Anyway, when I started this blog I knew that this would be a movie that I eventually would have to see. I didn't like it but, one day, I was going to have to bite the bullet and watch this. At first, I was hoping that I could see it online for free. I searched on YouTube as well as on various other websites but I finally gave up (I might have been able to see it on an obscure site that I didn't know of but I didn't want to risk giving my computer a virus just so I could see this). Then, I thought that maybe I could just rent it. But I immediately realized that it was very unlikely that any nearby rental store would have this on their shelves (God bless them if they do, though). So, it became clear that I was going to have to temporarily buy it in order to see it. Fortunately, I had seen plenty of cheap copies of it at this big used movie and book store in Chattanooga but I wasn't going to get it until I knew when I was going to review this franchise. When it was announced that Texas Chainsaw 3-D was going to be released in January of 2013, I knew that I would have needed to have seen it by then since I like to do tie-in reviews such as these. Well, as luck would have had it, I was at Scarefest in Lexington, Kentucky last September and a dealer table was having a buy two, get one free thing going on. As I was buying up some DVDs and Blu-Rays, I came across the DVD of this film. While I knew it would be a perfect way to see this film without having to spend any money on it, I still was like, "Son of a bitch! I wanted to get something other than this for free!" But, I bit the bullet and made it part of convention goody haul for Scarefest last year. The only good thing to come out of all this was that I got it for free. Actually, I can't even call that a fair deal because let's just say that, after I got through watching it, I may have seen it for free but I found the price!
Oh... my... God. When this movie was over, I was setting there with this bewildered look on my face that must have been hilarious, thinking to myself, "I actually think I was right all those years ago. I think this did melt some of my brain cells because I feel stupider now!" I know it's a cliche to ask what someone was smoking was when they wrote or directed something but that question does apply here because someone was not right when this was conceived. This couldn't have been a mistake. Somebody had to have decided to show people just how stupid they thought all of these slasher movies are by making a movie that cranks everything that can be annoying in those movies to the nth degree and making it all so crazy and incomprehensible that you'd think that you'd lost your mind. This movie is, without a doubt, the worst of these movies that are the black sheeps of their respective franchises and if you think about it, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise only has this one example of that. The second and third films may inspire mixed feelings from most fans but neither of them are as universally despised as this movie is. And neither are other similarly hated films like Halloween 5, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween: Resurrection, Jason Goes to Hell, Jason X, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, or all of those direct-to-video Hellraiser sequels. Some of those movies have their fans whereas most of them are generally hated but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is on a completely separate level in terms of how much hatred it creates.
It's 1996 and, while at the prom, Heather discovers her boyfriend, Barry, making out with another girl. In a rage, she jumps in Barry's car and takes off, with Barry in hot pursuit. Barry eventually manages to get inside the car and tells Heather that he wasn't really cheating on her. That's when they discover that two other teens, Jenny and her boyfriend Sean, were hiding in the backseat. While they're arguing, Heather drives down into the middle of the woods and crashes into another car, the passenger of which manages to get out but then faints. Jenny, Barry, and Heather walk down the road to try to find some help while Sean stays at the scene of the accident. The three teens come across an insurance agent who calls up someone named Vilmer to come by and clear the wreck. Not too long afterward, Vilmer arrives at the scene of the accident but proves to be a psychopath when he cracks the unconscious man's neck and then proceeds to run down and eventually kill Sean. Meanwhile, Heather and Barry get separated from Jenny in the woods and the two of them come across a house, where they're attacked by Leatherface and his brother, W.E. Soon, Jenny is the only left alive and it's not long before she's captured by the psychotic family, taken back to their house, and endlessly suffers at their hands.
What's even more unreal about how awful this movie is the person who's behind it: Kim Henkel, the co-writer of the original. After he helped write the screenplay of the original with Tobe Hooper, Henkel's career virtually went nowhere. He had helped write the screenplay for Eaten Alive, Hooper's follow up to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was one of many writers who contributed to the screenplay of The Unseen, a film directed by the late Danny Steinmann who would go on to direct the underrated Friday the 13th Part V: The New Beginning (Henkel wasn't credited for his work on the film), and other little known movies like Last Night at the Alamo (which he also edited and acted in)and Doc's Full Service. While he claimed at one point that he didn't intend on getting as heavily involved with this film as he obviously did, he saw this as an opportunity to make the "real" sequel to the original, since he said that he didn't like either of the previous sequels. Now that right there really, really annoys me. So, he doesn't like the first two sequels (which is his right) but then he decides to make what he intends to be the true sequel, which turns out to be an insane, stupid rehash of the original (it really is nothing more than a remake before there actually was one) with moronic characters, a Leatherface who is a complete joke, scenes and situations that come out of nowhere and serve no purpose other than to be crazy and weird, and it, ultimately, seems to be meant as a big middle finger to fans of the original. Even more infuriating is that not only does that rough demo-reel that I mentioned earlier have a voice-over that emphasizes the idea that this is the "real" sequel, but the opening crawl in this film (which isn't even a crawl, actually) mentions the events of the original and then talks about, "two minor but apparently related incidents" that were reported years later. Fuck you, Kim Henkel, seriously!
This remains the only film that Henkel has ever directed and it's easy to see why that is. As we'll get into, everything from the acting, the pacing, the editing, the ideas of the film just blows. I know that the film got heavily recut before it was actually released but still, you just watch this and it's evident that this was made at the hands of a man who had no clue what he was doing. This guy didn't know how to work with actors, create tension, film action scenes, make anything remotely exciting, and so on. And remember, he wrote this damn thing as well and there's no evidence that any re-writes took place so he's solely responsible for all of the stuff that you see on the screen. I would love to hear Henkel explain himself on why he decided to write this film and these characters in this way. Did someone tell him to do that? Did he smoke some really good grass? What happened during this writing process? Unfortunately, it's unlikely that we'll nver know since this is the only Texas Chainsaw Massacre film that doesn't have a special edition DVD and nobody associated with it will talk about it, especially not Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey (Henkel has mentioned it briefly in documentaries on the franchise but he's never gone into specifics about it and I doubt we'll see him talking about it again in great depth any time soon).
Like Leatherface, exactly where this movie falls in the timeline of the franchise is rather sketchy. If it wasn't for the opening text, you could almost think of this as taking place in its own continuity since, like I said, it's basically a remake of the original film. Like the previous film, it most definitely follows the original and, even though they're written off simply as minor incidents (God, that's still really insulting), it does mention the events of the other movies so you'd think that would settle the matter right then and there. But, there's a problem: the opening text for this movie says that not one member of the cannibalistic family was ever caught but the opening crawl for Leatherface says that one was indeed caught and was, in fact, executed in the gas chamber. Even more confusing, that family member was named W.E. Sawyer and yet, there's a family member named W.E. in this film! So, which is it, Kim Henkel? You can't have your cake and eat it too, man. You say that you didn't like the first two sequels and that this is meant to be the "real" sequel, which would make most assume that you're disregarding the films that you don't like but then, not only do you acknowledge them by waving them off as "minor incidents" in the opening text but you royally mess up something that was established in the opening crawl of the previous one. This is why the timeline of this series is so confusing. After the second film, they could never decide whether they should follow the previous sequels, just make a direct sequel to the original, or create their own continuity. I guess it doesn't matter though. The fact that this film follows the continuity of any of these other far superior movies is a travesty, especially when you take into account how Leatherface is characterized here and how one specific revelation that's exposed in this film affects those films as well (I need to pace myself; if I get started on that now, I'm never going to stop).
