Tobe Hooper's 1974 film is inspired by real events, and that should send a chill down anyone’s spine.
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Ed Gein was born in 1906 and lived with his mother. It was after her death that he found a passion for the human anatomy and the scientific experiments of the Nazis. So he sealed off his mother's room to keep it intact, and that's where the horror began.
After the Second World War, in 1947 he dug up corpses to take samples, and used the bones to make various objects. Not satisfied with only corpses though, he decided to attack the living.
In 1954, he killed a 51-year-old woman with a pistol (What do you mean - not with a chainsaw?) and then he then took her home, just like the fifteen or so bodies that he accumulated at home over the following years.
Arrested in 1957, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, considered ‘mentally ill.' It's this story that has inspired an entire franchise, starting with the feature film TheTexas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), which spawned four sequels, the final one in 1995. The series was rebooted in 2003 with two more films, and then again in 2013 with a film in 3D, followed by Leatherface (2017). A new film is now in the works, along with a television series.
