Adam Pasen
Much has already been made of the conspiracy themes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Kim Henkel, 1995); the alleged “shameless remake” follows final girl Jenny (Renée Zellweger in her first starring role) and her ill-fated friends trying to survive the prom night from hell after crashing their black Lincoln Continental on a Texas backroad – the same car and state in which JFK was killed. Matthew McConaughey’s villainous Vilmer drives a tow truck that literally reads “Illuminati Wrecking.” He and his girlfriend Darla (Tonie Perenski) seem to have been subjected to Illuminati-style mind control as posited by Fritz Springmeier (Vilmer’s trigger phrase is “silly boy,” while the relatively normal Darla periodically dissociates into a sexually aggressive dominatrix).
Check out the trailer for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation:
Furthermore, both Vilmer and Darla resent and fear Vilmer’s shadowy handler, “Rothman” (James Gale), who (parroting perennial accusations against the Rothschilds), Darla confides to a captive Jenny is part of a group that “runs everything” and “killed JFK.” There is even an entire #Pizzagate subplot, years before such rumors entered the mainstream: Darla takes a detour to pick up several pizzas for the demented family to eat for dinner, and along the way kidnaps high school girls Jenny and Heather right under the noses of several onlookers and two useless police officers. When Rothman interrupts the ensuing meal, he exposes a masonic scar in the shape of a pyramid before licking underage Jenny repeatedly (!!). He then picks up two slices of pizza seemingly at random before setting them down again.
(left) Vilmer wrecking prom nights and subtlety in the Illuminati-mobile; (right) Rothman baring his pyramidal scar and indulging in some pizza
What has not been explored before is the film’s alchemical motifs, particularly parallels to Sir James George Frazer’s magical masterpiece The Golden Bough. I believe doing so now will deepen viewers’ understanding of both Rothman’s motivations and the film’s underappreciated ambitions. First, it is important to note that many conspiracy theorists track the origins of the Illuminati to eighteenth-century Frankfurt, Germany – and specifically to the Rothschilds in the Judengasse (literally “Jews’ Alley”). With that in mind, here is a passage from Frazer on the Jewish celebrations of Purim there at the time:
“Among the Jews of Frankfort, who inhabited the squalid but quaint and picturesque old street known as the Judengasse… the revelry at Purim ran as high as ever in the eighteenth century… they shrieked, yelled, stamped, clattered, and broke each other’s heads with wooden hammers till the blood flowed” (Frazer, 646).
This would explain the theme of cracking skulls with a hammer in TCM: The Next Generation (incidentally reflecting the death of Hiram Abiff in Masonic legend by a blow from a maul): Leatherface’s only kill is Heather’s boyfriend Barry with the sledgehammer, while Vilmer impulsively picks up a hammer and clobbers brother W.E. at the table.
(left) Vilmer “breaking W.E.’s head” with a hammer; (right) Leatherface in drag and its magical implications
Frazer additionally suggests that Purim is derived from the Babylonian Sacaea, a festival characterized by inversion – including gender: “They disguised themselves, men and women exchanging clothes, and thus attired ran about like mad, in open defiance of the Mosaic law, which expressly forbids men to dress as women…” (Frazer 646). Here we find a satisfying explanation for the otherwise baffling decision to have Leatherface relentlessly chase Jenny wearing full drag: he is reversing gender roles as required by Sacaea. But why? To what end? The answer resides in the group’s plans for Jenny – hinted at from the moment Vilmer admits he “wants her alive, for some reason.”
After Jenny eventually escapes the farmhouse and a passing crop duster swoops down and kills the pursuing Vilmer (ambiguously either a Good Samaritan rescuing Jenny by chance or an agent on Rothman’s payroll tasked with eliminating a discarded asset), Rothman picks Jenny up in his limo and offers to drive her to the hospital. There he apologizes and reveals that her ordeal was supposed to be a “spiritual experience.” Implicitly, he meant for Jenny to undergo an alchemical process – to fulfill an important role as part of a larger protective ritual (much like Dana in The Cabin in the Woods).
As for what Frazer suggests that ritual might be, he states that on the first day of Purim women are allowed to open the window and look into the men’s synagogue (read: “see behind the veil”), because “the great deliverance of the Jews from their enemies in the time of King Ahasuerus was said to have been effected by a woman” (Esther of the Bible and eventual Queen of Persia). This is how Jenny fits into Rothman’s designs, and what the subtitle of the film refers to: scholars have suggested that at the higher degrees, the “G” of masonry (previously understood as “God” or “Geometry”) actually stands for “Generation.” Rothman’s terrorizing of Jenny is part of an alchemical process to get her to fill the role of Esther and re-generate Rothman’s people.
Jenny gets a glow up… and tries not to throw up. Note the Phoenix-looking design on her dress symbolizing rebirth.
This potential in Jenny is noted early on when classmate Heather remarks to Barry, “everyone thinks [Jenny’s] such a wuss… but I’ve had PE with her, and she’s got a body to die for.” And indeed, each new terror that Jenny is subjected to transforms her further; by the end of the movie, she has transcended the gawky, bespectacled doormat from the opening and blossomed into an assertive beauty who can convincingly command no less than Leatherface to “sit the fuck down!” She has effectively channeled Esther and completed the ritual… and ultimately ritual means repetition.
OG Final girl Sally in the hospital symbolically passing the torch and “regenerating” through Jenny before she disappears out the exit and “into the light.”
Unfortunately, for too long this repetition has been interpreted as a cynical cash grab or condemned for its lack of original ideas when it comes to the similarities between The Next Generation and the original. But this is no hollow remake… and the echoes of what came before are integral parts of the Kabbalist magical process, whether through recurrence of simple numerical patterns (both the address on Darla’s office trailer and the Route number the opening accident takes place on are 709), or through more significant “meta” moments like Jenny passing by original TCM final girl (and previous Esther surrogate) Sally Hardesty in the hospital at the end and having a profound instant of silent recognition.
As for Rothman, he is not the first Rothschild and/or Illuminati avatar in horror/horror-adjacent cinema (Max Schreck of Batman Returns and Sasha Rassimov of Hostel 2 spring to mind and require their own extended analysis). Yet while others are motivated by superficial material gain (destroying their victims impersonally and indifferently), Rothman’s objectives are far more interesting… perhaps even understandable in his desire to protect his brethren. He is appalled by Vilmer & Company’s gauche violence against Jenny and her friends, marking him as the most morally nuanced of this archetype. He doesn’t want to kill the teens… or even profit from them. As he orders Vilmer: “I want these people to know the meaning of horror.” And through him, we come to know it as well… horror means rebirth, and ultimately illumination.
References:
Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Rothschild, Mike. Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories. Melville House, 2023.
Springmeier, Fritz. How the Illuminati Create an Undetectable Total Mind Controlled Slave. CreateSpace, 2008.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Directed by Kim Henkel, Ultra Muchos Productions, 1995.
Adam Pasen is a screenwriter based in Los Angeles and holds a PhD in English from Western Michigan University. He has written several articles for Horror Homeroom and is currently working on a longer piece about conspiracies and the slasher film.
For other articles by Adam Pasen, check out: Set, Sodomy, and the Springwood Slasher: Queerness and the Occult in Freddy’s Revenge; and Freddy on the Grassy Knoll – A Nightmare on Elm Street and the JFK Assassination.
