Welcome BACK to Horror Press’s Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you. Today, we’ll clear up the record on one of Texas’ bloodiest families, the Sawyers from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series (and their remake counterparts, the Hewitts). It’ll be a rough ride to get to the bottom of who they are, why they kill, and how they developed their…particularly peculiar diet.
We won’t be delving into the David Blue Garcia 2022 requel much this time or that reboot trilogy with Leatherface and Texas Chainsaw 3D. Instead, we’re focusing on the longest-running series, which we’ll call the mainline continuity (that’s the original, Part 2, 3, and The Next Generation), and the remake duology (the 2003 remake and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) which shares some similarities. See the handy dandy chart courtesy of Bloody Disgusting for a proper timeline breakdown.
So, get to the back of the pickup and ensure you got your chainsaw filled with gas. Or make sure the battery is charged if you’re one of those eco-conscious city types!
Who’s up for a field trip to Texas?
WHO ARE THE SAWYERS?
The people who make Leatherface who he is, the Sawyers (originally named the much less subtle “Slaughters” in the script), are a cannibalistic family with more quirky and colorful members than you can shake a stick at. Their M.O.? Luring victims on the land around their home so they can toy with, kill, and eat them.
Most of their rituals and behaviors are a perversion of the traditional nuclear family, with the most infamous being their prolonged and exhausting dinners in which they relentlessly mock their targets and relish their suffering through torture.
Possibly with or without literal relish.
In Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, the immediate Sawyer family is comprised of:
- Standing patriarch, father, and award-winning chili cook Drayton Sawyer not-so-standing living fossil, Grandpa Sawyer
- Deranged hitchhiker, Nubbins Sawyer
- Nubbin’s twin brother, army veteran, and music lover with a skull plate, Chop Top
- And, of course, titular chainsaw wielder and mask maker Bubba “Leatherface” Sawyer
AN ALL NEW FAMILY FOR THE SEQUELS
There’s also Grandma Sawyer, a chainsaw-holding corpse shrine in Part 2 with no living appearances. Though…this crew is all dead by the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (except for Leatherface, depending on your interpretation). At the film’s end, Chop Top was supposed to have survived his scuffle with Stretch. However, this was a plan for the unmade short-film All-American Massacre and never came to fruition, so its canonicity is dubious at best.
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 shows us a new family, which includes:
- Suave faux cowboy, Eddie “Tex” Sawyer
- Mechanical genius, Tinker Sawyer
- Peeping Tom, Alfredo Saywer
- Leatherface’s unnamed daughter, who is credited in some places as Babi Sawyer
- And Leatherface’s mother, Anne Sawyer
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation rounded us out with only three more official Sawyers: the pretty u nremarkable W.E. Slaughter, a brand-new impostor Grandpa, and extended family member with robot legs, Vilmer Slaughter.
WHO ARE THE HEWITTS IN THE TEXAS CHAINSAW REMAKE?
The remake duology introduced a new version of the family. The Hewitts are distinct from the original Sawyers, in that rather than being a campy bunch of freaks, they’re pseudo-religious nutjobs that don’t take much pleasure in what they do. That is, barring our Drayton analog and head of the family, Charlie Hewitt (using the disguise of Sheriff Hoyt), who commands the rest of them with an iron fist and enjoys abusing captives. Beyond him, there’s:
- Surrogate mother to Thomas, Luda-Mae Hewitt
- Her brother, wheelchair-bound creep Monty Hewitt
- The youngest son Jedidiah Hewitt
- Baby thief Henrietta Hewitt and her mysterious cohort, The Tea Lady
- And Thomas “Leatherface” Hewitt
HOW DID THE SAWYER FAMILY BECOME CANNIBALS?
We can lay the blame on one: Grandpa Sawyer.
At the time of the original film, Grandpa Sawyer is about 120, meaning he most likely was born in 1854. As a young man, he became a skilled hand in abattoirs and stood as a renowned butcher; Grandpa was deemed (by Drayton) as once having been the family’s best killer due to these skills. We only ever get to see them on display in Leatherface, the first time he wields his trusty hammer with some level of efficiency beyond flapping his wrist around.
At the turn of the 19th century, Grandpa Sawyer would see the Texan meatpacking industry slowly begin to replace smaller butcher businesses. Due to the speed of the industrialized process, Grandpa lost his job, and soon the family became more insular. The fear of starvation from poverty and general isolation in rural Texas pushed the family to begin the practice.
HOW DID THE HEWITT FAMILY BECOME CANNIBALS?
In the remake duology, the failure of industrialization sets into motion the Hewitt Family’s corruption; newspapers shown in the film mention a local meat packing plant, The Lee Bros. Meat Processing Plant had gone under and left hundreds in town jobless. It closed due to numerous health violations, most likely related to the mistreatment of workers like Leatherface’s mother who dies on the job after stress-induced labor kills her (though a deformed infant Thomas with a skin condition still survives).
