The Entire Texas Chainsaw Massacre Timeline Explained

A young man enters a dilapidated, seemingly abandoned Texas farmhouse. He calls out if anyone is home. He steps further into the house toward a doorway at the end of the hall. Suddenly, a hulking figure appears in front of him in a filthy leather apron, long black wig, and what appears to be a mask made of skin. Before he has a chance to even register what is happening, the young man is hit in the head with a mallet. He falls to the floor, convulsing. The figure hits him again and pulls him into the doorway, slamming an aluminum door behind them. Silence, as if nothing had even happened.

This is the first death scene in Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and it's the moment that introduced the world to the horror icon known as "Leatherface." It happens more than 30 minutes into the film, and up to that point, Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel cultivated a deliberate pace and almost unbearable sense of dread. Now, things have exploded into a full-bore American nightmare, so visceral in its performances and gritty filming style that audiences would insist that it was a true story, if not an actual snuff film (per The New York Post).

The film was an immediate hit, but it would take more than 10 years before a sequel was produced. Unlike his contemporaries Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, Leatherface has never had regular appointments with moviegoers. Instead, he pops up once or twice a decade, often with a different family and a different backstory than in his previous film. The timeline of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series is a knot of prequels, sequels, remakes, and do-overs. Here is a handy guide to keep things sorted out.

On August 18, 1973, Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns), her brother Franklin (Paul A. Pertain), and their friends travel to south Texas after receiving word that their grandfather's grave has been desecrated. An encounter with a deranged hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) leaves the group of city kids shaken, but things take a turn for the horrifying when the group idles through the farmhouse next door to where Sally's grandfather used to live. Here, they run afoul of Leatherface and the Sawyer clan, including Grandfather and older brothers Drayton (Jim Siedow) and Nubbins, the hitchhiker they had picked up earlier in the day. After a hellish day and night witnessing the murder of her brother and friends, getting tortured, and being made the guest of honor at the Sawyer's grotesque parody of the big family dinner, Sally barely escapes with her life, blood-splattered and cackling as Leatherface twirls madly in the morning sun.

The very specific timestamp and the true-crime style narration (performed by John Larroquette in his film debut) at the start of the movie give the impression that the film is a true story, as does the documentary-like camera work and Hooper's decision to stage much of the film in broad daylight. Though loosely based on stories of 1950s serial killer Ed Gein, the film is a work of well-made fiction. Despite a reputation for intense gore, most of the worst violence happens off-camera. The real bloody stuff would be saved for the sequels.

Lefty's quest for vengeance against the Sawyers gets its big break when local radio DJ Vanita "Stretch" Brock (Caroline Williams) records audio of Leatherface (Bill Johnson) murdering a couple of preppy yahoos on the way to town for the big game. He convinces her to play the tape over the air, using her as bait to lure the family into the open. Sure enough, Chop Top and Leatherface come calling, destroying her radio station and kidnapping her. Lefty follows them to their new (and certainly not symbolic in any way) home underneath an abandoned Texas history theme park, armed with chainsaws of his own. As Stretch fights for her life, Lefty takes on Leatherface in a duel to the death.

The tone of "TCM 2" is strikingly different from the original. Hooper eschews the documentary-camera feel and goes straight for the funhouse, and while the film loses some of its visceral punch as a result, it allows makeup artist Tom Savini to build some brilliantly gory effects and even gives Leatherface something of an emotional arc, as his dedication to the saw ("The saw is family," Drayton declares) is tested by his attraction to Stretch. In the end, an exploding grenade seemingly kills Leatherface (after Lefty runs him through with a chainsaw blade), Drayton, Grandfather, and Lefty. Stretch gets in on the action by killing Chop Top with a chainsaw and giving her own little twirl, suggesting that though the family may be dead, their madness lives on.

The series gets its first major overhaul courtesy of returning "TCM" writer Kim Henkel. To begin with, the family has a new name: They are the Slaughters, led by patriarch W.E. (Joe Stevens) and older brother Vilmer, played by a post-"Dazed and Confused" but pre-Hollywood Matthew McConaughey. When a car full of high school kids headed to prom breaks down, Vilmer offers them a lift in his tow truck, and they accept, unknowingly headed to their doom. One of those kids, however, is more resourceful than the rest — good girl Jenny, played by a young Renée Zellweger. 

Leatherface once again has a surprising inner life. Henkel takes the character's interest in wigs and makeup in "TCM" to its logical conclusion, dressing Leatherface in full female drag for most of the film. While Jenny eventually manages to get the better of the Slaughters, she learns that they are merely pawns in a much larger game — an Illuminati plot to control the populace through experiences of terror like the one she endured. Jenny survives the night and is taken to the hospital, where she catches a glimpse of the family's last victim, a still catatonic Sally Hardesty wheeling by on a gurney.

