Gunnar Hansen, who played the iconic killer Leatherface in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, died yesterday from pancreatic cancer at his home in Maine, according to the LA Times. He was 68.

Hansen was born in Reykjavik, Iceland and moved to the United States at 5. His family moved to Texas where he grew up and attended the University of Texas, studying English and Scandinavian Studies. He was a hulking figure and was cast by Tobe Hooper as the flesh face, chainsaw-wielding psychopath in the 1974 horror classic, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Actress Marilyn Burns, best known to horror fans as the heroine of the original 1974 horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has been found dead at her home in Houston, TX, according to TMZ. She was 65 years old.

The cause of death has yet to be determined, but it has been reported that Burns was found by a family member.

One of the original scream queens, Burns’ gutsy performance as Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the film’s unsung virtues. The actress managed to convey genuine terror in its most harrowing scenes (though the squalid, brutal filming conditions probably played a big hand in that) and her lungs got the kind of workout that few horror heroines could match at their best moments. Chainsaw‘s shocking impact and box office success failed to catapult Burns to film stardom, but she still find roles regularly throughout the four decades that followed.

Texas Chainsaw 3D
Directed by John Luessenhop
Written by Debra Sullivan, Adam Marcus
Starring: Alexandra Daddario, Dan Yeager, Tremaine Neverson, Tania Raymonde, Bill Moseley, Paul Rae
Lionsgate Entertainment
Rated R | 92 Minutes
Release Date: January 4th, 2013

Directed by John Luessenhop (Takers), Texas Chainsaw 3D feels like the kind of slasher sequel New Line Cinema would have released in the ’90s.

Reminiscent of movies like Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday and Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, Texas Chainsaw 3D is a derivative, low-budget horror flick that digs up a mass grave of dead horses and beats them senseless with all matter of hammers, meat hooks, and chainsaws.

After 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and its 2006 prequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Platinum Dunes decided to abandon the franchise. Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate picked up the rights to the series subsequently, and planned a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 film – even though there are already three sequels to that film.

And I do mean ‘direct’ sequel – Texas Chainsaw 3D picks up minutes after the original, with police responding to a call from the pickup truck driver who rescued Sally Hardesty. Enraged and slightly drunk, the townspeople of Newt, Texas form a mob, burn down the old Sawyer homestead, and kill the family – even poor ol’ hammer-wielding grandpa. As one red-blooded redneck so elegantly puts it, “Eye for an eye, Sheriff. You can’t get around the Good Book!”

Successful horror films like SAW, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre find a way to keep their franchises alive. Sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and reboots, anything you can think of, it’s been done to your favorite horror franchise. The new Texas Chainsaw 3D film that hits theaters early next year will be just another example of a franchise that just refuses to die, no matter how many times the killers die and the body count stacks.

Texas Chainsaw 3D will follow the events of the original film that was released in 1974. A young woman inherits a home, so she decides to take her friends along to see what exactly she got. Little does she know that the house is connected to the notorious family involved in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If anything, the trailer shows why it’s dangerous to get high.

Watch the trailer here below.

Though January is usually a dumping ground for bad films or sleeper Liam Neeson movies, Lionsgate hopes to drum up some excitement with a new vision of Texas Chainsaw 3D.

The film may have changed the title (dropping Massacre), but it is still keeping with the spirit of it, and it will also be in 3D. Now the studio has released a new poster for your viewing pleasure, and it will make you glad that the Sawyer family hasn’t carved your face off yet.

Check it out below.