Of many things that cripple this movie, one of the biggest ones is the cast. Except for Renee Zellweger, all of these characters are either annoying as crap or are the definition of loathsome and none of them will... shut... up! Zellweger is the only actor in this film that comes out of it with any sort of dignity and, also, is the only one who seems like she's actually trying (including McConaughey, who I'll get to). As Jenny, she goes through the familar arc of starting out very mousy with glasses and everything else and, through the course of all the bad stuff that happens to her, eventually becomes stronger and fights back. True, she does do some dumb things, like when Barry and Heather run after a car into the woods and, when they're clearly out of earshot, she whispers something at them (why would she do that?) and gets into Vilmer's truck, even though the guy is clearly a psychopath with his tone of voice and the very stuff that he's saying but I do get some (emphasis on some) enjoyment out of her when she decides she's had enough and fights back against the family. I do like it when she smacks Vilmer across the face, yelling, "Don't you ever touch me!" and, when they're all fighting in the kitchen at that one point, she grabs that shotgun and tells everybody to shut up (I wanted to kiss her for that). Granted, she could have fought against the mafia guy when she realized that he was part of it, especially when he licks her, but I do smile when she's picked up by him after she escapes and when he's going on and on, apologizing to her and saying all of his bullshit about how this was a huge mistake and it was supposed to be a spiritual experience, she says what we're all thinking: "Fuck you." So, basically, Zellweger was the only character in this movie who I felt any sort of connection to since she wasn't annoying as hell and actually got about as sick as I did of the insane crap going on around her. Still, it wasn't enough to save the movie by a long shot and, like I said, even though she does become strong, she could have done a lot more than she did to make me root for her, like not doing that aforementioned stupid stuff and fighting back a little more. In fact, in the original cut of the movie, there was a subplot where Jenny's stepfather was abusive towards her mother and sexually abusive towards Jenny herself, which was emphasized in a scene at the beginning where her stepfather comes in while she's getting ready for the prom and touches her inappropriately. I think this was supposed to pay off when she fights back against Vilmer and says, "Don't you ever touch me!"; that she's fed up with everyone, not just the family but everyone, doing horrible things to her. I doubt it would have made the movie that much better but if it had been left in there, it may have given me a way to connect even more so with Jenny and care about her more. However, in the standard version (which is the most commonly available one), the only mention of it as at the very beginning when you hear Jenny's mother and stepfather fighting and it's never brought up again, making it pointless.
The other teenagers that we're stuck with have to take the cake as far as being the stupidest, most unlikable, and annoying slasher movie victims possible. The one that's the easiest to tolerate is Jenny's boyfriend Sean (John Harrison), mainly because he barely does anything and he's the first one to die. Supposedly, the character is meant to be a pothead, which may explain why he speaks with absolutely no emotion whatsoever. And that also may explain the idiotic things that he does when he's attacked by Vilmer. After Vilmer breaks the neck of the unconscious driver of the other car and then he tells him he's going to kill him, Sean takes off down the road with Vilmer right behind him in his truck. Now, here's the thing: Sean continuously runs straight down the road, tiring himself out to where Vilmer catches up to him. Wouldn't it be a better idea if he runs off into the woods where Vilmer can't drive his truck? Even stupider than that, when Vilmer catches up to him, Sean says, "Please, mister, you're scaring me." I like that Vilmer's response to that is, "No shit," because that's exactly what anyone else would be thinking. You just saw this guy snap a someone's neck, look at you with the eyes of a true psychopath and tell you he's going to kill you, and then he chased you for a fairly long while down the road and you're going to tell him that he's scaring you. Of course, he's scaring you! He wants to kill you, you idiot! I don't care if the guy is a pothead or not, that was just moronic. And, as much overkill as his death was with Vilmer running over him again and again, I didn't have any sympathy for someone that braindead stupid.
Oh, but I'm just getting started with the annoying teens. The real winners are Barry (Tyler Cone) and Heather (Lisa Newmyer), the couple who's bickering got them all into this mess in the first place. These two are one of the main reasons why I think that this had to be meant as a parody because, boy, are they unlikable and stupid! Barry's just a hateful asshole who treats everyone around him like shit (he constantly refers to Jenny as ugly, even though, as we know, Renee Zellweger is a pretty good-looking woman, and, at one point, implies that she's a lesbian for no reason), cares more about what his dad is going to do to him for wrecking his car rather than what happens to the other drive, and, on top of everything else, is a two-timing tool of a person who comes up with the dumbest excuses imaginable. You know you're in for it at the very beginning of the movie when Barry and Heather argue in the car. "Barry, I saw you. You were kissing her." "Once, I kissed her once {no, he didn't and she saw it}. God, it's like I can't talk to my friends anymore. I can't believe how possessive you are." "Oh right, I guess that's why you were feeling her up?" "Look, guys need sex. It's bad for you if you get all worked up and not get it. You can get... 'prostrate' cancer. Is that what you want?" Do you see that crap I just wrote? I didn't make that up, I swear. This is the writing in this movie! Oh, but it gets better. Later, Sean tells Heather that he and Barry used to be friends (not to mention that he says they stopped being friends because Barry got too popular for his own good and tells Sean that it's not his fault turned out to be such a geek) and that, "He used to come over to my house all the time and he'd laugh about all the girls he'd felt up. His big line was to tell them that his father was a doctor and that they could get breast cancer if they didn't get felt up." When confronted with it, Barry says, "All right, I lied. Big deal. It's not my fault they're stupid enough to believe it." This is not even seven minutes into this movie and I already wanted to turn it off. Barry keeps going on and on throughout the movie, making himself more and more unlikable and stupid, right up to when he gets killed. When he and Heather arrive at the family's house, Barry runs into W.E., who holds him at gunpoint and tells him to get into the house. Barry's response? "If I go in there, that's kidnapping. My father is a lawyer so I know what I'm talking about, okay?" When W.E. still makes him go in, not only does Barry comment that he needs to use the bathroom anyway but he proceeds to lock W.E. out and call him a dumbass. Hey, it's his house, idiot. I'm sure if he doesn't have a key, he can at least get in through that other door you saw a few minutes ago! (Or shot him through the door with that shotgun). And, despite the fact that he heard Heather screaming bloody murder just a few minutes before, when he gets inside the house, he calls for her and asks if she's okay. He also wasn't kidding when he said that he need to use the bathroom because that's the first thing he does: he finds the bathroom and takes a leak. There are more important things going on, dude. I think you can afford to hold it. After he takes his leak, he sees a decomposed corpse in the bathtub (which was in his peripheral vision when he first walked in, I might add), runs outside, and gets bashed on the head by a mallet, just like Kirk in the original (although this guy doesn't deserve to lick Kirk's shoes). At 31 minutes in, you're like, "Thank God!"
As bad as Barry is, his girlfriend Heather annoys me even more. I'm amazed that Henkel didn't cast a blonde actor to play her because it would have very appropriate (I apologize to all of my blonde readers). Heather is so stupid and annoying that it could cause you to rethink your opinions of any of the dumb girls you may have gone to high school with. Remember that dumb line that Barry said about getting prostate cancer if you don't have enough sex? Well, Heather is stupid enough to buy it! She says, "It's true. It is my fault. I won't have sex with him." When Jenny tries to reassure her that it's not her fault, Heather says, "Yeah, but what if he gets cancer and all his hair falls out from all the drugs or something? It could happen." Okay, first thing I got to say, Kim Henkel, is never start a movie with such an idiotic exchange of dialogue between two characters. In all of my years of watching horror films, I have never wanted a character to die seven minutes into the film. Heather is comparable to Tina from Halloween 5, she's so annoying (it doesn't help that she talks in the stereotypical ditzy teenage girl voice). And the ear sodomy that she dishes out doesn't stop there. After that stirring conversation between her and Barry, she randomly says, "I just thought of something so cool. What if we got into a wreck and we crashed into a car in front of us and we all died? They could write a song about it." This is the one time I agree with Barry when he looks at her after she says that and tells her to shut up. After they hit that other car, the first thing Heather does is look into the mirror and say, "God, this is going to leave a scar!" When she gets out after the driver of the car has fainted, the way she asks if he died is comparable to Tommy Wisseau in terms of how bad the acting is (just see it for yourself to get what I mean). She goes on to say, "It's my fault. If he dies, I'll be a murderer." When they decide to go off to try to find help, she tells Barry to keep away from her and yet, when the two of them walk off with Jenny, she's hanging onto his arm. Yeah, women, when you're scared, just hang onto any man who's around, if he's an asshole who has cheated on you. As they continue walking, she keeps going on and on, talking about how she has had dreams about being stalked in the woods, how some murderer in Chicago is going to kill them and their bodies will show up on A Current Affair, that the killers want them to wander around in the dark, and that they should just stay there (in the middle of the road) and start a fire. (At this point, I was actually thinking, "Good God, I think I can feel myself getting stupider while listening to this.) She does the typical dumb woman thing of asking Barry to carry her at one point and asking Barry to get her some water when they arrive at that insurance office even though the water cooler is right there. Tell me again why I'm supposed to like this stupid slut?
