Slasher Summer: Leatherface's Top 10 Most Intense Moments - Page 2
#5.
THE FIRST CHAINSAW KILL
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
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#5.
THE FIRST CHAINSAW KILL
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
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That actor from HBO's Oz plays a stone-cold biker in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and he comes to the Hewitt house in search of his lost girl (who unbeknownst to him has been dead for quite some time). After shooting Uncle Monty and taking Sheriff Hoyt hostage, he gets upstairs where Leatherface arrives and the tables turn. After a brief skirmish, Hoyt has the man pinned to the floor with his torso lying across the blade of Leatherface's inactive chainsaw, and Hoyt tells the masked brute to go ahead and turn the sucker on. Leatherface obliges, pulling the cord to start the engine a few times before slowly slicing up through the biker's body, drenching the entire room in blood. Hoyt remarks that Leatherface is a "beautiful bastard" after this kill, the first canonical death-by-chainsaw for the rebooted Leatherface.
#4.
SORRY, LITTLE GUY
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part III
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#4.
SORRY, LITTLE GUY
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part III
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One of the best things about Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is the main character's gradual transformation from helpless victim to delirious heroine. Michelle spends the first two-thirds of the movie being systematically tormented, both physically and psychologically, so that when she finally gets free of the Sawyer family, she has basically lost her marbles but found her balls. She lures Leatherface into the swamp, where the brute falls into a pool filled with body parts along with the other hero of the film, Benny (played by the incomparable Ken Foree). Leatherface and Benny have a nail-biting battle in the water, with the loose chainsaw bobbing up and down precariously along the surface, in which Leatherface ultimately becomes the victor. However, as he tries to emerge from the muck, Michelle is there with a large rock. She hits him repeatedly in the head while manically shouting, "Sorry... little... guy!" over and over again. It's pretty great, and it's easily one of my favorite moments in the whole franchise.
#3.
THE GREAT CHASE
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
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#3.
THE GREAT CHASE
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
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There are several memorable chase sequences involving Leatherface, but none are more iconic than the protracted run through the woods as he tries to catch up to Sally in 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It starts with the only chainsaw death of the film--which is reserved for Sally's extraordinarily obnoxious wheelchair-bound brother Franklin--and then proceeds for several minutes. Sally stumbles here and there and even gets her hair tangled up in some brush, but she manages to stay a few steps ahead (Gunnar Hansen, who plays Leatherface, had to deliberately trip himself up a few times to keep from accidentally catching her). At first, she runs in exactly the wrong direction: towards the Sawyer house. Realizing this is not the place to be due to the lifeless bodies in the bedroom, she jumps through a second-story window, gets to her feet, and continues running, all the way to a nearby gas station with the old man who sold Franklin a meaty sausage earlier in the movie. Believing herself to be safe, she is too exhausted to defend herself when the old man turns out to be the patriarch of the Sawyer clan and finally subdues her before dinner. This entire sequence is an exercize in audience stamina, with viewers left feeling almost as exhausted by the end as Sally herself. It's shot in deep darkness and contains several sharp edits that keep the audience off-balance, and Marilyn Burns' panicked acting is so believable that her bumps and turns never come across as contrived or stupid the way they do in many lesser slasher films. Though it is overshadowed by the dinner scene (which I actually didn't include in this list, because it doesn't really belong to Leatherface), this agonizing chase is a landmark moment in the history of horror and one of the most intense things audiences can experience from the series.
#2.
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE TREATMENT
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
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#2.
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE TREATMENT
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
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In the original film, one of our hapless teenagers is caught by Leatherface and hung very simply from a meat hook, while still alive. Director Tobe Hooper originally planned to have a gorier, more violent scene that included large spurts of blood coming out of the young woman's back and more slaughterhouse-style torture, but couldn't afford to pull that off, ultimately convincing himself that a simpler, cleaner approach would be more terrifying. Judging by a similar scene in the remake, however, we can conclude that he was dead wrong on this matter. In the remake, Andy is running from Leatherface when he gets his leg chopped off just under the knee, after which Leatherface carries him to his basement playroom and hangs him on a meat hook. This version also includes Leatherface salting the man's bloody stump and wrapping it in butcher paper, not to mention the much later scene where Erin finds what remains of Andy, tries to help him off of the meat hook to no avail, and must put him out of his misery. As it is more protracted (and yes, more bloody), the entire scenario is far, far more effective than the scene it's copying, making for one of the most difficult-to-watch scenes in the entire franchise.
#1.
SUDDENLY, A SLEDGEHAMMER
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
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#1.
SUDDENLY, A SLEDGEHAMMER
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
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There is one scene in particular, though, that no sequel or remake has been able to match from the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and it just happens to be Leatherface's first on-screen kill. Two of the unfortunate teens of the story, Kirk and Pam, discover the Sawyer house and approach it, hoping to find help. While Pam gets on a swing and waits, Kirk knocks on the open door before slowly entering the house. At the end of the foyer, he sees a lit room with odd pig sounds coming from it, and he walks towards it, cautiously calling out to whomever might be inside. Then, without warning, Leatherface jumps out, hammer in hand, and cracks Kirk on the head with a blow so fierce it knocks him down and sends his limbs spasming. This moment doesn't contain any musical cues or jump scare bangs, relying entirely on its own merits to deliver one of the most brutally simple deaths in all of film. It calls back to the beginning of the story--in which the crazed hitchhiker tells the teens about hitting animals in the head at the old slaughterhouse--and demonstrates rather elegantly the main theme of the entire franchise: it would be horrifying if we treated human beings the way we treat the animals we feast upon.
Though I wish the producers of the series hadn't tried to focus so heavily on Leatherface as an iconic villain to compete with the Jasons and Freddies of the eighties' slasher craze, he has undeniably cemented his place in history as one of the most horrifying killers to ever appear on film. I appreciate that he never becomes supernatural, that he never speaks, that no film tries to humanize him, and that he is relentlessly violent. As a character, he is the most imposing and probably the most frightening slasher we'll be covering this summer, but it is time to move on. Someone much smaller is vying for attention: the former Lakeside Strangler turned Good Guy doll, Chucky.
-e. magill 7/20/2017
THE UNAPOLOGETIC GEEK'S
SLASHER SUMMER: | |
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