This Friday brings the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix, the ninth installment in the long-running horror franchise that kicked off with Tobe Hooper’s all-time classic way back in 1974.
Following the template set by David Gordon Green’s smash hit reinvention of Halloween, David Blue Garcia’s movie acts as a direct sequel to the first film, picking up almost half a century after Leatherface first terrorized a group of free-spirited youngsters in the backwoods of his home state.
Even though we’re only halfway through February, it already feels safe to say that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is without a doubt one of the goriest things you’re likely to see this year, with all sorts of grisly dismemberments, beheadings and all-round gnarly kills being splattered all over the screen.
During a press event hosted by Netflix, We Got This Covered had the chance to ask stars Elsie Fisher and Sarah Yarkin if there were any moments during production when they ever wondered how they ended up sitting on set covered in blood, guts, gore, entrails and all the rest. Unsurprisingly, Fisher answered in the affirmative.
“There was a great moment for me, at least! Basically, after the bus scene where I was covered in a big old pile of blood. After that, to keep the continuity I had to be bloodied for a big portion of the rest of the film. And it was great, because every day on set they would lay out these garbage bags… it was flat, and they just got like a jug with the fake blood and poured it on. They’re like, ‘Get on the slab. Lie down, get in the blood!’.”
Yarkin had an altogether different type of experience, though, after being forced to spend a great deal of her time covered in pretend poop in the name of our entertainment.
“There’s a point when a sewage pipe explodes on me, and then for the rest of the movie I’m covered in poop. So, half the time it was made so they could die it brown, and the other half of the time… or most of it actually… our wonderful, wonderful makeup artists would make a batch of chocolate flavored oatmeal and cover me in it.
So, I’m in hair and makeup and they’re doing the blood, painting it on my face, and then slathering poop on me. And I just have all these pictures of me getting in my trailer and being like ‘tagged for another day, covered in sh*t!’. I had to do a selfie in my trailer at one point, and I did it covered in poop.”
You’ll be able to find out whether Fisher and Yarkin’s sacrifices were worth it in the end when Texas Chainsaw Massacre premieres on Netflix this coming Friday, February 18.