The horror genre has provided many a moviegoer with iconic villains to root against. Or to root for, depending on your point of view. The great slashers of the past have lived on for generations. Freddy Kruger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and many others have haunted the nightmares of so many horror hounds. It’s a wonder that people get sleep when they’re in such great fear of these guys. Other villains like Chucky, the Leprechaun, Pennywise, and Ghostface also line the peripherals, raising the goosebumps on the back of people’s necks.
Sometimes the memorable villain starts as part of a villainous group. The people who know the movies and watch the movies might know that. The people who only hear names and see iconic images instead of the whole picture might not, though. They only know one of the villains, the one with the iconic look, the one who stands out the most. That’s the case with someone like Pinhead, who started out as one of many cenobites terrorizing the world in Hellraiser. That is also the case with Leatherface.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre came out in 1974, a few years before the explosion of slasher movies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It followed a group of teenagers or early 20-somethings as they encountered a family of murderous cannibals. The key there being that it was a whole family. Leatherface wasn’t the only one. He was there, sure, and he wielded a chainsaw, among other things, but he wasn’t the only one. There was also the eccentric one, the cook, and a centenarian grandfather who helped with the murdering. However, with the mask made of human skin and the chainsaw, Leatherface became the iconic looking image of the movie.
Now, we all know that Leatherface became the face of the franchise. When New Line got the rights in the late 1980s, they decided that Leatherface could become a slasher villain to rival the likes of Freddy, Jason, and Michael. Or, at least, live in the same realm, since New Line owned the rights to Freddy and would soon own the rights to Jason. He was going to be the selling point in the same way that those horror legends were. It somewhat worked. There’s a reason we have nine movies in the franchise. There’s a reason there are more movies in the Texas Chainsaw franchise than the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Filmmakers keep pushing for Leatherface to be that icon.
The strange thing is that those same filmmakers, whoever they may be at any given time, pushed Leatherface to the forefront of the marketing, while still trying to keep the family aspect. The dynamic of the family through the movies wouldn’t leave you thinking that Leatherface should be the main draw. It’s clearly a result of the Leatherface visual; the skin hanging over his face, the chainsaw in hand. He tends to be treated like the baby of the family. He’s the screwup. Not the one that you expect to be the screwup, but the one who you put your faith in and he never fails to disappoint. The original film highlights that with the cook saying that Leatherface tore up the house and let the girl get away. The second one highlighted that through the cook saying that Leatherface couldn’t do his job of just killing the woman. And the third went back to Leatherface letting people get away again. Every time, he was chastised because he couldn’t do his job in the family. He wasn’t the leader, he was the screwup.
The stranger thing was that the franchise kept trying to make other family members have memorable traits, as well. Chop Top comes to mind from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. He was a surrogate for the eccentric photographer family member from the first movie, basically slotting in as the same character in the sequel. Only, he had one major difference. A chunk of his scalp was missing, showing a giant metal plate for about half the top of his head. Things like these became commonplace throughout at least the first four Texas Chainsaw movies. Which brings me to the movie that spawned this post.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation was the fourth installment in the Texas Chainsaw franchise. It was written and directed by Kim Henkel, who co-wrote the first film alongside Tobe Hooper. Jenny (Renée Zellweger) and three friends left prom to go for a drive. After getting in a car accident, they became the newest victims of Leatherface (Robert Jacks) and his new family. The leader of this sect was Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), who claimed he worked for the Illuminati. Things got stranger as the teens were lured to the family house.
I should probably start with how Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation played around with the Leatherface character. Was it the same Leatherface from the other movies? Was it another Leatherface that happened to be involved in the same sort of chainsaw-wielding murder mayhem? It was probably meant to be the same Leatherface that appeared in the three other films, but something different was done with him. This iteration of Leatherface was gender-fluid, switching between presenting themselves as male or female. There would be times when Leatherface was just like the Leatherface of previous movies. A bull-in-a-China-shop, chainsaw-wielding lunatic, out to murder people. Then there were times when Leatherface would wear a woman’s face, put on some makeup, and wear women’s clothing and accessories. The Blu-ray cover art from Scream Factory showed this side of Leatherface.
