10 Slasher Horror Movie Openings That Get Worse The More You Think About It

8. The First Victim - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Black Christmas 2006 Constance Lenz
New Line Cinema

Four years before headlining Hostel: Part II as Beth - that sequel's sole surviving protagonist - Lauren German had an extremely brief but extremely memorable role in Marcus Nispel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.

With her character not even receiving a name in the 2003 do-over, German played a traumatised hitchhiker who gets picked up by our core group in the film's opening moments. As said group travels across Texas on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd gig, they see German's stranger slowly staggering down an empty backroad.

Once aboard the van, this unnamed figure soon starts to panic when she realises which way the vehicle is heading. So much so, she pulls a gun from between her legs and fatally shoots herself through the back of the head.

This act in itself is a deeply troubling one, but the situation gets all the more chilling when you start to think of the motive behind this character taking their own life. What has this person seen and experienced, where they'd choose suicide over heading down a strip of road?

Clearly German's figure knows where the infamous house which Leatherface and his twisted family call home is, and it seems as if she herself has had her own harrowing run-in with the sinister clan. Did she lose family and friends during this encounter? What did she have to do in order to escape? So many questions, so many terrifying possibilities.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.