Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

Leatherface had the greatest trailer of all time (Leatherface meets the Lady of the Lake, remember that?). Maybe that's why nearly everyone was let down by the film itself. Most people view Leatherface as an unwelcome addition to the legacy that is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No, it's not as good as the original or the sequel, but what do you expect when Tobe Hooper's not on board? However, if you do not compare it to its predecessors, it stands alone as a fun flick. It's at least watchable (unlike the Matthew McConaughey "remake"). The only thing I really don't like about it is the lack of continuity. The David Schow script is great, it just leaves out some needed information. In essence, this is the first in a long line of remakes. The director, Jeff Burr, does succeed in creating tension. My heart still pounds every time when they stop to fix that flat tire. Those far-off squeaking sounds are unnerving. The cast does well also. No one has the energy of Bill Moseley (Chop Top from TCM 2), but he's a tough act to follow. What they do have is horror favorite Ken Foree. Foree is always great. I don't care whether he's in Dawn of the Dead or The Phantom of the Mall, he's great. And you must give credit to Viggo Mortensen. He's come a long way from b horror to star in the Lord of the Rings. When it comes down to it, TCM 3 is worthy of a bit more praise.

This second sequel to the horror classic is something of a letdown, purely because of the storyline. While the first sequel, dominated by Dennis Hopper's crazed performance, explored the key figures in a novel way, LEATHERFACE is a film that's content to simply emulate the first movie's storyline. Once again we get unwary travellers falling foul of Leatherface and his family, and an extended climax involving a family dinner. It's all way too familiar, and of course lacks the sheer intensity of Tobe Hooper's original classic.

The film's tone is wildly uneven throughout, and even in the would-be horror scenes it's hard to take it seriously. The movie feels like a spoof; it has a light-hearted tone that sits at odds with the grimness of the plot. Still, on the plus side, it's very fast paced, and it features a great deal of crowd-pleasing horror elements that are sure to win the hearts of splatter fans, although as with the original, it's never quite as gory as you think it's going to be (and I'm talking about the uncut version).

One of those crowd-pleasers is Ken Foree, Mr. DAWN OF THE DEAD himself, playing one of the film's would-be victims. Foree is a delight, and they sure play up to his potential, portraying him as a real ass-kicker of a man. I couldn't care less about the two characters who are supposed to be the leads, but Foree hooks you right from the start. The rest of the actors are less than impressive, and in particular the guy who plays Leatherface is just a stock heavy; there's certainly none of the hulking, imposing brutality that Gunnar Hansen brought to the role.

Of course, one of the draws watching this film today is seeing a pre-stardom Viggo Mortensen playing in a decidedly odd type of role, completely different from what you might expect; I enjoyed his performance, even if much of it is played for laughs. And that's the trouble with the film as a whole: we're back to that spoofy tone, that whole non-serious feel that everyone's laughing at the premise rather than getting to grips with the horrifying implications of it. Take the ear scene, for example, or the string of increasingly ridiculous and unbelievable things that happen at the climax (including the fate of one of the characters, which makes no sense whatsoever; blame a substituted ending for that one, after the original didn't go down too well with test audiences). In fact, come the end, I enjoyed this more as a bizarre comedy than as a genuine horror outing.

I'm actually really surprised at all the positive reviews for this film here, considering its horrible reputation.

Made on a shoestring budget with no-name actors (at least at the time, of course, Viggo went on to A-list-ish status) obviously, there is nothing groundbreaking in this 3rd chainsaw outing, as can be said of most sequels. Hooper's 1974 film said and did everything that needed to be said and done (its documentary style, iconic villain, the creation of the slasher-film template, the fire-orange burning sunsets, the post-Vietnam worldview, the subtle commentary about consumerism, animal cruelty, and decay of the nuclear family, etc....). That film is an unparalleled masterpiece, and even Hooper's follow-up didn't hold a candle or need to exist(although it was crazy, offbeat, quality cult filmmaking on its own terms), so a third entry would seem a complete waste of time.

So why even pay part III any attention? My adoration for it is based largely on the first half, which is very well done and far superior to the second. For starters, Kate Hodge and William Butler, as the film's yuppie protagonists, are natural and absorbing and never take viewers out of the film (something that can't be said of most slasher films of this era, which typically had bottom-of-the-barrel talent).

The cinematography is also imaginative and stylized. The entire "gas station peepshow sequence," for example, is fantastically shot and executed; the angle of our heroine through the cracked mirror, the claustrophobic lighting, the pov of the voyeur. And note Kate Hodge's reactions during this scene: she seems legitimately freaked out and uncomfortable, and her reactions of fear and confusion in the scenes that follow are equally convincing. It's a solid performance, in a film with uniformly solid performances.

The pacing in the first half is also impressive; from the mundane car conversation that opens the film to the bizarre "body pit" sequence- which was so absurd, it bordered on parody-to the armadillo murder scene, to the gas station sequence: all of these moments serve as knowing winks to Hooper's original, but because the film modernizes them, it benefits viewers as it keeps them in the "now" instead of the "then". And thankfully, the film sticks with the aesthetic of its time, because, while it would eventually show its age, attempting to match the documentary style of Hooper's original would have felt derivative, redundant, and out of place. So kudos to Burr and cinematographer James L. Carter, who later proved himself a real talent with more mainstream gigs, for remaining faithful to the mood of the original without plagiarizing, but still taking some new chances.

