To get into the role of the murderous man-child, a character inspired by the exploits of notorious murderer Ed Gein, Hansen spent time with mentally handicapped people, studying their mannerisms, the things that upset them. What Hansen does feels less like acting than going insane on screen Wes Craven said it looked like вЂњsomeone stole the camera and started killing people.вЂќ HooperвЂ™s film, anchored by HansenвЂ™s performance, approaches its horrors with such fierce banality it feels surreal. Today, the minute size of the chainsaw he slings around (whose idiosyncratic spelling in the filmвЂ™s title reflects the filmвЂ™s singular DIY attitude) seems almost comical, given the histrionic elongation of on-screen weaponsВ which bear increasingly little semblance to reality.

When a coterie of young hippie types wander into LeatherfaceвЂ™s house, he greets them by bashing in their brains with a mallet, dangling them from meat hooks, and carving them up with the titular woodland instrument. The character is a severely mentally handicapped man who wears a mask of his victimsвЂ™ faces sutured together in a grotesque quilt you never see HansenвЂ™s face unsheathed.

He took the role of Leatherface as a summer job, something he could tell his grandchildren about. Hansen, who died Saturday at the age of 68, was studying English and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Texas when he met Hooper. A lot of the credit for the filmвЂ™s infamy belongs to Gunnar Hansen, the 300-pound Icelandic-American poetry journal editor and sometimes carpenter who imbued the pivotal role of Leatherface with a kind of demented malaise that has afflicted few horror film villains, before or since. The film isnвЂ™t nearly as gory as its long-standing reputation insinuates вЂ“ Hooper wanted a PG rating, a laughable reverie (he instead got an X, then after some cuts, an R) вЂ“ but it pounds away at your nerves with perverse determination, abetted by the grinding and whirring of the sonic landscape, which sounds like a herd of mechanical animals in heat. вЂњThereвЂ™s just some things you gotta do.вЂќ Hooper seemed to approach the film with the same tenacious attitude: his seminal slasher film, which cost a paltry $100,000 (in cash), is a relentless 90-minute excursion into the sun-dried bowels of hell, with little reprieve from the screaming and shrieking of its victims and villains. вЂњI just canвЂ™t take no pleasure in killing,вЂќ says an old gas station attendant and habitual cannibal in Tobe HooperвЂ™s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

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