User:SeanTheYeti452/sandbox/project27

Drayton Sawyer
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre character
First appearance	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Last appearance	Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
Created by	Tobe Hooper Kim Henkel
Portrayed by	Jim Siedow Bill Moseley
In-universe information
Nickname	The Cook
Relatives	Bubba Sawyer/Leatherface (brother) Chop Top (brother) Nubbins Sawyer (brother; deceased)
Nationality	American
Classification	Mass murderer, Butcher
Primary location	Texas

Drayton Sawyer is a fictional character from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. Created by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel, the character first appears in the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and has made several subsequent appearances since, in both films and comic books. In the films, the character is portrayed by Jim Siedow in the original installment and it's 1986 sequel. After Siedow's passing, the character was portrayed by Bill Moseley, who had previously portrayed Chop Top in the series, in Texas Chainsaw 3D.

In all his appearances, Drayton appears as an antagonist. A mentally unstable and murderous cannibal, Drayton, along, with his family of fellow serial killers, lives in the backwoods of Texas, preying upon travelers, who he and his relatives capture and devour, selling some of their meat to unwary people in chili. Drayton's name wasn't mentioned until the second film, the first simply referring to him as Cook and Old Man.

Appearances

Film

Drayton Sawyer makes his debut appearance in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in which he first appears as the proprietor of the Last Chance Gas Station, a gas station and barbecue, where a group of teenagers stop while passing through the area. Drayton's malevolent nature is only revealed later in the film, where he beats Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) unconscious and captures her after she approaches him seeking help when her friends disappear and her brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) gets killed by Leatherface, having been chased by him previously and is highly hysterical after her shocking experience. Taking Sally to his home, Drayton torments her alongside his siblings, Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and the Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal), before deciding to let the family patriarch, Grandpa (John Dugan), kill her. When Grandpa proves too decrepit to kill Sally with a hammer, Drayton, the Hitchhiker and Leatherface attempt to aid him, but only succeed in losing grasp on Sally, who flees out a window, in their over-eagerness to help. Also, his more humane side of him is revealed when he states "I just can't take no pleasure in killing people" when Hitchhiker accuses him of doing nothing but cooking while he and Leatherface do all the killing.

In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Drayton reappears, now living in an abandoned amusement park by the name of Texas Battle Land, due to the intense police investigation sparked by the events of the first film, with what remains of his family, Leatherface (Bill Johnson), Chop Top (Bill Moseley) and Grandpa (Ken Evert). Now an award-winning chili cook, Drayton appears far more unhinged than in the previous film, happily joining in on his family's murderous frenzies, which previously disturbed him somewhat. Drayton dies, off-screen, at the end of the film, when, during the fight between Leatherface and Lieutenant "Lefty" Enright (Dennis Hopper), he is accidentally struck by Leatherface and the hand grenade he is holding explodes prematurely, seemingly killing Drayton, Lefty, Leatherface and Grandpa Sawyer in the process. Chop Top was the only member of the Sawyer family to survive the explosion, due to him chasing Vanita "Stretch" Brock (Caroline Williams).

Literature

In Topps Comics' 1995 comic miniseries Jason vs. Leatherface, Drayton, only identified by the name Cook Slaughter, appears as a main character. After Leatherface and the Hitchhiker bring Jason Voorhees, the main antagonist of the Friday the 13th franchise home, Drayton befriends him and inducts him in as an unofficial member of the Sawyer family.

The comics expand on Drayton's back story, revealing that, though he aspires to gain fame and fortune using his culinary skills in the city, he stays in the Texan backwoods due to a vow he made to his younger sister Velma on her deathbed, promising he would always look after her children, the Hitchhiker and Leatherface. The comics also portray Drayton as much more apathetic and lax towards his relatives murdering of people, with him, at one point, stating that he wishes the Hitchhiker and Jason, who had just delivered to him a freshly killed couple, had brought him some children as well ("their meat's so much more tender...")

An unnamed character similar to Drayton in both appearance and demeanor appears in the comic one-shot The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Cut!, which is set in the remake continuity of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and published by Wildstorm. Like Drayton, this character, a member of the cannibalistic Hewitt family and brother of Leatherface and a character similar to the Hitchhiker, is a chef, though he appears to specialize in ribs, instead of chili. In the comic, the Drayton look-alike feigns aiding a group of teenagers in making an amateur movie about the murders committed by his family, by bringing them to the supposedly abandoned Hewitt house. Revealing his true nature near the end of the story, the character, along with his siblings, slaughters the director of the film project (his brothers having previously killed his companions) like livestock. The comic's ending, set one year after the main events of the story, implicate the character will once more lead a group of wannabee filmmakers to their death at the hands of him and his family.

Production

Tobe Hooper has stated that Drayton, along with the rest of the Sawyer family, is based upon serial killer Ed Gein.

Jim Siedow was offered a chance to appear as Drayton Sawyer in the 1994 film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, which was originally meant to be a direct sequel to the original 1974 film, but declined. Drayton was ultimately replaced in the film by the character W. E. Sawyer.

References

This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the article namespace.

Categories:

• Fictional chefs
• Fictional cannibals
• Horror film characters
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (franchise)
• Fictional serial killers
• Fictional characters from Texas
• Male horror film villains
• Film characters introduced in 1974
• Fictional butchers
• Fictional mass murderers