The Correct Order To Watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Movies

The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" franchise is a long and tangled string of movies that can be difficult to unravel and get in the right order. The full series is comprised of nine total films released over the course of several decades. With many entries in the franchise going unnumbered and using non-descriptive, interchangeable titles, it can be a headache to even put them into their official release order, let alone put them into their proper chronological order. With sequels, prequels, reboots, requels, retcons, and remakes, it's fair to say that the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" timeline is a mess.

With that messiness comes quite a lot of inconsistency as well. Not all films in the overall franchise are considered canonical in the worlds of other entries in the series, meaning some films ignore others and erase the backstories established in earlier movies. The intellectual property ownership of the series changed hands almost every time a new movie was made. The brand wound up in the hands of such wildly different parties as The Cannon Group in the '80s and Michael Bay in the 2000s. The franchise never had the type of singular guiding voice behind the scenes that could have ensured a solid continuity from movie to movie, so the series instead wound up as a confusing jumble instead.

If you only aim to see the out-and-out good "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movies, then you are probably best off sticking to the original 1974 film and leaving the rest of the series by the wayside. However, if you are truly determined to watch the entire franchise from top to bottom, this is the correct order to do it.

Released and set in 1974 Texas, this is the film that started it all. If you only plan to watch one movie in the series, make sure it is the original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." This horror classic was directed and produced by Tobe Hooper, who also co-wrote the script with Kim Henkel, who would return to the series as a writer, director, and producer two decades later. The film was extremely controversial in its time and faced a contentious history of censorship and bans, even winding up on the infamous video nasty list. Despite this harsh reputation, much of the film's violence is actually kept off-screen or only implied. It is a credit to Hooper's direction that the movie feels as grungy and visceral as it does while displaying far more restraint than it often receives credit for. It wasn't until later on in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series that the movies began truly wallowing in gratuitous gore.

The story of the original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is extremely simple and was never designed to launch a single sequel, let alone a massive 50-year franchise. A group of young friends travels to an isolated rural home and faces torment and death at the hands of the deranged Sawyer family. While Leatherface would eventually become the main villain and the de facto figurehead of the series, that was not the case in the original. Leatherface makes quite the mark in the original, but he was just one member of the twisted Sawyer household, all of whom leave impressions that are just as large.

The director of the original film, Tobe Hooper, returned to helm the first sequel and would remain the only person who ever directed two movies in the franchise to date. Rather than attempting to recapture the intense and disturbing magic of the first installment, Hooper and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson took the property in a completely different direction. There is still plenty of violence and horror to be found in this sequel, but "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" veered headstrong into over-the-top dark comedy territory, as exemplified by the film's tongue-in-cheek poster, which parodies the poster of "The Breakfast Club."

The overwhelming financial success and high-profile reputation garnered by the original 1974 classic makes it surprising that the first sequel wasn't made until 12 years later in 1986. As explained by horror host Joe Bob Briggs, the prolonged wait between movies was due to the rights to the first film being in litigation for several years. As an indie fundraising measure, Hooper sold percentages of the film (totaling 140%, oops) to the likes of Texas politicians, a local drug dealer, and the New York mafia. Briggs was a personal friend of Hooper and had a cameo role in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" that ended up getting cut from the final edit. It was The Cannon Group, known for their over-the-top excess style, who eventually wound up with the rights to the property and produced the film with a relatively small but astronomically higher $4.7 million budget compared to the $60,000 bare-bones budget of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Despite what some of the other movies claim, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is the only truly 100% direct sequel to the original and arguably the only sequel that could be called anywhere in the ballpark of being a good movie.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" had a great deal of potential that didn't have the chance to flourish. Returning to the series for the first time in 20 years was Kim Henkel, who co-wrote the original film with Tobe Hooper. As odd as it sounds, Henkel remains the only person who has ever written and directed a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movie solo, and the only person who has written two movies in the series. His presence should have been enough to bring the series back on track, but some egregious behind-the-scenes meddling ruined any chance he had at success.

After the disaster that was "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III," the rights to the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" property again changed hands, this time landing under the control of Columbia Pictures. With such a major name in the film industry behind the distribution, it's a bit ironic that "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" had the smallest and most botched release out of any entry in the entire franchise. The movie was only released in about 15 theaters and received no marketing push from Columbia, who was accused of trying to bury the film. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" was first released in 1995, then re-released in 1997 after its two stars (the then-unknown Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey) had blown up in popularity. Both releases were extremely limited and were total financial failures.

This re-release was doomed from the outset as McConaughey's new management at CAA sought to prevent the film from being seen, and Columbia complied. This led to a lawsuit between the film's producers and McConaughey's CAA representation for "inter alia, tortious interference" in the film's distribution. The outcome of the lawsuit proved largely irrelevant as the damage had already been done, and the fate of "The Next Generation" was sealed with a pathetic box office return of just $185,000. The future of the mainline canonical series was effectively dashed, but the property wasn't immune from being remade or rebooted.

After the practically non-existent box office results of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" killed the series, the only viable option left for the franchise was to remake it. The 2003 remake established a new timeline and canon, and when it was a huge financial success, a follow-up went into production. Rather than making the next movie a sequel, they instead opted to go the prequel route with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning." Just as "Leatherface" aimed to provide an origin story for the original timeline, "The Beginning" does the same for the remake canon.

The film begins in 1939 and showcases the meatpacking-plant birth of the baby who would grow up to become Leatherface. The narrative then jumps three decades into the future and primarily takes place four years before the events of the 2003 film. What follows is all of the murder and cannibalism that the series is known for. This prequel still enjoyed a solid box office return but was nowhere near as much of a whirlwind success as the remake, while also costing substantially more to produce. Further entries in the remake canon never followed.