Why was the Texas chainsaw massacre created?

Answer 1

The story was mostly inspired by real life murderer, cannibal, alleged necrophiliac, and grave robber Ed Gein, who lived in an isolated house in Plainsfield, Wisconsin. The real story is far less epic than the film, though highly disturbing nevertheless.

He is the basis for the characters of Leatherface, Norman Bates from 'Psycho', as well as Buffalo Bill from the film 'Silence of the Lambs'. He was a man who dug up graves, stole body parts, organs, and bones which he then in turn made into grizzly works of art. For example, he had bowls made out of human skulls, a belt made of female nipples, chairs and other various furniture adorned with skulls and bones, and I believe he had even upholstered a chair with human flesh. In addition to this, he had an odd sexual fetish of dissecting and collecting the vaginas of dead women as well as he had severed female heads, organs in the fridge, and many other things that were quite revolting.

Throughout his life, Ed was only convicted of killing one local woman, Bernice Worden, which is nowhere near Leatherface's body count. But it was the way in which he did it that made him so infamous on top of having probably the most disturbing house of horrors ever uncovered by law enforcement. He entered her store and bought some antifreeze and then shot her with a rifle which killed her. He was the last customer she had before she went missing, so the police went to his home and looked around and found her headless torso hanging upside down from the rafters of his garage split down the middle like a deer bleeding out. He was doing this with the intention of eating her remains. He is the basis for Leatherface due to the fact that he had several masks made of human flesh and was in the in process of making a female body suit out of stitched together pieces of female flesh (the basis for Buffalo Bill) and he spoke to the ghost of his dead mother whose room he had boarded off so that nothing could get in or out of it (the basis for Norman Bates). There is no indication that he killed Bernice wearing a skinned mask or the suit, so there are no factual killings for the basis of Leatherface and he never used a chainsaw. He died in 1984 in a mental hospital.