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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre character
Sheriff Hoyt
A.K.A.	Charlie Hewitt
Gender	Male
Race	Caucasian
Location	Texas
Enemies	Everyone but his family
Portrayed by:	R. Lee Ermey

Sheriff Hoyt is a fictional character in the 2003 remake of the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its prequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. He is portrayed by R. Lee Ermey.

Contents 1 The films 2 The comics 3 Other appearances 4 References

A POW during the Korean War, Charlie Hewitt was forced into cannibalism to survive, as rations were extremely scarce. Each week, someone had to be killed and eaten. Charlie apparently grew to like the taste of human flesh and would later introduce the grisly practice to his family. ^[1]

Charlie shot and killed the local sheriff, Sheriff Winston, during the sheriff's attempt to apprehend Charlie's nephew Thomas for murdering his boss at the meat factory. Charlie took on the identity of the sheriff, going under the name Sheriff Winston Hoyt. He would use this new identity to lure teenagers off the road where they would meet Leatherface and his family to be killed and eaten. ^[1]

Hoyt is arguably one of the driving forces behind his adoptive nephew's cannibalism and murders, assuring Thomas that the butchery of human beings is no different than the slaughterhouse: "Meat is meat, and bone is bone." Later, Hoyt is present during Leatherface's first chainsaw murder, urging him to go forward and cheering him on at the same time. ^[1]

A gruff, mean-spirited bully, Hoyt not only makes no effort to conceal his contempt for everyone around him, he seems to revel in it. For example, when he is called to investigate the suicide of a young girl in the first film, he leers at the corpse and cracks jokes about his predilection for "copping a feel" on dead female bodies. ^[2]

He arrests the film's teenaged protagonists under the pretense of marijuana possession and responsibility for the girl's death and brings them to his family home to be butchered by Leatherface. The last survivor, Erin, proves herself to be tougher and more resourceful than he had expected; at the movie's climax, she runs him over repeatedly and kills him as she runs away. ^[2]

In Avatar Press' The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comics, set between the events of the first film and The Beginning, Hoyt regularly appeared, most often having unwary travellers venture to the Hewitt home where he and family would butcher them. Hoyt is depicted as exceedingly sadistic in the comics, regularly mocking and torturing victims to the point of mutilating them, justifying his actions under a "they got what they deserved"-esque pretense, as shown when he forces an escaped convict and drug dealer to snort cleaning chemicals. Of note, the Avatar Press comics have Hoyt referred to by the name Junior by his family. ^[3]

Although Hoyt was apparently killed off at the end of the 2003 remake, Wildstorm Comics's continuation of the movies suggest he might have survived.

The beginning of the series had Hoyt's offices under investigation, where it was revealed he had kept a scrapbook of his family's crimes in his office, victims held captive in a nearby shack, and a passageway through the sewers that lead to the Hewitt residence.

Later issues introduced 'Hank', the head slaughterman at the Blair Meat Company. When a cameraman and newswoman came to interview him about the murderers, he gave them a graphic tour of the slaughterhouse, showing them various animals being killed and how the meat was rendered. Later, when one of their crew went missing, the two went back inside only for Hank to reappear and attack them. After knocking them both out with a cattleprod, Hank proceeded to torture and ultimately murder the cameraman in the same exact way that the animals were prepared (by slitting the throat and letting the blood drain, and then tossing him into a vat of scalding hot water before 'rendering' the meat) while the newswoman watched helplessly while tied to a hook.

The newswoman managed to escape, with Hank in hot pursuit. He was stopped dead in his tracks by FBI Agent Baines, the uncle of Pepper (one of Leatherface's victims from the first film). Erroneously believing Hank to be responsible for his niece's death, Baines managed to find a stray chainsaw and engaged the slaughterman in a chainsaw fight. Although Baines was wounded by Hank's weapon, Baines gained the upper hand and managed to dismember and ultimately kill Hank.

Although Hank is never identified as Hoyt, he did bear a strong resemblance to the character leading some to believe that he was in fact the sheriff from the films. When artist Wes Craig was asked, he responded by saying while he wouldn't confirm whether or not Hank was Hoyt, that the similarity between the two characters was indeed intentional.

“

I don't really want to say if that was Hoyt or not, it might have been him, might have been his twin, who knows (okay I know but I'm not telling). But yes it was supposed to look like Hoyt. [4]

”

Hoyt had a small cameo in the comic one-shot About a Boy as "Uncle Charlie" (being that the events took place before the events of The Beginning) where he comes across a young Thomas in the process of skinning off the face of a bully that had tormented him earlier. After questioning Thomas as to whether he was trying to make the bully look like him (being that Thomas had no nose), or make himself look like the bully, he puts the bully out of his misery by blowing off his head off with a shotgun. His only criticism of Thomas's actions is that he "gotta learn how to fix 'em proper".

Hoyt later had his own one-shot titled "Hoyt, By Himself", also published by Wildstorm. It focused on Hoyt recalling his past as a POW in the Korean War in the "bone cold" winter of 1953 while he tortures an unlucky victim who crossed his path.

Hoyt recalls the torturous and humilating conditions he had to endure to survive, and how various soldiers were killed and fed to the other prisoners. Hoyt at first tries to resist the temptation of becoming an 'animal' but sooner or later engages in cannibalism to survive; "I'm a survivor, plain and simple. I do what I have to." When he is selected by his captors for the next meal, he escapes after impaling one of them with a discarded bone and ripping out his neck with his teeth, and stabbing another through the neck.

In present time, Hoyt's victim attempts to fight back. "You don't get it!" Hoyt says. "If I could survive the fucking communists all by myself...I can survive anything with my family around me." Just as the victim almost escapes, Leatherface arrives and chainsaws him to death. "Let's eat." Hoyt says as the story ends.

A seven and half inch tall statuette of Hoyt was created by New Line Cinema's House of Horror; the statuette comes with a two-piece van base and removable accessories such as a handgun. Hoyt (referred to as simply the Sheriff due to licensing issues) appears in the 2007 version of Universal Orlando Resort's Halloween Horror Nights in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Flesh Wounds haunted house; he also appears as the leader of Chainsaw Drill Team attraction.

v • d • e The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series
Original series	The Texas Chain Saw Massacre • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 • Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III • Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Remake series	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
Characters	Chop Top • Drayton Sawyer • Grandpa • Hitchhiker • Leatherface • Luda May Hewitt • Old Monty • Sheriff Hoyt • Sally Hardesty • W. E. Sawyer
Other	All American Massacre • Atari 2600 Game • Comics