Leatherface

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre character
Leatherface
Gender:	Male
Race	Caucasian
Location	Texas
Signature weapon:	Chainsaw Sledgehammer
Portrayed by:	Gunnar Hansen (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) Bill Johnson (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) R. A. Mihailoff (Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III) Robert Jacks (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation) Andrew Bryniarski (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (film) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning)

Leatherface is a fictional character in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror-film series. One of the first slasher-film villains, he has appeared in all six of the series' films since the release of the original, in 1974. The character wears masks made of human skin (a practice which led to his name) and engages in murder and cannibalism.

In the series, he often uses a chainsaw and sledgehammer to slaughter his victims.^[1] He lives with a poor redneck family of fellow cannibals and serial-killers, who often behave abusively and violently towards him. The character was inspired by serial killer Ed Gein, who also wore the skin of his victims.^[2]

Original series

The original film never shows Leatherface without one of his human-flesh masks on. He differs from other movie killers in that the films portray him not so much as sadistic or evil but as mentally retarded. Most of the time he only does what his family tells him to do. Hansen has stated that Leatherface is "completely under the control of his family. He'll do whatever they tell him to do. He's a little bit afraid of them."^[3] In the documentary The Shocking Truth, Tobe Hooper portrays Leatherface as a "big baby" who kills in self-defense because he feels threatened, pointing out that in the first film Leatherface actually shows fear when new people enter his house.^[4]

Leatherface's family uses the bones of the people he kills (along with some animal bones presumably caught while hunting) to build the insides of their house. They process the victims' flesh into barbecue and chili, which Leatherface's oldest brother, Drayton Sawyer, a skilled chef, then sells at his restaurant / gas station the "Last Chance" gas station, and at cook-offs. Aside from Leatherface and Drayton, the Sawyer clan includes two more brothers, a hitchhiker named Nubbins Sawyer and a vietnam veteran known only as Chop Top A.K.A. Plate Head, as well as Grandpa, Grandma and Great-Grandma sawyer (real first names unknown).

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a direct sequel to the 1974 film, has a more campy and over-the-top atmosphere than the original. Tobe Hooper said on The Shocking Truth that he wanted to expand on the dark comedy in the original film, an element that he felt no one truly picked up on. In this film, Leatherface develops a "crush" on one of his victims, and in one scene, skins off the face of her friend (while alive) and places it on her to hide her from the rest of his family. At the end of the film, he apparently dies in an explosion after being impaled with a chainsaw in a fight with the uncle of his previous victims from the first film.

With Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III the filmmakers attempted to make the series darker and grittier (much as the film-makers of the original had intended), but interventions from the MPAA had them tone it down and change the ending. An uncut version was released^{[by whom?]} in 2003. Leatherface has a different family and a daughter in this film, possibly from a rape.^[5] A four-issue comic series based on the film, entitled Leatherface was also created^{[by whom?]}; notably, portions of the comics are narrated by and shown from Leatherface's point of view.

In Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation Leatherface appears, inexplicably, not as a cannibal but as a pizza-eating transvestite named "Leather" involved in an Illuminati conspiracy to provide society a source of horror, and again, with a different family.^[6][7]

Remake series

Andrew Bryniarski as Thomas Brown Hewitt/Leatherface from the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

A remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre appeared in 2003. Its success greenlit a prequel, released in 2006, which delved into the origins of Leatherface and of his sadistic and cannibalistic family. In this continuity, Leatherface has the name Thomas Brown Hewitt; his mother Sloane (last name and the identity and status of his father unknown) dies giving birth to him on August 7, 1939 at the Blair Meat Co. (a slaughterhouse) where she works, and her uncaring and cruel unnamed boss leaves the infant to die in a dumpster. Luda May Hewitt finds him and takes him home to raise him. Says producer Brad Fuller, "The Hewitts raise Leatherface as their own. But in a lot of ways, Thomas Hewitt is more like a pet than a member of the family. At the same time, they do love and admire one another, albeit in peculiar and unusual ways."

The Hewitts used to work at the Blair Meat Co. but after they were fired and became poor they switched to kidnapping people, murdering them, and selling their flesh in meat at Luda May's butcher shop (one of his family members claims that he got the idea from eating human flesh in the Korean War while he was a Prisoner of War). The prequel reveals that they eat some of the meat thimselves - the remake only implied this.

Leatherface in this continuity suffers from a facial disfigurement and a skin disease that eats away most of his nose. Due to this disfigurement, his muteness and mental retardation (carried over from the first series), Hewitt is bullied by other kids as a child. He wears a small leather mask to cover up his deformity, and works at the same meat factory where he was born for the same boss his mother had, ironically the same man who left him for dead. He also has a tendency toward self-mutilation, and is diagnosed with mental degeneration at age 12.

After health inspectors close the factory down, Hewitt's boss and a reluctant co-worker order him to leave. When Hewitt doesn't, the boss and the co-worker bully him and call him a "retard" and a "dumb animal". Acting on a long-burning rage, Hewitt kills his boss with a sledgehammer. In the factory he discovers a chainsaw, which he later uses as a weapon. When Winston Hoyt, the local sheriff, tries to apprehend him, Thomas' uncle Charles "Charlie" Hewitt Jr comes to his aid by killing the sheriff; Charlie later assumes the sheriff's identity.

Hewitt later makes a mask out of human skin by slicing off the face of one the victims he has killed.

Although Leatherface's family still manipulate him in this interpretation, they do show themselves somewhat more caring for him and less abusive than in the original film. Before killing the sheriff, his uncle Charlie even defends him by saying, "He's not retarded, he's misunderstood". The cruelty suffered from his peers inspires his murderous behavior.

