10 Movies That Smashed The Box Office With A Totally Unknown Cast

5. Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Another slasher, but the lack of stars in this horror really do help chill the bones, Texas Chainsaw Massacre helped kick off the genre, along with the likes of Black Christmas, and took a number of cues from Psycho, the 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (more on that film later). While it mined Psycho for themes and camera trickery, it really took everything Hitchcock did and multiplied it by a factor of ten. A more isolated setting, more killers, this time even creepier than Norman Bates, more deaths. The list goes on, but is also notable for one of the most obscure casts ever to be put on film. Sally Hardesty, the films main heroine and only survivor was played by Marilyn Burns, who had only played a minor part in one film at that point. Then there was Paul Partain, playing the wheelchair-bound Franklin Hardesty. He'd only turned to acting a couple of years after returning from Vietnam and being laid off from his job at the manufacturing plant. Again the film was hardly the worse for the lack of involvement of recognisable stars. Making $300m at the box office - a remarkable 100 times what the studio paid to have it made.