And if you don’t know who the hell I’m talking about, I mean actor Bill Moseley, who did the unthinkable a little over 20 years ago: he upstaged Leatherface.  And if you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, I mean THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 2 (1986), in which Moseley played the aforementioned Choptop, the chatterbox brother of grunting and squealing but essentially mute and masked serial killer Leatherface.  After the release of the original film in 1974, Leatherface slowly slashed his way into the American cultural iconography to become as archetypal a monster as Frankenstein or Dracula.  With the sequel, Leatherface took a step back to make room for the manic antics and flood of verbal diarrhea from sibling Choptop, who is widely recognized as the inspiration for Michael Keaton’s BEETLEJUICE (1988).  Does any of this make sense?

Born in Barrington, Illinois on this day in 1951, William Moseley was a member of his high school glee club and an English major at Yale University, where he founded the extracurricular horror movie society Things That Go Bump in the Night with future Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas.  After leaving the groves of academe, Moseley was pursuing a career as a freelance journalist (with interview subjects as diverse as Jamie Lee Curtis and Linus Pauling) when he broke into movies in a characteristically singular fashion.  On the set of Alan Rudolph’s borderland sci-fi thriller ENDANGERED SPECIES (1984), Moseley traded the film’s producer photographs of mutilated cattle for a small speaking role as a cab driver… and in so doing also earned his membership in the Screen Actor’s Guild.  The success in America of George Miller’s THE ROAD WARRIOR (MAX MAX 2, 1982) prompted a slew of like-minded copycats around the globe, and Moseley turned up as the Apocalyptic guttersnipe ”Quilt Face” in OSA (1985), which starred a pre-DRUGSTORE COWBOY Kelly Lynch as a distaff warrior of the wasteland.  But it was when he was cast as one of the cannibalistic Sawyer clan in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II that his fate was sealed… and his immortality assured.  Working in predictably stifling conditions in a small studio in Austin, Texas, Moseley suffered the indignity of having his head shaved and of submitting to several full body molds for his physically and psychologically damaged character… a Vietnam veteran (well, to hear him tell it) with a itchy metal plate screwed into his shattered, bewigged skull.

Warning: this clip is not safe for work!

While Moseley dealt more damage than he received in TCMII, shooting was particularly brutal, with director Tobe Hopper calling for take after take after take because he was having so much fun watching Moseley batter his fellow castmates with a rubber hammer.  Moseley improvised most of his scenes, resulting in some of the film’s more quotable dialogue (most of which can’t be reprinted here).  His performance is a true tour de force and popular even with those who found this an inferior follow-up to the unforgettable original.  Why Bill Moseley didn’t become a big star after THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II is just one of those annoying showbiz mysteries – he certainly had the  chops (sorry) but he seemed to be stuck in that all too common rut for character actors of playing minor parts in big movies (PINK CADILLAC with Clint Eastwood, MR. JONES with Richard Gere) and better roles only in rarely-seen low budget features (he repurposed the classic line “They’re coming to get you, Barbra” as the ill-fated Johnnie in Tom Savini’s 1990 remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD).

Moseley’s visibility enjoyed an uptake when heavy metal rocker Rob Zombie channeled his record-selling cred into a bid as a first-time director.  The troubled HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES (filmed on the Universal lot in 2000 but withheld from release for three years) is a stylistic slumgullion of horror movie and true crime tropes (which counts among its victims a pre-THE OFFICE Rainn Wilson) that developed a cult following sufficient to prompt a sequel.  For THE DEVIL’S REJECTS (2005), Moseley was reunited with his H1KCcast mates Sid Haig, Sheri Moon Zombie and the late Matthew McGrory as the Sawyer-esque “Firefly Clan,” a brood of sadistic serial killers who hit the road ahead of a posse of Texas Rangers for a blood-soaked, flesh-flaying, profanity-strewn kill spree.  Bill Moseley is commanding, charismatic, fearsome and funny as the quick-to-anger Otis, who seems both Christ-like and Manson-esque in the various shades of his psychopathy.  Widely screened and discussed (with viewers falling into vocal pro and anti camps), THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is another film that should have urged Bill Moseley towards something bigger, something greater, something truly worthy of his talents.  To date, however, it’s been more small roles in big budget films (he’s one of many familiar faces paraded through Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of HALLOWEEN to no great effect) and principal parts in direct-to-video fodder such as THR3E (2006) and HOUSE(2008), Christian thrillers released by 20th Century Fox under their Fox Faith banner.  Someone needs to give this great American character actor a part he can really sink his teeth into.  Until then, Bill Moseley will be keeping busy - after celebrating his birthday today, he heads to Germany tomorrow as a guest of the ”Weekend of Horrors” convention in Bottrop.  “If any of you are in the neighborhood,” he writes on the blog of his official MySpace page, “drop by and give me some skin. Otherwise, as they say in the Midwest, if I don’t see you in the future, I’ll see you in the pasture.”

Bill Moseley’s MySpace page.

Bill Moseley’s website, Choptop’s BBQ.

The painting of Choptop at the top of this post is reproduced courtesy of artist Joel Robinson.