But the exchange of dialogue that about caused me to lose it was when Heather and Barry were walking by themselves after unsuccessfully try to chase down a passing car and right before they came upon the family's house. "Barry, wait, stop. What if they're murderers and they want us to follow them so they can hide behind trees and stab us? There could be dead people buried all around us and we'd never know. They could tie us up in a cellar and no one would ever hear us." "That's dumb. There aren't any cellars in the houses around here." (Why did he even say that?) "Okay, that's it. Don't call me dumb, Barry. I may not be the smartest person in the world but I'm not stupid. I just act that way sometimes to get people to like me, that's all." (Hint: it doesn't work!) "Yeah, right." "All those stories about murderers and people following me-- I know it's not true. It's better than being bored. I'll tell you what's stupid is that line you gave me about you and that girl, Brenda. Not even a little kid would believe that." "Jenny, that bitch. She started this whole thing. It's all her fault!" "You'd like to think. I'll tell you what it is. I'm a bitch. I'm just like my mother. She can't stand my father. But she stays with him because she wants a certain kind of life. I don't care what anybody thinks. That's still the best way to get it." "What's wrong with that?" "Forget it." "Okay, fine, but you should've said something. It pisses me off that let you me go on like this. It's embarrassing." "I told you, I'm a bitch." SHUT THE FUCK UP! OH MY GOD, HOW DID TWO PEOPLE AS STUPID AS YOU GET TO TEENAGERS?! GIVE ME THE CHAINSAW, LEATHERFACE! I'LL KILL THEM MYSELF! NOT ONLY WILL I DO THAT BUT I'LL ALSO...
(A full minute of insane, angry screaming, a lot of obscenities, and much pulling of hair later...)
...AND RUN OVER THEIR MAGGOT-FILLED CARCASSES WITH MY FOUR-WHEELER FOR BEING SO STUPID!
So, anyway, they get to the family's house, Heather says more dumb stuff (I don't want to quote her anymore), orders Barry to go check and see if the inhabitants are out back after they get no answer at the front door, and then sits down on the porch swings. Leatherface comes up behind, sniffs and plays with her hair, and she's so stupid that it takes her a good while to turn around and see him. Leatherface grabs her, drags her into the house, shoves her into the freezer, she tries to get over and over again, Leatherface keeps pushing her back in, and finally puts something on the lid of the freezer. After he kills Barry and drags his body into the kitchen, she manages to get out again and now, Leatherface finally puts her on the meathook. But, as the Cinema Snob once said, this is one of those asshole bad movies that makes you think you've seen an annoying character die but it tricks you. Later on, when Jenny is being taken back to the family's house by Darla, the insurance agent who's part of the family, we see that Heather somehow managed to get off the meathook, crawl out of the house, and crawl pretty far up the road. She's eventually brought back to the house by Leatherface and later on when Jenny finally takes control of the situation by grabbing a shotgun and holding everybody at gunpoint, she tells Heather, who's lying on the floor, to get up. First, Heather says, "Five more minutes," and then, when Jenny tries to make her get up again, she starts to get up but then mumbles, "I can't find my shoes," and lies back down! I was like, "Jenny, just leave that rock-stupid girl behind and save yourself!" But, nope, Jenny gets recaptured and Heater is finally killed after the dinner scene when Vilmer crushes her head with his mechanical leg after burning her back. I'm torn between just how mean-spirited this death was and by my elation that this annoying as hell character was finally dead and, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that she deserved such an excruciating death after all the stupid, annoying crap she had put me through. (Do you see what this movie is doing to me? I'm losing my mind. I really am.)
Some people have said that they managed to get some enjoyment out of Matthew McConaughey's performance as Vilmer, the psychotic head of the family in this film. To me, he's just another annoying and unpleasant part of a movie that is annoying and unpleasant overall. He's just a typical, nutty psychopath with nothing original in his performance whatsoever. While I won't deny that it is interesting to see McConaughey play this type of role, particularly given the types of movies that he's typically made ever since he became a big star, and while it does seem like he was enjoying himself, I don't feel like he tried to bring anything new to the table in terms of playing a psycho. He just talks crazily and nonsensically, berates and insults his victims before he kills them (poor Jenny suffers so much at his hands that it's rather hard to watch), mutilates himself at various points for no reason, and is never quiet for one moment of this movie, constantly yelling at the top of his lungs and so forth (much like everyone else in the movie). Now I know that, for a series as crazy as this, that performance is appropriate and I won't deny that McConaughey is good at looking absolutely maniacal in his eyes and face when he really goes off, but, like I said, he's just another crazy part in a movie that is already so crazy and nonsensical that it gets old very quickly for me. In fact, out of all the family heads that we've seen in this franchise, Vilmer has to take the cake for being the most psychotic not just towards his victims but towards his own family as well. I know that in the first two movies Drayton physically and verbally abused his brothers a lot and even in the previous film where they felt the most like a family to me, Tinker had an arguement with Leatherface that ended not so well for him, but here, Vilmer comes close to killing his family members, particularly his lover Darla. He beats on her so much and so violently, often for no reason (I know, he's crazy but still), that it's a wonder that she's not black and blue by the end of the movie and, at one point, he actually tries to crush her neck with his mechanical leg and it's only because of Jenny's intervention that she doesn't get killed. And speaking of which, who thought that giving Vilmer a mechanical leg would be a good idea? I know that past family members have had similar aspects to them such as Chop Top's head plate, Tinker's hooked hand, and Mama's electronic voice box, and even Leatherface himself had a metal knee brace in the previous film (which I stupidly forgot to mention in that review), but this is way overdone and silly. He does use it as a weapon like when he uses it to crush Heather's head but the idea that he uses a remote control to operate it is ridiculous and, when Jenny is escaping near the end of the movie, she gets another remote control and the two of them actually have a duel with Vilmer trying to get his leg going and Jenny repeatedly stopping it. Is that supposed to be funny because it isn't. It's just stupid. And Vilmer's death is as nonsensical as he is. He gets hit by a crop-duster plane at the end when he and Leatherface are after Jenny. I'll go deeper into that later on but still, what? So, I know some people enjoy Vilmer but, for me, he's just another intolerable part of a movie that I already cannot stand.
