TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
CHAIN REACTION
HOLD ON TO YOUR LIMBS! LEATHER FACE REVS UP AGAIN IN GORE-SPLASHED SEQUEL TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD
FEDE ÁLVAREZ REMEMBERS THE first time a flesh-masked maniac took a chainsaw to his brain. It was a life-altering wound; the kind that spares skin and bone but slices deep into the raw matter of imagination.
“When I was 12, I suddenly discovered this thing called horror,” the writer and producer tells SFX. “Like a lot of things in my life, I got obsessed with it and wanted to watch all the movies. I probably started with A Nightmare On Elm Street 3. You watch that and you go, ‘Hey, it’s fun, this horror thing!’ It was the time of VHS and like an addict you went to the store and asked the guy to give you something stronger. He’d look at you and say, ‘You’re a little young…’ Then he gave me the original The Evil Dead. And that fucked me up.
“Once I’d recovered from that, he said, ‘Well, maybe you’re ready for this,’ and he gave me The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was like watching porn. Completely forbidden. Your parents will never let you watch it, so it had that incredible taste of the forbidden combined with this terrifying experience. Once you’ve done it you regret it. You’re all shook up, a mix of shame and regret. I can still taste that feeling. I was really young but even today that’s exactly what you’re looking for in any good horror movie, the feeling that it’s not right. Shame on you for watching that film, young man!”
“Be right with you, just putting my face on.”
Director David Blue Garcia also encountered the film at a tender age. “I was in middle school or early high school, watching cable. I happened to stumble across this movie, didn’t know anything about it. As soon as Leatherface showed up and hit that guy over the head with a hammer it scared me so much I turned off the TV. I was like, ‘What is this? What was I watching?’ I had to turn it back on and finish the movie. It was so bizarre, it was so new, it was so terrifying.”