First seen in Tobe Hooper’s horror masterpiece, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, he is the former slaughterhouse worker who continues his trade butchering humans to feed his psychotic family. Leatherface earns his moniker with his trademark mask made of human skin, one of countless repurposed body parts from his many victims.
The actual makeup of these faces changes throughout the blood-soaked franchise, but each mask comes from a unique person and has been chosen for a specific purpose. With the release of a new sequel and with it a new mask, perhaps it’s time to examine the many faces worn by the mysterious killer throughout the years.
Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) has one of the most iconic, startling, and genuinely upsetting introductions in the history of horror. As road tripper Kirk (William Vail) wanders into his rural farmhouse, a large man appears and smashes his head with a sledgehammer before dragging him further into the house and slamming a heavy metal door. On its face this is striking enough, but even more startling is the fact that the giant with the sledgehammer is wearing a mask made from the skin of a human face. It’s old and fading with stitching in a circle around the hairline. Short brown hair juts out in spurts giving the appearance of a young man hard at work. With his dirty apron and shirtsleeves, this is the persona Leatherface assumes when slaughtering meat for the family, his Work Mask.
We never learn the identities of the people whose faces create these personas. Hooper’s ambiguity is a large part of why the film still packs such a meaty punch and Leatherface’s masks reveal more about the killer himself than the bodies from which they came. Dressing for the part he wants, his costumes help him navigate social interactions with his deranged family.
Leatherface wears two more distinct faces in the original film. The second is the mask of an old woman complete with gray hair. This Granny Mask is the outfit he wears when preparing dinner, a matronly costume to fill the role of the family’s missing matriarch. He wears the third and final mask to the dinner table. With longer dark hair, this one has its features exaggerated by makeup and goes with a dark suit and tie. Hooper’s sequel is equally depraved, but arguably more comedic than its predecessor. Upon first appearance in the film, Leatherface (Bill Johnson) wears a full body mask of sorts, the corpse of his brother the Hitchhiker who died in the conclusion of the original film. He and other brother Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) tote this body around as a twisted way of honoring their departed sibling.
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