Leatherface (original)

Leatherface is the main villain of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, and a cannibal. He is one of the biggest horror icons, but unlike most of them, is not supernatural in any way. His main weapons are a chainsaw and sledgehammer. He is also extremely mentally retarded. He does not talk, though he does make vocal sounds. He wears a mask made from a person's skin, which he uses to express a personality. It is also notable that director Tobe Hooper has stated that Leatherface kills out of fear, not malice. He wears masks made of human skin (hence his name) and engages in murder and cannibalism alongside his inbred family. Leatherface first appeared in the first film in the series (1974) and in its six subsequent continuations and remakes. Wisconsin killer Ed Gein, who wore a mask made of human skin, was reportedly the inspiration for the character.

Original series
The original film never showed Leatherface without one of his human-hide faces on. Leatherface used to work as the cow-killer at the meat factory. Gunnar Hansen, who portrayed Leatherface in the original 1974 film, sees Leatherface as "completely under the control of his family. He'll do whatever they tell him to do. He's a little bit afraid of them." In the documentary The Shocking Truth, Tobe Hooper portrays Leatherface as a "big baby" who kills in self-defense because he feels threatened. In the first film, Leatherface shows fear when new people enter his home.

Leatherface's family uses the bones of the people he kills (along with some animal bones) to build the inside of their house. They process the victims' flesh into barbecue and chili, which Drayton Sawyer, a skilled chef, sells at his restaurant/gas station, the "Last Chance" gas station. They also enter human-flesh dishes at cook-offs (according to the sequel, Drayton has won two cooking awards doing this). Aside from Leatherface and Drayton, the Sawyer clan includes several more brothers, a hitchhiker named Nubbins Sawyer, Nubbins' twin brother, a Vietnam vet known as Chop Top or Plate Head, a hitchhiking cowboy named Eddie/Tex, a hook-handed man named Tech/Tinker, a deranged pervert named Alfredo/Fred, a tow-truck driver named Vilmer and a redneck know-it-all named W.E. Apart from the brothers, the Sawyer clan includes the supercentenarian Grandpa, the dead Grandma/Great-Grandma Sawyer (whose corpse has been preserved), a wheelchair-bound mother called Mama and Leatherface's daughter (first names unknown).

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a direct sequel to the 1974 film, featured a more campy and over-the-top atmosphere than the original. Tobe Hooper stated on The Shocking Truth that he wanted to expand on the dark comedy in the original film, as he felt no one truly picked up on this element. In this film, the Hitchhiker is replaced by his hippy twin brother Chop Top (who transforms his dead twin's corpse into a puppet), the cook, Drayton, has become an award-winning chef. Leatherface develops a "crush" on one of his victims, and in one scene, removes the skin from the face of her still-living friend and places it on her to hide her from the rest of his family. At the end of the film, he apparently dies in an explosion after being impaled with a chainsaw in a fight with the uncle of his previous victims from the first film. Leatherface's clan's last name is also revealed in the film when brother Drayton wins a local cook-off, their family name being Sawyer.

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, became the second sequel in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series. The film was made as a reboot and a sequel, so the audience could interpret it as a direct sequel or as an alternative sequel in a different continuity of the previous two films, though several references are made to the previous two films, including Leatherface having a knee brace from his chainsaw accident at the climax of the first film, brother Alfredo owning a gas station and truck labeled "Last Chance Gas", the family's last name remaining Sawyer from the previous film and the inclusion of several characters from both earlier films. The filmmakers attempted to make the series darker and grittier (much as the film-makers of the original had intended), but they had to tone it down and change the ending after interventions from the MPAA. New Line released an uncut version to the home-video market in 2003. In this film Leatherface has an extended family and a daughter - possibly the product of a rape. A four-issue comic series based on the film, entitled Leatherface, was created; notably, portions of the comics are narrated by and shown from Leatherface's point of view. Note that horror actor Kane Hodder choreographed the stunts and played the stunt-double Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation apparently takes place in its own continuity; its prologue describes the second and third films as "two minor, yet apparently related incidents". The film features Leatherface as a yelping, pizza-eating transvestite involved in an Illuminati conspiracy to provide society a source of horror, and, again, with a different family.

