"The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1994) d/ Kim Henkel

In 1994, Kim Henkel, who co-wrote the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) with director Tobe Hooper, would write and direct the fourth movie focusing on the cannibalistic family of unemployed cattle slaughterers, and specifically, everyone's favorite hulking, chainsaw-wielding lunatic, Leatherface himself. The sequel in question, basically an imprecise remake, made the festival scene before being shelved for three years, until its two young leads, Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger rose from obscurity with roles in A Time to a Kill (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), respectively; after which the film was re-cut, re-titled, and re-released as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1997) to precious little fanfare. I'm not about to sing its praises here tonight, either, but read on, anyway...


Don't squeeze the trigger, Renee (unless you want to, and really, you'd be doing us all a favor...).
We follow the post-prom exploits of four Texas teens, including the pot smoking wallflower, Jenny (Renee Zellweger) and her faux airhead pal Heather (Lisa Marie Newmyer), who blow the negative vibes of the formal clambake in favor of dark, winding, dirt roads only to be targeted by the latest bellicose brood of  the infamous Slaughter family (weren't they the Sawyers? Mehhh.). There's Leatherface (Terry Jacks), who's taken to wearing full drag, and the wrecker-driving, point and shout-happy Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), who's got a robotic leg brace that's controlled by television remotes, and Walter (Joe Stevens), who drops an endless array of quotes from famous people (and little else). There's also the execrable insurance agent Darla (Tonie Perensky), who flashes her augmented breasts at passing cars when she isn't contentedly enjoying her mutually abusive relationship with the aforementioned shouting tow truck driver she calls her boyfriend. When the teens' car slams into an oncoming car in the night, leaving its driver unconscious and in need of medical assistance, the couples split up to find help. What they find, instead, anybody can see coming from a mile away...


Leatherface (Terry Jacks) or Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, you be the judge.
It isn't long (or perhaps it's entirely too long, who can tell at this point?) before Vilmer is exaggeratedly driving over one prom date in his tow truck and snapping the neck of the unconscious crash victim, while Leatherface is clobbering the stuffing out of the other male prom goer with a familiar mallet, stuffing a screaming Heather in a cooler before ploinking her down on a nearby meat hook. Jenny is taken captive by the family, forced to look with horror upon a taxidermized family at the dinner table, while Darla comically dislocates her beau's bum kneecap with the press of buttons on a tv clicker. Vilmer points and shouts a lot, slashes himself repeatedly with a straight razor, and is dispatched by the propeller of a low flying Illuminati airplane. Did I mention the Illuminati? Yeah, a fellow in a suit named Rothman shows up at the dinner party, disappointed by the family's inability to breed terror in its victims (sort of like this whole movie), and he ultimately drives Jenny to safety in his stretch limo while drag Leatherface does the spinning, whirling "She got away!" chainsaw dance on the highway. Sound familiar?


"Relax, Miss Jones, we'll locate your diary for you, alright.", exclaims Cop (John Dugan).
On a positive note, the film features three blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cameos from the original cast, John Dugan (Grandpa), Paul Partain (Franklin), and Marilyn Burns (Sally), though she's billed as ANONYMOUS in the credits, and "Queen" Debra Marshall, Stone Cold Steve Austin's ex-wife, also makes an appearance in there. This would be Henkel's only directorial credit, though he's got at least fifteen as a writer, most of which are Chainsaw Massacre-related, apart from The Unseen (1980) and Tobe Hooper's own Eaten Alive (1976). Amazingly, there's very little blood letting in either cut of this effort, sparse deaths, and zero scares. If it classified as your least favorite TCM sequel, or the least fun to watch, nobody could consciously blame you for it. It'd be nine years until they'd reboot the series with a remake of the original, which I also didn't care for, as if you couldn't have guessed. Single Wop city here.


...and Ann Nonymous as Sally Hardesty.

R.I.P. Gunnar Hansen

                       03/04/47 - 11/07/15

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Beginning"(2006)d/Jonathan Liebesman

