Meet Ed Guinn, The Hero Of ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’
Meet the only man to stop Leatherface!
It’s one of the most cathartic endings in horror movie history. A blood-covered Sally, the only survivor of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, endures a harrowing night of horrors, only to escape. At dawn, with the murderous Hitchhiker and Leatherface in hot pursuit, she runs for help.
Before they can finish her off, she’s saved by a Cattle Truck driver, who runs over the Hitchhiker and jumps out of his rig, Black Maria, to bean Leatherface with a wrench. After injuring the maniac, he runs away in fear.
“I see my driver as the good guy—a pivotal character of the movie,” says Ed Guinn, the big, affable Texan—and real-life Texas truck driver—who plays the trucker saving Marilyn Burns’ Sally in the film’s final minutes.
“Since I get her out of the nightmare, I’m the hero, because that’s what the good guy does! Even though he stumbles into it and runs out of it, he’s still the good guy,” said Guinn. “He’s kind of an Everyman doing his job when all hell breaks loose in front of him. His life is changed forever, one person is killed, Eddie Neal’s Hitchhiker, and my truck driver is running for his life. He even leaves his truck behind!”
How He Was Cast In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Guinn wound up in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre because production designer Bob Burns “pulled [him] into it.” He explained,
“[Bob] said to me, ‘There’s this movie, and, if you’re not doing anything on this given day, why don’t you come down and shoot this scene?’ They needed me to go to a truck stop and pick up this cattle trailer. My brother-in-law and I were partners in the truck I drove. I didn’t haul cattle; we usually hauled produce, fruit, and vegetables. They rented a cattle trailer for the scene, so I picked it up and got to the set an hour later. We started shooting the movie as soon as I got there at nine in the morning, and then shot until four or five in the afternoon. It was all done in a one-day shoot for me and my truck .”
Once he arrived on set with his truck, “I wore my own clothes, that’s my shirt—it was a very low budget film, man. I have never gotten any money from this movie, but I didn’t expect any. I got my payment then and there.”
Guinn found that director “Tobe Hooper was kind of a mumbler, in terms of how he gave direction. He didn’t tell you much, not a lot about what to do and what not to do.
“[The Texas Chain Saw Massacre co-writer] Kim Henkel mostly directed me, and let me know what they needed and expected from me in terms of input. Kim knew what needed to happen for the film because he had written a lot of it. I remember Kim and his input more than I do Tobe’s.”
Working With Icons
Of the film’s scream queen, Guinn said, “Marilyn Burns, who played Sally, was nice, really nice, but I only met her during that one scene.”
As for the notorious Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen, Guinn said,
“I liked him a lot! Gunnar was an old friend of mine—I was born in San Antonio and met Gunnar in the mid ‘60s. Gunnar was the Best Man of my brother-in-law at my sister’s wedding. My brother-in-law was German and moved to Austin, Texas, where he and Gunnar became close friends because Gunnar was Icelandic. They were very close, in a small town like Austin, because they were both Foreigners.”
He continued,
“I knew Gunnar quite a bit; he used to go camping with us. Gunnar would hang out with us, just a good guy. I liked Gunnar a lot. I watched him do part of the chainsaw dance that ends the film. But, I left while he was still doing it. I wanted to get the truck back while there was still plenty of light.”
Seeing Gunnar in his costume also made a strong impression on Guinn.
“The moment I saw him as Leatherface, when he came running at me in a mask, bloody smock, and chainsaw, I just felt sorry for him,” he said. “It was hot that day, really nightmarishly hot—the kind of heat you can only get in a place like Austin, with all the high humidity.”
Guinn continued, saying, “It’s not like a desert heat; Texas heat will break you. And there he was, poor Gunnar in that mask all day, runnin’, carrying that heavy chainsaw. He once told me that running in that big mask was like running while wearing a blindfold! It was really hard.”
The Only Person To Hurt Leatherface
Guinn’s truck driver is the only person to hurt Leatherface in the film.
“That’s true,” he says happily, “When he comes at me and the girl, I’m the only one who injures him! I hit Leatherface with a wrench that Bob Burns made—Bob Burns was so pivotal to this movie! He also made the bone chairs and Grampa, too.
“For the scene where I throw my tool and hit Leatherface in the head? Bob made my wrench out of balsa wood,” he explains.
“What was so interesting about the wrench is that it looks like a real pipe wrench, but you look at it closer, and anyone who uses a real pipe wrench immediately realizes that it’s missing things,” he said.
“Bob didn’t want to put all the detail into it; he just wanted it to look real for that quick scene,” Guinn explained. “It was light, so light to hold, it was hard to throw, but I managed to hit Gunnar with it.”
He added, “The wrench didn’t weigh anything, so he pretended to be hurt. It took two takes because it surprised me that it was so light to hold and throw, but it worked out great. It doesn’t kill him, but it gets him to cut his own leg open. He doesn’t die, because you see, he’s this monster dancing with the chainsaw at the end!”
How Did His Truck Get That Name?
Over the years, a lot of film critics have speculated that the name of the truck, Black Maria, was an homage to Thomas Edison. But it really was just a coincidence.
Quinn explained, “That’s funny. ‘Black Maria’ is the name we picked for our truck, because his middle name is Maria—he’s named after Erich Maria Remarque, who wrote All Quiet On The Western Front—and I’m Black! So, ‘Black Maria’. By sheer coincidence, Black Maria was the name of Thomas Edison’s studio. Some critics thought my truck was named after that. It was also a slang name for New York City cop cars.”
“When the chainsaw hits the door of my cab, it was a fake door that Bob Burns made for my truck—it was really just a thin sheet of aluminum with all the numbers copied perfectly and stuck on with a thin sheet of spirit gum! They used a real chainsaw for that scene. That fake truck door sat in my brother-in-law’s basement for 30 years, but I don’t know where it is now.”
After completing his part, Guinn went back to driving his truck. “I didn’t realize the movie had become this huge thing until the year 2000 or so. Gunnar, Ed Neal, and I did a horror convention together, and I was flabbergasted!” he said.
Discovering The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Fame In The 2000s
He continued on, explaining, “All these people wanted to talk to us about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre! I go to cons now, like Texas Frightmare or CreepI.E. in Ontario, California, and meet fans from all over; places like England, France, and Germany, who fly in just to ask me and the others about doing the original film!”
But he learned about these conventions from Leatherface himself. “Gunnar told me about these conventions, ‘Horror fans are the most decent, nice people you will ever meet,’ and he’s right,” said Guinn. “I have been invited to midnight screenings of the movie, but midnight is not my time to roam! It’s crazy. I was living in Texas, with no idea that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was such a big deal! I didn’t see any of the remakes, or what my character did in them.”
Besides truck driving, Guinn’s also an artist. “I make industrial scores for car dealership commercials. I won a student academy award for a documentary I did the score for, on foster kids,” he said. “In 2012, I did a movie called Butcher Brothers, because Kim Henkel and his son were the producers on that. They brought me in for a goofy cameo, which was fun. It was kind of like my truck driver from Texas Chain Saw!”
A Continued Legacy With The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
He’s happy with his continuing connection to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
“I’m so glad to be involved in such an iconic film that, 50 years on, people continue to respond to! I was astounded when Bob Burns told me that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in the Museum of Modern Art! I never thought twice about it after doing it,” Quinn confesses.
“It’s very exciting to find that my one-day gig in a film is part of this cult movie beloved all over the world! I’m barely there in the film by the skin of my teeth, but I’m there and I do save the girl!”
Categorized:Interviews
