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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - October 6th

"THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: 

THE BEGINNING" released today in 2006

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Every legend has a beginning... two brothers and their girlfriends decide to take one last road trip through Texas before being sent to serve in Vietnam, never once thinking that their fate will serve as the origin's of one of America's most brutal killers, Leatherface, in the prequel to the Texas Chainsaw saga, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning!

When a woman dies giving birth to a deformed baby in a Texas slaughterhouse in 1939, the child is later found by a young woman, Luda Mae Hewitt (Allison Marich), in the dumpster where she is looking for food. Deciding to raise him as her own, Luda Mae takes the baby back to the Hewitt residence, and names him Thomas. Thirty years later, "Tommy" (Andrew Bryniarski) is now working in the same factory in which his real mother died (working for the same man who left him in the dumpster), when he is told that the plant has been shut down by the health department. When Thomas refuses to leave, the Supervisor (Tim De Zarn) orders his Assistant (Marcus H. Nelson) to run him off. But Tommy returns later that night and brutally murders the Supervisor and takes the factory chainsaw home with him. Luda Mae's (Marietta Marich) son, Charlie Hewitt (R. Lee Ermey), learns from the town's Sheriff (Lew Temple) what Tommy has done and accompanies him to arrest him, but Charlie later murders the Sheriff and assumes his identity. After Charlie butchers the Sheriff's body for stew meat, he informs the rest of the family that they will "never go hungry again". A short time later, two brothers,  Eric (Matt Bomer) and Dean (Taylor Handley), are driving across the country with their girlfriends, Chrissie (Jordana Brewster) and Bailey (Diora Baird), before enlisting in the Vietnam War. Along the way, Dean reveals he's decided not to enlist and burns his draft card, right before Alex (Cyia Batten) - a female biker they encountered earlier on the road - draws a shotgun and orders the group to pull over. A chase ensues and the car crashes, with Chrissie being thrown from the Bronco and landing in a field out of sight. Charlie, still masquerading as the Sheriff, arrives on the scene and immediately shoots and kills Alex, before putting Eric, Dean and Bailey in his squad car, to take them back to the Hewitt house. Inside, while Tommy butchers Alex's body, Charlie tortures Eric and Dean (the group later manage to briefly escape, before they are recaptured). Meanwhile, Chrissie - having hidden herself in the wreckage of their van, which was towed by Uncle Monty (Terrence Evans) back to the Hewitt house - manages to meet up with Alex's boyfriend, Holden (Terrence Evans) and convinces him to help her free her friends. Nothing however could prepare them for the horrors they are about to witness inside the notorious Hewitt house, or for their encounter with the deranged Tommy - now reborn as the infamous Leatherface!

[seeing Baby Thomas aka Baby Leatherface for the first time]
Young Luda Mae: Isn't he beautiful?
Sheriff Hoyt: That's the ugliest thing I ever saw.

Top:   The deformed Thomas (Andrew Bryniarski) - aka the future Leatherface - working at the same slaughterhouse where he was born;

Above:   Chrissie (Jordana Brewster) joins her friends on a "final" road trip

After the hugely successful remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003, producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form from Platinum Dunes (a production company that specializes in horror films, particularly remakes) had originally decided not to make a sequel. But fan demand for another film proved irresistible, the producers sought out to make a prequel instead, offering answers to several unanswered questions from the 2003 film - some of them including how Monty lost both of his legs, to how Sheriff Hoyt lost his front teeth, and how Leatherface got his nickname. But most of all, to explain how the deranged, cannibalistic Hewitt family got to be the way they are. After meeting with Platinum Dune's co-founder, filmmaker Michael Bay, Fuller and Form hired Sheldon Turner to write the script for a prequel, exploring the roots of Leatherface's family and featuring the first murders he commits using a chainsaw. Originally subtitled The Origin, studio New Line Cinema had to pay $3.1 million more than expected in order to keep the rights to the franchise after Dimension Films made a large offer to buy it from the original right-holders Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel and Robert Kuhn.

Jonathan Liebesman (Darkness Falls and Rings), was hired to direct the prequel. It was the Rings short  - which offered an insightful transition between the two movies, and garnered high praise from fans of both The Ring and Ring Two - which brought him to the attention of Michael Bay to helm The Beginning. Cast reprising their roles from the previous film included R. Lee Ermey, Marietta Marich, Terrence Evans, and Andrew Bryniarski playing the deranged Hewitt family members, Charlie Hewitt/Sheriff Hoyt, Luda Mae Hewitt, Uncle "Monty", and Thomas/Leatherface respectively. Kathy Lamkin would also return as the Tea Lady, as well as John Larroquette, who provided the uncredited Narration. Newcomers to the series included, Taylor Handley as Dean (Handley having impressed the director and producers so much during the audition, that they cast him immediately after), Diora Baird as Bailey, and TV's Blue Collar star Matt Bomer as Eric. Reportedly, Marietta Marich developed a bit if crush on Bomer, later stating, "What a gorgeous guy he is, he has the most fantastic eyes. Oh! He's so beautiful." The Fast and the Furious actress, Jordana Brewster, was cast in the lead role of Chrissie.

