Editorials
Breaking the ‘Chain’: It’s Time for a Female Leatherface
Recently I had the audacity to suggest on the Twitter dot-coms – since we’re getting yet another Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot – the new Leatherface should be female. The pushback was immediate and predictable, the reasoning behind it specious at best and sexist at actually.
All the greatest hits were played, which is an overly generous way of saying the band trotted out the same tired songs we’ve heard a thousand times before. ‘False Equivalencies’ still has a beat you can tap your foot to, but if I have to hear ‘Enter Strawman’ ever again it’ll be too soon.
The word ‘continuity’ was casually dropped at one point. Continuity. In reference to the Texas Chainsaw movies.
The Chucky series has continuity. It has a storyline spanning seven movies that is impressively cogent, given the franchise’s ability to adapt and evolve with the zeitgeist. Friday the 13th hung in there for eight movies before finally cutting itself loose and stumbling into Hell. But Leatherface doesn’t even have the same name from movie to movie. As John Squires has pointed out, the Chainsaw films have always been a slideshow of alternate universes where anything goes depending on who’s writing, who’s directing and who currently owns the rights. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but to suggest audiences would suddenly be put off by the lack of respect for some non-existent canon is laughable on its (leather) face. And if you’re going to cite Texas Chainsaw 3D as an attempt at re-establishing a timeline, I first demand you tell me exactly how old Alexandra Daddario was supposed to be.
Lest you think otherwise, someone did invoke Ghostbusters 2016 as evidence gender-swapping fictional characters can’t work, as though that movie’s problems didn’t have more to do with the man behind the camera than the women in front of it. This concern over whether a female Leatherface would ‘work’ is disingenuous. Depending on who you ask, a male Leatherface hasn’t worked in a decade or three.
The overtly second-grade-level insistence that “Leatherface can’t be girl” aside, the most galling of these arguments was an underlying implication the Texas Chainsaw series is some sort of sacred cow. Maybe the first one is, but Tobe Hooper took the cow to slaughter in 1986. Don’t read this the wrong way; I absolutely love Part 2, but that movie wasn’t about building a franchise, it was about bringing one down. That’s a good subject for a deep dive another day, but one big tip-off is the scene where Dennis Hopper repeatedly screams “I’m bringing it all down.” Even if the series was a sacred cow – the selection of the next Leatherface announced via smokestack – that shouldn’t preclude an honest conversation about seriously changing things up.
Nostalgia is great. Familiarity is fine. But Horror is at its best when it’s showing us something we’ve never seen before. Previously unexplored angles and aspects of human suffering, both psychological and physiological. New images, new ideas… New icons. The Texas Chainsaw series has struggled to bring anything new or truly noteworthy to the table for a while now, and none of this is to say making Leatherface a woman would be an instant fix. It wouldn’t. But it would provide a much-needed new opportunity to explore a truly different version of the character.
Some of the perception around ‘gender-swapping’ a character like Leatherface is mired in the misconception they would be the exact same, “but a woman now.” This is a lazy and narrow field of vision. In truth, changing Leatherface’s gender would fundamentally alter the character’s perspective and motives from the jump because the experience of a girl growing up in the environment and circumstances that created such a maniac would be vastly different than that of a boy. This is a person disfigured and damaged to the point where wearing human skin as a mask seems like the proper thing to do. While previous iterations of Leatherface likely benefitted from being raised in a family consistently depicted as highly patriarchal in nature, a female member of the Sawyer clan would have to be twice as vicious and half as vulnerable as her male counterpart to earn the acceptance of her cannibalistic kin.
What kind of person would that perfect storm of deformity, desperation and depravity create, and what would be left of whoever encountered her? This very concept is fresher and more interesting than anything these movies have done in a generation, and Kim Henkel once brought the Illuminati onboard.
Truthfully, there has been exactly one unifying theme throughout the Chainsaw series’ constant cycle of reinvention. They’re all about the horrifying concept of venturing down America’s long forgotten back roads, hidden far from public view, only to be righteously devoured by a segment of society with an axe to grind. That’s why the real question isn’t “why should Leatherface be a woman,” so much as “why isn’t Leatherface a woman?”
Photo Credit: Jason R. Sheppard @ Truehorror.net
The problem with filming sequels back-to-back is that, unless you can afford expensive reshoots, there’s no easy way to adjust course in between movies if fans react badly to where the story is headed. That’s why it’s important to have a complete narrative thought out well in advance lest you accidentally kill a budding franchise.
However, this isn’t always the case. Every once in a while, it seems like the cinema gods smile upon certain chaotic productions and gift moviegoers with complete franchises that feel like more than the sum of their hastily produced parts. Ted Nicolaou’s Bloodlust: Subspecies III is precisely one of these miraculous pictures, with the raw talents of the artists involved (as well as the continued support from Romania) turning the feature into an effective conclusion for a series that kind of made things up as the filmmakers went along.
