By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
Upon its release in 1974, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was alternately hailed by critics as a landmark of the horror genre and derided by moral gatekeepers as sadistic trash. In the ensuing decade, the film’s reputation grew. As pointed out by J. Hoberman of The Village Voice in his 1983 book Midnight Movies, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre quickly evolved from exploitation drive-in feature to cult film to midnight movie. In 1982, the notorious tale of a boy and his power tool flirted with mainstream respectability when it became the best-selling videocassette in the United States.
Buoyed by a hideous progeny that includes Halloween‘s Michael Myers, Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees, and A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger, Leatherface, at last, took his rightful place in the pop-horror pantheon in 1986 with the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. The first sequel in a wildly uneven and muddled franchise, the film saw the return of director Tobe Hooper who, thanks to the talents of legendary makeup effects wizard Tom Savini, upped the gore quotient of the virtually bloodless original a thousandfold. The sequel also brought the muted black humor of the 1974 film to the forefront with the addition of Bill Moseley as ChopTop, the manic (and imminently quotable) twin brother of the original’s Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal).
Following The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, the franchise descended into a confusing litany of sequels, quasi-sequels, prequels, and re-imaginings of varying quality, peaking with the big-budget 2003 reboot The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its 2006 followup The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. In 2009, the rights to the franchise changed hands, resulting in the lackluster 2013 film Texas Chainsaw 3D, a direct sequel to Hooper’s original film that ignores the events of all previous entries as well as the Platinum Dunes reboot. Despite scathing reviews, Texas Chainsaw 3D did well enough financially to warrant the 2017 prequel Leatherface.
Netflix hopes to wipe the troubled franchise’s slate clean yet again with Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Touted as a direct sequel to the original 1974 film, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE picks up several decades after Sally Hardesty’s run-in with the deranged cannibal family as a new group of hapless victims run afoul of an aging Leatherface. This newest take on The Texas Chainsaw mythos will feature a radical redesign of Leatherface that nonetheless promises to remain true to Tobe Hooper’s depiction of the beloved chainsaw-wielding maniac.
Illusion Industries’ owner Todd Tucker and Head Designer Martin Astles recently took time to sit down with Rue Morgue to discuss their work on this newest evolution of a horror icon.
Thanks for speaking with us today, gentlemen. Obviously, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a classic. When did you first see the film and what effect did it have on you?
Todd Tucker: I remember seeing it as a kid, and I was a little confused because I was pretty young. I actually thought I was watching a documentary at first. It kind of affected me differently … and it scared me in a different way. Clearly, that movie set the bar for everything after. When it comes to horror, [The Texas Chain Saw Massacre] and The Exorcist really started the ball rolling.
Martin Astles: I was a little late to the game. As you can tell by my accent, I’m not from here! I think I was 11 when I first saw it — or maybe I was 13. It was hard to get copies of those films in the U.K. Everything was on badly-recorded VHS cassettes. I do remember seeing a very Lo-Fi version on VHS. My friend had a copy of it, and he loaned it to me.
I have to agree with Todd, actually. I was a bit confused. It had such a documentary feel to it. I couldn’t tell if what I was seeing was some sort of dodgy snuff film. It felt taboo to watch it. It felt like I had watched something really dirty and wrong.
TT: Like you were going to get in trouble! (laughs)
MA: I remember being really sort of taken aback by that. The only other time I had ever felt that, for me, was The Blair Witch Project. That was another film that had quite an effect on me. Texas Chain Saw, culturally, for me, was a whole new, different thing. Because, as a British person, seeing that kind of classic American horror was mind-blowing. It really was. For me, it was a definite cornerstone film.
How did Illusion Industries get involved in Netflix’s TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE?
