The film is said to be based on real events taking place on August 18, 1973 somewhere in Texas. But since production started two months before that, on July 15, that could obviously not be the case. However, it wasn't just a marketing trick... The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is in fact inspired by a true story, one almost as gruesome as the movie. In November of 1957 the Wisconsin police made a horrible discovery when they searched the property of Ed Gein, a man they suspected to be involved in the disappearence of local store clerk Bernice Worder. Upon entering a shad on the suspects property, the police were greeted by a nightmarish scene. Worden's headless body was hanging upside down from the ceiling with her chest split open and gutted like a slaughtered animal. Continuing their search of the property, the police made several macabre discoveries. They found human skulls mounted as corner-posts on the bed, lampshades and chairs made of human skin and craniums that had been used as soup bowls. They also found several items of clothing, made from human body parts, among these was a mask made from facial skin. It turned out that Gein was a cannibal, a sexual psychopath and a notorious grave robber who had lost his mind completely after his mother passed away. He was arrested and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution where he died of cancer on July 26, 1984. His dreadful crimes inspired both Hitchcock's Psycho and Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs. And it also inspired Tobe Hooper to make one of the most sadistic and horryfying horror movies of all times.