“I’ll kill you if the article isn’t good”, says the biggest chainsaw welding murderer in film history to me as I leave. If this was happening back in 1974 and he was wearing a mask made out of the flesh of his victims, I would worry, but the Gunnar Hansen that I’m bidding farewell to is a good and kind older man who would remind you more of Santa Claus then a sadistic murderer and his goodbye is nothing more then a friendly joke (I hope). We met in a restaurant at the lake, the surroundings remind Hansen of his childhood home at Freyja-street, but he moved away from Iceland only five years old to live in the United States. None the less, he has been a frequent visitor to his native land ever since he moved and has now arrived to costar in ‘Reykjavík Whale Watching Massacre’, which started filming this week. “I’m the captain on the boat, an old sailor who is now working on his own vessel as a tourist attraction to see the whales.” says Hansen who was very intrigued when he read Sjón’s script. “It was very well written, I get a lot of really bad horror movie scripts but it was a pleasure to read this. There are a lot of fun references to old horror movies, ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and a lot of scenes in the beginning of the film that makes you think of ‘Moby Dick’.” Hansen is though not playing a character based on Captain Ahab. “It’s only mentioned in a joke, one of the passengers keeps calling me Ahab, but the character is nothing like him.” But what does Hansen think when it comes to whale hunting? “I had whale steak for dinner a couple of days ago, that probably answers your question.”

We move onto to talk about the chainsaw killer who is simply known as Leatherface, the character that Hansen played in his first film, ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’. A lot of people would probably tire of answering endless questions about a 34 year old film that still is his most famous to date, but not Hansen. “I was never going to be an actor and I find it wonderful that I was given the opportunity to be in the film, it has opened many doors for me and still does.” says Hansen, who has starred in quite a few horror movies since then and is regularly invited to horror conventions, though most of his time goes to writing, which has always been his most passionate work. ”’Chain Saw’ had a lot of impact on horror movies, because they were on a crossroad at the time, there was endless talking in them and they were really polite, they would let you know when they were going to frighten you and they let you know when you were safe and could breathe with ease.”

We agree that even with all the horror in ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, some parts are quite hilarious and it features one of the weirdest family get-together that’s ever been shown on the big screen. But two years before, had another film become a hit, ‘Deliverance’, but there hasn’t been many films that have showcased the possible horrors that can happen in the backwoods of nowhere, but both ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Chain Saw’ had innocent city teens in the hands of insane rednecks. “That misconception exists somewhere in every country, that in the South, everyone is inbred and dangerous, the two films both obviously touch on that prejudice that’s there, and most likely act on some of those clichés.”