Texas Chainsaw Massacre Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
This Texas Chainsaw Massacre trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and starts with Tobe Hooper's 1974 original: the five friends in the van, the hitchhiker, the gas station, the meat hook, the dinner scene shot over a full sweltering day, and the girl in the pickup truck laughing as Leatherface swings his saw at the sunrise. It covers the making of the film too: the sub-$140,000 budget, the unwashed costume, the real animal remains, the narrator paid in marijuana, the mob-linked distributor and the countries that banned it. Then it moves through the franchise: Dennis Hopper and the black-comedy sequel, Viggo Mortensen and Matthew McConaughey's early appearances, Michael Bay's 2003 remake, the actors under the mask, Leatherface's various real names, and the 2022 Netflix film. Difficulty runs from easy to hard, and it is shown on every question. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the original 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper. His art film Eggshells had found no distributor, so after seeing students line up for Night of the Living Dead he bet on cheap horror as the way to get noticed far from Hollywood.
Q 02Roughly how much did The Texas Chain Saw Massacre cost to make in 1973?
About $140,000
About $140,000. It went on to take more than $30 million in North America, yet the cast and crew saw almost none of it: their distributor underpaid them and went bankrupt in 1976.
Q 03Which real-life Wisconsin killer partly inspired Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
Ed Gein
Ed Gein. He wore skin cut from corpses, which gave Leatherface his masks; one of the writers said he also drew on a Houston serial-murder case that was in the news as they wrote.
Q 04Which actor played Leatherface in 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
Gunnar Hansen
Gunnar Hansen. His costume went unwashed through weeks of 100-degree heat for fear of spoiling it, and by the end of the shoot, he said, no one would sit next to him at lunch.
Q 05Who plays final girl Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)?
Marilyn Burns
Marilyn Burns. A University of Texas drama student, she took so many knocks during the shoot that her screams were real by the end, and her costume had gone stiff with stage blood.
Q 06Which future Night Court star performed the opening narration of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
John Larroquette
John Larroquette. Then an out-of-work actor, he has said the director paid him in marijuana for the job, and he came back to read the opening of the 2003 remake as well.
Q 07At the start of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the van radio reports which crime in the area?
Grave robbing
Grave robbing. The bulletin plays over glimpses of a dug-up corpse, and it sends Sally and Franklin to make sure their grandfather still lies where he was buried.
Q 08The writers of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre set out to update which fairy tale?
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel. They kept its young wanderers lured to a remote house to be eaten; as one of the writers put it, theirs was just more sinister than a gingerbread cottage.
Q 09With what weapon does the hitchhiker attack Franklin in the van in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
A straight razor
A straight razor. He slashes Franklin's arm, is thrown out, and smears his own blood down the side of the van as it pulls away, a mark the friends shrug off.
Q 10How does Leatherface kill Kirk, his first victim, in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)?
With a hammer
With a hammer. The blow lands with no music and no warning, the way cattle were felled at the slaughterhouse where his family used to work.
Q 11Which character does Leatherface hang on a meat hook in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)?
Pam
Pam. For all the scene's notoriety, the hook is never shown going in and there is almost no blood: the camera simply closes in on her face as she hangs there.
Q 12How does Sally first escape the farmhouse in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
By jumping through a second-floor window
By jumping through a second-floor window. She runs to the gas station, where the owner soothes her with an offer of help, then beats her, loads her into his pickup and drives her straight back to the house.
Q 13Why do the brothers cut Sally's finger in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)?
Q 21What became of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre farmhouse?
It became a restaurant in Kingsland, Texas
It became a restaurant in Kingsland, Texas. A hotel's owners moved the house there from Round Rock in 1998 and restored it, so guests could eat in the room where the cannibal family's dinner was filmed.
Q 22Which New York museum holds The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in its permanent collection?
The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art. The same film was banned outright in Britain and several other countries, and one critic answered the museum's embrace of it with an attack in Harper's Magazine.
Q 23Why does Leatherface change masks during The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)?
So Grandpa can suck her blood
So Grandpa can suck her blood. The trick knife kept failing, so the actor playing Leatherface quietly cut her finger for real, during a dinner scene that took 26 straight hours to shoot.
Q 14How does the hitchhiker die at the end of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)?
He is run over by a truck
He is run over by a truck. He is chasing Sally down the road when a cattle truck flattens him, and she gets away in the bed of a passing pickup, laughing hysterically through the blood.
Q 15How does the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) end?
Leatherface swinging his saw at the dawn sky
Leatherface swinging his saw at the dawn sky. Fans call it the chainsaw dance, and the series keeps returning to it: the 1986 sequel ends with its heroine whirling a saw over her head the same way.
Q 16Which animal's remains joined the cows, deer and goats dressing the farmhouse in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
An armadillo
An armadillo. The art director gathered real carcasses and bones for the set, and they rotted so fast in the Texas summer heat that the cast ran to the windows between takes to be sick.
Q 17Which of these was a working title for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
Head Cheese
Head Cheese. It was one of several names tried and dropped: the final title was settled only a week before shooting began, and the head of the Texas Film Commission claimed the idea as his own.
Q 18What rating did the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre hope his uncut film would get?
PG
PG. He kept the blood off screen and phoned the ratings board for advice, wanting children to be able to see it; the board gave the uncut film an X, and only cuts brought it down to an R.
Q 19Where did the chainsaw idea for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre strike its director?
In the hardware section of a busy store
In the hardware section of a busy store. Stuck in a Christmas shopping crowd at Montgomery Ward, he found himself by a rack of chain saws and thought of a very quick way through the crush.
Q 20While Britain banned The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, what else did its censors bar from film titles?
The word 'chainsaw'
The word 'chainsaw'. Imitators had to rename their films, and the ban on the original outlasted two chief censors: Britain passed it uncut only in 1999, some 25 years after its release.
Each one fits a different mood
Each one fits a different mood. The writers gave him no speech and no personality of his own, so, as the actor who played him put it, the mask he picks shows his state of mind and how he will behave.
Q 24In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, what does the cannibal family's cook win with his 'prime meat'?
A chili contest
A chili contest. The sequel's black joke is that the family, now given the surname Sawyer, has gone into catering: the cook's secret ingredient is his victims, and the judges love it.
Q 25What is Leatherface's real name in the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and its prequel?
Thomas Hewitt
Thomas Hewitt. The prequel shows him born on a slaughterhouse floor and dumped with the rubbish, then found and raised by Luda Mae Hewitt, whose family he grows up to kill for.
Q 26Which star plays chainsaw-wielding lawman 'Lefty' Enright in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2?
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper. His Lefty is the uncle of Sally and Franklin from the first film, and he plays the avenger deadly straight, arming himself with three chainsaws, while everything around him goes for laughs.
Q 27Which character does Bill Moseley play in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2?
Chop Top
Chop Top. He is the twin of the hitchhiker who died in the first film, and he outlasts the rest of the family, chasing the heroine up a tower until she turns a chainsaw on him.
Q 28The poster for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 parodied the poster for which 1985 teen film?
The Breakfast Club
The Breakfast Club. The cannibal family sits posed like that film's five teenagers, a wink that the sequel was played for laughs, something its director felt audiences had missed in the original.
Q 29Which future Lord of the Rings star appeared in 1990's Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III?
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen. Eleven years before he played the noble Aragorn he was Tex, a hitchhiker who turns out to be Leatherface's brother and the film's chief villain.
Q 30Which two future Oscar winners starred in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation?
Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger
Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger. Both were little known when it was shot as The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; a studio then recut and retitled it, and it came out again in 1997, after both had broken out.