replacing it. And since you lost it in Austin, I'm now convinced that there is no way it wasn't a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan who stole that.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's Last Chance Garage, which was his own brand, but I thought Last Chance Gas was kind of fun.

• 24:30Josh Clark?

  I, now that I think about it, I've seen on Etsy vials of skin scrapings that say that you're, they're your skin scraping. So I wonder if it came from that hat.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Probably so.

• 24:41Josh Clark?

  It does ship out of Texas, it says.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  All right. There you have it.

• 24:45Josh Clark?

  So anyway, this gas station's out of gas, and they head on to the abandoned house and just start exploring it. But before they get there, they pick up a hitchhiker. And he turns out to be one of the Sawyers too, but he plays this character so nuts.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:58Josh Clark?

  He dances right along the edge of this is ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. It's totally over the top.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:05Josh Clark?

  It still manages to be more disturbing than, than like, come on, you know?

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. It's again, completely unsettling. His name, by the way, they do have names. His name is Nubbins Sawyer. Uh, but he's kind of mainly known as the hitchhiker. Uh, and his very short ride is, is just full of disturbing things. He looks like he's got, you know, blood on his face. He's uh, kind of rambling incoherently. He takes out a, or he, I'm sorry, he grabs Franklin's um, sort of whittling pocket knife at one point. And cuts his own hand in front of everyone's faces, which is terrifying.

• 25:42Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Uh, and then slashes Franklin, I think with his razor that he has in his boot.

• 25:47Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. And he's real squirrely too. So he's moving around a lot and he's like, just doing all sorts of weird stuff. But once he slashes, like they're really put off by this guy. But once he slashes Franklin, they don't even fully stop. They just slow down and basically push him out of the van.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:02Josh Clark?

  And take off. So they go to the Hardesty Homestead. Um, Franklin tells uh, them that there's a swimming hole nearby. And this couple Pam and Kirk go off to find it, but they find that it's um, dried up.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:17Josh Clark?

  And they're just kind of hanging out and Kirk spies a house nearby and he thinks, hey, maybe, maybe they have some gas that we can get. Cause the van's getting awfully low and they don't know where another gas station is.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they go to this house. Uh, Kirk is stupidly enters the house. He's kind of knocking on the door and the door just, you know, opens from him knocking. And he's the first to be killed. And it happens in such a brutally fast way. When he goes down the straight hallway into this, you know, it looks like another hallway off the entryway where they have uh, animal skins and skulls and things on the wall. And he gets clubbed by a hammer very quickly. And the speed at which that happens, the speed at which you see Leatherface for the first time, whose name is Bubba, by the way. And then the ferocity and speed that he slammed shut that metal sliding door is just terrifying.

• 27:11Josh Clark?

  It is. Yeah, that's a hell of a way for the first person to get picked off to go.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  It's very fast and just all of a sudden, you're already disturbed because everything before it was so, even Franklin, like every word out of his mouth is annoying and upsetting.

• 27:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we should say Franklin among film appreciators and horror fans, he's almost universally despised.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, poor Franklin.

• 27:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, yeah, it is because I was, I went into it again, thinking how much everybody hates Franklin. I was like, he's not that bad. He's pretty bad, but there's still, there's some redeeming qualities to him, but I don't want to just be contrarian, you know?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  No, I'm with you.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  So Pam, who was with Kirk, but is waiting outside on a swinging bench, starts deciding that Kirk's been gone too long and goes in after him. And she goes in, there's this classic shot.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:09Josh Clark?

  It's a dolly shot from the ground going upward and it follows her going up to the house. And it's just this amazing shot. Like anybody who knows anything about cinema is like, this is one of the best dolly shots of all time. Again, a 23 year old did this. And the reason they did is because the house just grows bigger and bigger, almost like it's going to swallow Pam up. And I would never think about that if I hadn't read someone describing it, but that's exactly what it does.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very creepy. It starts, it goes under the swing, which is a nice little trick.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Her backside is very prominently in frame. So I think at the time that was their version of selling something slightly sexy.

• 28:51Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  But it's so foreboding and you get that blue, blue sky and the clouds and that up angle shot of the house. Like you said, it's just, it's a great, great shot.

• 28:59Josh Clark?

  It is. So Pam goes in there and her fate is not met quite as quickly as Kirk. She stumbles into this room where

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Chicken room?

• 29:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a live chicken in a birdcage meant for basically canaries. So the chicken's almost stuffed in there.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  There's feathers everywhere. There's bones everywhere. Carcass is hanging everywhere. Um, the couches and the chairs are all basically upholstered with bones and these weird, but kind of in a strange way, beautiful, um, designs. And you can just tell it's so nasty in there that she starts to gag and tries to get out. And as she's trying to get out, she meets Leatherface and it just, it goes downhill from there.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this is equally as brutal. I mean, Leatherface is, I don't think we said is like six, four and uh, how much did he weigh?