Remake and Prequel
Marcus Nispel directed a remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003. Its success greenlit a prequel, released in 2006, which delved into the origins of Leatherface and of his family. In this continuity, Leatherface's real name is Thomas Brown Hewitt; his mother Sloane dies giving birth to him on August 7, 1939 at the Blair Meat Co., a slaughterhouse where she works, and her uncaring boss leaves the infant to die in a dumpster. Luda Mae Hewitt finds him and takes him home to raise him.

The Hewitts worked at the Blair Meat Co., but after losing their jobs they switched to kidnapping people, murdering them (often by chainsaw or shotgun) and butchering their flesh, as family member Charlie claims that he got the idea from eating human flesh in the Korean War after he became a prisoner of war. The prequel reveals that they do eat the meat of their victims; the remake only implies this.

Leatherface in this continuity suffers from a facial disfigurement and a skin disease that caused severe deformities and tumors to his face. Due to this disfigurement, his muteness and mental retardation (carried over from the first series), other children bullied the boy. He wore a small leather mask to cover up his deformity, and worked at the same meat factory where he was born, for the same boss as his mother - the same man who had left him for dead. He also had a tendency toward self-mutilation, and a doctor diagnosed him as suffering from a type of neurodegeneration at age 12.

After health inspectors shut the factory down, Hewitt's boss and a reluctant co-worker ordered him to leave. When Hewitt didn't, the boss and the co-worker bullied him, calling him a "retard" and a "dumb animal". Acting on a long-burning rage, Hewitt killed his boss with a sledgehammer. He later discovered the chainsaw he used as a weapon after searching the now abandoned factory. When Winston Hoyt, the local sheriff, tried to apprehend him, Thomas' uncle, Charlie Hewitt came to his aid and killed the sheriff with his own gun. Charlie later assumed the sheriff's identity.

Hewitt later made masks of human skin by slicing off the faces of his victims.

Although Leatherface's family still manipulate him in this interpretation, they do show themselves somewhat more caring for him and less abusive than in the original film. Before killing the sheriff, his uncle Charlie even defends him by saying, "He's not retarded, he's misunderstood." The cruelty he suffers at the hands of his peers, in part, inspires his murderous behavior, however it's his uncle, Charlie who encourages his anti-social behaviour and impulses.

At the climax of the remake, protagonist Erin Hardesty cuts off Leatherface's chainsaw-wielding arm with a meat cleaver, and Erin is able to escape him, though Leatherface survives the cleaver attack. Leatherface escapes after police discover his ranch house and find the remains of 33 people. The police fail to secure the crime scene properly, allowing Leatherface to attack and kill two officers. Leatherface then escapes and disappears, and the case remains open.

Andrew Bryniarski, who portrayed Leatherface in the remake, states: "In my estimation, Leatherface is like a beaten dog — he was ostracized and ridiculed, and treated harshly by his peers. The psychological damage they inflicted was immense — there's no chance for him." Terrence Evans, who played Leatherface's uncle Old Monty, says, "I think there was a chance Thomas' life could have been different. But the teasing he suffered, coupled with a bad temper, and following Hoyt around like a puppy dog, left room for Hoyt to get absolute control."

Texas Chainsaw 3D
Leatherface returned in the direct sequel to the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Texas Chainsaw 3D, which also serves as a reboot to the franchise.

The film begins directly after the events of the 1974 film, in which a mob led by Burt Hartman burns the family's house to the ground, and Leatherface becomes the sole survivor of his family except for his baby cousin Edith, also known as Heather, whom a member of the angry mob rescues and smuggles away. Many years later, when Heather returns to the local area with her friends, Leatherface lives in the basement of a mansion belonging to their recently deceased grandmother, who has been caring for him for the past 20-odd years. Due to her passing away, Heather - as the only identified living blood relative - inherits the mansion. Leatherface kills off Heather's friends one by one, not realizing Heather is, in fact, related to him, and nearly kills Heather before she escapes. After traveling to the local police station, Heather discovers her ancestry and the fact that Leatherface is her cousin. Upon discovering he is still alive, Burt Hartman, now town mayor, sets out to kill Leatherface once and for all, and since Heather is a member of the same family (the "Sawyers"), he develops a vendetta against her as well. Leatherface once again attempts to kill Heather before recognizing her birthmark, and realizing his kinship to her. Burt attacks Leatherface; Leatherface ultimately kills Hartman by pushing him down into a meat grinder. Later on, Heather finally reads a letter given to her by her now deceased grandmother, revealing that she simply wanted Heather to take care of Leatherface. His name is revealed to be Jedediah Sawyer, known as "Jed" for short.

