Starting from March 2021, a crowdfunding campaign has kicked off for the making of The Sawyer Massacre, a fan-film inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre set several years before the original that wants to give a more in-depth description of the entire family and its cannibalistic tendencies. A small cameo will be made by John Dugan who played the role of Granpa Sawyer. The campaign is currently active on the IndieGoGo website.
The Sawyer Massacre: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – Synopsis
While recovering from the loss of someone close, Jimmy’s friends bring him to the Texas countryside to escape city life. In need of supplies for their cabin, they ascend to a gas station where they are directed to find their supplies at an isolated farmhouse. The property is not as it seems. They find themselves hunted by a cannibalistic psychopath with an arsenal of violent tools at his disposal. If any live through the nightmare, they’ll wish they hadn’t!
Crowdfunding Campaign
The campaign will run for two months. Perks for donors will range from $2 to $7500. Merchandise including Hoodies, Blu-Rays, and Screen Used Leatherface Masks will be available for sale.
This movie is for fans eager for a return of the disturbing and gritty nature of the original film.
Fans will enjoy a fresh story engaging and entertaining on its own but paying superb homage to the original film.
Teaming up with indie film production companies Solar Squid Productions and Josh Skurnik Productions, director Steve Merlo will produce a terrifying fan film that will get people talking and having nightmares like the original.
Leatherface in nutshell. Between history and myth
Even though we can safely assume that Leatherface‘s story as we see it in the movie is a pure work of fiction, we should also take into consideration that there was a series of homicides in Texas that was the basis for the inspiration of the character, and of other characters in horror cinema. We’re talking about none other than Edward Theodore Gein.
Ed Gein was a mentally disturbed man, born and raised in a family context that calling small-minded would be extremely restrictive. His mother was an ardent believer aligned with Christianity and had a deep hatred for the female gender to the point of considering all women but herself whores, and even making Edward and his brother promise that they would never get married nor have any relationships with women.
The homicides and Gain’s maddened state seem to have begun, however, after his mother’s death (that is if we exclude his brother’s death of which Ed was accused but never found guilty).
It was Berenice Wordern‘s death – the deputy’s mother -, to finally shine a light on Gain’s atrocities. When agents set foot on the farm, they found a veritable Theatre of Horrors. There were pieces of corpses used like furniture or to make lamps and other common-use objects, dresses and masks made of human skin, noses, skulls, and fragments of bone. Gain later confessed to the killings of other people who had disappeared at the time and to the desecration of several graves. Once reopened, said graves confirmed Gain’s confession.
He died in July of 1984 while in detention. To this day, his story is still the basis for several characters in horror. If we look beyond the Leatherface universe, in fact, we can easily find other references to his actions in other works like Psycho (both Bloch‘s novel and Hitchcock’s film), Silence of The Lambs, and American Horror Story.
What to expect from The Sawyer Massacre?
When it comes to Merlo‘s work, as we already said, it is set several years before the events recounted in the 1974 movie. The new retelling introduces us to another side of this character as imagined by the director. We’re already sure it will stand up to its predecessors and we encourage you to support the project through this link.
