Based on a true story — except, not Texas. Not a chainsaw. Not a massacre.
Nota bene: Be sure to see update, here.
First, there was the woman who squealed in class when I mentioned Travis County, the Texas county in which resides Texas’s capital city, Austin. She said later she had thought it was a fictional county. By the way, she asked, was the rest of the “Texas chainsaw massacre” story true, too? (I have never seen any of these movies; I understand the 2003 version was set in Hewitt, Texas, which is a real, small Texas town near Waco, between Dallas and Austin — but not in Travis County. I’m not sure what Travis County has to do with any of the movies.)
Since then, in the last couple of weeks I have had at least a dozen requests to teach the history behind the movie, the “true story.” The movies are all highly fictionalized, I note. Perhaps I should plan a day to discuss real Texas murders, and just what fiction is, especially from Hollywood.
According to Snopes.com, one of my favorite debunking sites, there was never a Texas chainsaw massacre. There was a Wisconsin farmer who stole corpses from the local cemetery, and upon whom was based the earlier Alfred Hitchcock movie, Psycho. There was the chainsaw exhibit at Montgomery Ward seen by writer/director Toby Hooper, when he needed inspiration to finish a screen treatment. That’s about it.
But it’s nearing Halloween, and the studios in Hollywood hope to make money.
There are real Texas crimes that would be good fodder for movies, in the hands of intelligent and creative people. One wonders why more movies aren’t done on the real stories.
Historian Kent Biffle has a weekly column on Texas history matters in the Dallas Morning News, for example — and last week he featured a murder mystery from 1847, in which guests at a wedding were served cake laced with arsenic:
No matter how you sliced it, the luxurious dessert served to 60 East Texans in May 1847 was the wedding cake from hell. A few toxic bites sent guests into convulsions. At least 10 died.
Lacking autopsy tests, backwoods folks blamed arsenic poisoning.
The nuptials united a young couple on a Shelby County farm near the Sabine River settlement of East Hamilton, which today is little more than a cemetery where historian Bill O’Neal suspects several cake-eaters lie.
Author O’Neal links the mass poisoning to what he concludes was “Texas’ deadliest feud” in his new book, War in East Texas: Regulators vs. Moderators. Vigilantes organized as “Regulators” to punish suspected outlaws, usually by flogging. Soon enough they traded in their whips and canes for a lynch mob’s nooses and shotguns. Moderators claimed they arose to regulate the Regulators. As usual, in applying folk justice, vigilante leaders tended to target their personal enemies along with real outlaws.
“Four years or so of Regulator-Moderator warfare, along with a lethal aftermath, produced more than 30 deaths – more than 40 if the poisoned victims of the wedding feast are added,” said the Panola College professor O’Neal. He was in Nacogdoches last weekend to describe the Regulator-Moderator insurrection to members of the East Texas Historical Association.
It was full-out range war. One of the leaders of one faction got so good at killing, he thought he’d raise an army and take over Texas. Texas President Sam Houston personally intervened and brought the warring sides to the peace table (shades of the Camp David Accord). Then one was killed in a duel brought about when his mistress exchanged slurs with a physician’s wife.
Texas history is often the stuff of movies. The real stuff would make better movies that a lot of what gets made into movies these days. And for a lot of it, the stories are in the public domain. Fewer writers to pay.
October 9, 2006 at 11:54 am
Real crimes ARE being used in fiction - just not in the movies. Law and Order’s franchise has had plenty of “based on real situations” stories, as had CSI and E.R..
January 24, 2007 at 1:39 am
How could you say that “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not real”? I mean for god sakes my great great grandparents, my grandparents, and my mother lived during this Massacre… It happened around Elektra, Texas between 1969-1973, and if that doesn’t sound right I have newspaper clippings from when it happened… So how can you say it didn’t happen it Texas???
January 24, 2007 at 2:28 am
In a private e-mail I’ve asked for citations for the newspaper clippings, and I am rather excited about getting them. Among other things, I can find no evidence there ever was a town called Elektra in Texas.
Documentation trumps speculation. I look forward to seeing what Mr. Gross can produce.
Update, August 1, 2007: I’ve been by the town of Electra, Texas, a couple of times in the past six weeks. It’s in Wichita County, northwest of Wichita Falls, near the Oklahoma border — and a long, long way from Travis County, or Hewitt, in McLennan County.
