Jaworzyn - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE COMPANION

9781781164976

Published by

Titan Books

A division of

Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition October 2003

10987654321

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion copyright 2003 Stefan Jaworzyn. All rights reserved.

Foreword copyright 2003 Gunnar Hansen. All rights reserved.

Front cover image courtesy of Vortex Inc./Kim Henkel/Tobe Hooper, 1974 Vortex, Inc.

Picture credits

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for the use of their visual material, used solely for the advertising, promotion, publicity and review of the specific motion pictures they illustrate. All rights reserved. Braveworld Ltd, Cannon International, Mary Church, Columbia TriStar, Exploited Films, Guild Film Distribution, Hollywood DVD, Eric Lasher, Mars Productions, Media, Metro Tartan Pictures, MGM Home Entertainment, MTI Video, New Line Cinema & Video, Path Films, Trisomy Films, Ultra Muchos Inc/River City Films Inc, Universal, Vestron, Vortex Inc./Kim Henkel/Tobe Hooper. Any omissions will be corrected in future editions.

The views and opinions expressed by the interviewees in this book are not necessarily those of the author or publisher, and the author and publisher accept no responsibility for inaccuracies or omissions, and the author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability, loss, or risk, whether personal, financial, or otherwise, that is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, from the contents of this book.

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The right of Stefan Jaworzyn to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG, Bodmin, Cornwall.

FOREWORD BY GUNNAR HANSEN

TITAN BOOKS

Firstly, to all the cast and crew members from the films who contributed to this book. Many went out of their way to help with resources, contacts and follow-up interviews. Without them this project really would have been impossible and this book is dedicated to them:

Wayne Bell, Joe Bob Briggs, Marilyn Burns, Robert A. Burns, Allen Danziger, Duane Graves, Ed Guinn, Gunnar Hansen, Kim Henkel, Brian Huberman, Levie Isaacks, Bill Johnson, Richard Kidd, Richard Kooris, Robert Kuhn, Eric Lasher, Jim Moran, Bill Moseley, Paul Partain, Lou Perryman, Sallye Richardson, David J. Schow, Brad Shellady, Jim Siedow, Mike Sullivan/Michael OSullivan.

Steve Pittis, without whose encouragement and resources I probably wouldnt have started on this project.

People who provided help, research materials and/or encouragement:

Chuck Grigson, Jay Grossman/MTI Video, David Hyman, Alan Jones (additional credit: sneering and contempt I couldnt live without it), Stephen Jones, Craig Lapper, Edwin Pouncey, John Scoleri.

Others who provided research material or help in other ways:

Ryan Adams, The Austin Chronicle/Marc Savlov, Steve Beeho, Blue Dolphin Films, British Board of Film Classification, Cinefantastique magazine, CineSchlock-o-rama/G. Noel Gross, Fangoria magazine, Film Comment, Royce Freeman, Tim Harden, Harpers Magazine, International Cinematographers Guild/Bob Fisher, David Kerekes, Living-Dead.com/Ryan Rotten, New Line Cinema, Kim Newman, Phil Nutman, The Onion a.v. club, Spencer Perskin, Variety, Video Watchdog/Tim Lucas.

And thanks of course to the staff at Titan Books (David Barraclough, Adam Newell, Katy Wild) for reminding me of the true nature of horror.

(In absentia: Tobe Hooper.)

O ne recent spring day, Marilyn Burns and I took a walk on Regent Street, in London. We found a small pub and went inside for lunch. As we sat at the table contemplating our bangers and mash, Marilyn started to laugh. I never thought, she said, that thirty years later you and I would be having a beer in a pub in London. All because of the movie. The movie was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Marilyn had played Sally, the one victim in that misadventure to escape alive. I had played Leatherface, the brutish killer who, at the end, had danced and swung his chainsaw in frustration at her escape. We were in London for a few days to promote the UK release of a new DVD celebrating the movies thirtieth anniversary.

Marilyn was right: given what we had known back then, neither of us would ever have imagined such a thing. In fact, most of what has happened in these thirty years since the movie was released has been entirely unforeseen. When we were making Chain Saw, we were not expecting very much. Of course we wanted it to be a good movie. Of course we hoped people would like it.

But at best, I thought, it was just a low-budget horror movie. If we were lucky, it would earn enough money to make the investors happy, and a few hardcore horror movie fans would remember it for a while. After that it would fade into obscurity. We had even joked on the set that this, at least, was one movie that would never be on television.

I thought the highlight of the movie for me would be our ersatz premire at a small theatre in Austin, Texas, just before Halloween 1974. The manager let me in for free after I convinced him I had been in the movie. Afterwards a few friends gathered in the parking lot, where they gave me a defunct chainsaw, and we signed the charter for the Gunnar Hansen Fan Club in red ink. We had a lot of fun that night. And that, I figured, was that.

Gunnar Hansen in the role of Leatherface, an icon of modern horror cinema.

The real Gunnar Hansen.

Well, wrong.

Almost immediately the reviews started coming in, and we knew that we had something hot. One Philadelphia newspaper published articles about how angered and revolted theatre-goers had been at the movies explicit violence. They were, the writer claimed, leaving the theatre physically ill and demanding their money back. Of course, none of what they were complaining about is in the movie. For all its supposed violence, it is very tame compared to mainstream action movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark