Texas Chainsaw Massacre 9 is bringing back the final girl from the original movie. Released in 1974, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre introduced the iconic movie monster Leatherface along with the rest of the cannibalistic Sawyer family. A seminal horror work, the movie influenced countless filmmakers, including Fede Alvarez who now plans to revisit the Leatherface character for a sequel set decades after the 1974 classic.
Alvarez of course was the director responsible for another noted horror revisit, the 2013 Evil Dead remake. For the upcoming Leatherface-led horror sequel, simply titled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Alvarez will serve as producer with David Blue Garcia handling directorial duties. Obviously Hooper’s 1974 film has received plenty of sequels and reboots already, beginning with Hooper’s own 1986 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and continuing to 2017’s prequel film Leatherface. In 2013, it even received a semi-legacy sequel with Texas Chainsaw 3D, though fans were largely disappointed with that movie and its many plot holes, not to mention its ill-considered depiction of Leatherface. Alvarez and Garcia will now try to do a better Texas Chainsaw legacy sequel with their own version, which brings back Leatherface as an old man.
In fact it’s now been revealed that Leatherface is not the only original Texas Chain Saw Massacre character who is set to return in Alvarez’s legacy sequel. As reported by Bloody Disgusting, the movie will also bring back Sally Hardesty, the only character to survive Leatherface’s rampage in the 1974 movie. An early example of the final girl horror trope, Hardesty was portrayed by Marilyn Burns. Sadly, Burns passed away in 2014, so in the new movie a much older Hardesty will be played by Olwen Fouéré.
Burns of course did make her own return to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise in the aforementioned Texas Chainsaw 3D, playing the character Verna Carson, the Sawyer family matriarch and Leatherface’s aunt. The Sally Hardesty character meanwhile was only mentioned in Texas Chainsaw 3D and has in fact not appeared in any movie in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise after she survived the original movie. New Sally Hardesty actress Fouéré should be familiar to horror fans as she appeared in 2019’s Sea Fever as well as 2018’s Mandy.
That Alvarez and Garcia are bringing in Fouéré to play Sally Hardesty for their stab at a Texas Chainsaw legacy sequel is interesting to note, as it indicates the movie will try harder than Texas Chainsaw 3D to preserve some kind of non-ridiculous continuity with the original film. How expansive Sally’s role will be does of course remain to be seen. The movie’s plot indeed concerns new young victims finding their way into Leatherface’s sights, but somehow or another Sally will get involved as well. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 9 does not yet have a release date but is expected to come out some time in 2021.
Source: Bloody Disgusting