By 1990, American moviegoing horror fans had fully passed over from the Golden Age of Splatter into an era which saw the studios franchising of popular genre icons such as Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees, in an unscrupulous duckat-snatch that had thus far defecated eight Friday the 13th's(Jason Takes Manhattan, the worst of the lot, was released a year earlier), five Nightmare on Elm Street's(I gracefully bowed out on the second one, thanks), and five Halloween's(any which way you slice 'em up, the fourth and fifth movies are crap-garbage) into the waiting faces of willing wanks.It seemed that the only horror classic that hadn't had the last millilitre of piss taken out of it McDonald's-style, was Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, boasting of only one (relatively well-done)sequel up to that date.New Line Cinema was about to change all that, hiring director Jeff Burr, an Ohio native who never met a sequel project he didn't like, to figure out a way to resurrect everyone's favorite buzzsaw-wielding, hog-squealing retard in human skin masks(if you've been keeping score all along, Bubba(now 'Junior') technically ate explosive shrapnel-death while skewered on a Poulan in the second movie).With the help of the effects wizardry of KNB and a cast that included a post-'Death Spa' Ken Foree and a pre-'Reflecting Skin' Viggo Mortensen, Burr does more than that.He somehow manages to find the formerly-dead, lumbering, homicidal oaf with a penchant for human taxidermy and ruining front doors an entirely new family of cannibalistic psychopaths(Plentiful as armadillos down in Texas, reader Misti tells me...)!Raped repeatedly of worthy splat-tastic content by the MPAA, Leatherpiece would make less than six mil at the box office, proving that, perhaps, the majority of the American horror community are sticklers for detail, afterall.What's that?Rob Zombie's Halloween(2007) grossed fifty-eight??!!Okay, take any credit I may have just given you, and fucking bung it right down the lavvy...
Don't blame Ken Foree, he's just paying the bills.
At the outset, we're introduced to a pair of brabbling California yuppies(you're supposed to like these two, apparently) named Michelle and Ryan(Kate Hodge, William Butler)as they drive across what's supposed to be Texas(it's not, it's California), listening to a radio jock relaying news about an alleged recently discovered pit o' dead bodies that's causing traffic to move like molasses in January.Cut to nighttime, where we find our doomed dyad driving past said corpse chasm's security checkpoint.The next day, they make road-DiGiorno out of a hapless armadillo that Ryan mercy-snuffs when Michelle doesn't have the cazzies to do it herself.It's at a bedraggled roadside gas station that Michelle finds herself being peep-tommed by Alfredo(Tom Everett), the Last Chance's greasy petrol-pumpin' pervert, who's cockblocked by a ride-thumbin' cowpoke who'd given them directions earlier, named...drumroll... Tex(Viggo Mortensen).How apt.Michelle and Ryan speed away just as Alfredo seemingly gives Tex a hot lead injection.The grease monkey named after one of my favorite sauces decides to give chase that night(nothin' like a good head start), teaching them a valuable lesson by slapping a dead coyote on their windshield after somehow catching up to them.At this point their flat-changing experience is interrupted by ol' Leatherface(R.A. Mihailoff) himself, and they drive off before the big galoot can do more than limply rub his saw against their vehicle.They're suddenly joined by a black survivalist with no back story named Benny(Ken Foree) when a sanguinary Tex jumps out and causes an accident, which in turn causes Ryan and his unlikely new ethno-pal to go back and look for Tex, instead meeting a hook-mitted tow truck driver named Tinker(Joe Unger) who offers to set down some road flares.Benny notices a suspicious chainsaw in the back of Tink's truck, and grabs an automatic rifle from his own overturned jeep.Shit gon' be jumpin' off now, baby.Benny joins forces with a girl named Sara, who's entire family ended up as makeshift Ben Cooper Halloween masks for the homicidal lummox, who later pins her to a tree and dissects the bitch with his trusty Homelite for her troubles.
"Leath'-baby(R.A. Mihailoff), it's Beatrice...Yeah, from Custom Chainsaw Fabrications R Us?That antic eighty lb piece with engraved blade is ready for you to pick up, sugar..."
Ryan gets himself caught in a bear trap, his own misfortunes clearing an escape plan for Michelle, who stumbles upon a house in her panic, that...yeah, it's the wrong house to stumble upon in a panic.She gets shanked by a creepy little blonde girl(Jennifer Banko) in a room that's brimming with animal remains(always a bad sign in Texas), then crucified to a kitchen chair by Tex(yeah, he's one of 'em!) and introduced to Grandpa, who's dead, but still enjoys a regular sip o' the red stuff.Mama(Miriam Byrd-Nethery) and her electronic voice box make the scene, and so does Tinker, with mortally injured Ryan in tow.Tinker and Tex suspend the dying yuppie upside down from a doorway by meathooks, and when Leatherpiece shows up, Tex presents him with a nifty custom chainsaw with "The Saw is Family" engraved on the blade, as fabricated by Tinker.Meanwhile, Benny finds the admittedly less yummy version of Alfredo outside, and sinks him in a bog where he'd been dumping corpses when interrogation proves fruitless.Inside, the little girl, who's Leather-puss' daughter(!), creams Ryan into the afterlife with a swinging sledgehammer contraption, while Leath' moves towards dispatching the ball-gagged she-snob, just as Benny busts in with guns a-blazin', shooting up Mama, Grandpa's corpse, and fingers n' ear off of Tinker, allowing Michelle to pull herself loose(ouch) and shank Tex in the labonza, before escaping.The ensuing goosechase leaves Tex doused in gasoline and burnt to a crisp, and Leath' and Benny in a righteous bog-brawl where the black man's head is somehow sawed by 'Face's bog-proof implement of Hell.Michelle manages to bash the killer's dome in with a rock, leaving him to sink unconsciously into the mire, and reach the main drag as dawn breaks, only to be surprised by a still-breathing Benny, who's driving Alfredo's pick up.Oh yeah, that guy.Well, he ain't exactly coffin material either, as he springs up with a sledge only to get blasted by a shotgun-wielding Michelle.She remarks about all the roadkill in Texas as they drive off to safety, unaware that Leathergrill is still alive, revving his chainsaw in the distance...
"Nostril piercing??!!I was looking for a grill with a hella choice metal-skewered septum, goddamn it."
As overwhelmingly un-good as this chopped n' garbled incoherent mess no doubt is(the alternately edited, falsely advertised 'uncut version' on laserdisc and dvd is like a less sizeable turd with a Glade Plug-In sitting next to it), the next entry in the series, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Next Generation"(1994), makes it look like Dances with Wolves, ferchrissakes.Seriously though, fuck Kevin Costner, and motherfuck Waterworld, too.While Mortensen has familiarly spent his time distancing himself from the stink of his TCM stint with good roles in decent movies like Petey Jackson's Ring trilogy and Cronenburg's A History of Violence(2005), Hodge has gone on to prolific television work in tv movies and soaps.Mihailoff has stayed put in genre films, scoring roles in fare like Pumpkinhead II:Blood Wings(1994), and Hatchet II(2010).You might remember Jennifer Banko as young Tina in Friday the 13th Pt VIII:The New Blood(1988), and you might not.Foree has been recently spotted toiling away in Rob Zombie garbage and that unimpressive Dawn of the Dead remake by Zack Snyder in 2004.At least he's working.Burr is also responsible for Stepfather II, the aforementioned Pumpkinhead direct-to-video sequel, Puppetmasters 4 and 5, and Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy.Orson Wells he isn't.On the scale, Leather scores a single wop.Avoid it, trust me.
Hey Leathergrill, what's with the fucking leg brace, anyway?
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