Texas Chainsaw Massacre — the true story of Edward Gein

It’s 1957 and Edward Theodore Gein has just been arrested for murder and grave robbing. Grave robbing — that grotesque term used as infrequently as the act itself whose words attempt to pin down — means when one sneaks into a cemetery. Digs up the remains of a decomposing body, only to rob it from the earth and do whatever sinister thing one desires.

The police, upon entering Edward’s squalid farmhouse hidden in a small town in Plainfield, Wisconsin found a headless woman, hanging from a meat hook. Human skulls were scattered about the house used as bowls. A lampshade shone dim light in the corner, beaming through a dried human face. Leggings were made of actual human skin, while a table was propped up by human shin bones. In short, it was the most gruesome house imaginable. A house of horrors, and used almost directly for a film to be made some 17 years later by a breakthrough director named Tobe Hooper who was to define the horror genre and have film makers still today attempting to produce something half as good as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

But what creates such a dark figure like the Leatherface Ed Gein? Was he born with darkness? Or was it, like many of the most horrific actors of violence, something born upon the circumstances in his life? Raised on a 160 acre farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin by a tyrannically Puritanical mother named Augusta — Ed was wrapped tightly around the grip of his mom while his father, a serious alcoholic, was mostly absent and detached from the family. Already from the start, it appeared as if Ed, known by his neighbors as ‘weirdo Eddie,’ was set up from birth to become the Leatherface killer.

Preaching daily to her sons Ed and Henry, Augusta rapped about the Old Testament and went on long tirades about the immorality of the world claiming that all women were whores. One day, the family went to buy straw in a nearby town and they witnessed a man beating a dog to death. And when the family left, it was not the animal cruelty that enraged Ed’s mom Augusta. It was the fact that the killer of the dog was not married to the woman he was living with, which she could not forget at all costs.

In 1940 when Ed was 34, his father died from alcoholism. Consequently, Augusta’s grip on his son Ed grew further tightened. Four years later, Ed’s brother Henry died in a fire on the farm. The coroner listed the cause as asphyxiation, but there was severe bruising around Henry’s head, leading many to believe this as Ed’s first killing. From this point, it’s hard to say when exactly the grave robbing began except that it was sometime after Augusta’s passing in 1945, at the age of 67. And as Harold Schechter wrote, with Augusta’s death, Ed had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."

And so began Ed’s decade long reign of terror. Living alone and isolated on his deceased parent’s farm, he began a new hobby of digging up bodies in nearby cemeteries. He started dissecting corpses and using their skins and appendages for household items. During this time, reports came about of locals disappearing from nearby gas stations and convenience stores. No one could find these missing persons for years. Until finally in 1957, some clues led the police back to the house of hell where Ed Gein was living only to discover the remains of a countless list of missing persons along with many who were missing from their own graves.

From this horrific tale, the story began to spread throughout the small town and those surrounding it. Film maker Tobe Hooper, who grew up not too far from where the horrific incidents occurred, had heard the story for years and years as a young man. So much so, it began to burn in his mind so that he had no choice but to tell some version of it through a film. Eventually, this led to the making of what’s considered as the greatest horror film of all time: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

All of these goals are legitimate and excellent goals to have. When you combine all of these goals together in a year, this is the key to an actor’s success. Because if you are only focused on philosophical goals and you leave out the pragmatic goals, you are going to be imbalanced in your approach. Just as if you only focus on getting headshots and taking more acting classes, without the philosophical aims behind it, it’s like you are operating in a low gear and losing many chances as an actor.

Known for its raw and artsy style, the film depicts bodies not so different than meat thrown around at a butcher shop. Scene after scene portrays human remains dangling or stowed away like you would find cuts of beef. One of the young travelers gets thrown into a freezer, as one would toss meat to keep from spoiling. No film had ever dreamed of showing such dark realities, and like many films adapted by factual accounts, this movie does take most truths from real events but some liberties now and then in the changing of details.

For example, the list of young characters, passing through a small town by van, was certainly a story telling device to create some action and movement — as if the house itself was gobbling them up and eating them one by one. Additionally, the events did not take place in Texas but far up north in Wisconsin. Still however, the foundation of how Ed Gein himself lived and began his murdering rampage rings true to that of the facts. And for that, the folklore lives on through the film, and continues to live on in the form of how to make the perfect horror film that still cannot be outdone today on its 50 year anniversary.

And on a side note — I put a wager that if Netflix decides to do any Halloween themed series close to what they did with Dahmer some 2 years ago — this origin story of Ed Gein and how he became Leatherface takes the prize for what I predict Netflix producing in the next October or two. But only time will tell on that one.

-“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is now streaming on Tubi.