The Correct Order To Watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Series
As of this writing, there are nine movies in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series, and sussing out their chronology is one of the more herculean tasks a horror fan may find themselves undertaking. Like the "Halloween" movies, the "Texas Chainsaw" flicks abide by a choose-your-own-adventure structure, with some movies following a definite timeline, and others merrily ignoring previous chapters. Confoundingly, several of them have almost identical titles. The only consistent element of "Texas Chainsaw" is that they are all horrifically violent and unbearably disturbing. But, y'know, in a good way.
The premise of the "Texas Chainsaw" movies is simple. Thanks to rampant American poverty, entire families have been forced to live off the grid in remote, rural parts of the country. One of these families, largely inbred and blissfully detached from conventional morality, has taken to kidnapping passersby, stripping them for meat, and using their skin and bones as construction materials. When a van full of feckless city slickers passes through Texas in Tober Hooper's 1974 original, they run afoul of the locals, and many of the hippie kids find themselves dead or horrendously mutilated. The scariest member of the clan is a massive, mentally unwell brute nicknamed Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), so named for the mask of human skin he wears. Leatherface can barely speak and only knows how to treat and cure the flesh of victims.
The premise is so simple, it's kind of astonishing that so many filmmakers have taken a crack at it. Indeed, most of the "TCM" films are pretty aggressively terrible, often carried along by the raw, grimy, nightmarish power of the original.
Should one want to marathon through all nine of the extant "Chainsaws" to date, however, here is a handy guide.
The release order
The nine movies were released in the following order:
- Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974)
- Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" (1986)
- Jeff Burr's "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" (1990)
- Kim Henkel's "The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre," aka "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" (1995)
- Marcus Nispel's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2003)
- Jonathan Liebesman's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" (2006)
- John Luessenhop's "Texas Chainsaw 3D" (2013)
- Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's "Leatherface" (2017)
- David Blue Garcia's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2022)
Nispel's 2003 film is a remake of the original. Liebesman's 2006 film, "The Beginning," is a prequel to Nispel's film, meaning those two movies exist in their own continuity. The others all take place in a branching series of timelines that can be viewed in multiple orders. The 2017 film "Leatherface" is set in the 1960s, before the events of the original, and leads directly into the original, making it the single canonical prequel in the series. However, Hooper's "Massacre 2," "Chainsaw 3D," and Garcia's "Massacre" are all more or less direct sequels to the original, with "Chainsaw 3D" and 2022's "Massacre" ignoring parts 2 through 4. Although! If you squint, one might see the 2022 as being a sequel to the 1995 "Next Generation" film.
Fun trivia: "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" was one of the last films ever to receive an X rating from the MPAA before they switched over to using NC-17 ratings.
More fun trivia: "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" — the one with Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger — is considered one of the worst movies ever.
The branching narratives
To be succinct, then, here are the closest and most complete continuities as one might be able to suss out from a notoriously sloppy series, each one presented in order of their internal chronology:
Continuity #1:
- "Leatherface" (2017)
- "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974)
- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" (1986)
- "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" (1990)
- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" (1995)
- "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2022)
Continuity #2:
- "Leatherface" (2017)
- "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974)
- "Texas Chainsaw 3D" (2013)
Remake Continuity:
- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" (2006)
- "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2003)
As stated above, the 2022 film is more likely a direct sequel to the original, and may not belong in the continuity of films made from 1986 to 1995. Indeed, one can swap out "Texas Chainsaw 3D" with the 2022 film in Continuity #2 and not miss a step.
It's also notable that even within the solidest of continuities, the timelines don't synch up terribly well. If characters seem to wildly fluctuate in age from film to film, it's because the filmmakers weren't paying close attention.
More trivia: "Next Generation" was given a tiny limited release in 1995, but then received a re-titling and a major VHS re-release in 1997 after McConaughey and Zellweger became enormous stars (thanks to the 1996 films "A Time to Kill" and "Jerry Maguire," respectively). It's still terrible.
The remakes are slickly made and gorgeous to look at, which is, weirdly, exactly the wrong aesthetic to affect when remaking one of the grimiest movies of all time. One might appreciate, however, learning how a Texan murder family first came to start eating human flesh in the first place. It seems it was a combination of poverty, desperation, and proud Texan defiance of normality.