‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the one scene that made the cast constantly vomit
There are few kinds of movies that can prompt the same kind of bodily reaction as a good-quality horror flick, with the best of the genre being able to make you squirm, shriek and hide behind a cushion. Still, even though every single horror movie will market itself as being this scary, only a select few have the ability to cause guttural panic, with Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre certainly being one.
Where contemporary Hollywood horror flicks try to terrify their viewers in spite of their glittering industry sheen, Hooper’s 1974 film cared little about looking nice. In fact, it frolicked in its grotty aesthetic, being presented as if the celluloid had just been pulled out like a clown’s handkerchief from a rat-infested stagnant swamp. Kick-starting the slasher craze of the late 20th century, Hooper’s film was triumphantly nasty.
Giving Hollywood cinema a mute, malevolent and nihilistic killer like no other, Hooper’s central antagonist, Leatherface, was a disgusting beast and carnal cannibal who lay in waiting in his rural Texas house for the arrival of his prey. Such falls into his lap when five friends head out into the state’s countryside, only to fall victim to the rusty metal of Leatherface’s chainsaw.
The violent, visceral torture that presented itself went on to thrill hardcore horror nuts around the world, but just as hideous as the one-screen terror was the real-life drama that went on behind the scenes.
Made on a budget of just $140,000, the film was a proper example of shoe-string independent American cinema, with Hooper using a humble 16mm Bolex H16 RX5 to shoot his film. Shot on location under the baking heat of the Texas sun, the majority of the shoot took place in a 1900s farmhouse which became the home of Leatherface and his sickening cannibal family in the movie.
While several scenes use the location, the most memorable is the family dinner that occurs in the closing stages of the film when Marilyn Burns’s final girl, Sally, is forced to endure the company of killers. Sitting on a chair made partly from human arms, she wails as the dangling light made of facial skin glows and the stench of death resonates through the entire screen.
“The conditions on that long night that bled into the following day were intolerably putrid…Some of the cast and crew members referred to it as ‘the last supper’,” Joseph Lanza, writer of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Film That Terrified a Rattled Nation, recalled. Long weeks on set where actors were forced to wear the same clothes while set designers arranged props that used dead animals had caused a thick odour to acclimate in the house, with the stench quickly becoming unbearable.
Continuing, the writer added: “The heat and humidity outside and inside were so high… [that the cast] had to run outside for oxygen and periodic vomit breaks.”
It is, indeed, no coincidence that the finale of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so brutal, with each of the leading cast members barely having to do any acting at all to translate their terror, disgust and desperation.
