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00:00Blood, guts, and torture, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the mother of all slasher films.
00:27It was the first time those five kids went down the road and encountered the gothic horrors.
00:32This horror film really leaves you with a twisted feeling inside.
00:36It's kind of masochistic.
00:39The low-budget shocker was condemned by the church.
00:42They were outraged just by seeing the title.
00:46Banned overseas.
00:47I would hear about riots happening in theaters.
00:50And ripped to shreds by critics.
00:52He called it a vile little piece of sick crap.
00:55But audiences ate it up.
00:57I've been a chainsaw fan since the tender young age of five.
01:01The Texas Chainsaw Massacre launched a series of blood-soaked sequels.
01:07Welcome to my home.
01:11It's still fascinating to watch a dude cutting people up with a chainsaw.
01:17And this story is inspired by the truth.
01:20We just expanded what he did in real life to make it more dramatic.
01:24Hold on to your arms and legs and get ready to cover your eyes.
01:27Here comes the E! True Hollywood story of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
01:54The film which you are about to see
01:56is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths.
02:01For them, an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare.
02:07The events of that day were to lead to the discovery
02:09of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history.
02:13The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
02:24More than 30 years ago, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre slashed its way into theaters.
02:30The low-budget shocker terrified audiences and hasn't run out of gas yet.
02:35This movie still is big in people's minds.
02:38People still talk about how it scared them.
02:40It really did have a sense that you were watching something really happen.
02:44There's something about that primal campfire tale,
02:49that urban legend thing that struck a nerve.
02:54At the time, it was very disconcerting, very frightening.
02:58This film shows somewhere every single week.
03:02It shows at college campuses, it shows at film retrospectives, it makes a fortune.
03:06It's the first slasher film and it's sort of the most
03:10pure slasher film because it's just unremitting horror.
03:14Occult classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, spawned four sequels and one remake.
03:19A hair-raising horror franchise that scared up millions at the box office.
03:24No, no.
03:27And the receipts keep coming.
03:30In October 2006, a new cast of Hollywood hopefuls returned to the remote farmhouse
03:35to face unspeakable torture.
03:38Knowing that somebody out there could actually do this to another human being,
03:42it actually makes you sick.
03:44It's something that could happen just by taking the wrong turn off the highway.
03:47I was extremely frightened.
03:49It's a sickening story.
03:51I mean, this guy chops people up with the chainsaw.
03:55It's awful.
03:58Number six in the series, Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
04:01is a film that's been a huge hit.
04:03It's a really good movie.
04:04Number six in the series, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beginning,
04:08is actually a prequel to the bizarre saga of Leatherface and his bloodthirsty clan.
04:16Here comes the time when every boy becomes a man.
04:20The classic slasher series didn't just slither out of the deep dark recesses of a warped
04:25imagination.
04:27The first film was inspired by the real life crimes of a mild-mannered serial killer named
04:32Ed Gein.
04:34I was very young and I was hearing tales from my relatives in Wisconsin about this
04:43murderer that would kill his victims and then skin them and cover lampshades and furniture
04:51and such as that.
04:53And that stuck in my mind.
04:55The character of Leatherface, who was transformed by the face that he wears,
05:01was largely inspired by Ed Gein.
05:05The artifacts that you see throughout the film, you know, largely inspired by that story as well.
05:12Ed Gein grew up in rural Wisconsin in the 1920s.
05:15His father was a heavy drinker who died while Ed was still a baby.
05:19That left the boy at the mercy of his domineering mother, Augusta, a religious fanatic from hell.
05:26His mother, who was this sort of anti-sexual monster who thought sex was the root of all
05:32evil and who kept moving further and further out in the woods and who twisted her own son.
05:37His mother hated women.
05:40And so he grew up constantly being told that women were evil.
05:46That women were the devil's work.
05:49When Augusta died in 1945, Ed retreated into a twisted fantasy world.
05:55He was a total, complete schizophrenic.
05:58He had to call his mother back from the dead and she would actually be in front of him
06:02and he would ask her what he should do.
06:06Mother told Ed to kill women.
06:09Her disturbed son soon started using his isolated farmhouse as a human butcher shop.
06:15He's spending time with the body, skinning them, wearing them, wearing masks.
