In a hardware store years ago, the director of the horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” found himself overwhelmed by people who needed to buy nails, tools, or whatever else.

“The crowd was crushing in and it was really … I wanted out of the there,” said Tobe Hooper. “I found myself standing in front of the rack of chainsaws, and I thought to myself, I know how I could get out of here. And just the idea happened.”

His movie, released in 1974, is the tale of teenagers stuck in a remote part of Texas after their van runs out of gas. Looking back, Hooper says the gasoline crisis of the early 70s had an obvious impact on his creativity.

And so it goes with many of the horror films made in America in the late 1960s and 70s, something we learn in Adam Simon’s fascinating doc “The American Nightmare.” With the help of directors from those great movies - Hooper, George Romero, and David Cronenberg - this 70-minute gem follows the roots of films like the “The Night of the Living Dead” back to horrific moments in our Nation’s history. Romero, in fact, remembers driving to New York City with "Night of the Living Dead" in his trunk to sell the film the same night that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead in 1968.

Today we live with Swine Flu and Al-Qaeda. Back then Americans lived with things like - being carted off to Vietnam, barking German Shepherds and the fire hoses of the Civil Right Movement, the shootings at Kent State, and the constant threat of nuclear war - all of these things drenched daily life in horror and fear.

The director makes a point to remind us that even our own president turned out to be a monster. “North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States, only Americans can do that,” states President Richard Nixon in “The American Nightmare.”

The documentary features lots of footage from the original movies including scores and trailers, include one for Wes Craven’s “The Last House on the Left" that's accompanied by a bone-chilling "70s" voice over. Simon's doc also contains some smart commentary from several horror film professors. Overall nothing beats words straight from the filmmaker's mouth.

“I wanted something savage to happen,” says John Carpenter, the director of “Halloween.” “I don’t think I could do that now. I don’t think they’d let me do that.”

These are the things that make for a great documentary.

By Gregory Crofton

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