[Editorial] And What Will Be Left of Them: Sally Hardesty and the Emotional Weight of Survival

Trauma is the essence of horror. Though terrifying stories may differ wildly, the one common thread is the fear of physical or emotional pain suffered by a protagonist or someone they care about. In fact, horror’s popularity arguably persists because we use these stories to examine the pain in our own lives. By identifying with fictional characters as they suffer, we are better able to exorcise our own fears from the safety of the audience.

We find catharsis in watching beloved heroes defeat the monsters that torment them and we find strength in their ability to face their fears. We watch them survive and believe that we can too. This column is dedicated to examining trauma in horror. Each month we’ll study a character and their story, asking what we can learn and how we can align ourselves with their courage in order to heal ourselves. Not all of our characters will survive, but this column will examine who they are, why they matter, and what will be left of them.

Few in the horror genre have suffered as much as Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns). The sole survivor of Tobe Hooper’s original, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, she sees atrocities most of us could never imagine. On a summer trip through rural Texas, she and her friends run afoul of a cannibalistic family of former slaughterhouse workers who delight in dispatching them one by one then using their corpses as both food and home decor. The film’s final scene shows Sally covered in blood and laughing hysterically as she’s driven away from Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and his chainsaw in the back of a pick-up truck. This iconic image begs the question presented in the film’s infamous tagline: “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” The newest installment in the sweaty franchise, David Blue Garcia’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, attempts to deliver an answer. Now a Texas Ranger, Sally (Olwen Fouéré) confronts Leatherface (Mark Burnham) nearly 50 years later seeking revenge for her friends and hoping to put the trauma of her past behind her. 

When we first meet Sally in 1974, she’s a happy young woman on a road trip. After reports of grave robbing, she and her boyfriend Jerry (Allen Danziger) set out with friends Pam (Teri McMinn) and Kirk (William Vail) and Sally’s brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) to check on their own family plot. After running out of gas, the friends seek assistance at a nearby farmhouse and inadvertently wind up in the clutches of Leatherface, a gigantic former slaughterhouse worker wearing a blood-stained butcher’s apron and a mask of human skin. One by one, the friends are brutally slaughtered until only Sally remains. While pushing Franklin in his wheelchair through the wooded hills, a huge man holding a roaring chainsaw bursts through the bushes and murders her brother. Sally watches in shock before turning to run back through the brambles. It’s a moment that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

After twice seeking shelter on what appears to be Leatherface’s family property, Sally is captured by the Old Man (Jim Siedow) who owns the gas station nearby. He is the family patriarch and the cook who barbeques and sells the meat from Leatherface’s victims. The Old Man brings her back to the terrible house where she is held captive and made to sit through a family dinner straight out of hell. Sally watches the Old Man, Leatherface, and his brother, known only as Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), eat sausages made from human flesh; possibly that of her friends. Surveying the bizarre dining room, she sees a lamp made from a human head while sitting in a chair made from human arms. She knows they plan to eat her, but what kind of macabre decorations will they make with her body? Will her skin become a tapestry? Will her face become a mask? Will her legs become bones for another piece of furniture? The shock of her looming death is compounded by the fears of what will become of her body after the final course is served. 

As if sensing her pain, Leatherface and Hitchhiker leer at her like an animal in a cage. After dinner, they hold her head over a bucket as Grampa (John Dugan), a legendary slaughterhouse killer, tries in vain to land a killing blow to the back of her head. The Old Man calms her by saying it won’t hurt a bit, but the one assisted strike Grandpa does land absolutely causes pain. And that’s not to mention the emotional pain she endures while struggling through blow after blow knowing her life could be over at any moment. Adding insult to injury, the family is having the time of their lives, laughing and cheering Grandpa on. Her suffering is their entertainment, her life only valuable for the food her flesh will provide.

Finally breaking free, Sally jumps through a window to escape. Sheer desperation and a fate worse than death empower her to do something most of us could only dream of. The look on Sally’s face when she hits the ground speaks volumes. She’s relieved to be out, but likely still in shock and not sure what to do next. She stumbles to her feet then takes off running as Hitchhiker and Leatherface both burst through the door chasing after her. Sally escapes by jumping into the back of a passing pickup truck. Covered in blood, she shrieks and laughs as she’s driven away from Leatherface waving his chainsaw in the rays of the morning sun. It’s a striking image that has been used countless times to depict a nearly indescribably emotional state. Sally has endured an unthinkable nightmare and as she shakes hysterically, we’re left to wonder what will become of her. Will she ever truly escape Leatherface and his house of nightmares?

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Nearly 50 years later, Texas Chainsaw Massacre attempts to answer this question. A direct sequel to Hooper’s original film, the newest franchise entry follows sisters Melody (Sarah Yarkin) and Lila (Elsie Fisher) as they move to the nearly abandoned town of Harlow, Texas. Lila has survived a school shooting and Mel hopes to give her a safe place to recover. Lila’s body carries the scar of a bullet while her mind is clouded with survivor’s guilt. She suffers flashbacks of laying on the floor amidst the bodies wondering when the bullet wound she sustained will finally kill her. In a sense, she is a final girl. Her monster is not a chainsaw wielding masked killer but a person with an ax to grind and an assault rifle. Like Sally, she is haunted by the weight of her survival. While slashers and school shootings are nowhere near the same thing, Sally and Lila have both lived through the brutality of mass murder. We know very little about Sally’s recovery in the years immediately following her attack, but it makes sense to equate Lila’s emotional state with that of our beloved final girl. 