February 8, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Here is some additional debunking info I found….enjoy. [From Snopes.com]
So, true story or not? Certainly there was no real family of cannibalistic chainsaw murderers slaughtering people in Texas, nor any actual series of chainsaw-related killings. Writer/director Tobe Hooper said the inspiration for the film came from his spotting a display of chainsaws while standing in the hardware section of a crowded store:
I was in the Montgomery Ward’s out in Capital Plaza. I had been working on this other story for some months — about isolation, the woods, the darkness, and the unknown. It was around holiday season, and I found myself in the Ward’s hardware department, and I was still kind of percolating on this idea of isolation and such. And those big crowds have always gotten to me. There were just so many people to go through. And I was just standing there in front of an upright display of chainsaws. And the focus just racked from my eyeball to the people to the saws — and the idea popped. I said, “Ooh, I know how I could get out of this place fast — if I just start one of these things up and make that sound.” Of course I didn’t. That was just a fantasy.
Hooper has also said that he based the character of Leatherface on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin farmer who robbed graves (his own mother’s supposedly among them), allegedly engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism, and murdered at least two women in the 1950s (one of whose corpses was found hanging naked — decapitated and disembowelled — in Gein’s residence). As Gunnar Hansen, the actor who portrayed Leatherface, notes in his Texas Chainsaw Massacre FAQ:
Here’s what Tobe (director) and Kim (writer) told me themselves one night during the filming. They had heard of Ed Gein, the man in Plainfield, Wisconsin, who was arrested in the late 1950s for killing his neighbor and on whom the movie Psycho was based. So when they set out to write this movie, they decided to have a family of killers who had some of the characteristics of Gein: the skin masks, the furniture made from bones, the possibility of cannibalism. But that’s all. The story itself is entirely made up. So, sorry folks. There never was a massacre in Texas on which this was based. No chainsaw either. And, in spite of those of you who have told me you remember when it happened, it really didn’t happen. Really. Believe me. This is an interesting phenomenon. I’ve also had people tell me that they knew the original Leatherface, that they had been guards at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas, where he was a prisoner. Maybe they knew somebody who dreamed of being Leatherface. It is, I suppose, something to aspire to.
Police eventually discovered the remains of 15 different mutilated female bodies in Gein’s filthy farmhouse, parts of which (mostly skin and bones) had been fashioned into a variety of bizarre objects (including drums, bowls, masks, bracelets, purses, knife sheaths, leggings, chairs, lampshades, and shirts), as well as a refrigerator full of human organs.
Gein later admitted to killing two women, one in 1954 and one in 1957. He was suspected of involvement in the disappearance of four other people in central Wisconsin (two men and two young girls) between 1947 and 1952, but the remains found in his farmhouse all came from adult females, and none of them matched up with any of the four missing persons. (Gein maintained that with the exception of the two women he had admitted killing, all of the body parts in his farmhouse had been taken from corpses he dug up in the local cemetery.)
Gein’s story inspired (at least in part) the Norman Bates character — a young man who murders women out of a twisted sense of loyalty to his dead mother — in the classic thriller Psycho, and the Buffalo Bill character — a transvestite serial killer who murders women to make use of their skin — in the horror novel Silence of the Lambs. Although the Leatherface character and the events depicted in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre differ in many substantial ways from what is known about the life and activities of Ed Gein (most notably in that Gein was apparently far more a grave robber than a murderer, and he didn’t go around slicing up live victims with a chainsaw), there are definite similarities between the film and the Ed Gein story as well (e.g., hanging a murder victim’s corpse in the house, making functional use of the skin from dead bodies, elements of cannibalism). Whether these similiarities are sufficiently close to justify the statement that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was “based on a true story” is up to filmgoers to decide for themselves.
February 22, 2007 at 5:25 pm
so is the true or not??
February 22, 2007 at 5:27 pm
hello did a massacre really happen or was it just made up
was there even some1 who killed many people n waz there a cannibal family?????
February 22, 2007 at 7:04 pm
No, not true.
No masscre.
No serial murderer doing hitchhikers.
No cannibal family.
As I noted above — “based on a true story,” but it didn’t happen in Texas, there was no chainsaw, no massacre, and perhaps nothing more than desecration of corpses. Allison’s quoting from the Snopes.com website covers it well.
February 27, 2007 at 3:05 pm
By the way, Mr. Gross has not returned with any sort of verification of his claims above, that the movie is based on incidents in Elektra, Texas, a town that is probably fictional, too.
Ooops. See update, in my comments above. Spell it right, “Electra,” it’s findable.
March 4, 2007 at 12:54 pm
texas has nothing to offer the world in the way of interesting movie fodder…..
a laced cake? arsnic and old lace~! wow i cant wait to blow my cash seeing the wedding poisioning movie~!! = D what about a movie about a stupid dirt eating people? buahahahahahhahaha
trying to bbe tough using a gory movie to back themselves up…they were unable to see the whole country LAUGHING at them… cause that movie was a composite of eddie ghein
you are just too rich~!!
