Iconic horror film ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ gets Waco screening with local connection

“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” the 1974 Texas-made independent horror film that made stars of director Tobe Hooper and Gunnar “Leatherface” Hansen, will be shown at 7:30 p.m. at the Performing Arts Community Center, 924 Austin Ave. Admission is $12 and doors open at 7 p.m.

The Waco Movie Club, a collaboration between Waco public radio station KWBU-FM and the Waco Independent Film Festival, adds a local connection to the film in the person of Ross Burns, host of KWBU’s “I Hear America Singing,” who will talk about his brother Bob (Robert A.) Burns and his pivotal contributions to the movie’s look.

Bob served as “Chain Saw’s” art director and helped Hooper, then a University of Texas film student, in casting some of the roles, including Hansen as Leatherface, the mask-wearing, chain saw-wielding killer who terrorizes a bunch of college kids who stumble across what seems like an abandoned rural homestead.

Bob juggled work in commercial art and studies as a UT theater major and brought an exacting eye — and opinion — to the work, Ross explained. “Bob was insistent on making the setting as realistic as possible,” he said. That covered everything from the house and barn that the college students encounter to the furniture made from bones to the three Leatherface masks that he made.

While sometimes credited as one of the first “bucket of blood” horror movies, “Chain Saw” actually was somewhat restrained in its gore. That was partially due, Ross said, to Bob’s fondness for Alfred Hitchcock movies, known for the director’s mastery of suggestion rather explicit detail.

The movie was shot in Central Texas — the Austin-centric Central Texas, that is — in the summer of 1973 and it proved a stressful experience for Bob, not because of content, but the frequent clashes with the equally headstrong Hooper, Ross said.

Hooper initially intended “Chain Saw” for the drive-in movie circuit in the spring of 1974, but a writers’ strike left studios hungry for films in brick-and-mortar theaters and “Chain Saw” became a mainstream release with a surprising audience response. “It was the third top-grossing film that week in more ways than one,” Ross quipped.

Bob had to sue to get the pay owed him, compounded by the loss of advertising work he missed due to the film, but his eye for realism opened a new career door when director Wes Craven came calling to ask him to work on his “The Hills Have Eyes.”

Other directors soon came calling when they were looking for art directors and Bob’s name, and work, appeared in such 1980s movies as “The Howling,” “Re-Animator,” “The Shining” and about a dozen more.

Bob returned to Austin after a decade in Hollywood and became a fixture in the film scene, eventually relocating and retiring to Seguin before his death in 2004.

Ross, six years his younger, followed a different career path, which included about 11 years at Sul Ross State University, where his extensive record collection led to the start of his “I Hear America Singing” for a Marfa public radio station in 2006. Ross continued his folk/Americana music program after he and his wife retired to Waco in 2014, hosting it on Waco’s KWBU.

Louis Hunter, a founder and director of the Waco film festival, said the 82-minute “Chain Saw” proved a landmark film despite, or perhaps because of, its low budget and DIY vibe. “It’s such a foundational film in the horror genre and in independent filmmaking,” he said.

It’s the third film up for discussion by the Waco Movie Club, which meets monthly to talk about specific films. Earlier films were “Dead Poets Society” and “Pan’s Labyrinth,” with “Saving Private Ryan” up for November.

Those attending “Chain Saw” can buy related merchandise as well as beverages and food, which includes barbecue and “chainslaw.”