There are a few reasons for the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s groundbreaking success. Certainly, the iconic figure of Leatherface, the masked madman swinging an enormous saw, was hugely important. Tobe Hooper's gritty direction also played a role, as did the film’s marketing campaign, which hyped its loose relation to a real-life murder case. But perhaps the single most important element was Marilyn Burns, the film’s “final girl,” who endures unspeakable horror but manages to survive. No one who has seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has ever forgotten its ending, where Burns, drenched in blood and screaming for her life, runs from Leatherface’s home out to the highway, where she flags down a passing truck and narrowly escapes a violent death. During the entire three-minute sequence, Burns never stops screaming. Even after she’s safe in the bed of the truck, her shrieks escalate into maniacal laughter. She’s alive, but completely destroyed, a nod to the film’s ads, which wondered “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”

It’s like a nightmare come to life, and it’s worth remembering today, even if it guarantees a night of uneasy sleep, with the news that Burns has sadly passed away at the age of 65. According to Deadline, the actress was found in her Houston home yesterday by a family member. So far, a cause of death has not been made public.

In 2004, Burns told an interviewer that she’d always been interested in the arts, and she got her first job in film while she was still in high school, appearing in Robert Altman’s 1970 film Brewster McCloud. She was born in Pennsylvania and raised in Houston, and then attended the University of Texas, where she attended a casting call for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. She later had a crucial role in the 1976 TV movie Helter Skelter about the Manson Family murders, and reunited with Hooper for 1977’s Eaten Alive.

Asked if the intensity of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s grisly images affected her emotionally, Burns said “I was just so grateful it was over. I was probably the happiest girl alive.” The ending was particularly grueling, as the hot Texas sun baked the chocolate syrup and food coloring approximating human blood into her hair and scalp, attracting bees and ants. Then after they’d finally wrapped the sequence, Hooper called Burns back to set to shoot the whole thing over again. “So at the end, on the truck,” Burns said in 2004, “that’s how I felt… I didn’t need to sink way down deep inside me to give that ending performance.” Burns may have had to go through hell to get to that moment, but the results have chilled and mesmerized movie fans for decades. It will stand forever as one of horror cinema’s most indelible images.