06:18He could make masks of the victim, take their face and sometimes he'd make lampshades out of that.
06:24It's fusion with his victims, identifying with his victims, kind of becoming the victims.
06:30In November 1957, 51-year-old Ed Gein became a suspect in the disappearance of Bernice Warden,
06:37a local hardware store owner.
06:39Police moved in for the kill.
06:41They went out to Gein's farm and broke in.
06:45He wasn't there.
06:46And that's when they found her body dressed out like a deer and her head cut off.
06:52And so then the arrangements for the cannibalism in the kitchen,
06:59some of the organs were on the plate.
07:03Cops also discovered the remains of Mary Hogan, a divorcee who ran a nearby tavern
07:08and who mysteriously vanished three years earlier.
07:13They found a box of female genitalia.
07:17They found skulls, human skulls, masks made of human skin,
07:23artifacts made of human skin, lampshades made of human skin.
07:30Investigators realized they'd stumbled onto one of the most sadistic killers in American history.
07:37He robbed so many graves that it was impossible to determine with precision
07:43how many people he had killed and how many graves he had robbed.
07:47Gein was arrested and locked up in a psychiatric hospital.
07:52Ten years later, on November 14th, 1968, he finally stood trial.
07:57He was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity
08:00and sent back to the asylum for the rest of his life.
08:03If Ed Gein was insane, nobody ever was insane
08:08because he had no motive for these killings other than his madness.
08:13Meanwhile, Hollywood was already cashing in on Gein's gory glory.
08:17In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock brought the murderous mama's boy to the screen
08:21as Norman Bates in the classic thriller, Psycho.
08:26Thirty years later, Gein also served as the inspiration for the cross-dressing killer
08:30in The Silence of the Lambs.
08:33We have a fascination with monsters. We always have.
08:37We have a fascination with darkness as humans.
08:40And Ed Gein is the superstar of serial killers in a way
08:44because these evil folk ask us, how did they get to be this way?
08:49Is there something in them that's in me?
08:53While Gein's killing spree was all too real,
08:56the atrocities of Leatherface were the invention of screenwriters.
09:00But try telling that to a chainsaw fan.
09:04You go around Texas and you can ask anybody.
09:08It doesn't matter if they know a thing about it, if they've seen the movie or not.
09:13Everybody's going to say, yeah, it was filmed here.
09:15Oh, no, yeah, yeah, it happened here.
09:17They say, well, it's based on a true story.
09:19No, it doesn't say based.
09:21It says inspired by a true story.
09:22Ed Gein actually wasn't a Texas chainsaw masochist.
09:25He never was from Texas.
09:27He never used a chainsaw.
09:30In fact, no murder by chainsaw has ever been perpetrated in the state of Texas.
09:35Director Hooper came up with the idea in a crowded shopping mall.
09:39I was in a department store and I was thinking, how can I just get out of this crowd?
09:48And I was in the hardware department and my focus was a display of chainsaws.
09:53And it occurred to me, oh, you know, if I start one of these saws,
09:57it'll be like the parting of the waters.
10:01Coming up, making the movie a real killer.
10:05People were out on our hands and knees wretching.
10:07It was just so bad.
10:09And later, the beginning.
10:11You're going to see why Leatherface first picked up a chainsaw.
10:25We had all sorts of ideas.
10:29We had all sorts of chickens, pieces of bone and flesh.
10:33And under the heat of those lights, they became very foul.
10:39You can see the decomposing fumes from the real meat.
10:42The smell was so bad, it was nauseating.
10:44And I would say cut and people would run to the window and throw up.
10:49What smell?
10:52Prior to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
10:55Toby Hooper and Kim Henkel were two up-and-coming filmmakers in Austin, Texas,
11:00looking for a Hollywood break.
11:01I thought, whatever I do, I have to do something now that's flashy enough
11:05that will be seen from a distance.
11:08There was no Sundance, et cetera, et cetera.
11:10So horror really was almost the only possibility
11:14of making a film and actually getting it into theaters.
11:20Hooper and Henkel had a script, but no money.
11:23We had about three or four budgets put together.
11:27One was our big-budget color film, Wildest Dream Scenario.