Leatherface wasn’t the only member of the villain family to have their own unique trait. Vilmer, the leader of the family, had a pneumatic leg brace. It was controlled by a remote. If the remote didn’t work, Vilmer wouldn’t be able to move his leg. When his leg was able to move, it was stronger than a normal human leg. He could exert enough pressure with it to crush people’s heads if he wanted to. That gave Vilmer the physical trait to stand out among the other villains in the Texas Chainsaw franchise. The other thing that made him stand out was Matthew McConaughey’s performance. He oozed anger issues. He oozed psychotic break. McConaughey gave a performance that stood far above and beyond what anyone else in the movie was doing, which made Vilmer stand out that much more.
Finally, there was Walter Edward (Joe Stevens), also known as W.E. This character didn’t have a physical trait to make him stand out. There was no mask made of skin. He didn’t have a metal plate in his head or a pneumatic system on his leg. W.E. was just a guy. What made him stand out, however, was that he constantly quoted people. He would be in the middle of torturing someone and spout out a quote from a book or someone famous for their historical significance. He seemed like a book-smart villain, compared to everyone else in the franchise. It didn’t help make him any more formidable a foe. It simply made him stand out.
Much like the three movies that preceded Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, the family members were given traits to make them stand out among other horror villains of that time. That’s something that horror movies of the 1980s and into the 1990s were all about. There had to be a way to hook audiences in. There had to be a way to make audiences want to see their movie over others. That way was to make the villains stand out. It was to put the audience and the protagonists against a crazy villain that they hadn’t seen before.
Filmmakers tried to make iconic horror villains for a long time. They needed a way to stand out among the other horror movies that came out, especially when it came to slashers. In the wake of movies like Black Christmas, Halloween, and Friday the 13th, the horror subgenre had exploded into over-saturation within a couple years. That over-saturation was still kicking around in the early 1990s. It was why the subgenre had started dying. There were too many options and the effort was put into creating a unique villain instead of telling a compelling, albeit derivative because there aren’t too many ways to show a killer hacking and slashing people, slasher story.
Eventually, audiences desired something else. Slasher movies were given a different tone in the mid-to-late 1990s. That gave them new life for a few years. Then the remakes started. All the iconic villains came back with a new vision, Leatherface included. What these remakes forgot, however, was what made those villains work in the first place. The makeup on Freddy. The mystery of Michael Myers. The family hierarchy aspect of Leatherface. Yes, these were iconic villains in their looks. But there was a context to what made them work in the first place. An iconic look can only go so far when it comes to a villain.
Now it’s time for some notes:
- Welcome back to Sunday “Bad” Movies! This post is nearly a year late, but it’s here! I hope you enjoyed.
- The only actor from Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (also known as The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) to be a returning Sunday “Bad” Movies actor was Matthew McConaughey. He was in Tiptoes.
- I mentioned a few horror movie villains in here. The Djinn was the villain in Wishmaster, Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies, Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell, and Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled. Jason Voorhees was the main villain in the Friday the 13th franchise. I’ve covered Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (where he wasn’t the villain), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. I mentioned Michael Myers, who was the villain in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, and Halloween: Resurrection. I also brought up the Leprechaun, who was in Leprechaun 4: In Space, Leprechaun in the Hood, and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood.
- Have you seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation? What are your thoughts? I thought it was a decent enough horror movie. I thought Matthew McConaughey turned in a fun performance. Let me know what you thought in the comments below or on Threads.
- If you have any suggestions, the comment section below is where you can let me know what I should watch for this blog.
- Um… The next post should be the post for Valentine. Unless I put that up before this one. Then it will probably be a post for a movie called Van Helsing. No, not the Hugh Jackman one. It’s an animated movie from earlier this year. I have all three of these posts ready to be edited, so you’ll find out when I put them up. See you soon.
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