TT: We were very lucky. We had worked with a producer named Herb Gains on the films G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Jack Reacher 2 and Watchmen — going all the way back. We hadn’t worked with Herb since he started working for Legendary. We got a call from him, and he said, “We’re going to do this new movie, and I want you guys to do the lead character for it.” I said, “That sounds great. What can we do for you?” And then he said it was Leatherface … When do you get a call out of the blue where somebody goes, “Hey, would you mind designing the new Leatherface?” (laughs) Yeah. Christmas came early. We’re good to go. We were blown away. We were very excited because clearly, that’s a great opportunity. Two weeks after that conversation, everything shut down for COVID. And I was like, “Oh, my God!“ Of course, we’re going to lose this opportunity due to a pandemic. I got another phone call from Herb and he was like, “Hey, man. We’re going to keep moving forward. If you guys are on board, let’s do this.” We were like, “Hell yes, we’re on board!”
We started doing designs right off the bat, and the two directors at that time were here in town. So, Martin put together a 3-D sculpture that we were able to walk into the office to show the directors and the producer. They loved it, and that was the starting point of the design phase. The sculpture looks badass. You’re going to love it. Martin won’t necessarily brag about it, but I think people are going to really dig it.
MA: He’s my agent. [Laughs]
TT: After that, we brought in some really good additional artists to design the rest of the body’s look and the wardrobe. We went through a bunch of phases of different looks for the wardrobe. We brought in a guy named Miles Teves and a guy named John Donohue, and they did some 2-D designs utilizing the image of the sculpture that Martin had already sculpted. I’ll let you explain how did all that remotely.
MA: Working via ZOOM was a bit of an experience. I was pretty new to Zoom and that whole world of working remotely. The original two directors went back to Ireland, and we were in L.A. Everyone was sort of having to get on the same page remotely. Fortunately, it was smooth, but it was also kind of strange. It’s very easy to sit at a conference table and talk about things and share ideas and concepts. There’s something about Zoom that made it kind of weird.
TT: Keep in mind, it was the first time everyone was forced to use Zoom. It was really new. The process was a little different and not the norm for us when we design stuff. But, we got through it, and we brought in a crew. This was at the height of COVID, man. Everything was shut down and no one was leaving.
MA: To be honest, it was tricky finding crew. Understandably, they were worried. And I get it. Who wasn’t?
TT: It was two weeks after the shutdown, and everybody was freaking out … It was tough. But, we got a crew in here, and they did a great job. After we finished [the design], it ended up getting sent to Bulgaria, where it was shot. Martin went over there and headed up overseeing makeup and visually what was happening in the film — interacting with the digital department, interacting with the director as a very knowledgeable Texas Chainsaw nerd. (laughs) We’ll call it fan. Ultimately, it was one of our finest achievements and we had a great time. Martin got to live the experience in Bulgaria. It was great!
Martin, did you have any trepidation going into this project. Was there a moment when you felt the pressure of working on such an iconic character? Did you ever worry that you might screw it up ?
MA: Obviously, you do. I think anybody who said they didn’t feel that pressure would be lying. When you’re in the heat of doing the job — the build part — the pressure is more [on the act of building] because you have to get the look of it right. Or at least as right as you can get it. Once you’ve committed to that look, there’s no going back. Once you’ve sculpted it, molded it, painted it, that’s it. You’ve committed to it. For me, there was a lot of pressure at the build end of it; once you’re out there, you just gotta make sure you don’t screw it up! (laughs)
TT: When you walk the sculpture in and show it to [the director and producer], it’s kind of an instinctual thing. You put it in front of them, and they see it and turn it around. They’re either like, “meh,” or they’re like, “Holy crap!” And they were like, “Holy crap!” So we got that initial response that let us know that the design really works.
MA: We did come up with a couple of weird little build things on the mask which were a little different. We had a system where there was like a vacuum form understructure that was basically covered in a very micro-thin velcro. The mask can actually reposition itself in different positions to accentuate certain expressions. Not to change the look but to very, very slightly change the angle of the eyebrow. It’s very, very, very, very, very subtle. That mask, let me tell you, it gets the crap beaten out of it. I’ll tell you right now, there’s stuff that’s filmed that’s really vicious.