I think that W.E. (Joe Stevens) may be more annoying to me than Vilmer. He's the hitchhiker equivalent in this film in that he's the most outwardly crazy-looking of the bunch, although I hesistate to say that he actually is the craziest since I think Vilmer has him beat in that department. His big gimmick is that he constantly quotes famous people, be it while torturting people or when he himself is being threatened. Like Heather's stupid rambling and bubble-headed personality, that gimmick gets annoying very quickly. When it got to the part where Jenny is holding the family at gunpoint and W.E. quotes Shakespeare as he's getting down on his knees, I was like, "Oh, give it a rest!" Besides that, his constant bickering with Darla, Vilmer's lover, also gets tiresome. It's the typical thing where he's jealous of the fact that she came along, saying that before she did, he was the one who, "set things up." In other words, he used to be the one who lured unsuspecting travelers into the family's clutches but now, as shown at the beginning of the movie, Darla does it and he doesn't like it. To that end, he does everything he can to make her life miserable, like not telling Vilmer that she's bringing pizza home for dinner and so on. Again, I know that a staple of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies has been quarrels within the family but this is done in such an irritating fashion and just goes on and on for so long that it's unbearable. On top of everything else, W.E. loves to torture people with a cattle prod, including Leatherface, whom he constantly zaps with it. I'm probably sounding like a broken record but, again, he does it so often and so many times in one moment, like when he's shocking Jenny while she's in the back of Darla's car, that you get sick of it fairly quickly. I wasn't exactly sure what happened to W.E. by the end of the movie and it was only after looking online that I discovered that Vilmer bashed in the head with a hammer. I don't remember him doing that (that scene was so chaotic that I can't remember many specifics of it anyway) but if that is what most sources say happened, then I'm not going to argue. By the way, even though I said W.E. is like this film's version of the hitchhiker, it seems that Kim Henkel meant for him to be Drayton and for Vilmer to be the hitchhiker (he even tried to get Jim Siedow and Edwin Neal to reprise their roles but they turned him down). I can see the connection to Drayton since W.E. appears to something that looks like a gas station and since Vilmer first appears while on the road, I can sort of see how he was supposed to be the hitchhiker (never mind that the hitchhiker was run over by a truck at the end of the original) but, since Vilmer is the head of family, I immediately thought of Drayton in his case and I already explained why I thought W.E. was like the hitchhiker. But whatever. Nothing else in this movie makes sense.
I will give this movie a little bit of credit with the character of Darla (Tonie Perenski). She's the first character in any of these movies who was once an outsider and then became part of the family through her relationship with one of its members rather than being born into it. That's an interesting dynamic: seeing how somebody who became a part of the family through circumstance rather than fate views it. In a well-written movie, that could have been one of the best aspects of it. But, of course, this piece of shit being what it is completely wastes that. Her quarrels with W.E. are the closest this movie ever comes to realizing that promise and the only thing that manages to be is irritating. Anyway, since she's the most sane member of the family, Darla is the one that I could tolerate the most (she's still fairly annoying, though) and Perenski does seem well aware of what type of movie she's making here and does try to put a smidge of camp into her performance but it doesn't help. I'm not sure if she's Vilmer's wife or his girlfriend but, whatever the case, she suffers an awful lot of abuse at his hands and yet sticks around. She does seem to like some rough love every now and again as shown by that scene in the kitchen where she plays around with Vilmer's mechanical leg and that leads to some very rough kissing and making out on the table. But, even though I said she's the most sane one of the family, Darla still shows signs of being as unstable as everyone else. Unlike Drayton, who managed to hide his nuttiness while working at the gas station in the original film, Darla shows some signs of her craziness in her first scene where she flashes her breasts at some people who threw something at her office while driving past it (she's very proud of her breast implants and, honestly, she should be!) She also makes bizarre comments, like when she tells Jenny that she thinks Vilmer might be an alien and that there's an explosive device in her head that keeps her from leaving the family (I wouldn't doubt either of those statements, though). Like Drayton was in the first film, she seems to have mixed feelings about capturing Jenny and watching Vilmer and W.E. torture her in that, despite her initial threatening demeanor towards her, she tries to comfort Jenny and even gives her a fresh dress to put on. I guess that shouldn't be so out of the ordinary given what's happened in some of the previous films but here, it just fells as nonsensical as everything else. And, despite the abuse that Vilmer dishes out on her, she's more than willing to tell Jenny about the family's secrets, about the people they work for, and so on (oh, just you wait), which was really dumb on her part. Finally, unless I missed something again like the thing with W.E., I'm pretty sure that what happened to Darla after Jenny escaped was left ambiguous (not that I care, I'm just saying). To sum up, Darla was an opportunity to create a new dynamic with the family that was ultimately wasted in this awful movie.
I know an alternate title for this movie is The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre but there should have been another one: How To Destroy A Horror Icon. Back in my review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, I talked about how a lot of people don't like the characterization of Leatherface in that film and I argued that, while he may not have been as frightening there as he was in the original, at least he was still enjoyable and had some great moments, like when he sliced Buzz's head open and had that chainsaw duel with Lefty. Also I mentioned that some people have said that Leatherface was a pussy in that film but I countered, "Watch this movie {The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2}, then watch The Next Generation, and then decide which Leatherface is a pussy." (Ironically, Bill Johnson was offered the chance to play Leatherface again in this movie but turned it down.) What Kim Henkel did to such an iconic character of contemporary horror in this movie is a travesty. He turned Leatherface into a wimpering, crying baby of a bitch who won't stop screaming and whining throughout the entire film. I know Leatherface originally was a man-child who was terrified of his family members and did whatever they said but at least he wasn't afraid of the people he was attacking. When Heather finally turns around and sees him during his first appearance, Leatherface actually screams and cowers when she screams at him and the whole time he's dragging her into the house and stuffing her into the freezer, he won't stop screaming. His dialogue throughout the movie is just, "Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah!" I know he screamed and yelled a lot in the first two films but I'm not kidding when I say that he literally never stops screaming in this movie. It's bad enough to hear the family continuously yelling and arguing with each other during various parts of the movie but when you've got Leatherface crying and whining on top of it, it's no wonder that Jenny tells everyone to shut up (again, I loved her for that). The moment that brings it home is during the dinner scene when Jenny is leaving and Leatherface gets up and yells at her. Jenny tells him to, "Sit the fuck down and shut up!" and he does it! He even whimpers while doing so. You might as well take what balls Leatherface had before and just cut them off because he doesn't need them anymore (and I mean that in more ways than one, as we'll soon see). Good God, was that humiliating.Some people have said that they managed to get some enjoyment out of Matthew McConaughey's performance as Vilmer, the psychotic head of the family in this film. To me, he's just another annoying and unpleasant part of a movie that is annoying and unpleasant overall. He's just a typical, nutty psychopath with nothing original in his performance whatsoever. While I won't deny that it is interesting to see McConaughey play this type of role, particularly given the types of movies that he's typically made ever since he became a big star, and while it does seem like he was enjoying himself, I don't feel like he tried to bring anything new to the table in terms of playing a psycho. He just talks crazily and nonsensically, berates and insults his victims before he kills them (poor Jenny suffers so much at his hands that it's rather hard to watch), mutilates himself at various points for no reason, and is never quiet for one moment of this movie, constantly yelling at the top of his lungs and so forth (much like everyone else in the movie). Now I know that, for a series as crazy as this, that performance is appropriate and I won't deny that McConaughey is good at looking absolutely maniacal in his eyes and face when he really goes off, but, like I said, he's just another crazy part in a movie that is already so crazy and nonsensical that it gets old very quickly for me. In fact, out of all the family heads that we've seen in this franchise, Vilmer has to take the cake for being the most psychotic not just towards his victims but towards his own family as well. I know that in the first two movies Drayton physically and verbally abused his brothers a lot and even in the previous film where they felt the most like a family to me, Tinker had an arguement with Leatherface that ended not so well for him, but here, Vilmer comes close to killing his family members, particularly his lover Darla. He beats on her so much and so violently, often for no reason (I know, he's crazy but still), that it's a wonder that she's not black and blue by the end of the movie and, at one point, he actually tries to crush her neck with his mechanical leg and it's only because of Jenny's intervention that she doesn't get killed. And speaking of which, who thought that giving Vilmer a mechanical leg would be a good idea? I know that past family members have had similar aspects to them such as Chop Top's head plate, Tinker's hooked hand, and Mama's electronic voice box, and even Leatherface himself had a metal knee brace in the previous film (which I stupidly forgot to mention in that review), but this is way overdone and silly. He does use it as a weapon like when he uses it to crush Heather's head but the idea that he uses a remote control to operate it is ridiculous and, when Jenny is escaping near the end of the movie, she gets another remote control and the two of them actually have a duel with Vilmer trying to get his leg going and Jenny repeatedly stopping it. Is that supposed to be funny because it isn't. It's just stupid. And Vilmer's death is as nonsensical as he is. He gets hit by a crop-duster plane at the end when he and Leatherface are after Jenny. I'll go deeper into that later on but still, what? So, I know some people enjoy Vilmer but, for me, he's just another intolerable part of a movie that I already cannot stand.