• 29:49Josh Clark?

  300 pounds?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, very large dude, sort of, uh, looks like a professional wrestler, but he's wearing a, a skin mask with, with other hair, you know, that's not his.

• 29:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like a, a, almost a curly wig that just, that makes it so much worse too.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So everything he does is just, you know, brutal. I mean, clearly as the movie goes on, we realize that he's, has, you know, some pretty severe cognitive issues. Uh, like I'm not going to diagnose Bubba Leatherface.

• 30:18Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  But at any rate, he's, he's terrifying and the way he moves is just very sort of herky jerky and the way he, he's so big and the way he grabs her and brings her into that room is just, it's all, again, is terrifying.

• 30:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of the other things that's terrifying that also gets across the fact that cognitively he seems to be challenged, at least to some degree. They took away all of the dialogue that he had written for him in the script. So he doesn't do anything but make weird sounds.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, he kind of babbles at one point later.

• 30:47Josh Clark?

  He does. And then also, if you pay attention, there's times where he's clearly talking, but they dub in a, a hog squealing.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:57Josh Clark?

  And it's not supposed to be him, him making a hog call like it's just like that's what came out of his mouth. Weirdly, and it's, it happens so fast and they don't make any kind of point to point it out. That um, when you notice it, you're like, what the heck just happened? But it makes him, especially if you don't notice it, even, even creepier. I mean, the fact that he's wearing a mask made of a dead person's face.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:20Josh Clark?

  Bad enough, but all the extra little details they put into it. The apron that he's wearing, which clearly demonstrates he's a butcher with that chainsaw. Um, all of the details they put together just make him one of the great horror film villains of all time.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And set the mold for uh, the sort of um, non-verbal mask wearing dudes to come like Michael Myers and certainly Jason Voorhees.

• 31:46Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm, for sure. So what happens to Pam?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, Pam gets uh, meat hooked immediately. She gets taken into this butcher room. Uh, impaled on a meat hook, but still living. And gets to watch, we finally see the chainsaw fire up here for the first time. Uh, we get to see her boyfriend. You know, get, it, it doesn't show it and we'll talk about that later, but you see the, you know, Leatherface fire that thing up and kind of start to get to work on him.

• 32:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So like you said, Pam's still alive and she's impaled on that meat hook, just a few feet from where Kirk's body is on this table. That Leatherface is now dismembering with the chainsaw. So as she's dying, she gets to watch that. Um, and then I think it goes back to the, the um, homestead. Where Franklin and Sally and Jerry, who's Sally's boyfriend are still hanging out. And Jerry decides to go look for them, drawn into the same trap that Kirk and Pam fell for. By looking for them. And he gets picked off too. His, his death happened so quickly. That I actually thought for a second that he was going to come back because I hadn't seen it in a while.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:57Josh Clark?

  And then I realized like, no, he just, he got taken out with one, one hammer swing.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that that all makes it pretty scary, too, because there's not this big tense buildup like a lot of modern horror. People are dispatched up just very kind of quickly and without regard.

• 33:12Josh Clark?

  Which makes it seem like that's probably how it would be in that situation. It makes it more realistic, I think.

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 33:19Josh Clark?

  And by the way, I've seen Jerry referred to as Disco Stu across the internet because he really does bear a resemblance to him, for sure.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  So he, before he gets dispatched, though, he does open the freezer in the butcher room and sees that Pam is in there and sort of barely alive and kind of comes up, and that's right when he gets taken out.

• 33:42Josh Clark?

  For sure. So Jerry's gone, Kirk and Pam are gone. There's just Franklin and Sally left, and they wait until nightfall until they just can't not look for their friends anymore. So they go tromping through the woods, and this is where Hansel and Gretel really kind of becomes clear.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  Sally's pushing Franklin in his wheelchair, basically overland. And as they're wandering kind of aimlessly through the woods, they come upon Leatherface, who just starts chopping Franklin up in his wheelchair. And Sally, realizing there's nothing she can do for her brother, takes off. And this kind of chase through the woods that leads back to, leads her to the Sawyer house, which she's not familiar with. So she goes in there looking for help, realizes this is not the place to find help, has to jump out a second-story window, goes back to running through the woods, and then makes it to that original gas station slash barbecue pit, thinking she's found safety. And it turns out that's not the case at all.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, because that's when it all comes together, that Drayton is in on it. He's one of the family members. He kidnaps her in a, this, okay, this scene I could see is maybe being kind of funny, the broom attack. When he's smacking her with the broom.

