Sally Hardesty
Sally Hardesty is a fictional character in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. She was portrayed by actress Marilyn Burns in the 1974 film and later as a patient in a mental hospital.
After a series of grave robberies, Hardesty, her paraplegic brother Franklin, and their friends travel across Texas to investigate upon hearing reports that her grandfather's grave may have been vandalized, and is forced to face Leatherface and his cannibalistic family.
In academic materials, Hardesty has been regarded as one of the earliest examples of the final girl trope. Outside of film, Hardesty is featured in merchandise based on the films, has a main role in the novelization of the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, and is referenced in the 2017 video game Dead by Daylight.
Appearances
''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre''
In The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Sally and her paraplegic brother, Franklin, travel with three friends—Jerry, Kirk, and Pam—to visit the grave of the Hardesty's grandfather after reports of grave robbing in the area. Afterwards, they decide to visit the old Hardesty family homestead. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker. He borrows Franklin's pocket-knife and cuts himself, then takes a Polaroid picture of the others and demands money for it. When they refuse to pay, he burns the photo and slashes Franklin's arm with a straight razor. The group forces him out of the van and drive on. They stop at a gas station to refuel, but the proprietor tells them that the pumps are empty. They continue toward the homestead, planning to return to the gas station on the way back when it has received fuel delivery. When they arrive, Kirk and Pam find a swimming-hole dried up but hear a generator running. They stumble upon a nearby house. Later, Leatherface appears and kills Franklin with a chainsaw and Sally runs to the old house. She runs upstairs and finds the desiccated bodies of an old couple. She jumps out of the second story window to escape Leatherface and runs to the gas station.The proprietor—Leatherface's brother Drayton Sawyer—ties Sally up, gags her and forces her into the back of his truck and drives to the house. Sally is tied to a chair at a dinner table and Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring the desiccated body of the old man downstairs. They decide that he should be the one who should kill her. After several failed attempts of the old man trying to hit Sally with a hammer, she manages to escape and jump through the window and flee. She reaches the road and a semi-truck stops to help her but Leatherface attacks the driver. She jumps into the back of a pickup truck that stops to help her, escaping Leatherface. She is last seen laughing and screaming hysterically as she escapes.
Other
Although she does not physically appear in the sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Sally's aftermath from the first film is mentioned in the introduction. The narrator states that Sally described her traumatic encounter with Leatherface and his family as feeling like she had "broken out of a window in hell", and it is revealed that she had went into catatonia after her revealing her ordeal to the police. This film identifies her as Sally Hardesty-Enright. In the intro speech for ', the narrator states that Sally died in a private health care facility in 1977; this is contradicted in ' where Sally is briefly shown being wheeled through a hospital on a gurney while still in a coma. Marilyn Burns reprised her role for this film. Sally appears in a flashback scene in the 2013 film Texas Chainsaw 3D, which serves as a direct sequel to the 1974 film.In other media
In 2017, Fright-Rags released a T-shirt featuring a design of Sally and Leatherface. Although not playable, Hardesty is referenced in the video game Dead by Daylight.Development
While studying at the University of Texas at Austin, Burns auditioned for the role of Sally when a casting call was held for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Burns previously met Hooper when he was kicked off the set of Sidney Lumet's drama film Lovin' Molly, in which Burns worked as a stand-in for Susan Sarandon and Blythe Danner. Burns did most of her own stunts during filming such as jumping through the window during the ending and during the dinner scene, her finger was actually cut by a real knife with no fake blood being used. Originally, the 2003 remake was intended to be told in flashback format with an aged Sally recounting her experience with Leatherface to authorities. Burns was set to reprise her role. Ultimately, this version of the film was scrapped.Reception
In Shocking Cinema of the Seventies, author Xavier Mendik writes that "blonde Sally survives, and she's still intact. Bruised and cut, but still intact. Her hair is matted and dirty now, her tight vest is torn, her hip-hugging jeans no so white, but she's still alive. Whether this is a good thing, she does not yet know. For now, tied up, face to face with maniacs she thought she'd never see again, it is all too much. Her eyes go wide before she blacks out. And then she wakes, from one nightmare into another".In Making and Remaking Horror in the 1970s and 2000s: Why Don’t They Do It Like They Used To?, David Roche contrasts Sally to Laurie Strode from the Halloween series stating: "All in all, Sally Hardesty and Laurie Strode have very little in common, apart from the fact that both characters survive the horror they have witnessed" and goes on to say that "Sally, the hippie, is very "feminine" and not especially heroic: she undergoes intense suffering, attempts to sell her body, and seems to lose her mind. Sally is, in effect, the most resisting body. As such, the character of Sally simultaneously enables the Family to attempt to assert its masculinity in the face of the abject female and contributes to the discovery of the instability of sexist patriarchal values by bearing witness to the way the Family's mimicry of patriarchy reveals its constructiveness; these two functions coalesce in the shots of Sally's eyes. I would, thus, argue that the character of Sally by no means represents a feminist development, but her resilience does enable an anti-essentialist subtext to emerge to some extent". However, James Rose believes that Sally and Laurie have a lot of similarities, describing:
He goes on to state the difference between the two:
Editor Stefano Lo Verme compared Burns's performance as Sally to the performances of Sandra Peabody as Mari Collingwood in The Last House on the Left and Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in Halloween.