It's Only a Movie

Director: Brad Shellady

Starring: John Dugan, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow

The cinematic trailer to last summer's Blair Witch Project promised a film "Scary as Hell." More than 25 years earlier, another film capitalized on a similar declaration: movie critic Rex Reed's pronouncement that it was "The most horrifying motion picture I have ever seen."

Tobe Hooper's 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre raised the ante in horror cinema. From start to finish, Hooper's unnerving depiction of modern day cannibalism delivers what others only tease: a motion picture so frightening that you will find yourself repeating: "It's only a movie. It's only a movie."

Hooper cast actors John Dugan (Grandpa), Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface), Edwin Neal (The Hitchhiker), and Jim Siedow (The Cook) to personify his ultimate evil: a redneck, flesh-eating "family" intent on devouring (literally) those who trespass among them. Today, the four comprise arguably the most legendary family in horror cinema. Twenty-four years after the film's debut, director Brad Shellady sat down with each cast member to share their thoughts on the making of one of the most notorious motion pictures in history.

Individually, the four actors bear little resemblance to the psychopathic characters they made household names more than two decades ago. "I'm really a lover," kids Siedow, who appears almost fragile in old age. Hansen, probably the most well known of the four, addresses the stereotypes with a more somber tone.

"People think that I am the personality of Leatherface," says the soft-spoken actor. "I'll probably be remembered for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before I'll be remembered for anything else, and that's unfortunate."

When asked to comment on the atmosphere that surrounded the making of the film, all agree that much of Chainsaw's intensity came from a combination of long hours and oppressive Texas heat. Edwin Neal - who was attending The University of Texas at the time he landed the role of the Hitchhiker -- notes that the film's infamous dinner sequence required more than 26 hours to shoot. "It just got crazier and crazier" on the set, he says, noting that several cast members vomited between takes because there was so much rotting food present. "It became easier as we took on the environmental aspects of the family to become the family," he affirms.

Hansen agrees. "It was easy for the [dinner] scene to be intense because nobody liked each other anymore."

Other scenes were equally authentic, cast members reveal. Siedow recalls his initial shock when the director instructed him to pummel another actress with a stick. "I couldn't do it at first," he sighs. He later admits to participating in the scene, but only at the insistence of Hooper and the actress herself. Looking back, Siedow now chuckles that although the scene was "fun," the "poor girl got beaten up."

Go To Page: 1 2