• 34:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, especially if you if you know the little behind the scenes trivia that Jim Seadow did not want to to do that. He was basically forced to and goaded on to actually hit Marilyn Burns with the broomstick to make it look real. And if you know that, the first few hits are kind of tentative and he's almost looking like, can I get away with this? And they clearly cut and then say like, dude, you need to actually hit her. And he does. And it's, I mean, I think the fact that he didn't want to do it and then had to do it. There had to be some sort of transformation in his character that that you can't quite put your finger on there.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I guess I could see how that scene could come across as funny a little bit. But again, it's so terrifying because the way she screams and the brutality of it all, despite the weird broom thing.

• 35:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Like, I couldn't come back to a place of laughing. There's just no way.

• 35:51Josh Clark?

  No, so I'm glad you mentioned her screaming because, like you said, there's not a lot of dialogue in the second and third acts. But I can't imagine how many times they wrote Sally screams.

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Josh Clark?

  She screamed maybe more than any other horror film victim in history. But fortunately for us, her scream almost has like a pleasing quality to it. And she has a huge range. It's not the same scream over and over again. There's one point where she's like, oh. Like, it's like it's a bunch of different screams and she screams a lot. So she was very rightly and still is called a scream queen. She's one of the scream queens. But she screams a lot in this movie. But it it it doesn't get annoying. It's not grating and it just makes the whole thing that much more terrifying.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wouldn't say annoying, but I kept wanting it to stop because it's so relentless, you know?

• 36:45Josh Clark?

  Sure, it is. It is relentless for sure.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  It's very upsetting. Um, so, uh, she gets taken, you know, after the little broom fracas. She gets, you know, bagged and taken back to the house. Uh, and this is where, I mean, in a movie of disturbing scenes, maybe the most disturbing scene is the dinner scene.

• 37:04Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Uh, with the whole family, which is, uh, we don't really learn this here. I think we just sort of learn later in other movies, the the relations. But it's three brothers. It's Bubba, Nubbins and Drayton and then Grandpa. What I wondered is about the parents.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  I guess that's explained maybe in prequels and stuff.

• 37:23Josh Clark?

  I'm not sure.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have no idea because I haven't seen those, but there's a grandpa who it turns out was played by a 19 year old in in a face mask. Um, also the grandpa doesn't speak and it's just this macabre dinner scene where it just shows how this family of cannibals is so like, they're all just so disturbed. It's just disgusting.

• 37:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. At one point Leatherface grabs Sally's finger and cuts it with a knife and then puts her finger in grandpa's mouth. So grandpa can partake of drinking her blood, right? And then, so she's being tormented this whole time. This is a 10 minute long scene, at least depending on when you say it starts.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:03Josh Clark?

  Where she's just being tormented and terrorized and mocked. Nubbins, the hitchhiker is just mocking her like, please, please let me go. Um, and which makes it so much worse. Uh, and then just the terror on her face. She, she sells it so well. Um, but anyway, grandpa there who's essentially immobile and, and just a couple of degrees away from catatonic.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:27Josh Clark?

  They're, they're like, grandpa used to be the best at killing people. He could kill them with one hammer blow. Let's let her, um, let him kill her. So they actually drag her over to like a, a metal tub, lean her over it, her head over it so that she doesn't get blood everywhere. And, and give, uh, grandpa the hammer, but he's so aged and so just withered. He can't hold the hammer. So he keeps dropping it out of his hand and it lands like in the tub next to Sally's head over and over again, which, oh my God, dude.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  It's way scarier than if he had just hauled off and hit her with all of his strength.

• 39:02Josh Clark?

  Way. Cause it goes on for a minute or so, right?

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really disturbing.

• 39:07Josh Clark?

  Finally she gets away. She goes through another window and then we're, we reach the end of the movie.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. It just real quick, we should mention that Leatherface has, uh, changed, uh, his attire for dinner. And is, uh, wearing a dress and a new, um, I guess woman's skin mask because it's all made up with this heavy like, you know, clown makeup almost. And that just makes it even more disturbing.

• 39:33Josh Clark?

  Well, don't forget his lovely cravat too, that he was wearing.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 39:37Josh Clark?

  So Sally's getting away. She, she runs out of the house. It's now sunrise, daylight. Which is a good sign for Sally at this point. Also the fact that she's the last person and she's still alive. You can start to think like, maybe Sally's gonna get away, but she's running down the driveway and Nubbins catches up with her. But unfortunately for Nubbins, he doesn't really take her escape seriously and continues to mock her while he's chasing her.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Well, he's slashing her back with that razor the whole time, too.

• 40:06Josh Clark?

  Oh, I didn't notice that. Is that what it is?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why she ends up such a bloody mess. I mean, besides everything else that happened to her.

• 40:12Josh Clark?

