Most of the world knows him
as the ruggedly reluctant Aragorn, heir to the throne of Gondor and
object of many a Middle-earth maiden’s
affections. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy Viggo was rough yet sensitive,
a quiet man of action who yearned for his true love many miles away.
In other words, what many women would consider the perfect man.
But before Frodo came calling, he starred in the third Texas Chainsaw
movie and nailed a helpless woman to a chair so his insane maniac brother
could cut her head in half. Oh Viggo, you charmer.
As Tex, Viggo plays a charismatic hitchhiking cowboy who seems to have
only the best intentions for a smug LA couple driving through Texas.
Of course, Californian yuppies lost in the badlands of America are just
asking for trouble, and Tex turns out to be just one of the murderous
(and cannibalistic) family that spawned the chainsaw wielding Leatherface.
It
doesn’t take long for him to show his true colours, helping
to capture the hapless duo and offering up advice on how best to cook
human flesh – “I like liver” he quips - while helping
the eerily eager young daughter of the clan to smash a victim’s
head in with a sledgehammer. He even wears a frilly apron and nail varnish,
hinting that his butch Texan demeanour and bloodthirsty habits are merely
a cover for the love that dare not speak its name.
As you can probably guess, things do not end up going Viggo’s way
as the tortured woman is rescued from her impromptu chainsaw to the face
by a bad-ass survivalist (genre icon Ken Foree) who puts an premature
end to Viggo’s evil ways by dousing him in petrol and setting him
on fire. In a scene cut from the finished film, the charred and gooey
Viggo is also impaled on a splintery wooden booby trap in the woods for
good measure – a delightful sight that you can now see on the uncut
DVD edition, should you feel that being burned alive just isn’t
punishment enough for being an effeminate cannibal cowboy. Gandalf would
not approve.
Need to know: Leatherface is the nexus around which many Viggo coincidences
revolve. Much like the role of Aragorn, he only landed the part of Tex
after the first-choice actor left the project, forcing him to jump aboard
at the last minute. Leatherface was also produced by Mark Ordesky for
New Line Cinema, the same producer who would oversee Lord of the Rings
for the studio, and – in one of the strangest twists of fate – the
original choice to direct Chainsaw III was a then-unknown indie horror
director from New Zealand called…Peter Jackson.
Honourable mention: Viggo also turned in a chillingly seductive cameo
as Satan himself in Gregory Widen’s The Prophecy, a dark and underrated
religious horror from 1995 which starred Christopher Walken as a vengeful
Gabriel, alongside Eric Stoltz, Elias Koteas and Virginia
Madsen.
Availability: The uncut DVD of Leatherface can be found in most UK bargain
bins.
