In the early 1970s, Central Texas locations including Leander and near Round Rock were used as the backdrop for one of the most infamous horror movies ever made.

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was released in 1974 and was written and directed by Austin native Tobe Hooper. The movie is about siblings Franklin and Sally Hardesty and their friends who take a road trip to visit the grave of the Hardestys’ grandfather. A cannibalistic family, one of whom is a chainsaw-wielding murderer, terrorizes the group, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Bagdad Cemetery in Leander is featured in one of the opening scenes of the movie. The cemetery opened in 1857, and early burials included Col. C.C. Mason, whose tombstone is predominantly shown in the film.

A large portion of the film was shot at a home located in Round Rock on Quick Hill Road, north of where SH 45 is today. The house has since been restored and moved to Kingsland, Texas.

Tim Harden, a Round Rock resident and owner of Texas Chainsaw Massacre Tours, lives 5 miles from the Round Rock home in the original film. Harden conducted extensive research on the film and became friends with many of the cast members, who were integral in helping identify Texas locations and providing other information about the movie for his tour business, he said.

“It all happened because I am a big fan of the first film,” Harden said. “My first website, texaschainsawmassacre.net, was to solve the myth of where this house was.”

Convicted murderer Ed Gein was part of the inspiration for the film’s plot. However, Hooper said in a 2004 interview with Texas Monthly that the inspiration came from crowd fatigue while holiday shopping at Capital Plaza in a hardware department that carried chainsaws.

“I know a way I could get through this crowd really quickly,” Hooper said during the interview.

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,” released in 1986, included a scene that was shot at a then-chainsaw repair store, which is now the Mean Eyed Cat bar in downtown Austin.

Dennis Hopkins, former band director at Leander High School, said the LHS band played “The Eyes of Texas” in one of the film’s nonviolent scenes on the railroad tracks behind the store.

“They offered to pay us $1,500, which at that time in the 1980s, that was a lot of money,” Hopkins said. “It would be something that we could buy some equipment with. … They gave all the band kids [a] prime rib dinner. We ate on-site with the [movie] stars. … It was something the kids could do to bring notoriety to them in a positive way. And it turned out to be a lot of fun to say, ‘Hey I’m in a movie.’”