"Leatherface:Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"(1990)d/Jeff Burr

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?

"Halloween"(2007)d/Rob Zombie

"...it's pointless and why are they doing it?"-Rob Zombie,on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake
Anyone who's talked to me for more than five minutes about movies knows how furious I was when Rob Zombie signed on to remake John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic,Halloween.Once I reattached my mandible to my face,I set out to be as vocally opposed to such a project as anyone possibly could be.I added Rob Zombie as a friend on MySpace so I could shit on him directly and have him see my hatred firsthand(he deleted me after a few choice wall comments helped him realize I wasn't one of his sphincter-licking moronic fans).I went to Blockbuster the week his movie was released on dvd and ridiculed anyone I saw walking up to the checkout with the box in their hands.Above all,I vowed NEVER to see it,and more importantly,NEVER to pay money to see it and feed into the rehashed cycle of Hollywood unoriginality.Well,that was three years ago now,and though I still hate remakes,I figured enough water was under the bridge that I could actually objectively watch this thing,and if it was better than I thought it would be,I'd apologize openly to Zombie for being a dick about it,and if it sucked like I thought it would,well,it'd make for one helluva funny read here at the Wop.So I queued it up online,in keeping with my vow to never pay money to see it,threw on my headphones,and viddied well,little droogs.The verdict???
It seems I owe Mr. Zombie one hell of an apology,folks.He's not only a gifted writer with a great directorial eye,but he's actually improved....Of course I'm kidding,people,it fucking sucks sore-ridden AIDS ballbag at a Haitian hospital all day long.Giving a blowjob hack like Zombie a project like remaking Halloween to tackle is like throwing a blind double hand-amputee a hammer and chisel and putting him in front of a seven foot high pile of shit and demanding that he create a Michelangelo-level sculpture of Megan Fox out of it.After enduring the entire clusterfuck I wouldn't trust that douchebag to direct traffic.Of course I realize there's a small minority of diehard Zombie fans who'll idiotically defend anything the guy does,including this huge mistake,and to those people,I say:Walk blindfolded into rush hour traffic on the West Side Highway in Manhattan.You,along with Insane Clown Posse faggalos,and anyone who thinks Bono of U2 is some sort of humanitarian,are everything that's totally wrong with the world today.You won't be missed,and in fact,you'll be saving me several trips when I finally completely lose my mind and go on a sweeping kill crazy rampage.Everyone responsible for this mess should be wholly ashamed of themselves,and switch careers to cripple-robbers,as it's undoubtedly more dignified work.I feel most sorry for any actors and cult genre stars who appear here,and the list is long and pathetic:Bill Forsythe,Danny Trejo,Bill Moseley,Sybill Danning,Udo Kier,Brad Dourif,Richard Lynch,Clint Howard,Dee Wallace,Ken Foree,Mickey Dolenz,Danielle Harris,and Malcolm Mc-fucking-Dowell,ferchrissakes.Did you cast the entire movie at a horror convention,shitlocks?I can only hope you people were collectively drugged and forced to deliver the drivel that passes for dialogue here against your wills,otherwise...

Sherri Moon Zombie shows her acting flexibility here as a foul-mouthed,weatherbeaten white trash stripper very much unlike the other strippers she's portrayed in the past.
I've heard retards defend this,saying Rob Zombie adds backstory to the classic,putting his own personal spin on it.What they meant to say was,in Rob's little celluloid world,everyone's either a foul mouthed long haired piece of shit or a foul mouthed piece of white trash,with no in-betweens.Hell,the whole cast is playing essentially the same charac-turd here.After his prequel of sorts,where he graciously writes his own wife into the story as Michael's stripper mother(there's a stretch),turns his sister Judith into an obscenity spewing teenaged cockacidal whore,and worst of all,Michael himself into a long haired,chunky,animal killing ten year old pussy with a fetish for masks,Zombie piles on several unnecessary and uninspired deaths that would leave most gorehounds counting sheep instead of bodies.Dr. Loomis(McDowell)is Michael's school-appointed psychologist,and even he's a fucking scumbag,writing Michael off during his sanitarium stay in favour of a book tour hawking his years with Myers under the title "The Devil's Eyes".Give me a fucking break,would you?If they're not trying to get rich off of Michael,they're long haired dirtbag orderlies taking female inmates into Michael's cell to rape in front of his mask-covered eyes,only by now,he's mutated into a seven foot tall pro wrasslin-looking,long haired shitbag,that Zombie wants the audience to somehow pity for all the wrong done to him.He might have pulled it off too,if every single character,Laurie(Scout Taylor-Compton)included,didn't talk like two ten year old boys in a schoolyard trying to constantly offend each other.

