When Japan Thought Texas Was Full of Chainsaw Killers

Netflix has once again cracked open America’s darkest legends with Monster: Ed Gein. I know I can’t be the only one who binged the show in one weekend! But before there were binge-worthy true crime series, there was one Texas horror movie that defined the genre, and made the rest of the world fear the Lone Star State.

When The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hit theaters in 1974, it didn’t just create a horror icon. It made Texas itself the stuff of nightmares.

When Japan Met Leatherface

The movie’s raw, documentary-style horror felt so real that people left theaters convinced the events on screen had actually happened. But nowhere was that reaction more intense than in Japan.

In a new documentary called Chain Reactions, Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike- the creative mind behind the cult horror hit Ichi the Killer- recalls the first time he accidentally watched the film. He hadn’t planned on it; he was 15 years old and looking to see a Charlie Chaplin revival in Osaka. When that showing sold out, he wandered into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre instead; known in Japan under the much darker title The Devil’s Sacrifice.

The lights dimmed, the old theater creaked, and what unfolded on screen was unlike anything Miike- or anyone else in Japan- had ever seen. The film’s grainy texture and suffocating heat made every moment feel too real, too dangerous. Leatherface’s chainsaw roared through the silence, and suddenly Texas didn’t look like the friendly cowboy state people imagined, it looked like the last place on Earth you’d want to be stranded.

Up until that point, movies had been something safe. For the first time, I felt that movies could be something dangerous. Because of that film, everyone thought Texas was a dangerous place, a desolate landscape.

The movie gave Japan an entirely new and terrifying image of Texas. For years, audiences associated the Lone Star State with dusty highways, creepy farmhouses, and a chainsaw that never seemed to stop revving.

And yet, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre didn’t just scare Japan, it inspired it. Miike went on to become one of Japan’s most daring horror directors, crediting Tobe Hooper’s vision for showing him that movies could unsettle you in ways you’d never expect.

READ MORE: Horror Lovers Will Love this Dining Spot in Texas

Fifty years later, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre still stands as one of the most disturbing and influential horror films ever made. What started as a scrappy low-budget project in the heat of Central Texas became a global nightmare that redefined what horror could be.

And as Netflix’s Monster: Ed Gein reminds audiences where these nightmares began, Texas is once again in the spotlight, the land of dusty roads, endless horizons, and legends that never die.