Unleashed: 1974

What evil lurks: Director Tobe Hooper was inspired by both a hardware store and a famous serial killer when he wrote what would become The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Filmed on a shoestring budget under an unforgiving Texas sun that overexposed most of the film, the end product is a film with a tone that looks and feels so raw and real that it has caused nightmares for nearly four decades now. Hooper also hoped to qualify for a PG rating, so he kept most of the violence off camera—the result being a film made twice as scary by inviting viewers’ darkest imaginations to the dinner table. Add to that the innovative film score that included disturbing ambient sounds of broken camera shutters, rusty tools, and slaughterhouses and you have what is considered one of the scariest films of all time. There was no hope for PG and the film got Rated R.

Highlight from hell: An unsettling family dinner scene with an involuntary guest uses extreme eye close ups to terrifying effect.

Terrifying trivia: Filming during a Texas heatwave was so brutal that actor Edwin Neal claimed to have an easier time in Vietnam.

Diabolical dialogue: “They don’t throw nothing away. They, they use the jaws, the muscles, and the eyes, and the ligaments and everything!”

Son of: Psycho (1960). Author Robert Bloch’s fascination with real-life serial killer Ed Gein led to his story and Alfred Hitchcock’s subsequent film adaptation Psycho. Ed Gein’s actions inspired many films with a variety of results, but Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are the most memorable.

Shoddy sequel syndrome: As effective as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, it is always hard to identify with a group of snotty teenagers in a van.