11:32And that was, I think, $60,000.
11:35They got the majority of the funds from the Austin Film Commission.
11:39And then the rest of it they got from family members and friends.
11:43Once the money was in place to make the film,
11:46and I started casting it through the University of Texas Drama Department.
11:51We knew we weren't going to have any stars in our cast.
11:54We were going to have talent that was very little experience,
11:58et cetera, et cetera, all down the line.
12:02Drama student Ed Neal tried out for the part of the crazed hitchhiker.
12:07Toby Hooper comes out and he goes, can you be weird?
12:10I thought of the absolute most bizarre person I'd ever met.
12:13I said, can I be weird?
12:15Weird is what I do.
12:16So they call me a couple of days later and go,
12:19we must have you.
12:20You must be ours.
12:22At 6'4", 300 pounds, Gunnar Hansen was tailor-made for the pivotal role of Leatherface.
12:28He didn't realize that the maniac wore a mask and had no lines.
12:33I saw a production designer bringing this guy across the street to meet me
12:38that totally dwarfed the doorway that he came through.
12:43And it was like he was the one.
12:46I then tried to figure out how to create this guy.
12:48I went to a residential school of four retarded persons.
12:52And so I watched the way people moved and tried to
12:55acquire a set of physical movements and postures to represent the character.
13:02To play sole survivor Sally Hardesty, Houston-based Marilyn Burns had all the right attributes.
13:08But what the 20-year-old didn't have was experience.
13:11Marilyn was in a film in Austin.
13:14She had a small part in the film, Loving Molly.
13:17This was her first lead role.
13:19Austin student Paul Partain signed on as Sally's handicapped brother, Franklin.
13:24Other locals rounded out the cast.
13:26And in the summer of 1973, the real nightmare began.
13:31We started shooting in August around Austin.
13:35And it was extremely hot that particular summer.
13:39We shot seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day.
13:43And for much of the film, I'm running through the woods carrying a chainsaw.
13:50He didn't have no peripheral vision in that mask.
13:52The chainsaw itself was a little dangerous.
13:57To make matters worse, co-stars Marilyn Burns and Paul Partain did not get along.
14:03Those two seemed to not quite be on the best of terms.
14:10Paul would get on the set and he would sit in the wheelchair all day.
14:13And he would whine when he was not on camera.
14:15He just became Franklin.
14:18Come on, Franklin.
14:19It's gonna be a fun trip.
14:25He's probably the most despicable handicapped person in the history of film.
14:29The scene where Sally is pushing him through the woods,
14:32this sort of nagging back and forth and the kind of snapping at each other
14:36wasn't in the script at all.
14:37By that point, I don't think they could stand each other.
14:51The most grueling scene of all was the infamous dinner
14:53where Sally is forced to share a meal with Leatherface and his ghoulish clan.
14:58Lighting in the cramped location pushed the temperatures up to 120 degrees.
15:03Inside that house, it was extremely hot.
15:06The odor in that place was just abominable.
15:11All the stuff that was on the table was decomposing.
15:14You could see the fumes.
15:15We would switch out the head cheese and the sausage,
15:17but the dead chicken in the middle of the table is not replaceable.
15:20So it reeked.
15:21People were out on their hands and knees retching.
15:24It was just so bad.
15:25In fact, I reeked.
15:26I've been wearing the same clothes in Texas heat for 28 straight days.
15:30Nobody wanted to be around me.
15:32We were willing to put up with stuff that no experienced actor would tolerate.
15:39By August of 1974, Chainsaw was in the can.
15:43Now, all they had to do was sell it.
15:45We weren't having people beating our doors down, looking to distribute this film.
15:50Every major Hollywood studio passed.
15:53Finally, Hooper and Henkel got a buyer in New York,
15:56Bryanston Pictures, run by brothers Lewis and Joseph Perrano.
16:00They were going to pay us some upfront money.
16:04We weren't about to say no.
16:08However, according to widely published reports,
16:11the Perrano brothers allegedly had connections to the Colombo crime family.
16:16It's purported that they had some mob ties.
16:20Truth of that, I don't know.
16:23What I do understand is that some of the principals
16:27had distributed pornographic films in the past,
16:30and were trying to move through this company, Bryanston, into legitimate film.