In a post-credits scene, Heather's adoptive parents arrive at the mansion, greedily discussing how they plan to split the assets Heather now owns. Leatherface then shocks them as he answers the door, chainsaw in hand.

Comics
Leatherface became a prominent character in Wildstorm Comics's continuation of the remakes. With the family exposed after the events of the first film, the comics show the Hewitt family living in a series of tunnels in the sewers of Travis County.

As at the end of the remake, Leatherface in the comics has only one arm. Halfway through the first story arc, Leatherface's uncle Monty helps Leatherface build a "prosthetic arm" (consisting of a hook attached to a bone and tied to Leatherface's arm with a belt) to assist with his nephew's handicap. Leatherface later uses this hook in addition to his chainsaw on victims, at one point spearing a man's leg to prevent him from escaping.

The comics also imply that the other people in the town, while perhaps not involved with the Hewitts' cannibalism, at least know of it and have agreed to help them deal with outsiders. In one scene, when a potential victim runs into a bar looking for help, she is stopped from calling the police by the owner and patrons, who tell her that they "don't want no Hewitt trouble." They later reprimand Leatherface for not looking after his "livestock."

Later one-shot comics published by Wildstorm also dealt with Leatherface. One of them, About a Boy, focused on parts of Leatherface's childhood that The Beginning did not reveal. It shows that bullies severely picked on Thomas Hewitt as a child, and thus he spent most of his time alone drawing in his notebook, hunting and skinning animals, and later making clothing out of them. A foreshadowing of his future as Leatherface takes place when, after the book's antagonist, Chris, the leader of the bullies, throws rocks at him at a swimming-hole, Thomas attacks Chris and skins off his face while he is still alive.

About a Boy also details how the Hewitt family remain for the most part apathetic towards Thomas's actions. His brother/uncle Charlie (the future Hoyt) helps him get rid of Chris's body (his only criticism stating that Thomas needs to "learn how to fix 'em proper", after putting the faceless victim out of his misery with a shotgun). Later, after Thomas's teacher Mr. Hanson questions Luda May about her son's behavior and tells her that he plans to file a report with the city to get him some help, Luda May bashes his head in with a shovel and kills him, stating, "There is nothing wrong with my boy."

Mask
In the original film, Leatherface wore three different masks: the "Killing Mask", "Old Lady Mask" and "Pretty Woman Mask". Gunnar Hansen commented: "The reason he wore a mask, according to Tobe and Kim, was that the mask really determined his personality. Who he wanted to be that day determined what mask he put on. So when Drayton comes home with Sally, Leatherface is wearing the 'Old Lady Mask' and he's wearing an apron and carrying a wooden spoon, he wants to be domestic, helpful in the kitchen. At dinner he wears a different face, the 'Pretty Woman,' which has makeup." Also of note, the 'Pretty Woman' outfit consists of a female wig and a black suit, as Leatherface is "dressing up" for dinner, an old deep south tradition which stems from his southern upbringing, and the 'Killing Mask' is the skin mask he wears while chasing and murdering captives. Tobe Hooper also discussed the multiple masks and dinner scene on the audio commentary for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Hansen later added, "The idea of the mask is that there is no personality under the mask. That was the idea in talking with Tobe and Kim. When they created the character, they said he has to put on masks to express himself because he himself can't do it. The way we tried to create him, there is nothing under the mask, which is what makes him so frightening."

The remake offered a more concrete explanation as to why Leatherface wore masks. As a child, a severe facial deformity ate away most of his nose and made him subject to cruel ridicule from his peers. Prior to killing people, he wore animal hides, cloths and leather masks that covered up the bottom of his face. Later he began to skin some of the people he killed and wore their faces as masks. In contrast to the original film, Leatherface does not seem to have different masks for different purposes, although he does change masks occasionally. He appears briefly without his mask on in one scene of remake, his face suffers badly from Deterioration and he is missing a portion of his nose.

