A lot of the actors during production had to go through many budget cuts due to them being on a low budget. One of the actors’ most miserable actions was having to wear the same wardrobe due to multiple budget cuts done by Hooper. Actor Marilyn Burns, the final girl in the movie even stated that at the end of production her shirt was “visually solid” due to the multiple amounts of fake blood used on her including her having to spend hours and hours tied to the same chair. Not to mention the actor playing Leather face, Gunnar Hanson, had to wear the same butcher’s apron covered in blood to where he stunk horribly and no one wanted near him during breaks. Also, actor William Vail had a bruised eye due to Hanson striking him with the prop hammer for a scene. The wardrobe staying the same also made for multiple actors to stink bad during their long, miserable scenes.
 An instant of long, miserable scenes is the iconic dinner scene, which took 27 hours to finish. That was on top of the long days of filming that could take up to 18 hours. It was so bad that on the set it stunk of sweat, rotting food, and fake blood mostly because of the heat and humidity with the animal bones and blood. In fact, it took so long to finish the scene they had to reapply make-up multiple times and replace the food to try to stop it from rotting. Not surprisingly, by the end of the scene the food was rotting. 
But at one part of the dinner scene where the grandpa drinks the blood the prop knife with adhesive tape and tubes to put out the blood failed to work multiple times. So Hooper, in a rushed moment, without letting Burns know, cut her finger open so the scene could go on. But later on in life she found out but they did settle things. Speaking of the grandpa, he was played by 20 year old actor John Dugan who felt miserable in the makeup. It took him five hours to get his makeup done while sitting in the chair. This is one of the reasons why the dinner scene took so long to shoot because he didn’t want to keep sitting in the makeup that took so long to apply. In fact, he didn’t like it so much that he tried to do the whole dinner scene in one go, which added more misery for the actors. Overall, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was a movie that had a low budget. But had its advantages in making tons in terms of money. But in order to produce a movie like that on that budget, the actors had to go through a lot of pain and misery during their production. Although all of that happened, you should still watch it because of its documentary style recording. |
Budget Cuts in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Tobe Hooper, director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, had to go through many budget cuts in Austin, Texas in 1974, causing many actors to be miserable during production.
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