16:37Whatever the case, the Bryanston execs knew just how to promote the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
16:42Bryanston Pictures was very good at building an exploitation campaign,
16:47and the way they did that is with a poster that said,
16:50the story is true.
16:52People started talking about it as if it was a real event.
16:57The Texas Chainsaw Massacre opened in October 1974.
17:02Most famous horror movies were about adults.
17:06The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was about innocent young people against the evil older people.
17:15It was released in something like 230 theaters.
17:19We thought that was a pretty big deal, and we saw advertisements in variety.
17:25There were millions who appreciated the power of this movie as soon as it came out.
17:32There were also plenty of moviegoers who were so horrified, they walked out.
17:36Film critics everywhere went on the offensive.
17:38There were attacks on the film, and the Village Voice,
17:41the Los Angeles Times called it disgusting filth.
17:45It's curious to me how many people tell me how bloody this film is,
17:51and how explicit it is, when it's not at all.
17:53The film had collectively eight ounces of blood.
17:57Gore became the scapegoat.
17:59Most of the people who hate the film have an agenda to combat sex and violence.
18:06Even the king of late-night television lashed out against the movie.
18:09Johnny Carson started ranting about how dare they give this movie an R rating.
18:14Carson did a lot to make the movie famous,
18:16because he would use it in his monologue, and it would become more notorious.
18:21Overseas, the film was taboo.
18:24It was banned for years in Great Britain, probably many others too,
18:27but I thought it was absolutely ridiculous and funny.
18:33But the Texas Chainsaw Massacre set a whole new standard for movie horror.
18:37It's the most pure slasher film,
18:40because no one that came after it was willing to go quite as dark.
18:45This is one of the first films that the killer actually wore a mask.
18:50Chainsaw was also the first to let the killer survive.
18:54The concept of the final girl didn't really exist at the time.
18:58That's something that we've seen repeated since.
19:00Also, prior to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the country was a good place.
19:05The city was an evil place.
19:07This reversed it for the first time.
19:10The low-budget film grossed millions,
19:12but the actors claim they did not get their fair share of the profits.
19:16Let's speak the truth here.
19:17I was paid $800 to do the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
19:21We were given percentages in the film,
19:23and that way, if the film ever did anything, we'd be paid.
19:28All that I know for certain is that somebody kept all the money.
19:33Everybody attached to this film subsequently went to California
19:37and thought that they would have opportunities,
19:40and in fact, doors slammed in their face left and right.
19:43Marilyn Burns eventually gave up on Hollywood and went back to Houston.
19:48Even director Tobey Hooper got typecast.
19:51He was cursed in that he couldn't really do what he wanted to do.
19:54He kept returning to horror, kept returning to horror,
19:56because there was always a paycheck in horror.
20:01Welcome to my home!
20:05You can make as many sequels to a horror movie as you want,
20:08and it can be really bad.
20:10People will still see them,
20:12and that's why there are so many horrible, horrible movies.
20:14Rolling!
20:15See?
20:16Oh, my God.
20:18After the monster success of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
20:22a sequel seemed like a smart move.
20:24But nasty legal wrangling over profit sharing and distribution
20:28tied up the film for nearly a decade.
20:31There was lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.
20:33It was not settled until about 1982 by a federal judge,
20:39and by that time, horror had passed them by.
20:43Halloween had come out.
20:44Friday the 13th had come out.
20:47Nightmare on Elm Street was about to come out.
20:49You're so smart!
20:53Director Tobey Hooper moved on, too,
20:55with a string of other horror projects,
20:57including the TV miniseries Salem's Lot
21:00and the blockbuster ghost story Poltergeist.
21:03Still, Hooper felt pressure from producers to crank out another chainsaw.
21:08I had a three-picture deal with Canon,
21:11and I decided, with some encouragement from the head executives,
21:16to direct the film.
21:19Screenwriter Kit Carson signed on to write the script.
21:22What he turned in was more spoof than shocker.
21:27What the hell is that?
21:28There are elements of comedy in the original film,
21:31but they really sort of went overboard with those,
21:34you know, comedic tones in the second one,
21:37and it's sort of goofy and never really scary and sort of gross,
21:40but, you know, mildly entertaining.
