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| Kim Henkel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Name | Kim Henkel |
| Aliases | Kim David Henkel |
| Roles | Producer |
| Place of birth | Virginia |
| Gender | Male |
| Date of birth | January 19th, 1946 |
| Date of death | |
| First appearance | The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) |
| Height | {{{height}}} |
| Weight | {{{weight}}} |
Kim Henkel is an American film producer, director and screenwriter born in Virginia on January 19th, 1946. He was raised in South Texas from an early age and attended the University of Texas in Austin from 1964 to 1969. Henkel is best known for his work on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, serving as associate producer and co-writer on the first film in the series, a creative consultant on the third film in the series and director of the 1994 film The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Career[]
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It was while he was attending the University of Texas at Austin that Henkel met aspiring film student and assistant director Tobe Hooper. The two became friends and Henkel appeared in Hooper's 1969 independent film Eggshells. Henkel and Hooper went on to create their own independent production company Vortex, Inc. with Kim serving as president and Tobe as vice-president. Through Vortex, Henkel and Hooper made horror film history with a low-budget movie operating under the working title Headcheese. It eventually came to be known as the The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film was made on a budget of $83,532, $60,000 of which was invested by Bill Parsley, a friend of Tobe Hooper's. Henkel and Hooper drew inspiration for the film from a variety of sources, not the least of which was Ed Gein, the notorious serial killer from Plainfield, Wisconsin. Henkel based some elements for the Hitchhiker character on a Houston serial killer named Elmer Wayne Henley, a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man named Dean Corll. After Henley was arrested, he confessed to his participation in the crimes. Henkel found Henley's admission of guilt as intriguing and was quoted as saying, "He had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters." [1][2]
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre opened theatrically to mixed reviews and more than a little controversy. Henkel and Hooper were seeking to get a PG-rating for the film, so they deliberately held back on excessive gore, profanity and volumes of blood. Despite this, the film was considered too viscerally intense for the MPAA and it received an R-rating. The movie eventually proved to be a cult phenomenon and influenced an entire generation of film makers, giving rise to the modern slasher sub-genre and the "Grindhouse" exploitation era that dominated the 1970s.
Henkel and Hooper revisited the formula used in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to produce the 1977 movie Eaten Alive. As with Chainsaw, Eaten Alive was loosely based on the life of Joseph D. Ball, a Texas bootlegger who reputedly mudered more than twenty women in the late 1930s. In the film, the Ball character was named Judd and was the proprietor of a sleazy hotel where he murdered visitors with a scythe and fed them to his pet alligator. Henkel wrote the screen adaptation for the film.
Kim Henkel was one of the story developers behind the 1980 film The Unseen, another film whose provincial setting took place in a motel. Henkel's story concepts were expanded upon by Michael L. Grace, Nancy Rifkin and director Danny Steinmann (credited as Peter Foleg).
Henkel returned to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise in 1994, this time serving in the capacity of director. The original title for this fourth installment in the franchise was The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it was being produced by Columbia Pictures. The movie starred Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, who were relatively low-key actors at the time. The film went through a number of changes during it's production and there was great difficulty when it came to securing a release schedule for the movie. It was first screened at the South by Southwest Film and Media Conference in 1995. Columbia pushed for a limited theatrical release in October of that year, but lead actor Matthew McConaughey's agent purportedly put "pressure" on Columbia Pictures to not release the film theatrically, which caused complications between Henkel and the company. Columbia made Henkel re-edit a number of the scenes before attempting a second theatrical re-release and the title of the film was ultimately changed to Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.
In 2002, Henkel and two of his film students, Duane Graves and Justin Meeks produced a horror film short entitled Headcheese. The twenty-two minute black and white movie was made on a paltry budget of $1,500 and only contained three actors; Quentin Guerrero, Justin Meeks and Rena Moreno. The title for the film is taken from the original working title for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
In 2010, Henkel, Graves and Meeks began work on a film called Boneboys, scheduled for a 2011 release. Kim Henkel was co-producer as well as screenwriter. The movie reunited actors Marilyn Burns and Edwin Neal, two of the cast members from the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Body of work[]
Notes & Trivia[]
- The character of Agent Henkle from the 2007 Texas Chainsaw Massacre comic book series by WildStorm Productions is named after Kim Henkel.
External Links[]
References[]
 This article relates to actors, crew members and other behind-the-scenes creators pertaining to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. This template will categorize articles that include it into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Crew category. |