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.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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