Hello Internet - and welcome back to the most inquisitive channel on YouTube - Life’s
Biggest Questions, the place where we wonder how successfully we can sneak a few Halloween
specials in before anyone starts to notice.
What’s going on guys - as always, I’ll be your disembodied floating voice Jack Finch
- as we refuel the chainsaw, rev up the belt before doing an interpretive dance in front
of a glorious low-light sunset - and suspiciously ask the question What If Leatherface Was Real?
Roll the clip.
You all know the noise, the synonymous chainsaw buzz from Tobe Hooper’s seminal 1974 slasher
masterpiece The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - an indie horror flick, made on a shoestring budget
that cemented itself as the birth of slasher cinema - hurtling the collosal killer Leatherface
into the ranks of iconic horror legends.
So iconic in fact, that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre went on to spawn eight horror films,
a slew of comics and even a place alongside Scorpion in Mortal Kombat X.
Created by renowned horror director Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel, Leatherface is the household
name when it comes to cannibalistic rural families and unemployed slaughterhouse slayers
- but what if he was real?
Well.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but - he kind of was.
Before we jump into that whole debacle though guys, you know the drill by now don’t you
- if you’re a fan of this video, Tobe Hooper, Horror Cinema, Leatherface or just Life’s
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Leatherface - AKA Jedidiah Sawyer - doesn’t do things the way that most other horror icons
do.
He’s not supernatural in any way - he wasn’t ushered forward as part of some demonic ritual
- he’s not a criminal mastermind who plays games with his victims for the shear joy of
it.
He’s a large man with a chainsaw who wears peoples skin as a mask, while helping his
cannibalistic family to round up unsuspecting road-trip teenagers - chop them into tiny
pieces and cook them in their world famous award-winning chilli.
Yeah - the sequels get a little bit weird.
And for the most part - Leatherface has one of the most rewritten origin stories in the
whole of horror cinema.
In the 1974 version, he was the straight up Leatherface we know and love.
In the 1986 sequel, based 13 years later - he’s shed a few pounds and strapped on a tuxedo.
Throughout the next strange rewrites and mashups, he’s a pizza-eating transvestite involved
with an illuminati conspiracy, a dumpster baby with a rare skin-disorder - and an escaped
mental hospital patient with a skin-face moustache.
Still - the sentiment always remained the same, and director Tobe Hooper explicitly
stated on several occasions that Leatherface’s prime directive was to be a big murderous
baby, a killer that never actually murdered out of malice, but in self-defence at the
strange, perturbed understanding of feeling threatened.
Fear.
Leatherface is the product of The Sawyers - his twisted, macabre family that, while
not only lacking moral fibre - probably also lack the benefits of a well-rounded diet.
Far from the truth is the real story then, and the story of the serial killer that Leatherface
is based on - Ed Gein, an American murderer and body snatcher who has also inspired Norman
Bates from Psycho, and Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.
Gein’s story was so twisted, deranged and physically taboo that his murderous deeds
struck a chord in the modern publics psyche - Leatherface WAS real, in the realisation
that a human being could go to such disturbing lengths to feel what it’d be like to live
inside someone else's skin.
Also known as The Butcher of Plainfield, Edward Theodore Gein was born in 1906 - and lived
for the majority of his life in the same town that the horrific crimes would be committed,
Plainfield, Wisconsin.
Although he was only ever found guilty of murdering two women, tavern owner Mary Hogan
in 1954 and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden in 1957 - Gein was also responsible
for exhuming countless freshly buried corpses from local graveyards - manifesting in him
a morbid fascination with the mortality of flesh.
After Gein’s arrest following the disappearance of Bernice Worden, county sheriff’s would
search the Gein farm - where they found her decapitated body in a shed.
She was hung upside down, with a crossbar separating her ankles and wrists - and Police
later reported in their notes that the torso appeared to be dressed out like a deer.
However, the unearthing of Gein’s strange fascination with flesh was far from over.
After searching the house, authorities later found untold numbers of whole human bones
and fragments, a wastebasket made from human skin, human skulls that adorned his bedposts,
a corset made from a female torso - as well as leggings, and entire handcrafted masks
made from the skin of human faces.
Leatherface was very much real, and he was born that evening on November 16th 1957.
Leatherface, both the original 1974 Tobe Hooper horror flick, and the ever-changing iconic
horror legend himself, in essence - is a stark and bloody reminder of the reality of the
grotesque lengths that the human mind can go to, the pained and twisted existence of
Ed Gein.
Oftentimes, reality hits harder than fiction.
Horror cinema is a conduit for that, masterfully handcrafted by Tobe Hooper himself - who held
up a mirror to the silver screen, and showed us exactly what true evil looks like.
Well - unfortunately folks, that’s all we’ve got time for in today's video, cheers for
sticking around all the way to the end.
If you enjoyed this video, then why don’t you leave a thumbs up and share it on with
a friend, because nothing says Halloween like the morbid plight of human existence.
If you’d like to continue on with your questioning binge, then feel free to hit that playlist
floating conveniently above.
On behalf of LBQ, I’d like to wish you all a Happy Halloween.
As always, I’ve been your host Jack Finch - you’ve been watching Life’s Biggest
Questions - and until next time, take it easy.