21:42Since I wanted to be a comedy director when I started in the business,
21:46it was upsetting that it took like eight or nine years
21:50for people to start seeing the humorous side in Chainsaw.
21:55Thousands of dollars lost!
22:00In the sequel, the killers are caterers who dressed up as Leatherface
22:03to knock off college students during a Dallas football game.
22:07Dennis Hopper starred as the Texas Ranger investigating the murders.
22:11One of those boys so wild, sawed his own head off,
22:13going 90 miles per hour.
22:15Bring it on down!
22:18Even though you've got Dennis Hopper in it,
22:19even though you've got, you know, a big budget and some decent actors,
22:24still, just, the movie doesn't make any sense on its own at all.
22:29Moviegoers agreed.
22:30Released in October 1986,
22:32the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 scraped in a meager $6.2 million at the box office.
22:39Part two of Chainsaw, in its time, was not a hit.
22:43They waited too long to put out the sequel for it to be really effective.
22:46All the people who'd originally gone to see it
22:48were now sort of past that phase in their life,
22:52and all the new people, the young kids that were going to see it,
22:54hadn't really seen the first one.
22:57Still, Leatherface wasn't dead yet.
23:00Four years later, another director tried to squeeze blood out of the franchise,
23:05in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.
23:07To be totally candid, this is not what you'd call a plot-heavy movie.
23:11Our story is similar to the first one,
23:14in that an unfortunate couple drives up a dirt road and meets our happy family.
23:22I enjoyed the pure horror aspect of the first one,
23:25compared to the farcical nature of the second one,
23:28and hopefully in our picture, we're going back to the horror roots of the thing.
23:34But they didn't go back to Texas to shoot it.
23:37It was shot in California, there are mountains in the background,
23:41it doesn't look like Texas at all, it's not a strong script,
23:45it seems to be underfunded and not quite finished.
23:50Released in October 1991, Chainsaw 3 earned even less than the first sequel.
23:55The third one is just sort of a by-the-numbers horror movie,
24:00and it's sort of minus the magic of even the first two films.
24:06Two years later, producer Bob Kuhn and writer Kim Henkel were ready to try again.
24:11Kim and I were both disappointed in the two sequels that had been made,
24:16and they had differed so much from the original Chainsaw
24:20that we wanted to do something to go back to the original,
24:24but yet be different.
24:28What they came up with was a brutal black comedy
24:30about the world's most dysfunctional family.
24:34Cast as the leads were two unknown Texas natives
24:37named Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey.
24:40Renee had just graduated from UT.
24:43She had done anything more other than some bit parts in movies,
24:48you know, the kind of thing where if you blink, you'll miss her in the background.
24:52And Matthew had done Dazed and Confused,
24:56but that had yet to be released, so nobody's seen him on film.
25:00Zellweger impressed everyone with her scream queen abilities.
25:06I really wasn't considering anybody else for that role.
25:10That was that.
25:11McConaughey wanted his part beefed up.
25:14What are you gonna do?
25:16Shoot me.
25:17So I cast him in a small role in the film,
25:21and he came back around to us and said,
25:23well, I'd sort of be interested in reading for this other part,
25:28which is the major role, the lead villain in the film.
25:44As Leatherface's equally psychotic brother,
25:47McConaughey would get to chew up the scenery
25:49with Hollywood's most famous chainsaw-wielding maniac.
25:57So read him for that role and immediately knew he was perfect for it.
26:03The shoot began in the heat of August 1993 in locations around Austin.
26:09Zellweger was up for the challenge.
26:12She runs through brush, through stock tanks,
26:15jumps out of windows, and she never, never complained.
26:20She'd get back up and take off and run again.
26:24I know Renee did enjoy finally getting to swat Matthew really good
26:28because she got beat up on so bad throughout the course of the film,
26:31and she got her chance to turn a little bit.
26:35She didn't pull any clenches.
26:38She's getting it back now.
26:39Yeah, and she is.
26:40She's getting it back.
26:42She's gotten a bruise and stuff,
26:43so she's decided to knock the **** out of us now.
26:48My ear is still Renee's side.