TT: It goes through phases of destruction which becomes a little bit of a continuity thing that could be an issue.
MA: There are five different looks to Leatherface. In prep, we were supposed to shoot the film in sequence. But, of course, we didn’t. We shot the end of the film first, so I had to come up with the final look of Leatherface pretty much in the first week, and I had to make sure that we backed into that look during the shoot. Continuity-wise, this film was a beast! Every single day, I was hand painting blood on every part of the mask, the wigs, the wardrobe, you name it. It was just a constant battle to keep things in the continuity flow.
Are these five different looks various iterations of Leatherface’s personalities as represented by the “pretty woman” mask as in the original film?
MA: Yes. Basically, there are two different looks. There is a makeup version, and there is a freshly-skinned version. During the film, the mask starts to rot and break down. It’s vey subtle; the film takes place over a relatively short period of time. I had six different mixes of blood that were basically done brown or darker as the film progresses. I aged the masks down during the period of the shoot. [The mask] is going through sort of necrosis. At the end of the film, he’s covered in so much corpse …
TT: He’s a mess!
MA: It will definitely deliver on the mask part. I can tell you that! By the final act, it’s pretty shocking.
TT: Plus, blood ruins a lot of things. So blood continuity and resets are probably one of the hardest aspects of this kind of a movie.
MA: A good chunk of the movie takes place in the rain. So, I was up against that issue, too. I had to find ways to seal blood in. Between takes, I have to match looks really, really quickly. There were techniques I used to actually airbrush sealers over the blood to lock it in. When you’re out under 12 rain bars just kicking down 800 psi of rain on top of a character, it’s just washing everything off in no time at all. That was interesting, I can tell you!
TT: We actually made a special blood here that we had to ship over to Bulgaria. Shipping at that time was a nightmare. So, just trying to get stuff over to Martin as different obstacles were being thrown at him was a little challenging.
MA: Yeah. The blood was weird. We came up with nine different mixes of blood. Some of it had to be completely waterproof — and you’ll see why in the film.
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE shows us Leatherface nearly 50 years on from the 1974 film. Is the character’s age reflected in his mask and his physicality?
MA: Not in the mask. No. He basically skins somebody he is very close to in the film. This person means the world to him. And she …
TT: It’s an homage to her.
MA: [This character] unexpectedly passes away during the early part of the film. It’s a whole new look. There is kind of a flashback sequence. Physically, yeah. Mark Burnham, the guy who plays Leatherface, worked really hard on matching Gunnar Hansen’s original movements and also trying to push that 50 years on. From my point of view, Mark had this very heavy, thick, lumbering approach with kind of an arthritic twist to it. He did a really good job of it, I gotta tell you. There are some physical parts in the film that are very extraordinary. Leatherface does some pretty mad stuff in it!
TT: Leatherface isn’t schlumpy in this at all.
MA: Well, he kind of is …
TT: He’s got a lot of energy.
MA: He does some superhuman things that an old person can do. (laughs) That’s the way I would describe it! But Mark worked really hard on that. He was tireless in making sure that he was staying true to Gunnar’s original approach to Leatherface.
TT: Trying to find that balance of making something really amazing and finding those moments that the fans are going to respond to and feel that connection.
MA: Let’s not kid ourselves, he’s hacking his way through a lot of people, so he’s got to be physically fit. It’s such a weird balance. David Blue Garcia, the director, did a top-notch job of shooting this film. I think between Mark and David, they really know what Leatherface should be and will be to the fans.
TT: The film has a very, very big look. It feels like a big studio film with the right combination of the Leatherface elements. It’s definitely a film that I believe is going to attract people that might not even necessarily be fans of Leatherface, particularly. It’s just a well-made, beautiful film that’s really pretty on top of being scary as hell. It’s got a lot of good stuff that I think people are really going to enjoy no matter what.
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is now available, exclusively on Netflix.