March 4, 2007 at 12:56 pm
ghein murdered 2 women… get your gory wisconsin history right
March 14, 2007 at 12:24 pm
[...] traffic to the post I did a while ago noting that the movies are not based on any Texas incidents (see “Based on a true story, except . . .). The original movie, in 1974, was billed as “based on a true story.” “The film [...]
April 4, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Electra, named after the feisty daughter of cattle baron W.T. Waggoner, is located in the western edge of Wichita County. The Waggoners were pioneers in the area when they established their cattle headquarters here in 1878. Their property almost completely surrounded the original townsite. Confusion over the delivery of Waggoner mail and the name Beaver for nearby Beaver Creek led residents in 1902 to circulate a petition changing the name of the city to Electra in honor of Electra Waggoner. The townsite opened in October 1907. In 1911 an oil company leased a tract of land from W.T. and the famous North Texas Oil boom was begun as fortune seekers came to stake their claims.
Today, Electra continues its agricultural and oil impact in North Texas. Farm and ranch land surrounds the town and most every field is punctuated with an oil well. Manufacturing is another strong economic force to the city.
An industrious and enthusiastic city government and school system make Electra an exciting city to live in and raise a family. A progressive hospital offering a plethora of services, a physician clinic, family practitioners, internist and general surgeon assure the best of healthcare services not found in many small cities.
The Chamber of Commerce is extremely active. The annual Electra Goat Barbecue is one of the busiest and most exciting events hosted by the Chamber. There are also the annual homecoming events, semi annual City Wide Garage Sales, Scarecrow Festival, and an annual visit from Santa Claus. Restoration of the historic Grand Theatre built in 1919 is underway as a citywide project.
For over 90 years Electra has been a vibrant community rich in history and ripe in personality and was designated a Main Street City in 1998 and a National Main Street City in 2000.
May 5, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Hey If anyone knows if there Really any true info on the texas chainsaw massacre PLEASE PLEASE email me at jess_593@yahoo.com thanks
July 31, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Hey so is there any pics of him?is he still alive?
August 1, 2007 at 12:01 am
Jess, Katie — click on the “UPDATE” box at the top of the post.
Ed Gein died in 1984. There is a photo of Ed Gein at Biography.com:
http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=11291338
October 31, 2007 at 11:58 am
ok, i don’t understand, i watched “texas chainsaw massacre: the begining”
the movie said it was in a place called hewitt, but leatherface’s real name is thomas hewitt, but i also found that it is in travis county, texas, and also at the end of the movie, it said the him and his family killed 32 people between 1969-1972
plz tell me whoever, reply and say to me, i wanna be leatherface nxt halloween, i’m not evil, but i respect him for a halloween character, plz don’t think i’m evil, and all i need is a chainsaw lol
thx and plz reply.
October 31, 2007 at 2:24 pm
What is it you want a reply for, Chris?
No such event occurred in Texas. No such series of events occurred in Texas. Hewitt, Texas, is in McLennan County, about two hours’ drive north of Travis County.
Have a happy Halloween.
P.S.: Why not dress up as Sam Houston, or William B. Travis, or Davy Crockett, or Jim Bowie?
January 29, 2008 at 4:38 pm
It’s Reale?
January 30, 2008 at 4:29 am
Dear Ed,
Your responses to these people are all fine and dandy…..i mean it does sound like your the unofficial chainsaw massacre master.I’ve looked up and seen everything your talking about,my only problem is….just because a website says its true or false,doesnt make it so.Im not saying your wrong….i saw what the director said.I dont really care about the movie as much as i do about real facts.Sure he says it was based on Ed Gein….but Ed’s “only” murders…i say only,because i believe he murdered more than that.If we had the technology in the 50’s as we do now,im sure the story of Ed Gein might be a little different.Back to my point,Ed Gein’s murders…only two of which are known,happened in 1954 and 1957.So if leatherface is based off of Ed,does that mean the 33 murders which did happen in Texas……are based off two murders and a house full of skin furniture? I want to know who committed the 33 murders in Texas between 1969 and 1973.Ed was in a straight jacket in Wisconsin while the tail end of these Texas murders were still happening.Get back to me if you find any actual facts about the 69 to 73 murders.Those murders are real and i want to find out who really committed them…..
January 30, 2008 at 6:16 am
What 33 murders? It’s fine to doubt a website, skepticism is good — but one generally must have fact to rebut.
What 33 murders are you talking about? There is no record in Texas of such stuff that I have found.
March 19, 2008 at 10:44 am
Hey Mr. Bill,
Perhaps those 33 murders that the movie is referring to is fictional. Did that thought occur to you? Just because you see it on a movie screen doesn’t make it real.