10 Movies Based On True Stories (That Were Total Lies)

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is without a doubt one of the best and most influential horror movies of all-time, one made even more intriguing due to the fact that it was based on a true story... you know, of that time when a bunch of kids ended up being chainsawed to death by a leatherfaced maniac out in the middle of nowhere.

Or so the filmmakers wanted you to think when they marketed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a true story, which it totally isn't at all. Loosely inspired by some bad stuff serial killer Ed Gein did, the plot is actually totally fictional. Director Tobe Hooper made a conscious decision to brand The Texas Chainsaw Massacre "true" because he thought it would bring more people into the theatres to see it... he wasn't wrong; it made $30 million dollars on a tiny budget of just $300,000.

The disclaimer at the beginning of the film - "The film you are about to see is true" - was also apparently Hooper's way of reacting to the Watergate scandal, which is a little incident you may or may not have heard of from the '70s. The blatant lie was supposed to represent his personal feelings of disillusionment.