  Gotcha. But she makes it to the end of the driveway to the main road with, with Nubbins right at her heels. And they run out into the street just as a Mack truck. A tractor trailer essentially is barreling down the street and runs right over Nubbins.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Nubbins is gone. A little bit of trivia, the name on the side of the truck is Black Maria. Uh, I looked up to see if there was any significance and I didn't verify this, but there's no way it's a coincidence that Black Maria was the name of Thomas Edison's very first motion picture studio that he built.

• 40:48Josh Clark?

  Oh, no way that's a coincidence. But also, doesn't that go to show like what students of film these filmmakers were? That they knew that?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah, that had, that had to be the case, though.

• 40:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that they made an homage to Thomas Edison's first movie studio?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty great. Alright, so, uh, back to the movie. Uh, Nubbins has been run over. The truck driver obviously stops. A truck driver is played by Ed G U I N N, I guess Gwen, but very close to Ed Gein.

• 41:19Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  By coincidence, I'm sure. Uh, and the truck driver is one of the weird heroes of this movie. He has no lines. He's in it for a couple of minutes. Only African-American character in here. And in a, in a spin on that trope, that they're the first ones to die. He's actually the only guy that inflicts any damage on this family at all. Cause he runs over Nubbins.

• 41:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And he, he gets a big pipe wrench when he's getting out of the truck. And throws it at Leatherface, which causes Leatherface to fall down with the chainsaw and the chainsaw like cuts into his own thigh.

• 41:49Josh Clark?

  Which is probably the most brutal thing that they show in the entire movie. It's gross. Like you can see the fat in his leg come out, like bubble out of the wound.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Oh, God. Leg fat.

• 41:59Josh Clark?

  So Sally is still running around in the middle of the road here and luckily a pickup truck comes by and she manages to jump in the back and now she's finally gotten away. But she's clearly lost her mind, the way that she's reacting to it sinking in that she's gotten away. And Leatherface is not happy about this. He's very frustrated and he shows it by swinging the chainsaw around wildly.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Terrifying.

• 42:28Josh Clark?

  Twirling. You can tell he's just so mad and this is the only way that he can show it or get it out.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:33Josh Clark?

  And he's swinging and swinging against the sunrise and then like you said, it just cuts to black.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and heard that shot of her in the back of that truck with the blood all over and her madly cackling. It's, it's the perfect ending and the abrupt ending, like it's so loud with that chainsaw.

• 42:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  And then to cut, I can't imagine what it was like in the theater in 1974.

• 42:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  When it cuts to black and it's just dead silent. Like what the hell did that audience like do?

• 43:00Josh Clark?

  Had I been there, it wouldn't have been dead silence because I would have been like, that is a great movie.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Cheering. That would have said, this is what did I just watch?

• 43:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Uh, by the way, pickup truck driver played by Perry Lorenz, who I think now is an Austin real estate developer.

• 43:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay, cool. He was also the stunt driver, I think for the truck.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you can barely see him, but, uh, gotta shout out Perry Lorenz.

• 43:24Josh Clark?

  So that's the movie. I mean, there's not that much more to it, honestly. Uh, it was very bare bones, which I think again, makes it that much more believable. Uh, and we need to take a second break. I say we plug on and make this just one big fat episode. What do you think?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, we gotta do it.

• 43:43Josh Clark?

  Okay. So we're going to take our second break and then we're going to come back and you'll find out the bulk of the show is still to come.

• 44:14Josh Clark?

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• 46:03Speaker 02

  All right, so we're back. We know what happened in the movie.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  You know, hopefully if you came back and you didn't want it spoiled, this won't spoil too much of it, but...

• 46:11Josh Clark?

  Oh yeah, we're done with the plot.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  But we need to talk about the making of the movie. The film was shot in just over, well, right out of month, in 31 days, mid-July to mid-August in what are now suburbs of Austin and Bastrop and Round Rock. But I imagine then they were a little more rural than they are now. There weren't strip malls and stuff everywhere.

• 46:32Josh Clark?

  No, they look pretty rural.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Pretty rural, a little bit around Austin itself, obviously. The heat, the conditions were brutal, like, you know, 100 degrees plus on the roads and in the streets and fields and more than that inside the Sawyer House. With what little film lighting they had. And it was a brutal experience. They had a Ford van that drove around the gear, had an old camper, which is the hair and makeup trailer, and shot basically at about six places overall.

• 47:03Josh Clark?

  I counted five, so I've got the rundown gas station, barbecue pit, the abandoned house, which is the Hardesty homestead, the neglected cemetery, the dirt road, and then the Sawyer family house.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Then you're in the van too, baby.

• 47:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow, that's great, man. You just blew my mind.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so basically six-ish places, which is a great way to, you know, write a cheap, independent film, you know, as just a little tip.

