Was that footage from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre honestly real?

[Wetzelbill]

SPOILER

Ok, in the TCM remake, they had footage at the beginning and at the end of two policemen going into the crime scene to do a recorded walk through. The scene wasn't properly secured and the both were killed by Thomas Brown Hewitt aka Leatherface. The voiceover explains that this is the only known footage of "the man called Leatherface." I was wondering if the footage was genuine, a reenactment or what?

It was freaky, though.

[bhunt70]

1. I was under the impression it was fake.

I never thought twice about it though...hmmm.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. Pretty sure it was fake

The story itself isn't real, so I wouldn't expect the footage to be real either.

On edit: the original TCM was MUCH better.

[Twillig]

11. Ya, I liked the original better too.

But was glad to see that John Larroquette got to narrate again. I'd have popped it outta the dvd player otherwise.

R. Lee Ermey was ok, even though it was a nutty Gunny Hartman he was doing.

[Archae]

3. None of the above.

The original story behind TCM came partly from a WI guy named Ed Gein, who raided cemetaries and made furniture and stuff out of body parts.
Gein died in a mental hospital.

[jdsmith]

4. And what two other major movie villains are based on Ed Gein?

[Archae]

5. Norman Bates, and I forgot the other.

n/t

[bhunt70]

6. buffalo bill from silence of the lambs and han solo? :)

[phillybri]

7. Michael Myers?

:shrug:

[jdsmith]

8. Norman and BB

Though, as Tobe Hooper himself has said, the "true story" aspect of _TCM_ is only a little more "real" than the truth of _Fargo_, no matter what the films themselves claim.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

9. ...and the footage of Gein on the TCM Remake DVD...

...is 100% real. There is a documentary on Disc 2 of the "deluxe edition" called "Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield."



After Gein was sent to the mental hospital his farm was "mysteriously" burned to the ground. Someone got possession of his car and drove it around the region, "freak show-style," as "Ed Gein's Death Car" and charged people to see it. This, in turn, served as the inspiration for a somewhat obscure punk band named "Ed Gein's Car" (http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=ed_geins_car).

[Wetzelbill]

10. I thought it looked too well shot to and the video grain was too good

[dr.strangelove]

12. Ed Gein is the father of modern horror movies

The Police discovered the Gein house of horrors on November 17, 1957. The country was introduced to Gein one month later when the December 1957 issues of Life and Time magazines ran features on his house of horrors. These two magazines are somewhat valuable as collector's items.

Gein was in a mental hospital for ten years when he began to respond to treatment and was judged competent to stand trial. Gein was found guilty but criminally insane. He died in 1984 at age 57. His prison reprts are all positive. He was a model prisoner.

Gein inspired Robert Bloch to pen the Norman Bates character and Alfred Hitchcock turned Bloch's character into the great film "Psycho" (in my opinion the first modern horror movie).

Tobe Hooper's 1974 "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" was inspired by the Gein house with its armchairs that bear human arms, lamps made out of human hands and Leatherface, who hangs up his victims alive on meat hooks.

As previously mentioned on DU, Jonathan Demme's "Silence of the Lambs" and the killer Buffalo Bill were inspired by Gein.
(I hope my former roommate and friend Greg Raskin won't mind me stealing from his paper on Ed Gein, he wrote it several years ago for a film class. I stole most of Greg's research. I was only able to do this becasue I happened to have been throwing out massive amounts of college junk, sorry Greg but your old film papers aren't in the keep pile, when I read this thread.)