Malcolm McDowell watches as his cinematic integrity,raped and freezing,runs screaming away,never to return.
"Just make it your own. Hell. That's the most important thing. Make it yours."-John Carpenter to Rob Zombie,on his Halloween remake
...which roughly translates to:"I know you won't do my movie any justice,but do it anyway,because the stink of yours will only make people appreciate mine that much more."It's almost like Zombie doesn't get what made the original such a great piece of cinema,and even when his awful prologue is finally over,and he sets out to film the Carpenter section of the film,his glaring incompetence smells up the screen.The beautifully framed shots that drip with suspense and tension have been replaced with flat spastic,jerky camerawork,completely bereaft of anxiety or fear.He hamfistedly adds kills to the body count(Annie's boyfriend Paul,and both of Laurie's parents),with precious little flair or style,and then negates the entire gripping Laurie v Shape climax of Carpenter's masterwork in favor of yet more bromidic examples of Michael's humanity(In case you haven't figured it out yet,turning a blank,expressionless,inexplicably indestructible vessel of evil into an abused white trash mutant with a sliver of humanity remaining inside is NOT scary.It sucks.),erasing the entire balcony scene and replacing it with an empty inground pool and hostage negotiation with Loomis and a slew of trigger-happy cops.The sum of these pitiful parts is equivalent to the soulless McDonalds assembly line unhappy meal of slasher flicks.Lots of people may have paid money to eat it,but it's bland,bad for you,and a complete waste of time and money.

Remember the scene in the original where Michael butchers the Strodes?You don't?That's because IT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED!
I spent an hour or so trying to salvage something positive out of the whole experience,apart from the fact that I remained true to my word,and added none of my own money to the box office of this pile o'shit,and all I could come up with was this:Danielle Harris,who laboured away in the fourth and fifth craptacular Halloween sequels as little Jamie Lloyd,and signed on here to anonymize Nancy Loomis' Annie Brackett character,really grew up into a hot little number,and is the only eye candy I happened to notice throughout this mess.Hearing her spout filth like "Do you wanna fuck me?I wanna hear you say you wanna fuck me." while writhing topless on a couch was probably the only time I perked out of my Michael-esque catatonia during the entire hundred and twenty-one minute ordeal.I'll most likely endure the sequel to the remake sometime soon,after seeing how many hardcore Zombie-ites thumbs downed it,it's sure to make for another piece of review-based comedy.As for this toilet log,it merits ZERO wops,just as I predicted it would.Keep up the bad work,Rob!

Outside Wrasslemania XXXV,Kane searches a squad car for Hulkamaniacs.

"Dawn of the Dead"(1978)d/George A. Romero

If you climbed to the top of Gangkhar Puensum in Bhutan,and shouted to the heavens,"Who is the American King of the Living Dead?",not only would you be a motherfucking pioneer,as no one's ever climbed to the peak as of this writing,but chances are,you'd hear an echo return,"George Andrew!"The glory of the modern age lies in the fact that you really wouldn't have to go to such extremes to find that out,you can simply ask anybody who digs horror movies,and they'll gladly tell you.Also,it's hardly debatable as to which of the Cuban/Lithuanian(not Italian,but eh,close enough) Pennsylvania native's rottingly reanimated repertoir is his gut munching greatest of all.I can still remember dragging my poor old man off to the American Theater back in '78 to bear witness to Romero's latest entrail-pulling,groaning grey faced shamble-o-thon,which left him in a permanent state of pants-shitting fear any time zombies come up(or rise,if you will).Georgie boy had just scored big with critics the year before with his excellent vampiric venture,"Martin",and had been working on his follow up to "Night of the Living Dead"(1968) since 1974,and after nailing down Dario Argento to finance the project,he traveled to Rome where he wrote the script.After visiting the Monroeville Mall years earlier with a friend who joked that a person could survive there in an emergency,he had found the centerpiece of his latest chapter in his ongoing zombie saga.Every time I travel to the western end of the state,I try to make a stop at the mall,time permitting,and shuffle around a bit outside,though I've never actually been inside the damned place!One of these days,dammit,one of these days.
Tonight's entry rates as yet another in a goodly stretch of heavy hitters,at or near the top of anybody who's anybody's top horror films,and films in general,in many cases.Makeup maestro Tom Savini creates classic on-screen carnage that maintains its effectiveness to this day,does some nifty stuntwork,and even memorably appears as one of the pillaging party of Pagans in the film.Make no mistakes,droogs,this is Savini at his very best.Armed with a trademark script full of satirical barbs towards the consumer mentality and society itself,Savini's horrendous handiwork,a killer soundtrack featuring Goblin(Romero uses three of their pieces in his cut,Argento uses their work much more extensively in his),and strong performances from Gaylen Ross,David Emge,Ken Foree,and Scott Reiniger in the leads,Dawn assaults the viewer with action,comedy,drama,and terror from the opening sequence and doesn't let up until DeWolfe Library's Gonk plays out over the end credits.