• 47:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they were, again, they were on a shoestring. I suspect that the Ford van they used to carry the film equipment around was the same Ford van that the teenagers drive around in.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  I bet it was. That was my hunch.

• 47:41Josh Clark?

  And they also apparently got some guff because the road scenes that they filmed, they did not get a permit for.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm surprised they got a permit for any of it.

• 47:50Josh Clark?

  Right. So unfortunately for the cast and crew, most of the filming was done in the Sawyer House. And again, like you said, 100 degrees outside, apparently in the house. For our friends, except in Liberia, who use the metric system, it's 37.8 degrees Celsius.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Which seems very cold to me.

• 48:08Josh Clark?

  Right. And apparently it got 10 degrees more than that inside the house. And because this film was inspired in part by Ed Gein, the production designer Bob Burns used photos that were taken, like crime scene photos, taken in Ed Gein's house as inspiration for the set decoration.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Toby Hooper himself said that the movie is about meat.

• 48:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  And it's a case for veganism. Apparently, he became a vegan during filming. And you found out that Guillermo del Toro apparently became a vegan after seeing the movie as well. And I'm sure they're not the only ones.

• 48:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And if you, if you look out for that, all of the meat eating that's done in the movie is disgusting.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:52Josh Clark?

  The, the truck that runs over Nubbins is a cattle truck that is empty, which means it just is returning from having dropped off a bunch of cows at a slaughterhouse.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  They talk a lot about that. Yeah.

• 49:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they talk about a slaughterhouse nearby. Yeah, it, it makes a lot of sense. And also not to mention that there's that live chicken, tons of carcasses hanging everywhere, lots of like sausages and stuff all over the house, skins, bones, all that stuff. It just, it makes sense. Like, because if there's one word, it screams, it's meat.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, Franklin's chewing on that, it looks like a raw sausage.

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's pretty gross.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  For a while, in that one scene where he's trying to get into his old grandparents' house. And the implication here is that these, the Draytons are, this is, you know, human meat that they're grinding up into sausage. It's never explicitly said, but I think that's what you're supposed to believe.

• 49:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that that's what the barbecue that they're selling is made from too, right?

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I mean. Yeah.

• 49:52Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. So because Bob Burns is hanging actual meat around this house, and because it's 110 degrees in the house.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  Boo.

• 50:01Josh Clark?

  The house started to smell wretchedly, so much so, I saw from multiple sources that they would go outside between takes and throw up sometimes.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:10Josh Clark?

  At the very least, they had to get out to get some air because it got gamey in there, terribly nasty, just from the meat. But then you also throw in what the actors themselves must have smelled like because they had one set of clothing.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:24Josh Clark?

  And they had to wear it every day for the shoot because this action takes place over just one day.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Usually when you shoot a movie, you have multiples of your clothes. So if something happens to them, obviously you can switch it out. Or if they get stinky, you can switch them out. Um, on a modern movie, they probably have like eight versions of the chainsaw. They had one chainsaw, so on a budget, you just get one of everything. So they were very stinky. They had, uh, Bill Parsley, the, you know, one of the early financiers stopping by. Almost every day, basically saying like, when are you going to wrap this picture? Threatening to shut it down. They shot, you know, 12 to 18 hours a day. One day they went for 26 hours inside that house.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Obviously they're blacking out the windows to, cause most of it takes place at night. In that house, uh, which is, you know, psychologically, that's, uh, upsetting to a cast and crew.

• 51:19Josh Clark?

  For sure. Also like this experience of just being treated like this during filming. The cast itself, like in real life, like there is a lot of tension, a lot of squabbling and bickering and people just kind of being disgruntled. And that came through. I suspect from other stuff I've read that Toby Hooper was making that like really beefing that kind of tension up to get more just angst out of his actors.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. Using that to his advantage, uh, as every great manipulating director should.

• 51:52Josh Clark?

  Sure. He also isolated, uh, Gunner Hansen, who played Leatherface. I read that, um, each of the actors who was dispatched by Leatherface met Gunner Hansen when they filmed their scene for the first time.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:07Josh Clark?

  So that they couldn't get comfortable with them and were, I mean, again, like you said, six foot four, 300 pounds. And the chainsaw was a puling and apparently it's one of their heavier ones. And he's just swinging this around like it's nothing. So clearly he was a, an intimidating person in real life. And, uh, again, that was something Toby Hooper did to manipulate things.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he stayed in character too, which is also means he's walking around either babbling or, or not saying anything. I don't imagine they had a, a recording of a pig squeal to, that he could just kind of play for fun as he walked around.

• 52:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, but it's, uh, they were, they were, it wasn't a pleasant shoot.

• 52:45Josh Clark?