The subsequent movie star successes of McConaughey and Zellweger earned the film a second life after it sank like a stone in 1995. Recut and released as "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" in 1997, the film was still not a great success, which the producers blamed on McConaughey's agents putting pressure on the studio to bury the film for good (per Film Vault). But Leatherface cannot be kept down so easily.

In 1969, the slaughterhouse shuts down permanently due to health code violations. In a rage, Thomas murders his manager, the same man who had so callously abandoned him to a dumpster. Grabbing a nearby chainsaw, Thomas heads home to mother Luda Mae (now played by Marietta Marich) and older brother Charlie (R. Lee Ermey). When the only sheriff in town tries to apprehend Thomas, Charlie shoots the sheriff to death and assumes his identity for the next several years. The Hewitt family — which also includes Luda Mae's brother Monty (Terrence Evans) and a sister known only as Tea Lady (Kathy Lamkin) — presides over their increasingly desolate town, murdering and eating whom they please.

Into this hellscape drive brothers Eric and Dean (Matt Bomer and Taylor Handley) and their girlfriends Chrissie and Bailey (Jordana Brewster and Diora Baird), who are headed to Mexico for vacation before getting shipped off to Vietnam. A run-in with a biker couple results in a grisly car accident, and the "sheriff" takes them back to the Hewitt house to be tortured and killed. Thomas makes his first human skin mask from Eric's face, and though Chrissie makes a valiant effort to escape, she's stopped at the last minute by Leatherface, now fully transformed into the horror legend we know and love.

Seven years after "TCM: The Beginning," Lionsgate Films released "Texas Chainsaw 3D" in 2013 and the prequel "Leatherface" in 2017. Both films are meant to be directly related to the original "TCM," ignoring the remakes, "The Next Generation," and even the other films in the Original Timeline. Beyond their shared connection to the original film, "Leatherface" and "3D" feature new characters that recur between them — particularly the Hartman family, whose history is tragically bound up with the Sawyers.

Of the two, "Leatherface" is the more handsome production. The midcentury period piece stars Lili Taylor as Sawyer matriarch Verna and Stephen Dorff as Texas sheriff Hal Hartman, an obsessed lawman in the mold of Dennis Hopper's Lefty Enright, whose daughter Betty was killed by the Sawyers in 1955. Adult brothers Drayton and Nubbins are arrested for the murder, while young Jedidiah is taken away from Verna and put in a youth reformatory. 

Ten years later, two violent teens (James Bloor and Jessica Madsen) stage a riot at the reformatory and escape, taking Jedidiah (Sam Strike) and sympathetic nurse Lizzy (Vanessa Grasse) hostage. Hartman pursues the runaways with the intention of capturing and killing Jedidiah. A gunshot wound through the mouth renders Jed mute, and when he is rescued by Verna and his brothers, he proves his loyalty to the family by murdering Hartman and the young nurse with a chainsaw. To cover up his disfigured face, Jed sews together a mask made of Hartman's and Lizzy's skin. Leatherface is born.

In February 2022 Legendary Pictures and Netflix premiered "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," a new direct sequel to the original "TCM" from director David Blue Garcia. Garcia and his screenwriter Chris Thomas Devlin (with Story By credits for "Don't Breathe" writers Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues) take several cues from David Gordon Green's 2018 remake of "Halloween," first and foremost in the way they ignore the events of every "TCM" film except the original. The film catches the audience up to what is and is not canon via a prologue in the form of a true crime TV special covering the events of the first film (narrated by John Larroquette, of course). Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré, taking over for the late Marilyn Burns) remains the lone survivor of a massacre committed by the Sawyer family (though the film does not name them) in 1973. But rather than slipping into catatonia as she does in the prologue to "TCM 2," Hardesty becomes a hardened Texas Ranger, training her body and mind for the day when she will find Leatherface again.

As for our chainsaw-wielding friend, he escapes the police manhunt that ensues after Sally's escape, and by 1975 has become the adopted son of Mrs. MC (Alice Krige), the woman who runs the orphanage in the nearby town of Harlow, even though in the original film he is by all appearances a grown man. The film makes no mention of Drayton, Nubbins, or Grandpa Sawyer, and the farmhouse is only seen during an end-credits scene. For the next several decades Leatherface keeps his murderous impulses (and penchant for masks) at bay.