- "You don't like playin' with me anymore 'cause I'm a pussy, that's what you said. Well my nephew Tommy ain't no pussy, maybe you wanna play with him for a little while."
- ― Sheriff Hoyt, to Eric.[src]
Thomas Brown Hewitt, also known as Leatherface, is an antagonist in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.
Leatherface's real name is Thomas Brown Hewitt and his mother abandoned him until a lady named Luda Mae Hewitt found him and took him home to raise him. His family owned a slaughterhouse, but after losing their jobs they switched to kidnapping people, murdering them (often by chainsaw or meathook) and butchering their flesh, as family member - Charlie - claims that he got the idea from eating human flesh in the Korean War.
Leatherface in this continuity suffers from al disfigurement, a skin disease, that caused severe deformities and tumors to his face. Due to this disfigurement, his muteness and mental disability (carried over from the first series), other children bullied the boy. He wore a small leather mask to cover up his deformity, and worked at the same slaughterhouse where he was born, for the same boss as his mother/father/faced and the same man who had left him for dead. He also had a tendency toward self-mutilation, and a doctor diagnosed him as suffering from a type of neurodegeneration at age 12.
After health inspectors shut the factory down, Hewitt's boss and a reluctant co-worker ordered him to leave. When Hewitt didn't, the boss and the co-worker bullied him, calling him a "retard" and a "dumb animal". Acting on a long-burning rage, Hewitt killed his boss with a sledgehammer. He later discovered the chainsaw he used as a weapon after searching the now abandoned factory. When Winston Hoyt, the local sheriff, tried to apprehend him, Thomas' brother/"Uncle" Charles "Charlie" Hewitt Jr came to his aid and killed the sheriff with his own gun. Charlie later assumed the sheriff's identity.
Hewitt later made masks of human skin by slicing off the faces of his victims.
Although Leatherface's family still manipulate him in this interpretation, they do show themselves somewhat more caring for him and less abusive than in the original film. Before killing the sheriff, his brother/uncle Charlie even defends him by saying, "He's not retarded, he's misunderstood." The cruelty he suffers at the hands of his peers, in part, inspires his murderous behavior, however he loves Caitlin so much his brother/"Uncle" Charlie who encourages.
Appearances
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Special
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Grind
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Fearbook
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2007 comic series)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Raising Cain
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: About a Boy
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: By Himself
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Cut!
- Mortal Kombat XL (Cosmetic appearance only; "Butcher" variation)