I think that W.E. (Joe Stevens) may be more annoying to me than Vilmer. He's the hitchhiker equivalent in this film in that he's the most outwardly crazy-looking of the bunch, although I hesistate to say that he actually is the craziest since I think Vilmer has him beat in that department. His big gimmick is that he constantly quotes famous people, be it while torturting people or when he himself is being threatened. Like Heather's stupid rambling and bubble-headed personality, that gimmick gets annoying very quickly. When it got to the part where Jenny is holding the family at gunpoint and W.E. quotes Shakespeare as he's getting down on his knees, I was like, "Oh, give it a rest!" Besides that, his constant bickering with Darla, Vilmer's lover, also gets tiresome. It's the typical thing where he's jealous of the fact that she came along, saying that before she did, he was the one who, "set things up." In other words, he used to be the one who lured unsuspecting travelers into the family's clutches but now, as shown at the beginning of the movie, Darla does it and he doesn't like it. To that end, he does everything he can to make her life miserable, like not telling Vilmer that she's bringing pizza home for dinner and so on. Again, I know that a staple of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies has been quarrels within the family but this is done in such an irritating fashion and just goes on and on for so long that it's unbearable. On top of everything else, W.E. loves to torture people with a cattle prod, including Leatherface, whom he constantly zaps with it. I'm probably sounding like a broken record but, again, he does it so often and so many times in one moment, like when he's shocking Jenny while she's in the back of Darla's car, that you get sick of it fairly quickly. I wasn't exactly sure what happened to W.E. by the end of the movie and it was only after looking online that I discovered that Vilmer bashed in the head with a hammer. I don't remember him doing that (that scene was so chaotic that I can't remember many specifics of it anyway) but if that is what most sources say happened, then I'm not going to argue. By the way, even though I said W.E. is like this film's version of the hitchhiker, it seems that Kim Henkel meant for him to be Drayton and for Vilmer to be the hitchhiker (he even tried to get Jim Siedow and Edwin Neal to reprise their roles but they turned him down). I can see the connection to Drayton since W.E. appears to something that looks like a gas station and since Vilmer first appears while on the road, I can sort of see how he was supposed to be the hitchhiker (never mind that the hitchhiker was run over by a truck at the end of the original) but, since Vilmer is the head of family, I immediately thought of Drayton in his case and I already explained why I thought W.E. was like the hitchhiker. But whatever. Nothing else in this movie makes sense.
I will give this movie a little bit of credit with the character of Darla (Tonie Perenski). She's the first character in any of these movies who was once an outsider and then became part of the family through her relationship with one of its members rather than being born into it. That's an interesting dynamic: seeing how somebody who became a part of the family through circumstance rather than fate views it. In a well-written movie, that could have been one of the best aspects of it. But, of course, this piece of shit being what it is completely wastes that. Her quarrels with W.E. are the closest this movie ever comes to realizing that promise and the only thing that manages to be is irritating. Anyway, since she's the most sane member of the family, Darla is the one that I could tolerate the most (she's still fairly annoying, though) and Perenski does seem well aware of what type of movie she's making here and does try to put a smidge of camp into her performance but it doesn't help. I'm not sure if she's Vilmer's wife or his girlfriend but, whatever the case, she suffers an awful lot of abuse at his hands and yet sticks around. She does seem to like some rough love every now and again as shown by that scene in the kitchen where she plays around with Vilmer's mechanical leg and that leads to some very rough kissing and making out on the table. But, even though I said she's the most sane one of the family, Darla still shows signs of being as unstable as everyone else. Unlike Drayton, who managed to hide his nuttiness while working at the gas station in the original film, Darla shows some signs of her craziness in her first scene where she flashes her breasts at some people who threw something at her office while driving past it (she's very proud of her breast implants and, honestly, she should be!) She also makes bizarre comments, like when she tells Jenny that she thinks Vilmer might be an alien and that there's an explosive device in her head that keeps her from leaving the family (I wouldn't doubt either of those statements, though). Like Drayton was in the first film, she seems to have mixed feelings about capturing Jenny and watching Vilmer and W.E. torture her in that, despite her initial threatening demeanor towards her, she tries to comfort Jenny and even gives her a fresh dress to put on. I guess that shouldn't be so out of the ordinary given what's happened in some of the previous films but here, it just fells as nonsensical as everything else. And, despite the abuse that Vilmer dishes out on her, she's more than willing to tell Jenny about the family's secrets, about the people they work for, and so on (oh, just you wait), which was really dumb on her part. Finally, unless I missed something again like the thing with W.E., I'm pretty sure that what happened to Darla after Jenny escaped was left ambiguous (not that I care, I'm just saying). To sum up, Darla was an opportunity to create a new dynamic with the family that was ultimately wasted in this awful movie.
Leatherface looks stupid in this movie too. Henkel tries to go with the motif of him wearing three different masks like he did in the original and while it good enough of him to attempt to bring that fascinating concept of the different masks back, like everything else, he messes it up royally (not that it matters because, no matter what he wears, Leatherface is still a big crybaby). The kill mask in this movie is beyond ridiculous-looking. If that's supposed to be human skin, then whoever made this mask doesn't know what human skin looks like. It looks like he's wearing a big clump of brown playdough with hair on top of it and on either side of the mask, there are actually curled parts hanging off from the top of it (a possible precursor for what's to come later on). Leatherface is even dressed weird in this part, with a camouflage jacket over his typical shirt and butcher apron (which, given what comes later in the film, I thought was a dress). Why? It's just odd. When Darla brings Jenny back to the house, Leatherface is now wearing the face of an old lady, like he was in the original. But, as with the first mask, the thing looks laughable, like it's made out of gray clay rather than human skin, with a ridiculous afro-like hairdo, and while in this mask, he's also wearing pearls and a frilly apron. Since he wore something similar in the first movie, I normally wouldn't be complaining but the reason I'm making such a big deal out of it is what comes next. As with the dinner scene in the original, Leatherface dresses up like a woman but instead of merely putting on the face (which has an awful wig, I might add), he goes all the way with a low-cut black dress and fake boobs! Kim Henkel, what the hell is wrong with you?! I know there was a dichotomy in the original that, in the final third, Leatherface became like a grotesque version of the female characters but this is like something you'd see in a John Waters movie! I'm not kidding, he looks like Divine! And since he goes out in broad daylight like that, you get a good look at just how awful this getup looks (that fake skin looks like latex with flour dumped on it). And the scene where you see Leatherface putting on lipstick and looking at himself in the mirror in that outfit with that record playing the background is like a retarded nightmare that you'd have. The same goes for the ending where Leatherface is running after Jenny and eventually does the chainsaw dance while wearing that stuff and screaming at the top of his lungs. On top of all of this, the freaking tagline was, "If looks could kill, he wouldn't need a chainsaw." Again, this had to have been meant as a parody. Had to have been. There's just no other explanation for it.