And how about that "truck-chase/changing the tire" sequence? I LIVE for scenes like this and sadly, modern horror films just don't take us here anymore: the ominous, minimalist score, slow-burn pacing, the effective use of that lantern light, and again, Kate Hodge's display of fear and hysteria feels all too real, as do boyfriend Ryan's (William Butler) reactions of incredulity, anger, and frustration. There is some commendable attempt at realism here, resulting in a truly tense and nerve-jangling scene. Also, dare I say that the atmosphere here comes the closest out of any film in the series to matching the "flashlight fight between Sally and Franklin" from the original? It's that uncomfortable mix of anxiety, dread, and panic that Hooper perfected so well that I think gets overlooked in this sequel.

Okay, so that's the first half. The second half is less ambitious and becomes, as I mentioned earlier, almost a parody of the first film, with an uneven mix of horror and (attempted) black comedy. There are hints of wit and social commentary to be sure: the mocking by one of the chainsaw clan of the elitist boyfriend's underwear ("California!"), Ken Foree's completely out-of-place military survivalist, to name a couple. But these clever bits are treated as afterthoughts, rather than organic byproducts of the story (although the scene where Leatherface grapples with the Speak and Spell is curiously touching). Contributing to the dip in quality is some abrupt editing and rushed pacing, which I suspect is the fault of the studio and MPAA, which butchered (no pun intended) the heck out of the film.

With that said, there is still enough well-choreographed action to make the second half more than watchable. And witnessing Kate Hodge's transformation from genteel yuppie to traumatized badass makes it worth sticking around. A nice homage to Sally in the original.

But then comes the final shot, which is almost as if director Burr threw up his arms and said: "Alright, time for the trendy 80's slasher movie ending....we all got bills to pay". And of course, it leaves room for yet another sequel. Shame, shame, New Line.

And there you have it: LEATHERFACE, the wildly uneven, sometimes ambitious, consistently amusing, what should have been the final word on an already dying franchise, and more notably, sub-genre that would never quite be the same. As we all know, SCREAM followed 6 years later, and the slasher film became a cultural artifact only to be mocked, parodied, and "post-modernized" for a new generation of filmgoers, most of whom weren't alive when their genre forefathers were in their heyday. So with that in mind, we should be grateful for earnest little works like TCM III, which, while far from perfect, mark the end of an innocent and unpretentious era of irony-free slasher filmmaking. Sigh.

There are several reasons to dislike this movie. First, the level of studio interference was considerable. That explains the atrocious ending grafted on against the director's wishes. The studio was looking ahead to a sequel more than they were concentrating on making this picture work. Second, because of the huge success of the first film (among genre fans) anything which followed was going to draw a lit of criticism. Do the filmmakers simply mimic the original, or do they completely break the mold? Usually what you get is a mishmash of both theories and that's what you have here. That said, "Leatherface" is lot of fun if you like a balls -out gore fest with some humor and better production values than the budget warranted. Director Jeff Burr creates a deliciously-crazed atmosphere while driving the

story home. This is also a very fine looking movie and kudos go to the director of photography, whose name escapes me. The cast is excellent. Mortensen looks like he's having a lot more fun here than in the "Rings": movies and Kate Hodge is very under appreciated. There's a good role for genre veteran Ken Foree too and he delivers the goods. By the way, the chainsaw in this one is a real beaut. "Leatherface" is a very solid B-movie effort.

Traveling through the desert together, a brother-and-sister attempting to deliver a classic car to a relative encounters a murderous, cannibalistic family that preys on travelers hunting along the highway and must team up with a stranded survivalist to stave off the family's advances.

This here turned out to be decent and actually quite enjoyable actually. One of the main aspects that works really well to this one is an impressive atmosphere, with the film being rather creepy for the most part. There's a lot of fun to be had with this one in the desert despite being set at night but it makes the film just that much better because the majority of the action takes place at night and that is really tough to pull off, yet it's done nicely here. The initial appearance by the couple changing their car-tire which turns into an attack on the car and then leading into the chase down the highway where they bump into their friend gives this a strong launching pad to where the movie really works in the chasing through the patch of woods by the highway. The dark trees and nearly impenetrable layout makes for a perfect spot to unleash the series of ambushes, stumbling across the traps left out and getting plenty of strong, stellar stalking throughout where the killer comes out of the shadows in rather unexpected locations to catch them in the traps or stalk them with the chainsaw leading for a great time throughout here. With the family dinner scene being rather enjoyable with plenty of gruesome, bloody moments that are far more squirm-inducing than expected and a nasty streak that runs throughout, suddenly machine gun fire bursts into the room, gunning down most of the family leading into the final brawl out in the swamp which has a lot to like. The gore is great as well, especially in the unrated form where the gore is a little nastier and it should please the gorehounds looking for a ton of blood and guts. There are still some flaws here, as there is an 'R' rated version of the film that is so heavily cut that it makes no sense why it was rated 'R.' Almost no violence at all occurs in the main cut of the film which is virtually bloodless and with a low body count to chop up, it doesn't have a lot of deaths to dole out. There are way too few people to get involved in the family which keeps the body-count to a point where it's quite obvious there's not a lot of opportunities to knock people off which is really distracting. There's also the fact that the family again changes around members needlessly, offering up another change in the members and characteristics of the group which is never explained and offers up the kind of questions that shouldn't be made in this kind of situation. Ranging from who's who in relation to each other and what they're pasts were like since they're colorful enough to be memorable, however too much is kept off-screen around them which is rather disappointing. Still, it's far better than expected.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.