Iconic Slasher Movie Actor Was Paid For His Role In Drugs
In a story that could not happen today, actor John Larroquette confirmed how he was paid for his role as the Narrator in the classic 1974 horror film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Speaking to Parade, the man with the iconic voice confirms he was paid in marijuana for his part in the low-budget classic. It was a rare case of someone responding with “totally true,” in response to internet rumors.
John Larroquette went on to say that director Tobe Hooper, “He gave me some marijuana or a matchbox or whatever you called it in those days. I walked out of the [recording] studio and patted him on the back side and said, “Good luck to you.” The two had been friends for years, first meeting when Larroquette was a bar tender in Colorado. Each was doing a favor for the other, the Night Court star working for cheap, and the legendary horror director providing some good weed, as at the time, neither one knew that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was going to launch a franchise.
When Tobe Hooper was working on the seminal horror classic, he spent under $140,000 on the entire budget for the film, the equivalent of around $800,000 today. The plot is simple, following friends that get waylaid on the way back home and become the victims of a family of cannibals. With a budget that small, and a cast of unknown actors, it’s really no wonder that John Larroquette accepted drugs for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
“He gave me some marijuana or a matchbox or whatever you called it in those days. I walked out of the [recording] studio and patted him on the back side and said, “Good luck to you.”
John Larroquette on his role as The Narrator in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
John Larroquette’s role, which took under an hour, sets the scene of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and immediately puts viewers into the headspace of expecting to see something horrible, bloody, gory, and possibly based on a true story. All of those were true, as Hooper wrote the script based off of the crimes of notorious serial killer Ed Gein, though it was only a very loose adaptation. No one would have expected the small film to go on and become a genre-defining classic, earning $30 million ($150 million with inflation) during its theatrical run.
The film was such a success that sequels followed, and in 2003, John Larroquette came back to narrate The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. This time, the cast included Jessica Biel, R. Lee Embry, Mike Vogel, and Eric Balfour. Larroquette was paid with money to reprise his role, and again, the film was a massive success, spawning a wave of similar horror movie remakes during the aughts.
John Larroquette is coming back again, for a fourth time following the 2006 prequel, as the Narrator for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2020, a direct sequel to the original film, set decades later. A Netflix exclusive that failed to make much of an impact, the film was largely ignored by fans and derided by critics.
Today, The Librarians star is going back to his most famous role, Attorney Dan Fielding on the revival series of Night Court. Starring The Big Bang Theory’s Melissa Rauch as the daughter of Harold Stone, played in the original by the late Harry Anderson, the new series premieres January 17th on NBC. John Larroquette is again, being paid in cash for his role, accepting weed for The Texas Chainsaw Massacare is one of those amazing things that will never happen again.