By the way, that tagline lies because Leatherface never kills anybody with a chainsaw in this film. In fact, the only person he kills period is Barry and he does that with a sledgehammer (I guess you could say that he killed the couple in the RV at the end of the film because he caused them to crash but you never see those two again and Jenny survived the crash so who knows if they were killed or not). I know in that the previous films, Leatherface has usually only killed one person with his chainsaw (two in the case of the last film if you count Benny's very apparent death in the alternate ending) so they can't really be called "chainsaw massacres" like the titles say but hey, if you've got the word "chainsaw" in the title, then you should have somebody get it taken to them. But nope, that doesn't happen here (which would make the film's alternate title, The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a bigger lie than that tagline because it sure as hell didn't return). Also, while Leatherface does do a lot of chasing with his chainsaw, his swings with it are just pathetic. There's a part where he's chasing Jenny through the woods and she runs through a puddle of water. He gets almost directly behind her, swings with the chainsaw, but his swings are so feeble that, even when he's that close, he still misses! He can't even kill Jenny with it when everyone else is holding her down like at the end of the dinner scene. I guess the metaphor that Tobe Hooper introduced in the second film about the chainsaw being Leatherface's manhood was literal. Now that he's lost his balls in this film, both in the sense that he's a wimp and that he dresses like a woman, it's useless to him. All I can say that if this really is meant to be the same character that we saw in the past films, then I want to know what happened to him! Did the fact that two more people got away from him at the end of the last film cause him to have a psychotic break that made him regress farther down in his mindset than he ever had been before? If there's an answer to this question, I want to know it.
One last curious bit about Leatherface in this movie is the actor who played him, Robert Jacks. I find it interesting in that the credits introduce him as Leatherface even though he was in two movies before this and would never act again after this. There's very little information about this guy. He was born in Monterey, California, was a good friend to Viggo Mortensen, oddly enough, as well as Patricia Neal and Deborah Harry, the latter of whom he recorded a CD with and one of the songs on that CD is featured in this movie. (The CD cover even has Harry standing in front of a portrait that features Jacks in all three of his Leatherface costumes. It's a surreal cover to say the least.) By all accounts, he had a miserable time making this movie and in some of the behind the scenes footage that you see, particularly in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth documentary, there's footage of him questioning a bit of direction given to him by Henkel as well as him complaining about his mask and how it keeps slipping off his face. Like I said, Jacks never acted again after this movie. He died in 2001 of an abdominal aneurysm the day before his 42nd birthday. To date, he's the only Leatherface actor who's no longer with us, knock wood, and while I didn't appreciate his performance in the role (I've heard some who say that they do, which is fine even though I don't get it), it's still a shame that he died so young and that he will undoubtedly always be best remembered as having played a horror icon in the most embarrassing incarnation imaginable.
There is a grandfather character in this film as well. He's played by Grayson Victor Schirmacher and appears briefly at the dinner table. W.E. talks to him continuously while they're sitting there but he never responds or moves and, at first, you assume that he's just another one of the corpses that the family has sitting at the table. And then, in the middle of the scene, he gets up and walks away, proving that he is alive. This is another aspect of the film that complicates the notion of where this film falls in the timeline since, as you remember, Grandpa actually was a corpse in the previous film. And even if this film is meant to disregard the last two, it still doesn't make sense because in the original, Grandpa was so old and weak he couldn't even stand up but now, he's strong enough to get up and walk. Once again, Kim Henkel doesn't seem to know what he's doing.
As if Henkel hadn't destroyed the franchise enough with the idiotic characters, nonsensical story, and the insulting portrayal of Leatherface, right before the film's climax, he introduces a character that causes this derailing train to finally crash. After Darla brings Jenny back to the family's house, she keeps telling her about how Vilmer and the rest of the family work for a mysterious shady group that controls everything, has been doing so for centuries, has engineered all sorts of tragedies, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to keep society in line or something to that extent, and so on. Now, you would think that this was just the nutty babblings of a crazy woman... until when Jenny attempts to leave after the dinner scene. Suddenly, this limousine pulls up and in steps this guy in a dark suit accompanied by his chauffer. The guy (James Gale) is named in the credits as Rothman, although I don't remember his name being spoken in the movie, and he confirms that he not only is the possible leader of this organization but he's actually offended that Vilmer has apparently disobeyed the rules that he has set for him and the family. He tells Vilmer to remember why he does this stuff, so people will, "know the meaning of horror." And that's where any belief that this film could salvage itself goes out the window. Basically, what Henkel is saying that the horrible things that happened in the original film and the two sequels before this one weren't due to fate, the influence of sunspots and Saturn being retrograde, or the simple fact that all of these victims just ran across these insane people who wanted to murder them for no reason they could possibly understand. In other words, there really was no terrifying randomness to it all. No, it was because this shady, mafia-like organization willed all of this to happen so people would understand what the meaning of horror is. That's the final nail. Not only has Kim Henkel taken away how terrifying Leatherface and his family once but he's also destroyed what made the nature of their horrific murders so scary: that there was no definitive reason for them other than their possibly being the acts of people who are desperately hungry or that these people are simply doing what they do. It makes you wonder just how much of the original film Henkel actually wrote because he doesn't seem to understand what made it and the other movies work.
Taking away what he does to the franchise as a whole, the character of Rothman is also just simply nonsensical. He comes out of freaking nowhere, tells Vilmer that he's disgusted at how he's deviated from the rules that were established for him (which makes no sense because isn't Vilmer showing Jenny the meaning of horror by torturing her like this?), opens up his shirt, exposing some weird tattoos and piercings on his belly, inexplicably licks Jenny's face for a little bit, and then just leaves. You're left just wondering what the point of all that was. And after Jenny escapes from the family, Rothman actually saves her and apologizes to her for what's happened (supposedly, he ordered a hit on Vilmer, which might explain that crop-duster flying down to clobber him, but that's another thing that I don't remember at all). This stuff he says, like the character himself, makes no sense: "This, all of this, it's been an abomination. You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. {I love how, as he's going on and on, Jenny is just getting angrier at the bullshit he's saying.} I suppose it's something we all live with, people like us who strive for something-- a sense of harmony. Perhaps it's disappointment that keeps us going. Unfortunately, it's never been easy for me. One of my many failings." I have no clue what in God's holy name he's talking about. It makes no sense whatsoever and, you know, for Henkel to try to put in some sort of deeper meaning after all of the nonsense he has subjected us to over almost an hour and a half is not only pretentious but a slap in the face as well. He really expects us to take something from this crud, like he's making an art film. Not only do I agree with Jenny telling Rothman, "Fuck you," as I said earlier but I would like to think that it's directed at Henkel as well for coming up with this pretentious and insulting notion. Asshole.
The side-characters in the film aren't treated with much dignity either and some of them are as weird and crazy or stupid as the main characters. The guy who was in the other car that Heather crashed into is perhaps the most normal one since he only says one line but do you know what his name is listed as in the credits? I'm Not Hurt. That seriously is what he's called since that is the only thing he says in the entire film. Once again, that's something you'd expect to see in a parody. When Heather arrives at the prom, there's a girl out in the hall who is acting like she's doped up on medication and she calls some teacher a bitch several times. Don't know what that's about. There are these two cops who are at the pizza place that Darla stops at and while the woman (Debra McMichael) is fine, the guy (Derek Keele) is really stupid in that he comes up to Darla and tries to hit on her, even though he was close enough to hear her tell Jenny that she was going to tape her up if she didn't keep quiet. I know he didn't see Jenny because of the dark garbage bag she was wrapped up in but he still should have heard what Darla said and yet, he's so much of a horndog that he didn't. It's just stupid. Even the couple in the RV (Geri Wolcott and Axel L. Schiller) at the end are weird because they keep calling each other Mr. and Mrs. Spodish. What kind of sense does that make? And, finally, we have several cast members from the original film who got roped into appearing here. The cop at the hospital that Jenny talks to is played by John Dugan, who played Grandpa and while they're talking, an orderly pushing a gurney walks by. The woman on the gurney is none other than Marilyn Burns (credited simply as Anonymous in the ending credits, which is also stupid) and the orderly is Paul Partain, aka Franklin. So, is Burns meant to be Sally and, if so, why is she at a hospital instead of a rehabilitation center? I know it's simply meant to be an homage to the original but it's not one that makes any kind of sense.