26:53Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Next Generation
26:56was supposed to hit screens in October 1994,
26:59but execs at Columbia TriStar kept delaying the release.
27:03Meanwhile, the actors went on to bigger and better roles.
27:06Zellweger opposite Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire
27:09and McConaughey opposite Sandra Bullock in A Time to Kill.
27:12Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Next Generation finally opened in August 1997
27:18after Zellweger and McConaughey had already become A-list superstars.
27:22Columbia TriStar sort of farmed the film out to this small outfit out of New York
27:31that gave it a very limited release,
27:34and we felt like if you have a film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
27:40and it features two young actors who are emerging stars,
27:47that you take that thing and you go out there and you kick ass and take names.
27:52All right, all right, all right.
27:55But that wasn't happening and we felt,
27:59but we weren't terribly happy about it.
28:06Let's put it that way.
28:08In January 2001,
28:10Henkel's production company sued both Columbia TriStar and Creative Artists Agency
28:14for allegedly trying to curb distribution of the film.
28:17However, the studio and agency denied the claim.
28:20We began hearing stories that representatives of Matthew McConaughey
28:26and René Zellweger were opposed to the release of the film.
28:31They became movie stars and they were sensitive about being in a movie.
28:35We never had any confirmation of those kinds of things.
28:39Largely, they in fact have denied them,
28:41but we were hearing them anyway.
28:43You know, whether they're true or not, who knows?
28:46Are we having a party or what?
28:48The case was finally settled through arbitration in August 2004.
28:52The terms were not made public.
28:54Even so, the damage was done.
28:56Box office returns for Next Generation were pitiful.
29:00It didn't deliver the promise, which was the chair jumping,
29:06the moments of shock that would terrify you and keep you on edge.
29:13People didn't like it.
29:14People thought it was silly.
29:16I think I was one of the few defenders of it.
29:20After three failed sequels, it seemed Leatherface was finally dead and buried.
29:25That is, until one of Hollywood's biggest directors decided to pick up the chainsaw.
29:31Coming up, fanatical.
29:32I've been a chainsaw fan since the tender young age of five.
29:36And later, it's all too real.
29:38I was actually inflicting pain psychologically and physically.
29:49After a slew of disastrous, even laughable sequels,
29:58the Texas Chainsaw Massacre looked like it was finally running out of gas.
30:03Enter Hollywood A-lister Michael Bay.
30:06Bay was famous for directing big budget blockbusters like Armageddon and Pearl Harbor.
30:11Reality TV producer Mike Fleiss helped seal the deal.
30:16I think at the time he was interested in genre films
30:18and he said, so what else you got going?
30:20I said, well, I have the rights to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
30:22He said, I'd like to get involved in that.
30:24I said, okay.
30:25And I thought I'd never hear from him again, but he called the next day.
30:28We talked about Texas Chainsaw and how the movie was 30 years old
30:32and going back to the original.
30:34There had been others after that,
30:35but the idea of going back to the original excited all of us.
30:41Bay wanted to capture the low budget integrity of the original film.
30:45He hired video director Marcus Nispel.
30:48This is a little company I started a year and a half ago.
30:52It was to help new directors break into feature films.
30:55Marcus Nispel redefined the whole Texas Chainsaw Massacre thing.
30:59I mean, there's still that sort of grainy realism in the shooting,
31:03but he gave the whole movie really a new look.
31:06We took a lot of direction from the first one.
31:09We didn't want to make it irreverent, silly.
31:19So producers also hoped to recreate the realism
31:27of the first Chainsaw Massacre by hiring mostly unknown actors.
31:32The 2003 remake had a great cast, Mike Vogel and Eric Balfour,
31:36Erica Learson, John Tucker, and of course, Jessica Biel.
31:40No, no, please, no, please, no, please.
31:48The former Seventh Heaven star won the lead role of Erin,
31:51a 21st century update of Survivor's Sally Hardesty.
31:56I've always been a big fan of thrillers.
32:00And when I read the script, that really drew me into the character.
32:06Jessica was really important part of that film
32:08because not only was she the star, but she gave girls a reason to come
32:13and experience a true horror film.
32:15My character has that instinct that gets her through the events that happen to them.
32:25What the f*** is wrong with you?
32:26Are you okay?
