The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movies might  have claimed to be "based on a true story,"
  but the real-life history that inspired the  series was a lot different than what was presented
  on-screen.
  The 1974 original was loosely based on Ed  Gein — a criminal who also inspired films
  like Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.
  But this is one case where history really  is stranger than fiction.
  Since the devil is in the details, here's  where The Texas Chain Saw Massacre took liberties
  with Gein's gruesome deeds.
  Don't mess with...Wisconsin
  If there was a competition for least geographically  accurate biopic in history, Texas Chainsaw
  would win every single time.
  While the movie takes place in Texas, and  it's right there in the title, the true story
  that inspired the film happened over 600 miles  away in the backwoods of rural Wisconsin.
  Not only did real-life Leatherface Ed Gein  never set foot in Texas, he never really left
  his hometown.
  Gein lived with his mother and spent his entire  life in a small town called Plainfield, working
  odd jobs to get by.
  When his mom passed, he lived alone in her dilapidated  house, surrounded by her possessions.
  Needless to say, he couldn't have been further  from small town Texas.
  As for why the cinematic story was set in  the Lone Star state, well, "Wisconsin Chain
  Saw Massacre" doesn't really have the same  ring to it.
  More importantly, Texas was where writer-director  Tobe Hooper was born.
  And that wasn't the only personal experience  that would inform a major shift for the screen
  version….
  No chainsaws
  Leatherface's weapon of choice might be a  chainsaw, but Ed Gein never used one.
  Although he did tend to relieve corpses of  their skin to make gross household items himself,
  he did the deeds with just a knife.
  Hooper chose to incorporate a chainsaw into  his narrative because of his own experience
  at a hardware store.
  The director admitted that over the holidays  one year he found himself in front of a display
  of the power tools and had a brief daydream  about grabbing one and slicing his way through
  the crowds.
  Thankfully, Hooper was a guy who made films  about maniacs and psychopaths rather than
  becoming one himself, so instead of revving  up one of those power saws, he simply added
  the idea to the Ed Gein-inspired flick he'd  been working on.
  The real body count
  While the movie doesn't specify a time frame  for its setting, the hippy wagon the kids
  ride up in indicates they lived sometime around  the Summer of Love.
  But Ed Gein's crime spree began and ended  decades before that.
  He committed his first in 1954 and his last  in 1957.
  But the fudged dates weren't the only numbers  that didn't add up to the truth, because Gein's
  body count was also significantly lower than  what was presented in the film.
  In the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie,  there are five people who fall victim to Leatherface
  and his terrible family.
  That's a relatively short victim list by horror  movie standards, but Ed Gein's body count
  was even lower.
  The infamous "Plainfield Butcher" was only  responsible for slaying two women: Mary Hogan
  and Bernice Worden.
  It's what Gein did on the side that makes  him so fascinating, and explains why his story
  caught Hooper's eye.
  After a stroke took his beloved mother's life,  Gein went full Buffalo Bill.
  He started reading up on German medical experiments  and human anatomy.
  He began dressing in his mother's clothes,  and after a couple years of this, Gein started
  digging up the corpses of women and turning  them into furniture, then cutting off parts
  for his collection.
  There are echoes of this in Texas Chainsaw,  of course.
  The very first shot is of a mutilated corpse  tied to a grave.
  But while Leatherface and his family were  cannibals who did some grave robbing on the
  side, Gein was a grave robber who graduated  to taking lives.
  No survivors
  Texas Chainsaw advertised itself under the  tagline "who will survive, and what will be
  left of them?" which implied that at least  some of Leatherface's victims would survive
  the film.
  And one does.
  Sally, the lone survivor, escapes.
  She may be covered in blood and short on sanity  by the end, but she's alive.
  In this case, real life is far crueler than  fiction.
  For the women Gein encountered, there was  no nail-biting escape, no speedy exit in a
  truck while their attacker threw a well-choreographed  chainsaw tantrum.
  Those who encountered Gein never lived to  tell the tale.
  Both Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden met gruesome  ends.
  Hogan was shot in the back of the head while  closing up her bar and dragged back to Gein's
  farmhouse.
  There she was butchered, her face turned into  a mask for Gein to wear, a gory detail that
  would later become part of Leatherface's costume.
  If anything, Worden's loss was worse.
  Unlike Hogan, she was later found , dis,  and decapitated, with the remnants of her
  body hanging from the rafters of Gein's barn  and her face removed.
  That discovery was grim, but there was some  positivity to come of it.
  Her son was a sheriff's deputy who had noticed  Gein acting suspiciously around her store.
  So, the moment she went missing, he pointed  the finger at Gein, which meant they were
  able to stop him before he could claim any  more victims.
  Gein confessed to police he liked to wear  the flesh of slain women and dance around in
  the moonlight — a detail that is somehow  too horrific even for the Texas Chain Saw
  Massacre.
  The unhappy ending
  Unlike the movie, in which Leatherface eludes  capture, when Gein was caught, he didn't escape.
  He didn't carve up other people in prison.
  And he didn't get in a chainsaw duel with  Dennis Hopper, as Leatherface does in the
  so-bad-it's-bad Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,  which also claims to be based on "real events."
  Gein's last victim was Beatrice Worden, and  after he was caught, Gein didn't commit any
  more atrocities in the remaining 30-odd years  of his life.
  This is probably because of where Gein spent  those remaining years.
  After his arrest in 1957, he was deemed unfit  to stand trial and confined to psychiatric
  care.
  After being declared mentally competent in  1968 and tried for his crimes, he was found to
  have been insane when the crimes took place  and recommitted, this time to Mendota Mental
  Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin, where  he remained until his final day in 1984.
  
        
      
 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét