You won’t find a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie with more Hollywood star power than Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, notable for featuring early career roles from both Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger. Both actors became household names shortly thereafter, reportedly unhappy about their involvement in the oddball sequel.
Kim Henkel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, completed in 1994, would finally see an edited down limited release in 1997. In the sequel, a group of teenagers get into a car crash in the Texas woods on prom night, and then wander into an old farmhouse that is home to Leatherface (Robert Jacks) and his insane family of cannibalistic psychopaths.
McConaughey memorably plays twisted family member Vilmer in The Next Generation, and over on his YouTube channel this week, the actor reflects on the film over 25 years later. For starters, McConaughey originally had a much smaller role in the film.
“I had already done Dazed and Confused the summer before, in Austin, Texas. Now I went back to school, graduated, and had my U-Haul packed up. Just as I was about to drive out to Hollywood, I got offered this role in this horror picture, Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” the actor reflects. “It was a one-day role. A guy who rides up on a motorcycle at the beginning of the movie, sees Renée Zellweger’s character on school campus, she sees him, he rides off. She goes through her night of hell, and almost gets killed, and the next day at school he rides back up, she sees him, jumps on the motorcycle, they ride off. No lines. Just sort of Romeo to Juliet character.”
McConaughey continues, “I go to the production office, I’m talking to the director, Kim Henkel, and he says, ‘Matthew, do you have anybody in mind who could play the lead killer, Vilmer’ – the guy who drives the tow truck, hangs the kids up on a winch, has a mechanical leg. And I gave him a couple names of local actors I knew… as I got to the curb to get in my truck, which already had my U-Haul packed up, I said, ‘I should try for that role.’ So I went back down the sidewalk, went in, I said, ‘I want to try out for the role of Vilmer.’
“The girl that was the secretary goes, ‘I’ll do it!’ I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a big table spoon out of the drawer, came back in, and just pinned her in a corner and acted like it was a weapon. And did it until she cried. And they yelled ‘Cut,’ and Kim was like, ‘That was good.’ And the girl was like, ‘Yeah, that was really good. You really scared me.’ And Kim goes, ‘Do you want the part?'”
The rest, as they say, is history. Before The Next Generation was even released, McConaughey appeared in Angels in the Outfield, Glory Days, and A Time to Kill, while Zellweger rose to fame in Jerry Maguire. Reportedly, McConaughey’s agent put pressure on the studio to not release the film theatrically, and it only ever saw a limited release a few years after it was made.
All these years later, it’s nice to see McConaughey fondly looking back on the experience!