The TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE breed, though Harris notes it has a true-life inspiration as well. “I grew up in Texas,” he tells Fango, “and as a kid, I was 100 percent sure that CHAINSAW 1 and 2 were documentaries. We had a big woods near our neighborhood, with a 1800s house and a rambling old man with a shotgun and 100 cats basically, a slightly less decrepit ‘Grandpa.’ That was the original big scare for me, and there was no question that for my first time out, those were the kinds of characters I wanted to work with.

“I know the CHAINSAW reference raises hackles with fans,” he continues, “but it’s not a remake; I’m not interested in that. But if you make a backwoods horror movie, you’re either taking inspiration from CHAINSAW, totally missing out or lying. As a director, it’s a challenge to show the killers’ faces, let them talk and give them a family dynamic and a history. We’ve got the Hardell family tree charted back for centuries to try and get that texture. The actors playing our killers are great all guys from Memphis, and none of them were willing to let their characters be two-dimensional. That’s how we tried to pay tribute to the genre.”