At the climax of the remake, protagonist Erin Hardesty cuts off Leatherface's chainsaw-arm with a meat cleaver, but he survives the attack. He escapes after police discover his ranch house and find the remains of 33 people. The police fail to secure the crime scene properly, allowing Leatherface to attack and kill two officers. Leatherface then escapes and disappears, and the case remains open.

Andrew Bryniarski, who played Leatherface in the remake, states: "In my estimation, Leatherface is like a beaten dog – he was ostracized and ridiculed, and treated harshly by his peers. The psychological damage they inflicted was immense … there's no chance for him."^[8] Says Terrence Evans, who played Leatherface's uncle Old Monty, "I think there was a chance Thomas' life could have been different. But the teasing he suffered, coupled with a bad temper, and following Hoyt around like a puppy dog, left room for Hoyt to get absolute control."^[9]

Comics

Leatherface became a prominent character in Wildstorm Comics's continuation of the remakes. With the family exposed after the events of the first film, the comics show the Hewitt family living in a series of tunnels in the sewers of Travis County.

As at the end of the first film, Leatherface in the comics has only one arm. Halfway through the first story arc, Leatherface's uncle Monty helps Leatherface build a "prosthetic arm" (consisting of a hook attached to a bone and tied to Leatherface's arm with a belt) to assist with his nephew's handicap. Leatherface later uses this hook in addition to his chainsaw on victims, at one point spearing a man's leg to prevent him from escaping.

The comics also imply that the other people in the town, while perhaps not involved with the Hewitts' cannibalism, at least know of it and have agreed to help them deal with outsiders. In one scene, when a potential victim runs into a bar looking for help, she is stopped from calling the police by the owner and patrons who tell her that they "don't want no Hewitt trouble" and later reprimand Leatherface for not looking after his "livestock".

A young Leatherface, without a mask, in About a Boy

Later one-shot comics published by Wildstorm also dealt with Leatherface. One of them, About a Boy, focused on parts of Leatherface's childhood that The Beginning did not reveal. It shows that bullies severely picked on Thomas Hewitt as a child, and thus he spent most of his time alone drawing in his notebook, hunting and skinning animals, and later making clothing out of them. A foreshadowing of his future as Leatherface takes place when, after the book's antagonist, Jesse, the leader of the bullies, throws rocks at him at a swimming-hole, Thomas attacks Jesse and skins off his face while he is still alive.

About a Boy also detailed how his family remained for the most part apathetic towards Thomas's actions. His uncle Charlie (the future Hoyt) helps him get rid of Jesse's body (his only criticism stating that Thomas needs to "learn how to fix 'em proper", after putting the faceless victim out of his misery with a shotgun). Later, after Thomas's teacher Mr. Hanson questions Luda May about her son's behavior and tells her that he plans to file a report with the city to get him some help, Luda May bashes his head in with a shovel and kills him, stating, "There is nothing wrong with my boy."

Mask

In the original film, Leatherface wore three different masks; the "Killing Mask", "Grandmother Mask" and "Pretty Woman Mask". Gunnar Hansen commented: "the reason he wore a mask, according to Tobe and Kim, was that the mask really determined his personality. Who he wanted to be that day determined what mask he put on. So, when the Cook comes home, with Sally, Leatherface is wearing the 'Grandmother Mask' and he's wearing an apron and carrying a wooden spoon – he wants to be domestic, helpful in the kitchen. At dinner he wears a different face -- the 'Pretty Woman,' which has make up."^{[cite this quote]}

Hansen later added "the idea of the mask is that there is no personality under the mask. That was the idea in talking with Tobe and Kim. When they created the character, they said he has to put on masks to express himself because he himself can't do it. ... The way we tried to create him, there is nothing under the mask, which is what makes him so frightening."^[10][11][12]

The remake offered a more concrete explanation as to why Leatherface wore masks. As a child, a severe facial deformity ate away most of his nose and made him subject to cruel ridicule from his peers. Prior to killing people, he wore animal hides, cloths and leather masks that covered up the bottom of his face. Later he began to skin some of the people he killed and wore their faces as masks. In a difference with the original film, Leatherface does not seem to have different masks for different purposes, although he does change masks occasionally. He appears briefly without his mask on in some scenes of "The beginning", but his face remains hidden in the shadows - though it oddly appears to be an abnormal skin colour (a drab grey) possibly pale.

The Wildstorm comics that took place in the remake's continuity had Leatherface taking off his mask when alone with his family, something that did not occur in any of the original films.

Silence

Leatherface never speaks in any of the films or comics, which portray him as mute. In the first film he tells his brother Drayton Sawyer (who confronted him about a missing door) through gibberish about how he killed everyone and broke it while chasing them — although he speaks no word of English (save for an "uh uh" (meaning "no") sound when Drayton asks if any of them "got away"), Drayton appears to understand him. Often in films Leatherface will yell and make strange vocal sounds as a form of communication, he is notable as being one of the few silent horror film villains that makes any sort of grunts or noise, unlike Michael Myers, who is almost always completely silent (the only exception being the 2007 remake where he speeks as a child for the first few minutes of the film before becoming completely silent alltogether), and Jason Voorhees, who doesn't speak aside from flashbacks to his childhood and a brief scene in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday where he is possesing someone as a demon (he only as two lines in the scene in question:"hey get the hell away from her" and "on no where do you think you're going"). How his family understand him remains unknown, though it is suggested by the fact that he does seem to try speaking that he can talk but due to his limited intelligence (which causes various characters in the films to call him a "retard") he can not enunciate comprehensible words and can only sound out words through grunts and yells.

References