The SWAT teams strain to restrain Willie,whose ghetto disdain causes it to rain brains.
There's considerably less room in Hell,as the world is in the midst of a pandemic which causes the unburied dead to reanimate and eat the flesh of the living.In the midst of a chaotic television broadcast at WGON in Philadelphia,Stephen(Emge) suggests to his girlfriend Francine(Ross),a station news tech,that they escape in his traffic helicopter to safer periphery in the Canadian woods somewhere.Meanwhile Stephen's friend Roger(Reiniger),a SWAT member,has his hands full in an apartment complex full of immigrants who've ignored the state of martial law,refusing to turn over the bodies of their recently dead to authorities,instead storing them in the basement,where they've reanimated.During a meltdown from a member of Roger's unit,where he guns down immigrants and zombies in a xenophobic rampage before being taken down himself,Roger meets up with Peter(Foree),a SWAT member from another unit,and invites him along on the planned chopper escape with his friends.A one legged Latin priest points them to the basement,where they find a cache of living corpses,and the two soldiers clear them out with a flurry of well-placed bullets to the head.The four rendezvous at the pier,and after a momentary square off with some policemen(one of which,Joe Pilato,would return in the third chapter,1985's "Day of the Dead" as Capt. Rhodes,a different character entirely!)with similar escape plans,take off for friendlier climes.As they fly over rural Pennsylvania,they witness the National Guard and local rednecks treating the zombie hunt like weekend sport over beer.During a pitstop at an abandoned airfield for gas,they are attacked by zombies,and while Stephen panics and with his awful marksmanship,nearly kills Peter,who has his hands full with two zombie children,Roger,a dead shot,dispatches the undead threat,and the group again takes flight.

Insert obligatory off color "black dudes n' neck bones" joke here.
During their flight,they notice a large multi level indoor mall surrounded by zombies,and after landing the chopper on the roof,decide to go inside to pick up supplies,when Peter suggests that they hold up there for a while.Peter and Roger hotwire abandoned tractor trailers and park them at the mall entrances to block zombies outside from entrance,but Roger's reckless abandon gets him bitten in the process.Once the entrances are secured,the four load up on guns and ammunition and do a sweeping killing spree of all the zombies inside,storing the dead bodies in a meat locker.Roger,now infected with the zombie virus,enjoys his last few days shopping,and playing video games at the arcade,barely coherent from the morphine injections his friends are administering him.He finally dies and reanimates,with Peter carrying out his last wish,stopping him with a bullet to the head.The three remaining survivors enjoy the spoils of their enormous hideout,building a full apartment on the executive level above the stores,but soon find themselves prisoners to the very safety they sought in the first place.While Stephen is teaching his now-pregnant girlfriend to fly the chopper,they are noticed by a professional army of bikers who have survived on the street.Peter tells "Fly Boy",if they lock up the stores and retreat to the upper level,the bikers will never know they were there.The bikers easily break into the mall bringing hundreds of zombies in with them, and begin to pillage the stores,spurring Fly Boy,who is blind with greed,to begin shooting at them.He is winged by one of the bikers,and while retreating to the elevator,is feasted upon by zombies.Peter snipes several of the bikers,and the zombies descend upon the wounded scumbags,and tear them asunder.Peter retreats to the apartment and waits for Stephen's zombie with Francine,knowing his memory will lead a slew of ghouls up to their digs with him.He tells Francine to leave in the chopper by herself,as he prefers to die where he is,disenchanted with it all.After dispatching Fly Boy,he points a gun to his own head,but before he commits suicide,he has a change of heart,shooting zombies and fighting his way up to the roof before the girl has fully taken off,and climbs aboard,barely escaping.With a nearly empty gas tank the two depart into the sky,leaving the mall to its undead denizens.

Reanimated Roger(Scott Reiniger)or Stooges frontman Iggy Pop on an opium binge?You decide.
Romero would follow his 50 million dollar megahit up with Knightriders(1981) and Creepshow(1982) before tackling the third(and what was to be the final)chapter of his zombie opus,Day of the Dead,in 1985.Five years later he would re-write and earn an executive producer credit on a remake of his "Night of the Living Dead",directed by Tom Savini.In 2005,he directed the fourth chapter,"Land of the Dead",and has since followed with the luke warm "Diary of the Dead",and most recently,"Survival of the Dead".Foree has enjoyed a long career in genre films and television,scoring roles in "The Wanderers","Knightriders","Death Spa","Leatherface:Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3",and more recently,in Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects" and "Halloween" remake.Emge was most recently seen in 1990's "Basket Case 2" and 1992's "Hellmaster",although you can usually find him on the horror convention circuit.Reiniger would show up in a cameo(as did Foree)in Zack Snyder's 2004 (so-so)remake of "Dawn of the Dead".Ross's last genre work would come in 1983's "Madman", under the pseudonym "Alexis Dubin",though there's a store with her name in the Dawn remake.Savini,who was awarded a Saturn Award for Best Makeup Effects in tonight's entry,remains busy acting and directing,as always,allegedly announced to return to direct special effects in the upcoming sequel/remake Friday the 13th Part Two.Oughta be interesting,to say the very least.Tonight's entry remains one of the greatest horror movies of all-time,and is thusly awarded four wops,the highest possible scale rating."Could be nuculah!"

Fly Boy(David Emge)searches for his promotional giveaway bag of hard candy.