The Wildstorm comics that took place in the remake's continuity had Leatherface taking off his mask when alone with his family, something that did not occur in any of the original films

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Leatherface's cannibalistic family consists of his older brothers Nubbins Sawyer, Chop Top Sawyer, and Drayton Sawyer. He also has an unnamed grandfather, who is extremely old and frail. Leatherface's real name is Bubba Sawyer.

When Sally, Franklin, Jerry, Pam, and Kirk reached their homestead, Kirk and Pam looked for the local swimming hole and stumbled upon the cannibals' house--hoping they could get some gasoline for their van--where Leatherface killed Kirk with a sledgehammer and hung Pam on a meat hook before throwing her into a freezer where she froze to death. When Jerry came looking for them, he was killed by Leatherface with a sledgehammer. He then killed Franklin in the woods with his chainsaw, and chased Sally, where Drayton took her to his house to cook her and eat her. When Grandpa failed to kill Sally with the hammer, she ran, but Nubbins the hitchhiker and Leatherface chased after her. Nubbins was run over by an 18-wheeler, and the driver hit him with a wrench, knocking him down and causing him to cut his leg on his chainsaw. He was last seen swinging his chainsaw around in frustration as Sally escaped in the back of a pickup truck.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
After fourteen years, Leatherface reemerged, killing two drunks named Buzz and Rick. Sally and Franklin's uncle Lefty Enright was searching for the cannibals to get his revenge. When he got Stretch to play the deaths on the radio, Leatherface and Chop Top went over to the station to kill her. However, Leatherface fell in love with her. He refused to kill her when Drayton and Chop Top found her, however he did not attempt to stop Grandpa from killing her, and held her in place. Grandpa was too old and frail, so Drayton tried to kill her himself, but Lefty entered, armed with several chainsaws. After injuring Drayton, Lefty engaged Leatherface in a chainsaw duel, where Leatherface was impaled by Lefty with his chainsaw. He was still able to fight, but the fight was ended shortly after; Drayton, deranged and having lost a lot of blood, set off a grenade. Leatherface was last seen getting hit by Grandpa with a hammer (he was really aiming for Lefty), knocking him down, before all four of them were killed in the grenade explosion, which narrowly missed Chop Top as he climbed a ladder after Stretch.

This is the only timeline where Leatherface ever dies; he survives in all others.

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3
This movie takes place in its own timeline, though it could be considered an alternate continuation from the first movie, in which Stretch is a news reporter and Leatherface is wearing a leg brace from when he was cut on his chainsaw. Drayton is renamed W.E. Sawyer and was executed in the gas chambers. Leatherface has a different mask and a different family, consisting of his mother Mama Sawyer and his brothers Tex, Alfredo, and Tinker. All are killed except Leatherface, who is beaten with a rock by Michelle, but survives, as he is revving up his chainsaw. In an alternate ending, he drowns after he is hit with a rock.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
This movie is its own timeline and is not connected with any of the other films. W.E. Sawyer is alive in this film, and he and Leatherface have another brother named Vilmer Sawyer. He is also not a cannibal, but involved in an Illuminati conspiracy to spread fear, and eats pizza. He is also a crossdresser and is called "Leather" instead of "Leatherface". W.E. is killed by Vilmer, who is then assassinated by the Illuminati, causing Leatherface to run around in terror at the conclusion of the film.

In other media
Leatherface appeared in the Robot Chicken episode That Hurts Me where he is on the Big Brother show with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Ghostface, and Pinhead. He wins the challenge when he retrieves a kitten from a block of ice. He also plays charades with Jason and Michael (none of the three can talk).

Leatherface also appeared in the fan video The Nightmare Ends on Halloween, sent by Pinhead to kill Freddy. His back is hunched.

A spoof of him appeared in the spoof movie Stan Helsing. Going by the name Pleatherface. He also talks at one point. His chainsaw is plugged in; thus, he is defeated when his chainsaw is unplugged, and runs off.

Trivia

 * While the second and third movie are considered different canons, it was at one point explained that the limp in his leg in the third movie was a result of the grenade explosion in the second. This is unlikely and it is commonly accepted that his leg injury was from a chainsaw wound in the original.