5 Faces Of Leatherface (And What Your Most Frightening Says About You)

1. The Offish Ogre - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

"You can't have a creature like that around normal folk..." €“ The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) As is the fate of anything that captures the imagination, eventually it is repeated enough that it loses whatever power it had. The character of Leatherface is no different as the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) can attest to. In each fairly tiresome film, Leatherface is depicted not with a provocatively morbid psychosis, but rather as a big, dumb, lumbering thing €“ an animal. As frightening as a rabid dog with a chainsaw might be, the truth is it's just not that interesting. Concerning the remakes, Leatherface is reduced to nothing more than a gruesome troll stored away in the family's basement. He is called upon from time to time to offer some brute force when needed, but not much else. Beyond the plot point of a flesh eating disease that forced him to wear a mask, and therefore, theoretically led him to butcher and skin his fellow humans, there is little characterization added to answer that most chilling question: why? Without that, Leatherface becomes just another faceless slasher, despite his excess of faces. The character of Leatherface has been pushed out to pasture into this thematically deprived wasteland of remakes, prequels and one unnecessary continuity-inept sequel. It's ironic that Texas Chainsaw 3D presented Leatherface's one-dimensional characterization in three-dimensions. Seems a little gratuitous to me... and not in a good way. Sadly, most horror icons suffer the same fate. They become unchallenging, soulless. Time, or perhaps familiarity, disconnects them from whatever deep-seated terror they used to embody. They are inevitably reduced to "scary guy who stabs you". Although the fear of penetration does have a few fascinating implications, it is also the slasher film's most derivative theme and present in any film featuring a madman with a knife, or an axe, or a gardening spade. The resulting horror is straight forward. It has it's place, just not a very important one. If out of the generous bounty of Leatherfaces that exist, you happen to relate to this one the most, then you probably like your horror safe and simple. Bad guys are big and scary, heroines are manicured and scantily clad. You want the thrill of the chase without any lasting creep factor. You'd rather deal with the predictable splashes of blood and screams than a gravedigger unearthing your private hidden terrors. This could point toward a fear of being challenged; the anxiety that if you were truly shaken, there's no telling what might come falling loose. Perhaps one day Leatherface will once again find the teeth for his chain and regain his buzz. Until then, however, we'll have to be satisfied with the contemporary mindless goon in all his uninspired goonishness. Well, at least we are left with a eclectic group of chainsawed faces to choose from. And so we are compelled to ask, which one fits the best? Like this article? Let us know in the comments section below.