Leatherface Attacks

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) has held a special place in my psyche since I saw it for the first time at the ripe old age of 15. I was getting into horror films in a big way, but TCM had always eluded me due to it being banned in the UK. On an historic night, it was aired on Channel 4 for the first time in the UK, in the summer of 2000. I remember it well. I had just to moved to Essex and was renting a house with my family, at Chaney Road in Wivenhoe. It was a sweltering hot summer's evening, crickets were chirping (before crickets went virtually extinct in Britain), and I was still in a state of discombobulation after the move, my anxiety levels at a natural high. The film scared me senseless. Halfway through, during an advert break, I joined my sister in her room to watch the rest. We had taped it on VHS and watched it every day for weeks after. I had never been so terrified and delighted by a film in equal measure, and I doubt I ever will again. It swiftly became my favourite horror film, perhaps my favourite film of all time.

I ignored the first Leatherface dream I had this year, as I didn't believe it held any great significance. But when another one happened a few months later, I thought I'd better take notice. The first dream happened during daylight hours, in a western town in Texas. It was all dusty saloons, barns with hanging corpses on meathooks, weathered old men with shotguns, and Leatherface running rampant from house to house with his chainsaw, leaving a trail of destruction. Enough time has passed that I forget the finer details, but it was part 2 in a dream about threatening hillbillies. The first section had been a scenario with Straw Dogs ne'er-do-wells with rifles, who were intent on using my wife and I as target practice as we ran across a field to escape the village hall where they were shacked up.

In my latest Leatherface dream, he was wearing the pretty lady mask (pictured below) and was stalking me through a rambling farmstead at night. The lights of the house were all on, as it was populated by teenagers having a party, but it was black as pitch outside, a sweltering summer night. The dream had me running up staircases, setting booby traps Home Alone style, hiding in cupboards, and jumping through windows to escape. The relentless buzz of the chainsaw rung through the house, pursuing me wherever I went. There was nowhere to go and I was running out of hiding places. Occasionally I would hear the screams of other people in the house as they were murdered, and would later find their mangled corpses and trails of blood. I don't remember how the dream ended, but it was a white-knuckle ride.