The Sawyer FamilyIn the original 1974 film, the lead villain, Leatherface, is living with his father and brothers Drayton and Nubbins Sawyer. His brothers are killed in the original film's continuity.
She was born in 1978, apparently conceived from the rape of one of his victims. She likes to carry around a dead infant's body as a doll who she calls Sally, a possible reference to Sally Hardesty.
Who Is Leatherface's Mother? The mother of all the Sawyer boys in TCM III, Anne Sawyer (Myriam Byrd-Nethery) can be seen using a wheelchair full-time and an electronic voicebox. The boys are actually conceived as a product of incest between Anne and Grandpa Sawyer.
Hansen described Leatherface as someone "completely under the control of his family", while also being afraid of them; going on to explain that, although Leatherface is the most powerful and violent member of his family, he is also the most fearful.
Texas Chainsaw 3D is a direct sequel to the 1974 original film and starts immediately after Sally Hardesty's escape. Sheriff Hooper arrives right after the extended Sawyer family gather to the house with shotguns, in which the sheriff demands Drayton, now revealed to be Leatherface's father, hand over Leatherface.
Entire Disturbing Leatherface Family Tree Members - Backstories Explored
Is the Leatherface family inbred?
In this continuity, Leatherface is raised by the Hewitts, a family of inbred cannibals. The family is loosely based on the Sawyer Family from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. The Hewitt family consists of Luda May Hewitt, The Tea Lady, Jed Old, Charlie (aka Sheriff Hoyt), Emma Hewitt, and Hannah Hewitt.
Leatherface is seen forming a crush on Vanita Brock, sparing her life and hiding her away from the rest of his family upon finding her in the Sawyer hideout. In the third film, Leatherface is much more aggressive and crueler due to mental maturity, now with the mind of a rebellious teenager.
Leatherface, inspired by serial killer Ed Gein, portrays intellectual disability in how he lacks the ability to properly communicate and care for himself. He can't fully think for himself and obeys the orders given to him by his family out of fear.
But when he came to Harlow he had to hide everything, from murderous tendencies to his masks and his queered identity. Mrs. MC represents a safe haven for Leatherface; she knew of the chainsaw, so she surely knew about his masks and thus, inadvertently or not, his queered identity, too.
To put it simply, Leatherface's gender-bending in Hooper's 1974 original, is both an allusion to the warped return of the so-called traditional nuclear family and a manifestation of sexual repression and gender confusion.
In addition to the visual rhetoric, sound cues associate cannibalism and carnism to produce the conception of the two being the same or analogous. When Leatherface knocks down a victim with the mallet, a non-diegetic sound of a pig squealing dubbed over this image recalls pigs brutally killed in slaughterhouses.
For example, he wore an old lady mask when helping out in the kitchen when his brother came home and a female mask with lipstick at dinner to honor his late mother. Despite his sinister appearance, Leatherface's reasons for wearing his masks hide a tragic childhood that left him in his current state.
Grandpa Sawyer is the grandfather and oldest living member of the Sawyer Family. He is a supercentenarian, former butcher/slaughterman and mass murderer. Director Tobe Hooper stated on the audio commentary for Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, that Grandpa is kept alive by drinking the blood of his family's victims.
Leatherface appears to be the weakest the family and is hurt by the fighting that occurs. His brother W.E. abuses him relentlessly, to which Leatherface does not fight back but cries.
Leatherface never speaks, and of course you never see his face, but he's by far the most expressive and unforgettable character in the movie. This is not only because he carves up most of the cast with a chain saw.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface is responsible for 31 deaths across all movies in the franchise, while Freddy Krueger's kill count seems to be between 42 and 48. Jumping to the 1990s, another famous slasher, Scream's different Ghostface killers, have a total of 46 kills.
Leatherface, portrayed by Gunnar Hansen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), is 6 foot 4 inches (1.93 m) tall. Leatherface is the main antagonist of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even though he commits his murders alongside his family. Leatherface wears a mask made of human skin, which is where he gets his name from.
Leatherface in this continuity suffers from al disfigurement, a skin disease, that caused severe deformities and tumors to his face. Due to this disfigurement, his muteness and mental disability, other children bullied the boy.
Due to him suffering from a skin condition, Leather-Face grew up shunned, and, along with his family, became a cannibalistic psychopath. Slaughtering anyone he comes in to contact with, thanks to his rusty chainsaw, and in some cases removing the skin from his victims and wearing it over his own.
He is also extremely mentally ill. He does not talk that much, though he does make vocal sounds. He wears a mask made from a person's skin, which he uses to express a personality. It is also notable that director Tobe Hooper has stated that Leatherface kills out of fear, not malice.
The film was marketed as being based on true events to attract a wider audience and to act as a subtle commentary on the era's political climate. Although the character of Leatherface and minor story details were inspired by the crimes of murderer Ed Gein, its plot is largely fictional.
