Horror fans have a habit of humanizing their favorite monsters, perhaps the slashers especially.

Art the Clown, who currently holds the modern slasher championship title belt for his work in the ongoing Terrifier series, is a “rizz master;” Jason Voorhees, for reasons clarified through his backstory, gets sympathy votes from viewers no matter how many horny teenagers he kills (and no matter how brutally he kills them). We like to invest in optimism, the chance that behind the mask, or under the makeup, there lies a soul deserving of compassion, someone who, if circumstances allowed, we could “fix.”

No figure in slasher cinema’s canon is better calibrated for provoking our empathy than Leatherface, that misbegotten son of the maneating Sawyer clan and antagonist in Tobe Hooper’s America

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