  I also read that the guy who played Franklin, Paul Partain, uh, stayed in character as well and everyone hated him.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:54Josh Clark?

  So there was also physical suffering, too. We talked about how Marilyn Burns was actually hit in the head with the broomstick just to make it more realistic looking. She was, she did almost all of her own stunts. From what I could tell, a woman named Mary Church was, the only stunt she did was actually jumping out of the windows.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, bad wig in that shot.

• 53:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. But when Sally falls down, you know, whatever, when she's running through Mesquite and gets trapped in it, running through Cockleburrs, like, that was actually Marilyn Burns, the actress, having to do that over and over.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you get that sense, too, when she's freaking out in that long chase scene through the thicket. It's terrifying, and it looks like she's not enjoying things at all, as, you know, so it comes, really comes across on film.

• 53:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because she gets stuck and she's like, ah, and has to pull herself out. And yeah, I think she really did.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then, you know, the, we mentioned in the plot, the scene, again, this is a big spoiler, at one point, her finger is cut at the dinner scene, and it's put into the mouth of grandpa to suckle her blood. Apparently, the blood squib didn't work, and they really cut her finger, and that 19-year-old grandpa kid in the face mask really drank her blood.

• 54:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, unknowingly, apparently, until afterward.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Good God.

• 54:12Josh Clark?

  So one of the things that people point to is what made this movie so great was this, the inexperience of these novice filmmakers.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:21Josh Clark?

  We said that Daniel Pearl, the cinematographer, was 23. Toby Hooper apparently was the oldest at 29.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:29Josh Clark?

  And they had, like, documentary backgrounds. Daniel Pearl was, he apparently caught Toby Hooper's eye from a Texas Department of Public Safety PSA, right?

• 54:41Speaker 02

  Like, blood spills red on the highway, kind of thing?

• 54:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, basically, except this is about a drug bust, and Toby Hooper noticed, like, wow, that was shot really interestingly, and who did that? That's how they came together. They made their own dollies out of wood, their own crane out of wood, too, I believe. And then the editing, too, gets a lot of credit for making the movie what it was.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like we said, it's a trim eighty-three minutes. Uh, you can thank Larry Carroll and Sally Richardson as the editors for just, you know, like I kept mentioning, like the speed at which the kills happen and the abruptness in which they end and with the movie ends, like, those are all just great editing decisions to like, um, you know, it's tough because, you know, they call it like losing your babies. You don't want to lose stuff you shot or the great line, but a good editor knows like, no, tighter is better, shorter is better, and it helps create a lot of the unsettling feeling, I think, by how quickly they cut away to stuff.

• 55:39Josh Clark?

  For sure. So they, they finally got it done. I think I said three hundred grand is the, the highest I saw as an estimate for what they actually, what the budget actually was. They got it done to eighty-three minutes. They had the final cut. They have investors like breathing down their neck because, remember, they initially got eighty grand. The budget ended up being three hundred grand. So, um, Toby Hooper and Kim Henkel kept having to go back and find new people to give them money. And over time, a lot of different investors, including the cast and crew, owned that movie. They owned portions of it. And as true indie filmmakers, Kim Henkel and Toby Hooper watered down their own share

• 56:22Josh Clark?

  to get the money to get the movie completed. Uh, and they ended up just, uh, with a seven and a half percent cut each. These are the guys who thought of and made the movie. They ended up with fifteen percent between them.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, I mean, we'll see it made a ton of money, but how those things pay out, it just, it never pays out like you think it would, uh, even though it was cheap to make and made a ton of money, um, that creative accounting, and in this case, uh, sort of mob accounting.

• 56:50Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Uh, because, well, I guess we should say first, it did get picked up. Uh, the commissioner, Warren Scarron, that we were talking about, the film commissioner of Texas, shopped it around. Uh, there, you know, there weren't a ton of big, of movies being shot in Texas at the time, so it was sort of a, you know, it was before, uh, Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater put Austin on the map. Toby Hooper was first, so it wasn't like a big film scene. Um, so it took the film commissioner to really champion it for distribution. Uh, almost got bought by Columbia. Um, eventually was bought by the distribution company who put out Deep Throat, the famous porn. Uh, and their name was Bryanston, uh, Distributing Company.

• 57:32Josh Clark?

  Yes. And their whole business model was basically just generate as much publicity as you can. Negative publicity is just as good as positive.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:42Josh Clark?

  And then they would just promote the heck out of it. Publicize all of this outrage and everything that the movie was getting. And the reason why is because they couldn't afford traditional marketing as it worked out. It was basically a show game, house of cards. And like you said, it was a mobbed up movie distribution company.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Bryanston was owned by the Colombo crime family or, you know, members of that family. Specifically, Big Tony Perino. He also helped finance part of this film and other of their films. And yeah, I think they distributed Dark Star from John Carpenter, which is a sci fi cult classic.

