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— by Larry Carroll
AUSTIN, Texas — An eerily familiar haunted house, its floors and walls saturated with blood. Smoke from a recently revved gas-powered chainsaw flows down a staircase from the darkness above. A 6-foot-5-inch silhouette steps forward, clad in a butcher's apron, his stringy black hair dripping a monstrous mixture of sweat, what appear to be brain fragments and God only knows what else.
Bounding over to greet his visitors, the man they call Leatherface lights up with a Cheshire Cat grin, accompanied by the sort of wide-eyed, unhinged glee that one usually associates with a Charles Manson parole hearing.
"What's up, pressies?" he screams into the faces of the assembled journalists. Fortunately, the floor is coated with so many indeterminable substances that, if anyone soils themselves, the crew won't be inconvenienced.
"He's very Method," leading lady Jordana Brewster later explains of Andrew Bryniarski, the gargantuan star of this latest entry in the "Texas Chainsaw" franchise. "He's very into his character. I just kind of keep my distance."
"I come home with blood on my hands every day," explains the former bodybuilder. "I'd love to leave it at work, but Thomas Hewitt [a.k.a, Leatherface] and I, we're in a love-hate relationship."
It is in the spirit of this love and hate, then, that Bryniarski, Brewster and fresh-faced newcomers Matthew Bomer ("Flightplan"), Diora Baird ("Wedding Crashers") and Taylor Handley ("The O.C.") have assembled to shoot the tentatively titled "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Origin" — an exceedingly rare (and perhaps even unique) slasher-movie prequel. Set four years before the 2003 hit that scored big contrasting a sweaty, terrified Jessica Biel with a relentless, gore-splattered Leatherface, the movie tells the 1969 tale of a family stepping over — well over — the subtle line between bizarre and bloodthirsty.
"Leatherface is just so damned scary," Handley says, nicely summing up the feelings of several generations of petrified "Chainsaw" viewers. "The Hewitt family is just so disturbed; it's interesting to watch how crazy these people can get. There's torture, and they kill and eat people; I mean, it's disgusting. I love it."
"This is a really bombastic entrance for the origin of Leatherface and the story of the family," Bryniarski offers with unbridled enthusiasm. "It's a chance to see [how it] is going to go wrong, sooner or later. Comfort is an illusion."
There are disembodied limbs, rusted-over weapons of torture and old chicken coop cages strewn throughout this set located within a field far off an interstate road. In one room of the house, a gutted rabbit hangs upside down beside a knitted, eerily sweet wall hanging that reads, "Life Is Fragile/Handle With Care."
Even with Bryniarski factored in, however, none of the set's attractions comes close to the raw power of the most captivating presence on the set.
"In real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends!" thunders R. Lee Ermey, somehow managing to smoke a cigarette, drink black coffee and chomp down on chewing tobacco at the same time. "But playing a sexually perverted homicidal maniac, you don't have to do that."
No, the veteran character actor and former Marine is not discussing Leatherface, but his own disturbing creation: Sheriff Hoyt.
"Sheriff Hoyt is a really a fun character to play — and I have creative license, making it even better. There's not a writer in the world, I've found, who can capture this [Hoyt] character. I created this character [in the 2003 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'] and I like to think that he's my guy."
"I don't think he's said a single line that was written," Jonathan Liebesman, the film's ostensible director, says of Ermey while shaking his head.
"He's quite a character, huh?" offers Bryniarski of his partner in crime on both sides of the camera. "If we had come into this movie with no director, quite frankly, R. Lee Ermey and I could have almost done it ourselves."
"Here's the deal," barks Ermey, in a tone reminiscent of the "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) drill sergeant role that first brought him a measure of fame. "A writer sits in this lonely little dark office and he pecks away at this word processor and he comes up with the best he can. He's writing about 10 characters. I'm concerned about one, only one character, so I can concentrate all of my efforts and my brain power and my creativity on this one little character. I'm on the set. I see the props that I have to work with."
"There was a huge pig's head and its tongue was sticking out," Brewster remembers of her favorite on-set item. "It was so wild, because the place kind of smelled like pickled eggs, which we also had. That was disgusting."
If such props (and personalities) are any indication, "Origin" seems bound to be larger than life itself as it slices its way into theaters next October. Sure, flashbacks have offered peeks at the back stories of Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers — but will an entire movie explaining the motivations of a killer shift the audience's sympathies away from the eternally imperiled screaming teens?
"Well, they may," speculates returning producer Bradley Fuller, "until the really bad things start happening. You know how bad R. Lee Ermey is. You know how bad the kids are."
"If you are not rooting for the kids in our movie," chimes in co-producer Andrew Form. "We have not done our job."
"It was really fun for the first, maybe, 15 takes," Baird, a recent Playboy centerfold, says of the maddening process that goes into being a damsel in distress. "After a while, the blood just doesn't taste very good. It tastes like soap."
"They had the blood machine come at me," she remembers of a recent day of filming. "Somebody's being sawed up, so they have this machine that just squirts out large amounts of blood, and the director's like, 'More blood!' and we just kept shooting. He's like, 'Keep going,' and I'm [coughing] and I'm spitting out blood. All I've heard so far is 'More blood!' "
"It's a lot gorier than the last movie," the redhead says, smiling. "That's for sure."
"It does have a lot of graphic content in it, so I imagine there's a possibility that it could be rated R," offers Bomer, whose Texas roots had him falling in love with the grisly movies as a youngster. "I've used language that would have made a drill sergeant blush in this movie. I think I even offended R. Lee at one point."
" 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' the remake, was such a success and Sheriff Hoyt was such a warm, cuddly, lovable character that we felt that we needed to come back with another one and show how all this started out," growls Ermey, chewing, smoking, drinking and charming anyone in listening distance, all at once. "Hoyt is a horrible bastard; he's a homicidal maniac, a perverted homicidal maniac. How can you be over-the-top with this character? He gets by with murder, right? Every damn thing I do, I push it right to the edge."
On the way off the set, as crew members with air-purifying masks prepare the upstairs bedroom for another scream-inducing moment, Bryniarski attempts to say goodbye to his visitors. He sprints over from his trailer carrying a black guitar, with lithe dancing girls etched into the fretboard. As he defiantly blocks the entryway of the shuttle van, one could be forgiven for thinking that he plans to chase his quarry through the meadow, waving his growling, signature weapon above his head as he has so many times before. But it turns out he just wants to strum a quick solo and offer a few autographs.
"I'm a rock and roll machine, not a killing machine," the man promises, playfully scribbling your name in front of the words "... is next." "I give at the office and I leave. I get all my serial killer issues out, and I go home.
"I mean, aside from, like, listening to Slayer's Reign in Blood," he adds, thoughtfully rubbing a chin that will soon be hidden once again behind that infamous, iconic mask. "Which, I guess, is kind of along the same lines."
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Photo: Van Redin/ MTV News
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Ferrell gets racy, and 'The Lion' roars. Peep Overdrive Movies.