32:26Where's the gun?
32:29Where's the gun?
32:32Athletic Andrew Bernarski signed on to embody Leatherface,
32:36the chainsaw-wielding psycho with a fetish for human skin.
32:40Bernarski brought a fresh interpretation to the terrifying character.
32:45In the original film, Gunnar played Leatherface pretty much as he was mentally challenged.
32:52My take on Leatherface was more like he was pretty angry.
32:55This was his revenge and a release at the same time.
33:02Bomb!
33:03Still, remaking the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a daunting task for everyone involved.
33:09I did have doubts from the beginning.
33:11I felt that a lot of people would not be very happy with us remaking such a classic.
33:19No one was excited about it and so we felt like our back was against the wall from day one.
33:25Just like in 1974, the new cast faced some harsh and harrowing conditions during production.
33:32It's 115 degrees, I'm sweating in silicone,
33:35sucking down chainsaw exhaust, chasing Jessica Bielder runs like a 4-2-40.
33:40You would constantly be yelling at the guy,
33:41okay, you're cutting into my back, you're cutting into my back, that's real flesh.
33:45Dead skin.
33:47Fortunately, I didn't have to do it.
33:49I was black and blue for about four days.
33:53After the grueling summer shoot, Chainsaw was in the can.
33:57Meanwhile, fans of the original prepared to attack.
34:00But when the remake hit screens in October 2003, the critical carnage never came.
34:08It was nice that a lot of the diehard fans of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre
34:14really were happy with what we accomplished.
34:16The remake was a frightening film and it delivered the scares.
34:22You know, I've heard wonderful things like we put the teeth back in the saw and
34:26put the teeth back in terror and reinvented and reinvigorated horror.
34:31The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre shot to number one at the box office
34:35and went on to gross more than $80 million in the U.S. alone.
34:40Fans of the series became more fanatical than ever.
34:45I've been a Chainsaw fan since the tender young age of five
34:48when my mom and dad took me to see it at the drive-in in San Antonio
34:50and I've been hooked ever since.
34:53This is my girlfriend, Michelle.
34:54His enthusiasm for it has obviously gotten me enthused about it as well.
35:00It's such a landmark in the horror genre because it has such a shroud of mystique around it.
35:08Tim Harden heads up the Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan club
35:12and runs several websites devoted to the films.
35:15When I first saw it as a teenager, I mean, watching it scarred me for life.
35:20Harden turned his obsession into a vocation.
35:23He also offers guided tours of the locations around Austin, Texas
35:27where most of the movies were shot.
35:29Among the highlights, the slaughterhouse, the gas station,
35:34the cemetery, and of course, the house.
35:38People want to take the tour because people see this movie
35:41and they're kind of traumatized and I think they want to go back to it
35:44and try to dissect it and figure it out and try to perhaps master it somewhat.
35:49Coming up, Leatherface, the early years.
35:52He's developed a taste for human flesh.
35:55He's a sexually perverted, homicidal maniac.
36:19With the success of the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003,
36:24Leatherface was a hot property again.
36:26Producers were anxious to make another killing, at the box office, that is.
36:31Naturally, with the success of that movie, you talk about making another one.
36:37But they didn't want to dig up the same old skeletons.
36:40The beginning is our first film that isn't a remake of something.
36:44It's an original story.
36:46And so we've tried to create a legacy for the people that you met in the 2003 film.
36:52We're on our own now, people.
36:55And alone, we will rise above it all.
37:00Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the beginning, is the origin of one of the most sadistic
37:09and crazy American families.
37:11And basically, you're going to see why and how Leatherface first picked up a chainsaw.
37:17Why he cuts people's faces off.
37:20Why this family sort of bands together for the family business of killing and eating people.
37:28We wanted the movie to be about the movie.
37:30And we were looking for young talent that was great, but maybe not so exposed yet.
37:39Exposed yet.
37:42So people could actually just sit in the movie theater and almost feel like the movie was real.
37:52We take this dysfunctional family that we've already met,
37:56and we go back and we find out just how did all this happen?
38:01The job of directing the twisted family saga fell to 29-year-old Jonathan Liebsman.
38:07Can we put more blood on him?
38:08His previous film was the supernatural thriller Darkness Falls.
