“The prop knife they used, which contained a tube of fake blood that Hansen was to squeeze onto Burns’ finger, had malfunctioned,” Lanza writes. The way this scene was filmed would be a career-ending scandal today. During the torturous dinner scene, Sally - the character subjected to this misery, played by Marilyn Burns - was supposed to have her finger cut by the maniac known as Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) so the family’s centenarian patriarch, played by then-18-year-old John Dugan in heavy prosthetic makeup, could drink her blood. In some cases, there was actual violence. “The heat and humidity outside and inside were so high … had to run outside for oxygen and periodic vomit breaks.” Some of the cast and crew members referred to it as ‘the last supper,’ ” Lanza writes.
“The conditions on that long night that bled into the following day were intolerably putrid. Some of the actors hadn’t washed or changed their clothes in five weeks for continuity, and the set was littered with dead dog and cattle parts and fetid cheese for atmosphere, giving off an unbearably rank odor. “ The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Film That Terrified A Rattled Nation,” by Joseph Lanza (Skyhorse Publishing), recalls how that scene, filmed in one 26-hour marathon, took place in a farmhouse in Round Rock, Texas, where the mercury had soared to 115 degrees. Behind the scenes, the making of the film was a real-life horror show. In the film’s most horrifying scene, a woman is tormented at a dinner table, tied to the arms of a corpse as she’s threatened with imminent death by the ghoulish clan. “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” directed and co-written by Tobe Hooper and released in 1974, set the standard for the slasher-film genre with its depiction of a family of sadistic cannibals who torture and murder a group of interlopers. 'Neglected' children's asylum hides shocking 'experimental' treatments Neve Campbell on 'Scream 6' salary: A man would've been offered more
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