Unlike Grandpa Sawyer, Charlie Hewitt introduces his family to cannibalism due to his time in the Korean War, where he picked up the habit as a means of survival. Taken captive in 1952, Charlie and other prisoners were forced to choose among themselves who would be sacrificed to feed the rest. Though they were eventually rescued, this practice awakened something in Hewitt that he would eventually spread to the rest of his kin. This also expands on the anti-war subtext of the original film, as much of The Beginning does.
WHY IS THE SAWYER FAMILY DIFFERENT IN EVERY FILM?
While Part 2 mainly adds Chop Top, a trend pops up in 3 and The Next Generation, where a new version of the family exists to aid Leatherface.
There are a few explanations for this.
One could be that Sawyer progeny are just everywhere. After Sally escapes in the first film, Drayton and company relocate to the abandoned Texas Battleland Amusement Park. However, the Sawyer House in 3 and The Next Generation are also different homes, which may be inhabited by extended family members. By this logic, Leatherface somehow survives his wounds in Part 2 and simply moves from family to family whenever he needs assistance. This theory is backed by the fact that Stretch, the protagonist of Part 2, makes a cameo in 3, looking for Leatherface as a now fully-fledged T.V. reporter.
The more outlandish explanation? The Sawyer Family isn’t a real family.
In Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, it’s revealed that the Sawyers are funded and protected by a shadowy conspiracy, most likely the Illuminati of legend. Their representative even abducts the last survivor of that film to observe the effects of the Sawyer-induced trauma on her mind. It would make sense that whenever Sawyers are killed, the Illuminati simply funnels in new family members to replace them, and perhaps even creates and installs a new Leatherface should the current one suffers wounds too great to recover from (such as the ill-fated chainsaw duel with Lefty at the end of Part 2).
HOW DID BUBBA SAWYER BECOME LEATHERFACE?
The primary explanation for Bubba Sawyer, and Thomas Hewitt for that matter, becoming Leatherface is that their families simply brainwashed them into serving as a grunting, violent attack dog. Abused by their respective father figures, the mentally stunted Leatherfaces came to mimic their violent parentage and ended up as a distortion of the breadwinner by hunting down and butchering innocents for the family.
Hurt people hurt people, you know?
WHY DOES LEATHERFACE WEAR THE MASKS?
Contrary to popular belief, the grisly masks Bubba sports in the mainline continuity are meant to reveal more than they conceal. While human consumption is a matter of sport and sustenance for the rest of the family, Leatherface’s masks are mostly separate from this as a sign of care and craft. They’re used as a reflection of his emotional state.
Gunnar Hansen has mentioned many times that Tobe Hooper’s original intent for the varying masks we see is to reflect how Leatherface feels on any given day. They’re used to make him feel pretty or powerful, and he takes great care in fashioning them. The masks can even function as gifts: in Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, he shares a makeshift mask with Stretch in an attempt to save her. Their feminine connotation also directly opposes Drayton’s very masculine, very aggressive energy.
In the remake duology, however, the answer is much more straightforward: Thomas Hewitt suffers from a mysterious congenital skin disease that ate away at his nose and mouth and uses the mask to cover it up. It’s never outright stated but implied to be caused by the sanitary conditions of the meat packing plant harming his mother while pregnant.
WHY DOES LEATHERFACE USE A CHAINSAW?
Loud and scary.
This is still my favorite jumpscare of all time.
Just kidding, the actual answer is it’s a phallic symbol.
From subtext to almost plain text, Part 2 lays it out on the table. Between Bubbas’ beer-spraying chainsaw malfunction and Drayton’s iconic quote about choosing between sex and the saw (see below) makes Leatherface’s chainsaw a representation of sexual repression as the family forces him into the role of being a deranged killer.
It also symbolizes how toxic masculinity has eaten at the whole family. It’s the ultimate tool of a boy being forced to become the Sawyers’ perception of a man: an aggressive predator who hurts women, built through the teachings of his almost entirely male family. Everybody must emulate Grandpa because he was a “strong” man through tough times. They ignored all the very clearly messed up things he did for and to his family.
Really, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies are some of the most heavily dissected horror films regarding sex and gender, so if you have the time, read some of the many wonderful scholarly works about the franchise. Do I even have to say it? I’m talking about Carol J. Clover. Read “Her Body, Himself” from the legendary Men, Women, and Chainsaws. It’s an excellent essay.
And that will be it for today’s Horror History 101 lesson. See you in the next class, and stay tuned for more content concerning horror movies, television, and everything in between.