• 58:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Speaker 02

  But because it was mob connected, it was kind of one of those things where they knew that no one was going to see the money they were probably owed. And I think, you know, some of them made a little bit of money, but the total pot, even though it made, well, we'll talk about the grosses. But I think a little over a quarter of a million bucks or a little under a quarter of a million bucks to dole out to everybody.

• 58:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the cast and crew was left with $8,100 to split between them.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  So, I mean, it's not terrible.

• 58:54Josh Clark?

  No, it's not great either. I mean, divide that by about 20.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't think those extras got much, if anything.

• 59:01Josh Clark?

  Okay, still so divided by 10 because the crew was involved too.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not saying they got paid a lot, but in today dollars, if that cast walked away with like five grand, then I mean, that's not terrible for an indie movie.

• 59:15Josh Clark?

  Sure. The investors sued Bryanston and there was a judge who ruled like, yeah, you need to give them more money than that. And Bryanston said, we would if we could, but we're bankrupt now. So see you guys later. Finally, New Line picked it up in 1983 and some real money started to flow in, but still not much trickle down to the people who actually made the movie.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. One of the most startling facts of this whole podcast to me is that Toby Hooper was trying for a PG rating. That was pre PG 13.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  The board, the MPAA, basically said that that meat hook scene, like you can't have that in your movie at all and get a PG 13, like get a PG rating because he was like, how could I cut that scene in a way that gets it a PG? And they're like, they're incompatible, my friend.

• 1:00:04Josh Clark?

  Right. And he responded with, yeah, come on.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  He got an X rating instead.

• 1:00:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he did. He managed to lobby it down to an R because this was the time when you got an X rating. Like you can kiss any success for your movie goodbye, unless of course, Bryanston owns it. Cause we should say, um, being distributed by Bryanston wasn't a total like scam or a bust. They actually did do some good stuff. Like we said, they generated some really negative publicity and then publicized that. They also managed to get this film, the year it came out, into the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. You can believe they publicized that. They also got it shown at Cannes.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Josh Clark?

  Which is, I mean, we could say like, that's actually some, a couple of good things that they did for sure for the movie, which certainly remember this, when it came out, it's going to be a drive-in B-movie slasher film. And before anyone knew what a slasher film really was, and then it would probably be gone in a month or two at best. And these things started to help make it like, okay, maybe we should pay a little more attention to this. Cause at first the critics panned it. Um, and then they started to see like, okay, actually there's some really good cinematic stuff in here that we're overlooking.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it grossed more than The Great Gatsby that year, Chinatown, uh, Death Wish. Uh, it took in, in that year's dollars, uh, about 26 million bucks and change. Um, eventually went on to gross $150 million in present day dollars.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  So it was a, at one point, it was known as the, the most successful independent film of all time, money-wise.

• 1:01:47Josh Clark?

  Right. I think Rocky knocked it out a couple of years later, from what I understand, but it was definitely huge.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  Rocky knocked it out? You sure it wasn't the TKF?

• 1:01:56Josh Clark?

  I didn't even mean to do that. The spirit of Jonathan Strickland just flowed through me.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  That's right. But yeah, you mentioned the critics. They, you know, they kind of got on board a little bit. Like Rex Reed said it was, you know, the most terrifying, like me, film he'd ever seen. Ebert said it was some kind of weird off-the-wall achievement. I can't imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it's well-made, well-acted, and all too effective.

• 1:02:20Josh Clark?

  Right. But they still ultimately said they panned it, right? Although I don't think Rex Reed did. I think he might have given it a thumbs up, however he did that. But they, they would invariably say that it was blood-soaked, that it was gory, and those, that's just not true. Because if you watch the movie, there is very little blood, very little gore, and a lot of the violence is just implied. It's not actually shown. Certainly, you don't see the meat hook go into Pam.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:02:52Josh Clark?

  But you see her dangling from a meat hook, and that confused people at first. So people walked away thinking they just seen a ton of gore and blood, and they hadn't.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. The, the hammer blows are kind of shot from far away and very fast. And again, you know, you don't see blood spatter everywhere. There's just an overall, like, the NPA should just say, hey, man, I don't care if we don't see one drop of blood, this gets an X for disturbing factor.

• 1:03:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, I could see that, too. And I mean, it's a credit to Toby Hooper that he managed to get it reduced to an R. But yeah, you can imagine his disappointment. Making the film based on the idea that he was making it a PG movie, I mean, that's just as naive as it gets, really, for a filmmaker.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And it really, you know, like I said in our act one, that really set a standard for films to come. Slasher films, teenagers, kind of driving through the woods and coming upon an abandoned, seemingly abandoned place. This was the first movie to do that stuff, really. Like, horror movies before this, a lot of them were the Hammer movies, like the Gothic, like Vampire in a Castle kind of stuff.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  The final girl trope was either birthed with this, or, um, which one? Black Christmas?

