I am well on the record as saying that the Texas Chainsaw series is my forever franchise. So profound was the effect of seeing Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece at an impressionable age that no remake nor sequel nor reboot nor rebootquel can defeat me.
I will find something to love in all of them, no matter public opinion. Didn't care for the newest one? First one with an actual chainsaw massacre; respect. Not a fan of 2017’s Leatherface? Well, we've certainly never had a Texas Chainsaw film directed by Frenchmen, filmed in Eastern Europe, and starring mostly Brits. You can’t get that anywhere else. Didn't like Texas Chainsaw Massacre III? Tell your story walkin', pal; I just put it on the cover of our first issue of 2023. And I'm such a fan of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation that I moderated the commentary on the director’s cut Blu-ray. For better or worse, mine has been a life spent being HERE for the Texas Chainsaw franchise.
So when Fango contributor and friend Andrew LaSane, known in our circles for his custom sneakers and clever merch, dropped a T-shirt last fall containing a reference from 2013’s much-derided Texas Chainsaw 3D, some saw it as an ironic tribute to a bad movie. But I think one could make a case for it being much more. And today, on the film’s 10th anniversary, I aim to do just that.
It’s not any particular iconography or imagery from the film on Andrew's shirt, nor is it a play on the impossible chronological math at the heart of that particular franchise entry. No, Andrew has wisely capitalized on the one thing the movie has left imprinted on pop culture forever – a line from the movie. If you’ve seen the film, you know what it is already.
It’s a moment that occurs late in the film, as our possibly 40-year-old final girl Heather (played by the luminous Alexandra Daddario), now wise to her blood relation to the Lone Star state’s most infamous family of mass murderers, tosses a chainsaw to the hulking Leatherface (Dan Yeager), so that he might save them both from the evil redneck responsible for killing all of their relatives back in 1973.
Prior to this moment, the iconic cannibal slasher had been trying to kill Heather for about 45 minutes of the film, and did in fact kill ALL her friends, so her sudden pivot to sympathy and kinship was a bridge too far for some. The absurdity of the moment was punctuated and immortalized by Heather hollering to Leatherface, “Do your thing, cuz!”
You might as well have chiseled it on the film’s tombstone. “Do your thing, cuz” became the focal point of ridicule for a movie that was in truth a serviceable entry in a franchise with a pretty low bar and, thanks to the internet’s penchant for boiling its cinematic carcasses down to the marrow, the phrase became the film’s leftover memetic headcheese.
But am I wrong in thinking (and already tweeting) that, ten years later, “Do your thing, cuz” sits as a resonant and maybe even beautiful message of tolerance, freedom, and inclusivity? Consider: Heather’s initial reaction to Leatherface is one of fear and revulsion; in the film’s climax, her revelation is, though abrupt, a powerful one in which she recognizes not just the Other’s right to exist, but that each of us has a place in the world. Moreover, we all have a purpose – it’s just that sometimes that purpose is to chainsaw into a scumbag’s Achilles tendons and then saw his hands off before throwing him into a meat grinder.
In the decade that’s passed since the film’s opening day, I think we can all agree the world has gotten much, much worse. In hindsight, is the line really all that silly, or is this simple uncynical message of love and acceptance, delivered by the film’s beleaguered young protagonist at the height of her trauma, maybe the most positive statement to be found in 2010s horror?
“Do your thing” - Be who you are, live your truth, love what you love, and walk in joy;
“Cuz” - Cousin. Kin. Though we are different, we are family; you are accepted as my blood, and the two of us are but parts of a larger whole.
Isn’t that beautiful? Couldn’t the world use more of that? Should I get some coffee about now? Forget the haters. “Do your thing, cuz” is a message to carry in your heart (and on your chest) – then, today, and ten years from now.
An earlier version of this article originally appeared in The Terror Teletype.
