For the latest TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE entry, they’re going back further than THE BEGINNING, and like Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN, are showing their central murderer’s childhood roots. Sam Strike plays Leatherface a.k.a. Jackson Sawyer as a mentally ill teenager, who escapes the confines of his mental hospital with a couple of companions and a hostage in tow. Stephen Dorff plays the Dennis Hopper role of the Texas Ranger doggedly hunting the future serial murderer/aspiring butcher down, and Lili Taylor plays his dear old mama (I wouldn’t bet the farm on her surviving through the end credits, though).
This is like the post-SAW horror variation of that classic EPISODE I teaser, and it’s a good way of getting across the premise while invoking the chainsaw imagery that we all associate with the franchise.
The pertinent question is whether audiences/fans have any interest in seeing Leatherface before he became the iconic monster we all know and love, but that didn’t stop them from making THE BEGINNING (which turned a neat profit), so why would that stop them here?
LEATHERFACE hopes you forget that TCM III was also called LEATHERFACE sometime in 2016.