Not surprisingly, this film looks like shit as well. It has this orange tinge to it, like it was shot through a filter made of cheese, and it's very ugly and unpleasant to look at. The majority of the locations are bland as well, from the outside of the high school (we never actually see the prom that's going on; the closest we get is the hallway right outside of it) to the bland woods that so much of the film takes place, there's basically no imagination put into the film's production design. As I said, the woods are especially uninteresting. Most of the first half of the film involves the characters walking down the road in the middle of this murky, fog-filled forest and due to the unappealing color palette and the fact that, even though it's supposed to be night, it's so brightly lit that you can see just how bland it all is, it gets old really quickly. The scenes with Leatherface chasing Jenny through the woods aren't much better for the reasons I've just listed and as for the climactic chase that takes out in broad daylight, I think the sight of this happening in an open field surrounded by woods with a road in the middle of it is nowhere near as scary as the ending of the original where it takes on an open, public road with a vast horizon all around it. It's hard to explain but something about that climactic scene is much scarier to me (although, Leatherface wasn't wearing a damn dress then so that might have been a major plus). One credit I will give to the art direction in the film is that the house does look a lot like the house in the original, both on the outside and on the inside. I can't deny that. But, that said, it's not even close to being as creepy, not just due to the inept direction of this flick but also, again, due to the film's ugly look (although the shots with shafts of light coming in through the windows do kind of work and give it a bit of a nightmarish feel) and due to the fact that, instead of being filled to the brim with bone sculptures, this house is mainly just cluttered with a bunch of junk. There are some bone creations here like a chandelier above the dinner table that's made of bones as well as what appear to be bones making up the backs of the chairs (I think there were some lamps made of bone as well) but they're so barely dwelt upon and there's so much chaos going on in that scene that it's unlikely that you'd notice them. There is a swing outside the house as well as what appear to be animal hides hung on the walls in random spots as there in the original but, again, they're not used as effectively and you barely get any time to notice them, as you did in the original, unless you pause the film and look closey. So, again, kudos to the art directors for making the house similar to the one in the original but the details are not used even half as well as they could have been.
The similar look of the house leads me into another major problem the film has: it's trying more to be a remake rather than a sequel. Now, you could argue that the house looks similar because it's meant to be the same one that was in the original (again, if Henkel is simply following that film and ignoring the other sequels, which is up to debate) but, even putting that aside, Henkel copies so much from the original that it's impossible not to notice. The kids come across a type of place run by someone who appears normal but later turns out to be part of the family; a girl sits on a swing in front of the house while her boyfriend goes to investigate; said girl is put onto a meathook and into a freezer (the only difference here is that the order is switched); Leatherface bashes the boyfriend on the head with a heavy hammer, whose body then twitches before it's dragged away; Leatherface chases the main girl through the woods, into his house, saws the door down in order to get to her, chases her up the stairs, she goes through the window, makes her way back down to the ground, and he continues the chase up to the aforementioned public service-providing station (I know that's an awkward term but I couldn't think of a better way to describe it); the seemingly normal person who runs the place turns on the main girl and brings her back to the house; she suffers a lot of torture before escaping; she's chased by Leatherface and another family member, the latter of whom is killed when a vehicle kills them; the girl gets away in another vehicle while Leatherface does the chainsaw dance. The only thing that keeps these scenes from being complete xerox copies of their counterparts in the original are some notable additions to the proceedings, like how Leatherface chases Jenny onto the roof after she goes through the window or how Vilmer is killed by a random crop-duster plane rather than a cattle truck like the hitchhiker or the fact that you think Jenny is going to get away in the RV but it crashes and she ultimately escapes in Rothman's limousine. And even then, some of the scene lifting doesn't make sense when juxtaposed with certain aspects of this film. The one that stands out the most to me is Leatherface putting Heather on the meathook. The reason I bring that up is because it's highly suggested that the family isn't cannibalistic in this film. I doubt a family that is so destitute that its members have turned to cannibalism to fill their stomachs would be able to afford a pizza for at least four people (five if you count Grandpa). And if they could afford it, why cannibalize people at all? What, did they just decide to eat something other than human flesh that night or something? And Heather is placed at the dinner table along with the corpses of many other people so they're clearly not devouring their victims. Now, I can buy the bone sculptures in that those bones are probably all that's left of people they killed long ago and they decided to do something with them, but why the meathook? How did that make sense in conjunction with this depiction of the family? You could argue that this randomness is just more evidence of how crazy they all are but that's grasping at straws to me. I think the real explanation is simple: no thought was put into it other than, "Well, it's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie so we have to have someone treated like a piece of meat even if they're not going to be eaten." Shameful.
As you're no doubt aware of by now, this movie's biggest flaw is that it's just too damn crazy for its own good. I know that sounds like an odd criticism for an entry in a franchise that is well known for being insane but this one just goes way, way too far with it. Tobe Hooper himself has made some pretty insane and nonsensical movies throughout his career but this movie makes the craziest of his look downright sober by comparison. It's not just the annoying and insane characters but also that there are so many scenes where it's evident that Kim Henkel has no clue how to instruct actors to reign in their performances or how to plot and structure what's going to happen without it becoming overlong and monotonous. I know there is some feeling that scenes in the original film went on too long, like the montage at the dinner scene with Sally screaming and her tormentors laughing at her, but that was done in such a way that it was horrifying and disturbing. Here, it's just constant chaos, people acting crazy, and nonsensical yelling for almost five full minutes or so, to the point where you agree with Jenny when she yells at everybody to shut up. It makes you wonder how it was supposed to be entertaining because it's not. It's just a bunch of madness. Again, I know there was a lot of madness in the first two films but there, Hooper had an idea of how to stage and play it all out and he also gave good direction to his actors. It's obvious here that we're in the hands of someone who doesn't know what he's doing and that the actors either don't understand the direction that he's given them but they're just doing it anyway or they're making up stuff because they've not been given any direction at all. Whatever the answer, none of this stuff meshes and these scenes end up being long stretches of craziness that quickly become boring and make you want to turn the movie off.
The movie also has a bad habit of repeating itself. Besides the number of purely insane scenes whose faults I mentioned above, another one is the shear number of times Jenny either escapes from her captors only or is about to but gets captured again. She gets picked up by Vilmer, jumps out of the truck when she realizes he's a psycho, gets chased by Leatherface and he chases her to the real estate office where Darla captures her and takes her back to the house; Jenny manages to get the shotgun, make it out the front door, and almost gets away in Darla's car but she's captured again by Vilmer; during the dinner scene, she manages to once again regain control and tries to leave but is stopped yet again and is briefly tortured by Rothman; and after that is when she runs out the front door with Leatherface and Vilmer in hot pursuit and finally gets away from them for good. (I bet by this point, when the RV that briefly picked Jenny up got turned over, most people panicked and thought she was going to be recaptured again and the movie would go on for another fifteen minutes or so!) Can you spell repetitive? That is a prime example of bad screenwriting right there and, remember, we have nobody but Kim Henkel himself to thank for it. (What really frightens me, though, is that Henkel now teaches film! Yeah, just let that sink in for a little while.)
