“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” is a slasher film directed and co-written by Tobe Hooper and released in 1974.

It is considered a classic in the horror genre due to its depiction of a family of sadistic cannibals who torture and murder a group of interlopers.

The film’s most iconic scene is when a woman is tied to the arms of a corpse and threatened with death by the ghoulish clan. However, the making of the film was equally as terrifying as the final product.

“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Film That Terrified A Rattled Nation,” by Joseph Lanza, reveals that the scene was filmed in one 26-hour marathon in a farmhouse in Round Rock, Texas.

The temperature on set had risen to 115 degrees, and the actors had not washed or changed their clothes in five weeks for continuity.

The set was littered with dead dog and cattle parts and fetid cheese, giving off an unbearably rank odor.

The conditions on set were so unbearable that cast and crew members referred to it as “the last supper.”

In addition to the unpleasant conditions, there were instances of actual violence on set.

During the dinner scene, the character Sally, 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 John Dugan, could drink her blood.

However, the prop knife malfunctioned, and Hansen grew so impatient that he surreptitiously sliced her finger for real before exposing her to Dugan’s saliva.

Neither Burns nor Dugan realized what had happened until years later at a post-screening Q&A. Burns was reportedly “furious,” but Dugan later said, “I didn’t find out until years later I was actually sucking on her blood, which is kind of erotic really.”

The cast and crew’s lack of regard for the well-being of the actors extended beyond the dinner scene.

Jim Siedow, who played one of the maniacs, later recalled how during a scene where his character was to beat Sally, things again became more real than a slasher film should allow.

Siedow noted that at first, he had trouble with the depiction of violence and couldn’t get himself to a place where he could simulate the vicious beating.

But as Hooper and others in the cast and crew, including Burns herself, prodded him to actually strike her, screaming things like “Hit her!,” “Hit her harder!,” “Hit her some more!,” Siedow eventually settled into the brutality.

The cast and crew were not the only ones who were high on set.

During filming, it was revealed that some of the actors were operating real chainsaws while under the influence of drugs.

This added an extra level of danger to an already dangerous set.

The final product of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” was praised for its raw and realistic portrayal of violence.

However, the behind-the-scenes story of the making of the film paints a different picture of the film’s production.

It is a story of a cast and crew who were willing to put the actors in dangerous and uncomfortable situations for the sake of the film.

It is a story of a set where the line between reality and fiction was blurred, and where the safety of the actors was not a priority.