That’s why I’d like to invite my fellow readers to join me on this third part of our journey through the Subspecies franchise as we look into Bloodlust and talk about how it remains a surprisingly satisfying finale to the original trilogy.
A Trilogy Planned on the Fly
Released only a year after Bloodstone found plenty of success in rental stores and mail-in VHS catalogues worldwide, 1994’s Bloodlust was produced at the same time as its predecessor in (mostly) the same locations and with the same team. This means that the movie benefited from all the same upgrades as Bloodstone, with the crew now being more experienced with the ins and outs of surviving a low-budget Romanian production and the cast really settling into their characters.
At this point, everything from location scouting to the makeup process had been streamlined, with Wayne Toth and Norman Cabrera, the main duo behind special effects, even switching out time-consuming prosthetics for latex gloves in order to speed up Anders Hove’s monstrous transformation. The titular “subspecies” demons were also once again relegated to a mere cameo appearance due to the laborious puppetry required to bring them to life.
The only real hiccup came from the fact that actress Denice Duff had replaced the first film’s Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and was immediately expected to portray the character as both an innocent victim in part II and as a secondary villain in part III. According to behind-the-scenes interviews, the hectic production schedule that blended two different movies meant that Duff would often find herself having to alternate between two incredibly different versions of Michelle during the same shooting day – though it’s obvious that she’s having more fun with Bloodlust’s more traditionally vampiric version of her character.
In the finished film, we pick things up immediately where the previous entry left off as Rebecca (Melanie Shatner) is forced to leave her vampire sister Michelle (Duff) behind in the dungeons of Castle Vladislav due to the rising sun. This allows Mummy (Pamela Gordon) to use Michelle’s blood to revive the vicious Radu (Hove) so that he may continue his quest for the coveted Bloodstone – a magical artifact that perpetually drips the Blood of Saints.
Meanwhile, the dreamy US embassy agent Mel (Kevin Blair) agrees to help Rebecca plan a rescue mission, though they’re unaware that Radu has become infatuated with Michelle during his attempts to guide her growing bloodlust. This all culminates in a climactic confrontation meant to tie up all of the series’ loose ends in one of Full Moon Pictures’ most ambitious productions.
The Evolution of Radu
Like its predecessor, Bloodlust: Subspecies III was also warmly received by fans who argued that the series was an even bigger success than Full Moon’s other major horror franchise, Puppet Master. This praise wasn’t unanimous, however, as 1994 had seen the rise of a more modern breed of sexy vampire popularized by Anne Rice, with old-school Nosferatu like Radu being viewed as obsolete when compared to the likes of Lestat and Gary Oldman’s take on Dracula.
In a way, one might argue that Nicolaou’s film is something of a swan song for the classic vampire story, as Bloodlust combines all of the traditional elements we tend to associate with these tales into a single tragic yarn that ties a neat little bow on Radu’s story as well as the old-fashioned monster movies that he represents. The finale remains shocking despite the fact that this is the third time we see Radu get brutally killed onscreen, with the brief tease that he may one day return feeling more like a nod towards the nature of evil rather than sequel bait.
The film dabbles a bit in gothic romance and even explores the inherent power fantasy behind transforming into an immortal creature of the night, but the filmmakers never lose sight of Radu as a demonic force even when he’s willing to betray his beloved Mummy for Michelle’s sake. In fact, his twisted “love” for his fledgling makes him even creepier as we get the feeling that his passion comes from a dark and disturbing place.
Anders Hove is at his absolute best in this film, with the effects department boosting his moments of what the younger generation would call “aura farming” whenever Radu emerges from shadows like a 90s version of Count Orlok. There are even a couple of surprisingly effective jump-scares here, which is why I’d argue that Bloodlust cements Radu as one of the most memorable cinematic vampires of all time despite his humble origins.
Subspecies Saves Its Best For Last
Nicolaou and Vlad Panescu also saved the best for “last” (more on that in a bit) regarding the film’s visuals, with the cinematography and overall atmosphere of Bloodlust absolutely surpassing what we saw in the previous films. Everything feels appropriately climactic this time around (including the wonderful soundtrack that was co-composed alongside an authentic Romanian orchestra), and I appreciate how this is the fastest-paced entry in the trilogy since the film doesn’t need to waste time setting anything up.
Bloodlust still suffers from some of the same low-budget blemishes as its predecessors, but there’s so much creative passion here that no amount of wonky effects work or stilted dialogue can get in the way of appreciating the flick’s gothic grandeur. That’s why it’s not surprising that the movie’s definitive(-ish) ending would later be retconned as fans begged for more Radu.
Of course, the next entry in this series would be a different kind of vampiric endeavor altogether, with the filmmakers attempting to engage with the same trends that ultimately killed Radu and his antiquated kin. That, however, is a story for another time. For now, I’ll merely insist that Bloodlust: Subspecies III remains a highlight of Full Moon’s expansive catalogue and is definitely worth seeking out today.
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