It takes years for a movie to earn its status as a classic, cult or otherwise. The Thing, for example, didn’t become a beloved favorite until years after it infamously tanked in theaters. Similarly, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre disgusted and appalled most critics and audiences upon release- though its catchy title and reputation meant a sturdy box office turnout. Nothing about the movie turned out the way the cast and crew thought it would, particularly the film’s reception. Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansen wasn’t prepared for the way audiences would receive his performance and how that reception would change and grow in the decades since, nor was he prepared for how it would affect everything up to and including his love life.
After The Texas Chain Saw Massacre began its theatrical run on October 1, 1974, in Texas before spreading across the country, discourse over the film got heated. Johnny Carson lampooned the film in opening monologues of The Tonight Show, The London Times lambasted it among many other trades, multiple countries banned it outright, and some of the cast and crew removed it from their resume in hopes of landing future gigs. It was only when critic Rex Reed raved about the film, declaring it the scariest film he’d ever seen, that the ice began to thaw and the tides began to turn. In the 45 years since its initial release, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has shifted from reviled trash to a celebrated work of art. It’s a heralded classic now, but for years it wasn’t easy being Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansen.
If you’ve read Hansen’s novel Chain Saw Confidential, a must read for fans of the movie, then you’re probably familiar with a story near the end where Hansen briefly recalls taking a first date to see his movie. She reacted to the invite warmly, excited about the possibility of dating a star, but the moment she saw Hansen’s Leatherface put his poor victim on a meat hook, well, the night ended with a door shut firmly in his face.
Hansen’s close friend Stephen Harrigan, a University of Texas graduate who went on to become staff writer and editor for Texas Monthly magazine, hilariously recounted his version of events that night for the magazine in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary. The article details how the double date went awry, while also noting that Hansen at least came away with his own fan club that night.
It was for the May 1985 issue of Texas Monthly that Hansen first told of that disastrous first date, in an article penned by Hansen himself. It might’ve been the first date derailed by his turn as Leatherface, but as he put it in the article- penned over a decade after that fateful date- it was hardly the last.
“And, as many others would in later years, she had confused me with the character I had played,” Hansen wrote. “So now when I meet a woman who wants to see the movie with me, I suggest she not see it. It’s just another horror movie, I tell her, the kind I would never go to myself, had I not been in it. I can’t stand horror movies, I say. They scare me. It usually works.”
Tobe Hooper’s seminal film changed horror as we know it, though it’s taken decades to get a relatively clear picture as to how. Even now, there are articles that still proclaim this classic to be one of the goriest ever made, when very little gore actually graces the screen. For Hansen, making the film was hell. So was getting paid on the project. Though he’d have redone it all again in a heartbeat. He wound up moving back to New England not long after, resuming the career that held his heart in the first place; writing. He learned a lot making the film, and grew to be proud of its legacy. Even if creating one of horror’s most iconic characters wound up derailing his love life for a spell after its release.
We often look back at the trajectories of classic films, but sometimes examining how iconic roles affected their actors is just as fascinating. We miss you, Gunnar.
And happy 45th, Leatherface.
