Plot summary

On August 7, 1939, a young woman who works in a meat-packing plant in rural Travis County, Texas, dies giving birth to a child in the back room of the building when she suddenly goes into labor. The cruel plant manager abandons the newborn in a dumpster. A local woman, named Luda Mae Hewitt, discovers the baby while searching for food. She names the infant Thomas and takes him to the Hewitt residence and raises the baby as her own son.Over the next 30 years, Thomas (Andrew Bryniarski) grows up and goes to work in the same slaughterhouse. When its horrid conditions cause the closure of his workplace, Thomas comes back and kills the slaughterhouse's owner with a sledgehammer; he also finds and takes a chainsaw. Charlie Hewitt (R. Lee Ermey), Luda Mae's (Marietta Marich) sadistic son, learns from Sheriff Winston Hoyt (Lew Temple) what Thomas has done, and accompanies the Sheriff to arrest Thomas. When they find Thomas, Charlie kills the Sheriff with a shotgun and takes his identity. Charlie and Thomas take the Sheriff's body home and butcher him for stew meat, telling the rest of the family that they will not leave their home even as the rest of the area becomes deserted.A few months later, in July 1969, two brothers, Eric (Matthew Bomer) and Dean (Taylor Handley), drive across the country with their girlfriends Chrissie (Jordana Brewster) and Bailey (Diora Baird). Eric and Dean are draft dodgers and are plotting to flee north to avoid being drafted into the U.S. Army where they will be sent to Vietnam. They stop at a local eatery where they encounter a group of bikers. As the group pulls away, a female biker, Alex (Cyia Batten), follows them. A chase ensues, ending with the group crashing into a cow and flipping their car. In the process, Chrissie gets thrown from the car and lands in the weeds, out of sight of the others. Charlie Hewitt/Sheriff Hoyt soon arrives on the scene; he immediately shoots Alex, throws her body into the trunk of his squad car, forces the rest of the group in as well, and calls for his Uncle Monty (Terrence Evans) on the car's CB radio to tow the wreckage. The tow truck comes and tows the car, in which Chrissie has hidden herself.Hoyt takes the group to the Hewitt house and calls for Thomas to butcher the dead Alex. He then takes Eric and Dean to a barn and hangs them by their arms from the rafters; he later ties Bailey to the kitchen table. From the car, Chrissie sees her friends tied up and runs back to the highway. She flags down Holden (Lee Tergesen), one of the bikers from the diner, and tells him about Alex and her friends. Holden then follows Chrissie back to the house.At the Hewitts', Hoyt tortures Eric and Dean by beating them with his nightstick and forcing them to do pushups when he figures out that they are draft dodgers. However, they manage to free themselves. When they attempt to rescue Bailey, Hoyt beats Eric, and Dean gets caught in a bear trap. Bailey escapes, taking Monty's truck, but Thomas stops her by stabbing her in the chest with a meat hook and drags her from the truck. Thomas then takes Eric to the basement and straps him to a wooden table.Holden enters the house to search for Alex, but ends up shooting Monty in one of his kneecaps, surprising Hoyt in the process. Hoyt leads him to a bedroom where Thomas kills him with his chainsaw. Chrissie finds Eric and tries to free him, but cannot release the metal straps nailed to the table. Thomas comes downstairs as Chrissie hides under the table. Thomas kills Eric and then skins his face, putting it on as a mask.... thus earning his nickname Leatherface. Thomas/Leatherface comes to the aid of his wounded uncle Monty, and seeing that the shotgun wound to his left kneecap is bad, uses his chainsaw to amputate Monty's leg off. Then, for no clear reason, Thomas chainsaws Monty's other leg off as well just above the kneecap as some twisted way of making is work perfect.Later, Chrissie finds and tries to free Bailey, whom Hoyt has tied up again on the second floor. As Chrissie attempts to untie her friend, Hoyt and Thomas catch her and bring her downstairs for "dinner". There, Dean sits unconscious as Thomas/Leatherface slits Bailey's throat with a pair of scissors, then grabs Chrissie and brings her downstairs as well. On the way to the basement, Chrissie manages to stab Thomas in the back with a screwdriver and escapes by jumping out a window, with Thomas pursuing her.Dean regains consciousness, escaping to the front of the house. There he assaults Hoyt by smashing his head repeatedly into the solid concrete porch, knocking out him out cold, as well as Hoyt's two front teeth, then heads out to find Chrissie. Meanwhile, Chrissie hides in the abandoned slaughterhouse. She slashes Thomas's face with a knife she has found, but he drags her to the floor. Dean arrives to stop him but Thomas impales and kills him with his chainsaw. Meanwhile, Chrissie makes her way to a nearby car and drives off into the night.Chrissie, desperately looking for help, sees a police deputy who has pulled someone over. As Chrissie is about to pull over, Thomas suddenly appears in the back seat and kills Chrissie by ramming his chaindaw through her seat. The car, out of control, crashes into the Deputy and citizen, killing both of them. Thomas (now called Leatherface) exits the car and slowly walks back along the dark road to the Hewitt house.