• 1:04:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, those two usually are the rivals for the first one.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the final girl is obviously the trope where there's one girl left alive at the end. You know, the last, either victim or one who survives. And those movies were both released in the same year and clearly didn't know about one another, so I give them the co-lead.

• 1:04:31Josh Clark?

  And like I said, over time, people started to, especially film appreciators, started to see this as like a cinematic treasure, a masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino apparently listed it among six perfect movies, among the likes of Jaws, Exorcist, Young Frankenstein, and Back to the Future, and Annie Hall. Like, people, apparently Stanley Kubrick owned a 35mm print of it himself. That's kind of all you need to say, right there.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Josh Clark?

  But, maybe in spite of that, or because of that, or whatever, everyone agrees that you could never remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and capture the spirit of the original because of the way that it was hamstrung, all the different ways it was hamstrung, and the inexperience and naivety of the filmmakers, which also freed them up to take chances that an experienced filmmaker wouldn't take, like dubbing in a hog squeal instead of a voice for Leatherface at some point. You put all that together, you just can't recapture that.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  No, you can't. Sometimes there's just a way you shoot a movie. You capture lightning in a bottle. I read the Dazed and Confused oral history recently. That's a great book. That was sort of a similar movie like, that's why that was maybe the best movie about teenagers in high school of all time because of the way they did it and the inexperience and like you don't know what you don't know. And this movie is very much the same thing. Like they've tried. There've been countless sequels and remakes. I think there have been like nine or 10 of them now.

• 1:06:07Josh Clark?

  If you want to count them, yeah.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, none of them hold a candle to this. Most of them are not very good. For my money, the thing that comes closest is Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses in spirit.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  But, and which was, you know, this was a very big influence on that movie, obviously, but I don't think anything. And again, I haven't seen these, but I've seen enough of them and read enough about them where it seems like none of them come close.

• 1:06:35Josh Clark?

  I also see Wolf Creek and X as given high marks for being inspired by the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and managing to do something worthwhile, too.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Wolf Creek is great. I don't think I know X.

• 1:06:48Josh Clark?

  X, the, it's part of the Maxine trilogy, X, Earl and Maxine, the first one.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  I saw those. Okay. I forgot it was called X. Yeah, that, those are all good, too.

• 1:06:57Josh Clark?

  I've only seen X. Are the other two worth watching, too?

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 1:07:01Josh Clark?

  Okay. And then, so I think John Landis put it how impossible it would be to remake or capture that same spirit from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre when he described the remake in 2003 like a shampoo commercial.

• 1:07:19Josh Clark?

  Gets it across.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a pretty sick burn.

• 1:07:23Josh Clark?

  Wow, you got anything else?

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  I got, I got nothing else. I try to watch this every Halloween. I don't know why it took me so long to see it.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Cause I had gotten into horror movies in the past, like 20 years, more and more. It was just kind of hanging out there until a few years ago. And I was like, wait a minute, I've never seen the granddaddy of them all.

• 1:07:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And when you watch it, you said, wow, this is a great movie.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  No, no, you know what I said.

• 1:07:47Josh Clark?

  We gotta watch it together. I wanted to just watch you watch it.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  All right, we'll do it.

• 1:07:52Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, since Chuck agreed to let me watch him while he watches the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as it was predicted in 2008 by Chuck Stradamus himself, I just triggered listener mail.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  This is from Taquarius. Hey guys, 19 years ago, when I was just 13, I was allowed to visit our local skating rink along with my uncle. It was an experience that stood out from my previous visits because that night was full of black culture. It left a lasting impact on me and I would often jokingly think to myself, it must have been Black Night or something. After listening to your roller skating episode, I was astonished to learn that such events were actually a thing after the Civil Rights Movement. I'm uncertain whether that night was a tradition that dated back to that time, but I like to think that it was and that I was a part of the experience. Thank you for helping me, a black man, make connections that I was completely unaware of. And he attached a photograph from that night that he took with his uncle and his friends

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  that was pretty sweet in a time capsule. And he said, "Have a great day, guys." And that is from Taquarius McMurray.

• 1:08:57Josh Clark?

  Nice. Thanks, Taquarius. That's a great one. I love that episode in part for that because I had no idea about that either.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, same.

• 1:09:04Josh Clark?

  That's awesome. If you have recently listened to an old episode and want to tell us what you think about it, like Taquarius, we love that kind of stuff. You can send it off to [email protected].

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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• 1:10:31Speaker 04

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