I want to know if the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story? What is all this ed geins talk? HELP?

Question

I HEARD ALL THIS GEINS TALK BUT WAS THAT TRUE?? AND IVE ALSO HEARD PPL SAY THEY REMEMBER WHEN IT MASSACRE HAPPENED

Answer 1

It's loosely based on Gein but only very loosely.

The actual events in the film are 100% fictional

Answer 2

Wasn't the movie based on a true story?

This came directly from Gunnar Hansen AKA Leatherface:

Nope again. And double nope. Here's what Tobe (director) and Kim (writer) told me themselves one night during the filming. They had heard of Ed Gein, the man in Plainfield, Wisconsin, who was arrested in the late 1950s for killing his neighbor and on whom the movie Psycho was based. So when they set out to write this movie, they decided to have a family of killers who had some of the characteristics of Gein: the skin masks, the furniture made from bones, the possibility of cannibalism. But that's all. The story itself is entirely made up. So, sorry folks. There never was a massacre in Texas on which this was based. No chainsaw either. And, in spite of those of you who have told me you remember when it happened, it really didn't happen. Really. Believe me. This is an interesting phenomenon. I've also had people tell me that they knew the original Leatherface, that they had been guards at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas, where he was a prisoner. Maybe they knew somebody who dreamed of being Leatherface. It is, I suppose, something to aspire to.

Answer 3

First of all, nobody has their story straight. It was not based on Ed Gein. Ed Gein lived in Wisconson, I believe. He was a psychopathic serial killer. One of the worst in history.
Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story. There were five teenagers coming home from spring break in Mexico. They never made it home. They weren't the only ones to disappear at that property, and I believe the investigation is still open. Not even the police want to set foot on the property. This happened way back in the seventies. You should watch the original, then the remake. Don't watch "the beginning" or whatever it's called. I think it's just riding on publicity.

Answer 4

Chainsaw massacre no. Fiction.
Silence of the lambs, partly.
Psycho pretty much, the closest to Ed Geins true story.

Answer 5

Some aspects of Ed gein and TCM do coincide. Ed Gein was a Momma's boy village idiot loner that everybody felt sorry for from small town Wisconsin who dug up womens bodys and made clothing/masks from them so you could say that the Leatherface character was based on him. I am not sure if he killed people or just dug them up after they were recently burried.. but I do know all the people were older women and that it occured in the 1950s...anyways Jeff Dahmer was from Wisonsin too so stay away from there lol Hope I was able to help

Answer 6

TEXAS massacre! Keyword being Texas. Ed Gein Had nothing to do with it. The movie is very very loosely based on events that took place back in the late 60's in Northwest Travis county Texas. North Austin to be exact. In fact, the Dell computer facility sits atop the site of the old farm house where it took place. One of the nasty little stories from back home. actually, Austin is a very nice place to live...Hope this helped.

Answer 7

Ed Gein was a loner who killed older women and dug up women's bodies. He was the original "psycho" and was a bizarre person to put it mildly.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was not based upon a true story other than the inspiration was drawn from Gein the psychopathic loner who was caught in the 1950s in Wisconsin and died in 1984 at the age of 77.
Gein was dominated in life by an overbearing mother who corrupted him with taboos about sex, etc.

Answer 8

It is based on Ed Gein

Answer 9

its based on some lunatic hic crazy as**d mo fo's that collected chainsaws, and sawed everything up in sight, that moved. the tale goes back to way back when in texas. the greatest land upon earth

Answer 10

Writer/director Tobe Hooper said the inspiration for the film came from his spotting a display of chainsaws while standing in the hardware section of a crowded store:

I was in the Montgomery Ward's out in Capital Plaza. I had been working on this other story for some months — about isolation, the woods, the darkness, and the unknown. It was around holiday season, and I found myself in the Ward's hardware department, and I was still kind of percolating on this idea of isolation and such. And those big crowds have always gotten to me. There were just so many people to go through. And I was just standing there in front of an upright display of chainsaws. And the focus just racked from my eyeball to the people to the saws — and the idea popped. I said, "Ooh, I know how I could get out of this place fast — if I just start one of these things up and make that sound." Of course I didn't. That was just a fantasy.
Hooper has also said that he based the character of Leatherface on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin farmer who robbed graves (his own mother's supposedly among them), allegedly engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism, and murdered at least two women in the 1950s (one of whose corpses was found hanging naked — decapitated and disembowelled — in Gein's residence). As Gunnar Hansen, the actor who portrayed Leatherface, notes in his Texas Chainsaw Massacre FAQ:

Here's what Tobe (director) and Kim (writer) told me themselves one night during the filming. They had heard of Ed Gein, the man in Plainfield, Wisconsin, who was arrested in the late 1950s for killing his neighbor and on whom the movie Psycho was based. So when they set out to write this movie, they decided to have a family of killers who had some of the characteristics of Gein: the skin masks, the furniture made from bones, the possibility of cannibalism. But that's all. The story itself is entirely made up. So, sorry folks. There never was a massacre in Texas on which this was based. No chainsaw either. And, in spite of those of you who have told me you remember when it happened, it really didn't happen. Really. Believe me. This is an interesting phenomenon. I've also had people tell me that they knew the original Leatherface, that they had been guards at the state prison in Huntsville, Texas, where he was a prisoner. Maybe they knew somebody who dreamed of being Leatherface. It is, I suppose, something to aspire to.
Police eventually discovered the remains of 15 different mutilated female bodies in Gein's filthy farmhouse, parts of which (mostly skin and bones) had been fashioned into a variety of bizarre objects (including drums, bowls, masks, bracelets, purses, knife sheaths, leggings, chairs, lampshades, and shirts), as well as a refrigerator full of human organs.

Gein later admitted to killing two women, one in 1954 and one in 1957. He was suspected of involvement in the disappearance of four other people in central Wisconsin (two men and two young girls) between 1947 and 1952, but the remains found in his farmhouse all came from adult females, and none of them matched up with any of the four missing persons. (Gein maintained that with the exception of the two women he had admitted killing, all of the body parts in his farmhouse had been taken from corpses he dug up in the local cemetery.)

Gein's story inspired (at least in part) the Norman Bates character — a young man who murders women out of a twisted sense of loyalty to his dead mother — in the classic thriller Psycho, and the Buffalo Bill character — a transvestite serial killer who murders women to make use of their skin — in the horror novel Silence of the Lambs. Although the Leatherface character and the events depicted in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre differ in many substantial ways from what is known about the life and activities of Ed Gein (most notably in that Gein was apparently far more a grave robber than a murderer, and he didn't go around slicing up live victims with a chainsaw), there are definite similarities between the film and the Ed Gein story as well (e.g., hanging a murder victim's corpse in the house, making functional use of the skin from dead bodies, elements of cannibalism).

Whether these similiarities are sufficiently close to justify the statement that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was "based on a true story" is up to you. Is it a true story? NO!!!!!