Just like Lila, Sally probably struggles with how to continue living the rest of her life. Lila says she’s treated like a special one, a miraculous survivor, and feels pressure to live an extraordinary life lest she waste the second chance denied to her friends. But she knows that her survival is due to nothing more than random luck. How can her life ever compare to the promise of who her friends might have been? What can she do to make up for what they lost? It’s a question we can easily see Sally asking herself. An early scene tells us that Sally told her story only once, then refused to talk about it again, but we can see that she has dedicated her life to answering that all important question. Sally has chosen to focus on revenge.

In the years following the death of her brother and friends, Sally became a Texas Ranger, essentially dedicating her life to hunting down the elusive Leatherface. She has hardened in the face of her trauma. No longer the soft and delicately beautiful girl who set out on that long ago road trip, she now lives in the shadow of the man who attacked her. She is still beautiful, but now dresses in the masculine clothes of one who must be ready to defend herself at any moment. When she hears that Leatherface may be killing again, she grabs her shotgun and immediately sets out to track him down once and for all. 

Upon arriving in Harlow, Sally prepares for the confrontation by looking at a picture of her lost friends. Kirk, Pam, Jerry, and Franklin all laugh together on that fateful summer afternoon, the last of their short lives. This picture is tucked behind Sally’s car visor and it’s clear she looks at it often, keeping their memory close to her heart. It’s a symbolic representation of her unwavering need for justice and the high priority she’s placed on avenging their deaths. Once Sally finds Leatherface, she confronts him with the names of his victims, reciting them as he sits in his new home wearing another mask of human skin. Sally essentially begs him to say her name and to remember her friends. Leatherface has lived in her nightmares for nearly fifty years. He has irrevocably altered her life and she just wants to know that she has had an impact on him as well. Like Lila, she struggles to accept that the cataclysmic trauma she’s endured is nothing more than dumb luck. 

Sally emerged from Leatherface’s dining room feeling less than human, insignificant and disposable, and she’s been trying to recover from that feeling of helplessness ever since. Sally wants Leatherface to say her name so that she can hear him admit that she has one; that she is more than just an object to be torn apart. Part of her mind is still trapped over the bucket waiting for the killing blow to land. If he could just say her name he could give her back the humanity she lost that horrific night. But he can’t. To her, she is a random victim, someone who just happened to cross his path. The terrifying truth about trauma is that it does not care about us. It is a rock that splits the stream, ever present and unconcerned with how many times we bash ourselves against it. So often it simply strikes then moves on, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. This randomness is perhaps the most frightening of all. If we are not chosen to suffer because we’re special, then our specialness may not allow us to survive again. If overcoming such a horrific nightmare truly is just happenstance, then we have to live with the fact that next time we may not be so lucky. 

Sally bravely escapes from the house of horrors in Hooper’s film. But Garcia’s sequel implies that this is what haunts her. With her dying breath, she warns Lila that by running away today, she’ll doom herself to emotionally running forever. If she doesn’t turn around and fight back, she’ll always regret it. Sally frames her running as a form of weakness, but what else could she do? From the moment she meets Leatherface, she actively tries to escape him. Young Sally doesn’t know that her decision to run will haunt her because it isn’t a decision. It’s an instinct. She sees a monster and runs from it. And saves her life. 

Perhaps it's the inability to forgive herself for not saving her friends that truly haunts Sally. She lives not only in the shadow of Leatherface, but the lives her friends might have had. To combat this survivor’s guilt, she’s dedicated her life to reclaiming the power she believes she lost when escaping in the back of the pickup truck. Leatherface has reduced her to a frightened animal running for her life and she believes that killing him will take away the memory of that terror. But like so many who have suffered before her, those aren’t the cards she’s dealt. Truly overcoming trauma often means accepting the randomness of life and the unexpected nature of death. Sally blames herself for not being a hero, forgetting about the incredible fact of her survival. 

When answering Hooper's original question, what will be left of Sally, the unfortunate answer is not much. In a cruel twist, Garcia’s film throws her away and she dies on the whirring blade of Leatherface’s saw. Sally’s demise is a tragedy given how much of her life she’s dedicated to tracking him down. But it also serves as one more example of the unflinching randomness of life. Now the sole survivor of her own tragedy, we can only hope that Lila will find a way to move on. Maybe Sally’s life and her tragic death can serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of holding onto pain. Hopefully Lila will keep a picture of those she lost and remember them often, but continue with her life beyond the shadow of her trauma. That’s how she can truly become one of the special ones. By mourning the past, but continuing to move forward into the sunlight.

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