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It happened in 1974, 1986, 1990, 1995, 2003, 2006, 2013, and in 2017. Now, 48 years later it’s happening again. This week marks the premiere of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, director David Blue Garcia’s modern take on Leatherface and another sequel to the 1974 original. Nine movies into this franchise, it’s worth asking why. What is it about the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that continues to haunt our nightmares? Looking back at the original, it was never just about this killer’s prowess with chainsaws or his propensity to wear faces made of human flesh. No, what has always made Leatherface both iconic and disturbing is his shockingly relatable internal life. All that horror is all thanks to one quiet, often-overlooked scene.
It’s interesting that Leatherface inspired the slasher genre because a giant madman is not the character who haunts Hooper’s 1974 classic. Instead, the monster Hooper gave us was a disturbed man who overreacted to a home invasion. In the first half of the original, Leatherface never went hunting for this movie’s band of young adults. Instead, they almost always came to him. Kirk (William Vail) broke into his house looking for gas and was met with a hammer to the head. Pam (Teri McMinn) followed soon after as she looked for Kirk. That decision led to her hanging from a meat hook. And when Jerry (Allen Danziger) went looking for his lost friends, he met a similar fate.
Every one of these encounters started with Leatherface in the right. Sure, the second he started swinging hammers and chainsaws, he became the bad guy. But barging into people’s houses is also an unsettling crime. Because of this, the large, intimidating monster at the center of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre never fully felt like a monster. As the story progressed, small details emerged about the figure that would go on to sculpt the slasher genre. For example, it’s revealed that Leatherface is trapped in an abusive household with a father, brother, and grandfather who think it’s OK to murder people and turn them into barbecue. Since he’s out in the middle of nowhere, it’s safe to assume that Leatherface probably hasn’t met many other people. His squeals and moans imply that he may have a mental or developmental disability. Hansen even reportedly visited special needs schools to prepare for the role. So when this complicated and abused man found himself home alone with a flock of strangers who kept breaking in, of course he overreacted.
In one of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s most surprising strokes of brilliance, the movie actually portrayed the emotional toll of this near-constant home invasion. After killing Kirk and Pam, Leatherface takes a moment for himself. Panting and moaning, he drags himself to a corner of the house and just sits. You can actually see him alternating between panicking and trying to pull himself together with each rattling breath. It’s an anxiety attack that absolutely makes sense. Leatherface has no idea how his father (Jim Siedow) is going to react to all of these dead bodies. Based on how he typically acts, there’s a good chance his dad will hurt him for letting anyone in their house. But while he’s panicking about what’s going to happen to him, these intruders just keep coming. For a brief moment, we see the movie from Leatherface’s perspective, and it’s clear that he absolutely cannot win.
It should go without saying that murdering people is wrong. Leatherface is indisputably the villain of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But what has always made him alluring was that he was a villain you could understand, at least for a moment. If strangers kept breaking into your house, you may not kill anyone but you would be terrified. The motivation for Leatherface’s first reign of terror was never explicitly stated but it was shown in disarming glimpses of empathy. It’s interesting that this is the detail that’s routinely missing from the slasher genre.
At his core, Leatherface has always been a tragic figure. He’s a man surrounded by abuse and poverty, the latter owning to technological advances that made his family’s slaughterhouse jobs obsolete. He’s been unable to receive the type of societal care that he needs. It’s that tension between understanding why this family is this way and abject revulsion that has always made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre so effective. We don’t want to have sympathy for our villains, especially not when they’re deranged as the ones in TCM. Yet it’s next to impossible to walk away from this 1974 movie without being at least a little bit on Leatherface’s side. Yeah, the cannibal family is to blame for these onscreen horrors, but so is American society. That’s a lesson that the latest installment in this franchise would do well to keep in mind.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) premieres on Netflix Friday, February 18.