TRIVIA:   The cow that gets hit by the jeep was made of fiberglass and filled with blood, fake entrails and fake bones then screwed together

Top and Above:   Chrissie's friends, Eric (Matt Bomer), Bailey (Diora Baird) and Dean (Taylor Handley) are about to have a gruesome encounter with the Hewitt family!

Principal photography began on 10 October 2005 in and around Austin, Texas. Brewster initially got made fun of for the way she ran during filming scenes in which her character Chrissie had to run. Jordana said she's so use to running on a treadmill in form, but producer Andrew Form told her that she looked like she was running in the Chariots of Fire and told her to run messy with her arms in the air and not go in a straight line. Later Jordana said she ended up running faster then the camera operators could go and was reportedly said, "Well, how's that?" with a laugh. Adn for the scene where Eric gets his face wrapped in cellophane by Sheriff Hoyt, Matt Bomer's head was actually being wrapped in very real Saran Wrap. R. Lee Ermey said he was very concerned for Bomer during filming, despite taking the precaution to leave a small gap opening at the bottom of Bomer's chin for him to breathe, so when ever he was having trouble breathing he would signal to Emery to stop by knocking his knees together!  According to Liebesman, the scene for Luda Mae to sing 'Hush, Little Baby' to Bailey at the dinner table was Marich's idea, which Liebesman thought was one of the creepiest scenes in the entire movie. later on, for Baily's throat slitting scene, the filmmakers filmed the scene nine times, with slight variations each time. But with all the guts and gore in The Beginning, Marich has said the 'surgery scene' was so realistic that it was very hard for her to watch.

It was during production that Brewster and producer Form began secretly dating, keeping their relationship secret for the rest of the cast and crew as they felt it may appear unprofessional otherwise. While remaining mostly in Brewster's trailer between scenes, Brewster later said that while filming, "Everyday Andrew wore these work boots to the set, and if I was lying down in the shot or there was equipment in the way, I'd look for his shoes. It was comfortable just to know he was nearby." Announcing their relationship after the end of production, Brewster and Form would later become engaged in 2006 and married in 2007. The couple had their first child, a son named Julian, in 2013.

Sheriff Hoyt: [after seeing Leatherface with a mask for the first time] I like your new face.

Top:   The sadistic Charlie Hewitt Jr (R. Lee Emery) posing as Sheriff Hoyt;

Above:   Thomas walks down the highway with his trademark chainsaw, having now become Leatherface!

According to producer Brad Fuller, The Beginning was given an NC-17 by the MPAA, and a total of 17 scenes had to be edited in order to get an R rating, before being released across 2,820 theaters and debuting at #2 at the box office (grossing $18,508,228 on its first weekend). Reviews were largely negative for the prequel, with Nathan Lee from The New York Times panning the film and calling it "an invitation to hard-core sadism" and Peter Travers from Rolling Stone awarding the film zero stars, calling the film, "putridly written, directed and acted"; he also criticized the film's obvious plot turns. Online review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus reads, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is full of blood and gore, but not enough scares or a coherent story to make for a successful horror film." In January, 2007, at the 27th Golden Raspberry Awards, The Beginning was nominated for Worst Prequel or Sequel - but lost to Basic Instinct 2.

Despite being a critical failure, The Beginning was still a modest box office hit. After the film's release, Platinum Dunes announced that the company would not be producing a third film in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot franchise, and in October 2009, it was announced that Twisted Pictures and Lions Gate Entertainment were attempting to purchase the rights to the franchise, with Twisted Pictures producing and Lions Gate distributing. Lions Gate eventually signed a contract with rights-holders Bob Kuhn and Kim Henkel for multiple films, the first being an unrelated sequel, Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013). Although the film had less than it's predecessor at the box office ($47.2 million against almost $52 million), Twisted Pictures announced an eighth picture in the Texas Chainsaw franchise, tentatively titled Leatherface, with Millenium Films as a producing partner. While five of the Texas Chainsaw franchise's seven films have been shot in Texas and one in California and one in Louisiana, Leatherface marks the first time a film in the franchise has been shot outside the United States, with production beginning on May 18, 2015 in Bulgaria. Leatherface is expected to be released sometime in 2017.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   12%

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