The 2006 Prequel: The Beginning

Lore & Background

In the dusty backroads of 1969 Texas, the Hewitt family—led by the iron-fisted Luda Mae and her brother, the former sheriff Charlie Hewitt—once ran a slaughterhouse that bled prosperity. When the plant closed, the walls of their decaying farmhouse became a larder for human flesh, and they turned to murder to survive, preying on travelers who made the fatal mistake of stopping. Thomas Hewitt, a gentle but deformed giant with the mind of a child, was molded into a killer by his family's cruelty, his first kills a clumsy, brutal baptism into a legacy of terror. The film explores how Thomas acquired his chainsaw—ripped from a gas station attendant's hands—and how the family's twisted code of hospitality ensnared innocent victims, turning their home into a meat hook cathedral.

In Their Own Story

The dust settled on a hot Texas afternoon as four friends drove toward a new life, their laughter swallowed by the hum of the engine. They never saw the truck that forced them off the road, or the hulking figure in a mask who emerged from the shadows, reeking of sweat and old blood. In a decaying farmhouse, the Hewitts prepared for a feast, their rituals as old as the land itself—Luda Mae humming over a stove, Charlie sharpening his wit like a blade. One by one, the visitors were stripped of hope, their screams echoing through the slaughterhouse like prayers to a dead god. Only one would survive the night, forever changed by the horror she witnessed, her eyes hollowed out by the sight of a chainsaw glinting in the moonlight.

Reader's Guide

The film opens with the birth of Thomas Hewitt in a slaughterhouse, where a deformed infant is abandoned on a blood-slicked floor but rescued by the Hewitt family, who raise him in the stench of offal. Years later, in 1969, four friends—Eric, Chrissie, Dean, and Bailey—drive through Texas after Dean's draft notice, their car a tin can of nervous jokes. They are stopped by a sheriff (Charlie Hewitt) after a minor accident, but soon find themselves hunted by the family, their tires slashed and their escape routes sealed. Thomas, now a masked killer with a child's curiosity, captures them one by one, using a chainsaw he acquires from a gas station attendant after a brutal, spurting kill. The family tortures and kills the victims in their home—a sink filled with teeth, a freezer packed with limbs—with Chrissie as the sole survivor who escapes after a brutal chase through a slaughterhouse of hanging meat. The film ends with Thomas donning his iconic mask of human skin and the family preparing for their next victims, a grim cycle that directly leads into the 2003 film's events.

Did You Know?

• The film was shot in the same Texas locations as the 2003 remake, including the Hewitt house set.
• R. Lee Ermey reprised his role as Sheriff Hoyt, bringing a menacing authority to the character.
• The prequel was initially rated NC-17 for its graphic violence before being cut to an R rating.
• Jordana Brewster, who played Chrissie, also starred in the Fast & Furious franchise.