MANIAC (1980) Directed by William Lustig


Moving the Gein-style


butchery from the boonies to the big city, Maniac is a product of both the sleazy New York grindhouse scene of the ’80s, and the then- changing landscape of the US horror film in general,


Tools Of The Trade: Leatherface (Dan Yeager) contemplates his chainsaw shelves.


even given the time span between the events in the original film and this one, was the same person who hung Pam on a meat hook and let Sally get away 39 years ago. To do this, he carefully studied the original Leatherface. “One of the most profound moments in making


this movie was when I got to walk through the orig- inal Texas Chainsaw house with Gunnar Hansen. It was detailed out for the movie. That’s a surreal ex- perience in itself, to walk through that house. Then to do it with Gunnar Hansen and talk about shooting the movie, what it was like back then, and the dif- ferences and similarities he saw. He had some def- inite advice about surviving this. I told him, ‘I did my absolute best to rip you off!’ There’s a time passage that’s mine to deal with, but I wanted to do what he did. He had all sorts of little subtleties that he’s writ- ten about and talked about, where he found that character and what he did with it. I’ve tried to repli- cate that the best I could, and apply the new cir- cumstances.” When Hansen was preparing


for the role, he spent time at a camp for developmentally chal- lenged children, learning to mimic their mannerisms so well he was able to pass as a resi- dent. That informed his brilliant portrayal of Leatherface as both frightened and childlike. “There’s a lot of debate about


Leatherface’s mental capacity,” says Yeager. “He’s not just men- tally stunted: he’s a person, that’s the most fascinating part of his character. And it’s the most hor- rifying thing when you think about it, his life. It’s unbearable. I tried the actor gim- mick of living as the character. I lasted about three hours. I might have been able to go longer, but it was time to go to bed and I just couldn’t fall asleep as Leatherface. It’s too horrifying, and unnecessary to make a movie, I found.” As monstrous as Leatherface is, Yeager doesn’t


see him as a boogeyman or a character that re- quires a back story. “I think he’s a person. I’ve never really worked out


the fine details of his back story, how he really came to be or what the whole family dynamic was. I still don’t have a firm grasp on that. He has his point of


view and he responds to the world in a way that makes perfect sense to him. There’s absolutely noth- ing supernatural about Leatherface, which is the other thing I love about the character. He’s a guy, he’s a dude, and he just does what he does. If you’re in a room full of people, and one of them is Leatherface, you want to be Leatherface. It’s too dangerous to be anybody else. He’s lethal. He loves only his family; everybody else is a threat or food.” As in the original film, this Leatherface wears dif-


ferent masks to suit the occasion; Yeager expands on the reasoning behind that. “One of the things we found is that the masks


mean something. It’s how he expresses himself to others. He’s very much aware of the persona he’s trying to put out; he’s particular about what he wears. In the original you would see that, when he was making dinner he wasn’t dressed like he would be when he was just working around the house and the kids happened to pop in. I think that’s what led subsequent movies down the path that he liked to dress as a woman.” Those movies were disre-


garded for this new 3-D version, and Yeager is confident that it is as valid as the original. “The Texas Chainsaw Mas-


sacre changed cinema. They were breaking some ground. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of with the movie we made. I think we broke some more cinematic ground by shoot- ing it in 3-D. People tend to pooh- pooh 3-D as a gimmick. I think you’re going to see that there’s a


new cinematic vernacular available now, if that’s the way you choose to tell a story. 3-D is the next step, like colour was, or adding sound, and it changes the way you make a movie.” This is the first film for Yeager, as The Texas


Chainsaw Massacre was for Hansen. Producer Carl Mazzocone has an option to make six films, and Yeager confirms that, “If it does good box office, we’re going to make some more.” At the suggestion that perhaps he’ll be tapped for a remake of Holly- wood Chainsaw Hookers (1988), Gunnar Hansen’s next “big” role, the affable actor laughs, “Hey, you never know.”


when gore was as expected as scares. The late Joe Spinell stars as Frank Zito, a middle-aged NYC apart- ment dweller – traumatized by early childhood abuse at the hands of his prostitute mother – who kills women and collects their scalps to pin on man- nequins as trophies. (Tom Savini provides gruesome gore effects.) Trying to soothe his mother/girl and in- timacy issues, he even takes the dummies to bed to chat. The object of his affections, a photographer named Anna (Caroline Munro), may be able to curb his compulsions... or not. The film, which has been remade with Elijah


Wood as the lead (to be released later this year), demonstrates how the Gein character became an archetype, easily reimagined for not just different times but different places.dn


THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS


(1991) Directed by Jonathan Demme Taken from a well-re-


searched best-selling novel by Thomas Harris, this pseudo-Gein antagonist is one Jame Gumb (Ted


Levine, pictured), an amalgamation of Gein’s psy- chotic mindset and compulsion to harvest women’s skin to make clothing (stemming from a desire to change gender, due to a deep self-loathing), and Ted Bundy’s modus operandi (feigning injury to lure women into his grasp). As newbie FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jody Foster) tracks him down with the help of incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), Gumb is starving his latest victim in a pit in his basement in order to loosen her skin – Ed never had such foresight. Here we see the body and gender issues at the


forefront, all taken one step further than when we last saw them broached with as much style and substance in Psycho. Director Jonathan Demme was so successful with his serial killer story that it swept all the major Academy Award categories that year. dn


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