Editorials
On the Passing of Gunnar Hansen…
Yesterday brought the sad news of the passing of Gunnar Hansen, the man who played “Leatherface” in the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hansen passed away Saturday at his home at the age of 68 from pancreatic cancer.
Hansen was, in his own right, a horror icon. While he only only played Leatherface in the original film, it was his portrayal that cemented the character as one of the most notorious and iconic slashers ever committed to film. To this day, the scene of Leatherface hitting Kirk with the hammer, dragging him into the abattoir, and then slamming the metal door shut is one that gives viewers nightmares.
I don’t know what it is about Leatherface that makes him such a fascinating slasher. He has no lines and his movements are, if you stop and think about it, almost Looney Tunes-ish in nature. Remember when Sally is running from him in the dark? There’s a moment where Sally runs along the side of a house through a fence gate. Leatherface could’ve easily gone diagonally through the gate and continued without breaking stride. Instead, he keeps going straight, comes to a stuttered halt (just add a cartoon “screech” sound and it’s perfect), and then continues after her. It’s comical in its innocence, even with a chainsaw blaring.
This idea is furthered when you take into account that Tobe Hooper, in the documentary The Shocking Truth, states that Leatherface is a “big baby”. Additionally, Gunnar stated that the character was defined to him as, “…as someone who was severely mentally retarded and severely mentally disturbed [Source].” The infamous “chainsaw dance” at the end of the original film is essentially an exaggerated temper tantrum, the throes of a child who didn’t get his way.
David Gregory, director of the documentary, explains, “…Leatherface…put the family in jeopardy by committing a string of murders after he misinterprets a group of teenagers looking to find gas and leave as a group of home invaders.” This helps put one of my favorite scenes from the original film into perspective. Leatherface is scrambling around the bone-filled living room, frantically trying to see if there is anyone else that is invading his home. He then sits down, his hands fidgeting and beating his head. It’s the actions of a child that knows he’s in trouble and isn’t sure of how to get out of it.
A quick little addition is that Leatherface is also a character that is concerned with his appearance, using only the nicest faces to cover his own and applying makeup in a measure to beautify himself. No other slasher that I can think of has that kind of interest in their own appearance, as though he is fully aware of the ugliness of his actions so he tries to cover it with his own ideal of beauty.
Gunnar brought all of this to a role where he didn’t have a single line. He knew how to portray a character that pushed boundaries, created abject and absolute terror, but also inspired sympathy. There was a poetry to his portrayal of a character that is often seen as a big, dumb lout. But he was our big, dumb lout and we loved him, flaws and all.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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