When it comes to horror movies, I feel that you can go one of three ways: you can genuinely try to terrify or disturb the audience, you can make it into a fun time with a lot of over the top gore and death scenes, or you can do both. Obviously, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a prime example of the first method and the second movie followed the middle method. The Next Generation, however, doesn't do any of those. I guess Henkel was trying to make it a lot like the original by putting almost no blood in (I'd say there's even less blood here than there was in that film) but since this movie doesn't come close to being genuinely scary, we're left with a movie that's also not any fun in an over the top, gory way. You don't see any gore whatsoever when Barry gets bashed in the head with the sledgehammer, Sean's death happens virtually off-screen since you don't see a closeup of Vilmer's truck getting run over his body, and you don't see anything at all when Vilmer crushes Heather's head. The only bits of blood you see in the entire film for the most part occur when Vilmer cuts himself like the maniac he is. There are a couple of fairly gruesome-looking corpses, like a dead animal that Jenny, Heather, and Barry come across in the middle of the road (which looks decent but is on-screen so briefly that it might as well have not even been there) and the heavily-decomposed corpse that Barry finds in the family's bathtub (which does look pretty gross, I must admit). That's all there is basically. Despite the lack of gore, the film actually is quite violent but some of it comes across as downright mean-spirited. That's yet another odd criticism for an entry in this franchise, I know, but think about it, as mean-spirited as the previous films often were, they were worked in conjunction with what each film was trying to do (the original was truly trying to scare the crap out of you, the second was trying to be a gory satire, and the third was trying to be quite nasty). But since this film is not scary at all and is most certainly not fun or even nasty, the mean-spirited, violent scenes just make you cringe and not in a good way. When W.E. constantly zaps Jenny with the cattle prod when she's captured at Darla's agency building, it goes on far longer than it should (a common problem with this movie) and comes across as bullying sadism on the part of both the character and the director. The same goes for Heather's death. As much as I hated that character and wanted to kill her myself because she was so annoying, the length of time it takes for Vilmer to crush her head, even though you don't see it, feels very drawn out and the crushing sounds add to the unnecessarily sadistic feeling of it. Heck, I think some could even argue that Sean's death, with Vilmer driving over him again and again, is a case of overkill. So, not only is the film not scary or entertaining but Henkel's inability to sense when enough is enough makes some instances of violence very unpleasant to sit through.
It probably won't surprise you when I tell you that the music by Wayne Bell (who did the music for the original along with Tobe Hooper) sucks too. It's instantly forgettable, with no distinct sound or style to it at all. At least I could remember some of the music from Leatherface. The only bit of music for this movie that I remember is the bit that plays over the ending credits, which is an off-beat, silly fiddle-played piece of music that makes you feel like you're being mocked after having sat through this god-awful movie. It would work well for the closing credits of a spoof or parody but, as I've said too many times in this review, I can't be sure if that really was Henkel's intent (and if it was, he failed on that score too). There are a bunch of forgettable songs on the soundtrack as well. The only ones I remember, at least in terms of what they sounded like, is that song playing on the record when Leatherface is getting dolled up for dinner (someone correct me if I'm wrong but is that the song Robert Jacks produced with Deborah Harry?) and when he and Vilmer are chasing Jenny during the climax. I assure you that the only reason I sort of remember those songs is because of the surreal scenes that they accompanied. And, worst of all, Henkel was so sure that he was making the "real" sequel to the original that he had Wayne Bell put that eerie screeching sound into the film at various points, like right before the car crashes into Barry's and it's the last thing we hear when we see drag-queen Leatherface dancing with his saw at the very end. They even put it in inappropriate spots, like when the kids are getting their pictures taken at the prom at the very beginning. Why?! You know, Mr. Henkel, when my good friend Jeff Burr had that sound put into the background during the excavation of the mass grave in his movie, it helped give it a creepy feeling. It feels like you're just putting it into this movie in order to say, "See, see, the sound from the original is in here, so that makes this the real sequel!"
Like Cannon Films and New Line Cinema before them, the heads at Columbia/Tri-Star weren't exactly sure what to do with the film once it was finished and the journey that the film took from post-production to its very brief theatrical release is a little hard to keep straight but I'll try my best. After it was completed, I think it had a very limited and brief theatrical run in 1994 and it was shown at the South by South-west Film and Media Conference in 1995. I think then the studio agreed to release the film in theaters all over the country in October of that year and, after that deal was made, the film, which was still called The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at that point was re-edited (which, to be far, could explain why so much of it doesn't make sense but that still doesn't the questionable decisions Henkel and company made) and given the title it now has. The release date in October of 1995 was yanked however when Renee Zellweger won her role in Jerry Maguire and Columbia/Tri-Star, feeling that Zellweger would be a high-profile actor after starring in a big movie with Tom Cruise, decided to wait and release the film after Jerry Maguire had came out in order to cash in on Zellweger's newfound fame. While the filmmakers agreed to that, apparently Matthew McConaughey's agent pressured the studio not to release the film in theaters at all and I think Zellweger's representatives may have done the same. McConaughey and Zellweger have never told their side of this story so whether or not this is true is unclear but, in any case, the film was released in theaters in 1997. However, it was a very limited release, in less than twenty cities, and it had almost no marketing as well, which lead to box-office returns that were positively anemic. Kim Henkel and producer Robert Kuhn were not at all happy about this set of circumstances and felt that Columbia should have either given the film back and let them distribute it themselves or done the best release that they possibly could have without upsetting the stars' agents. But, again, who knows if there actually was any controversy with the stars' agents? Maybe Columbia just realized what an awful film it was and didn't want to embarrass themselves by releasing it all over the country. Whatever really happened, Columbia's drastic tinkering of the film ended up creating another movie that has a fabled alternate cut to it. That cut, which still has the original title, is only available in Canada and, from what I've heard, while the movie is still bad, that version makes more sense and has the subplot with Jenny's abusive father (but, I've also heard that it has even more dialogue between Barry and Heather and I out and out refuse to believe that can be a good thing). It doesn't matter, though. I still hate this movie and I sure as hell am not going to spend money on another DVD just so I can see an alternate cut of something I already can't stand.
Before I end, I just want to say that, while this movie does generally have an extremely negative public and critical opinion, there are people who actually like this film. Its biggest supporter is Joe Bob Briggs, who went as far as to call it the best horror film of the 90's and prefers it much more so than the first two sequels. Now, I have nothing against Briggs. I actually like the guy quite a bit and he has every right to like this movie as much as he does. I really don't get it but, again, that's his opinion and he's welcome to it. When the film was originally released, some critics did give it some fairly good notices. John Anderson of the L.A. Times liked it quite a bit, calling it, "a giddy mix of gruesome horror and campy humor" (I don't know what "gruesome horror" he's talking about and the humor is campy, yeah, but in an annoying way), and I know the Village Voice said that Leatherface crossed Divine (see, I told you) with Hannibal Lecter (where the hell was Hannibal Lecter's influence on this movie?) And today, there is a small but passionate cult following for the film who do enjoy it. I only bring all of this up to reiterate my stance that everybody likes what they like and if you enjoy something that I don't, great. It doesn't make you an idiot or a bad person or anything else. It's fine. I certainly have my share of movies that I like that everyone else seems to hate (case in point, that list I did) so it's all relative. It'll just remain one of those odd mysteries of life on how someone can get any type of enjoyment out of this movie but, again, if you do, no foul.
Joe Bob Briggs may think it the best horror film of the 90's but I, and a lot of other people, consider The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation to be one of the worst horror films ever. It's a nonsensical, crazy film with characters who, except for the main girl, are either so annoying that you can't stand them or are just batshit insane, a plot that rehashes elements from the far superior original and does it very poorly, sequences of pure craziness that go on for so long that they're just tedious and almost impossible to get through, a tone that can't decide if it's trying to be serious or if it's trying to be a spoof, and it all comes from a man who helped write the original but clearly had no clue what he was trying accomplish by making this movie and yet, insultingly enough, tried shoehorn in some deeper meaning after filling the movie with such stupidity. While I do respect the opinions of those who do get enjoyment out of it, to me this movie sucks big time, is one of the worst entries in any franchise, and if it weren't for this blog, I would have never put myself through it and, now that this review is done, I never will again. This movie can kiss my ass and so can Kim Henkel.