38:13Liebsman was already a chainsaw buff.
38:16Let's get more blood in there, Johnny.
38:17The 2003 remake totally raised the bar.
38:22I really wanted to take what I love from Texas 03
38:26and meld it with what I love from the 74 movie.
38:33A couple of familiar faces agreed to reprise their roles.
38:37Sheriff Hoyt is a pretty sick individual.
38:39He's developed a taste for human flesh.
38:42He's a sexually perverted homicidal maniac.
38:46Andrew's a huge guy, big enough guy to be able to handle
38:50swinging the saw around in the August heat.
38:53And I think he's quite effective.
38:54He's a big guy and he's frightening, he's scary.
38:57And action.
39:01But the beginning got a new leading lady, Jordana Brewster.
39:05I didn't feel any pressure until Andrew Bernarski told me.
39:09When I heard you were coming on,
39:10I really thought Jessica Biel's shoes were some big shoes to fill
39:13and I didn't know if you could do it.
39:16On set, the actors were in for some blood-curdling experiences.
39:20The shooting of the movie was scary.
39:24I'm pretty much a wuss and it was petrifying, honestly.
39:29I kind of lost touch with reality for most of the part
39:32and you kind of lose your mind.
39:36All of a sudden, you're thrust into a scene
39:41where somebody's chasing you with a chainsaw
39:44who happens to be about six foot five.
39:46You just are kind of there and scared.
39:49When it comes to the close-up, you know,
39:53rubber knives look like rubber knives.
39:55Phony chainsaws look like phony chainsaws.
39:58And we don't have any of that stuff in this movie,
40:01so that means when you're going close, you're going real.
40:05My biggest challenge would be the blood.
40:09The taste of the blood, not choking on it while I'm screaming
40:12and, you know, being squirted with blood and blood, blood, blood.
40:17Jordan and Dior, the girls would push themselves
40:20to like the edge of looking sort of insane and fearful.
40:26The boys were scared too.
40:30I actually had a lot of nightmares about Leatherface
40:32when I was filming the movie.
40:34It was actually Andrew Bernarski plays Leatherface hiding in my hotel.
40:40There are many scenes in the movie that I'm being beat up, being tortured.
40:48There's a scene where Sheriff Hoy beats Taylor Hand,
40:52so we ended up having to beat Taylor with the real nightstick, with the super thin pad.
40:58I was actually inflicting pain on them psychologically and physically.
41:03I'm concerned about your physical fitness here.
41:07Remember, Taylor's back was bruised and Lee actually broke a bone in his hand.
41:11People went all the way, which was unbelievable.
41:18We were done shooting a scene that was very, very tense for me because, you know,
41:24I had to tell Matthew Bowman exactly what we're doing
41:27and let everybody know this is very delicate, very dangerous.
41:31And he wrote me a card that said, you know,
41:34thanks for taking such good care of me and most importantly,
41:36for always making me know that I was safe.
41:40And it just made me cry.
41:43You have to really feel like you're pushing things to insanity,
41:48especially on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is the sort of granddaddy of insanity.
41:56You kids best not be making a mess in my car, you'll clean it up.
42:02Since it first slashed across movie screens more than three decades ago,
42:06the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has evolved from an edgy groundbreaking shocker
42:11into a mainstream money machine.
42:14The original 16mm film also became recognized as a cult classic,
42:20appreciated around the world by critics, film scholars
42:23and a whole new generation of chainsaw fanatics.
42:26We never dreamed we'd be getting fan mail from Japan
42:29that the Museum of Modern Art would buy a print to put on the shelf
42:34next to Casablanca and Maltese Falcon and Gone With the Wind.
42:37The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you just say the word
42:40and it means this is going to be really, really scary.
42:44It looked behind the door into the darkness
42:47that most people would not voluntarily go into.
42:51It's unimaginable that, you know, this thing that we were doing
42:57essentially in the backyard, you know, when I was a baby,
43:00you know, has endured as it has, has become what it has.
43:05You know, it's just astonishing.
43:07If you're a horror fan and you've never seen The Chainsaw Massacre,
43:11then you're in for the ride of your life.
43:13And that's true today just as much as it was true in 1974.
43:27you