This movie has earned nearly forty million dollars at U.S. box offices.I just wanted to get that out of the way early, so you can keep it in mind throughout the following review of Jonathan Liebesman's 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Beginning', a prequel to the 2003 remake of the original 1974 Tobe Hooper film.We all remember the original, don't we?For those of you that somehow don't, fret not.Tonight's entry covers all the exact same bases, albeit ineffectually, with a lazy script that caters to R. Lee Ermey's sudden injection into the murderous Hewitt clan geneology.I'm not sure what a slightly more psychotic Gny. Sgt. Hartman adds to the Chainsaw mythos, but producers Hooper and Kim Henkel must've dug the shit out of the idea.We're also treated to Leatherface's back story for some reason, as if a lumbering cannibalistic retard-hulk wearing a human skin mask and wielding a chainsaw wasn't self-explanatory enough.Liebesman, who's also directed 2003's Darkness Falls(liked a lot) and 2011's Battle:Los Angeles(fell asleep in the theater), doesn't seem too concerned with selling the prequel's 1969 aesthetic besides a bandanna here, and some Vietnam chatter there, handling the potential for horror and tension like a true fucking butterfingers, focusing his lens on ugly characters and uninspiring cookie cutter gore instead.So why did they bother with this one in the first place, if it had little chance of adding much to the popular horror series, which was pretty much past the exhausted point after the first sequel in 1986? For a definitive answer to that question, simply re-read the first line of this review out loud to yourself.Fortunately, my own Happy Talk cash never contributed to the film's gaudy theatrical run, which saw it finish second(!) to Scorsese's The Departed(2006)(!!) in it's opening weekend.I merely pulled four singles out of my wallet and flopped 'em down in the Wal-mart cashier's mitts, and in hindsight, may have overpayed by two or three of those.Towards...

That rotten rutabaga has a funny shape to it, huh.
After being bloodily shat out by a rotund meat processing plant worker, who abruptly croaks on the floor in a blecchy puddle in the melee, and rescued from being garbage-chucked, by Luda Mae(Allison Marich), who takes the deformed little bastard home as one of her own, we see a credit montage of a grown up Tommy Hewitt(Andrew Bryniarski) doing odd things to animals and their skins, in particular, as a newspaper headline tells us the town is going belly up, leading to lay-offs at the meat packing plant, where the repugnant-pussed Leatherface-to-be has great difficulty comprehending he's suddenly out of a job, despite the best insults of his employers.Next, we see Eric(Matthew Bomer) pirating around in a motel pool with a knife in his yap, before driving off to re-enlist for Vietnam with his younger brother, Dean(Taylor Handley), who's just been drafted, but secretly plans on ducking out on his responsibility to his country, to Mexico, somewhere along the ride.Meanwhile, back at the plant, Tommy pulverizes the boss' legbones with a sledgehammer before laying a serious Wile E. Coyote headshot on the whimpering floored coot, the same no good feller whut threw Ugly Tommy in th' traish, all them yurrs ago.When Sheriff Winston(Lew Temple) comes to the Hewitt's door with an arrest warrant, Charlie(R. Lee Ermey) tags along for the ride, later blowing the sheriff away and adopting his blood-speckled uniform and badge, and declaring the family's struggles over as they all sit down to eat Winston's remains.After a classic exploitative run in with bikers leaves one exploded cow and their Jeep totalled, Dean, Eric, and their respective arm decorations, Chrissie and Bailey(Jordana Brewster, Diora Baird), find themselves at the mercy of the faux-sheriff, who blows away a female biker and, after glimpsing Dean's partially burned draft card, orders the three wreck-battered youths into his cruiser, while Chrissie watches helplessly from the cover of some nearby tall grass.She stows away in Monty's(Terrence Evans) tow truck, while Charlie and his adoptive brother, Tommy see to their new house guests...

"Okay! Okay! Tell Gallagher II he'll get his money!!"
At the Hewitt's place, Eric and Dean find themselves strung up in the barn, while Charlie gleefully mocks and berates them, partially smothering Eric with a plastic sheet, and billyclubbing the fuck out of conscientious objector, Dean, as he tries to accomplish some freedom-based push ups(as if he was reprising some drill sargeant character he previously portrayed in some other movie, I dunno).There's an attempted escape that nets Bailey a meathook in the tit-shelf, Dean, a bear-trapped foot, and Eric gets K.T.F.O.ed with a shotgun, while Chrissie has enlisted the help of Holden, the biker who's unknowingly looking for his dead old lady, and the unlikely pair pay the Hewitts a social call that night.Chrissie finds Eric strapped to a table with a few bits missing as Holden straddles Tommy's buzzsaw to a minced up end.With Chrissie hiding under the table, Tommy does Eric proper with his soon-to-be trademark implement, spraying her with his lifestuff before removing the boy's fac-piece and wearing it like a mask.Charlie remarks that he likes Tommy's new toy and new grill, before ordering him to hack off both of Monty's legs when they look uneven after an impromptu single leg chainsaw amputation.Chrissie gets herself caught, and finds herself the centerpiece of an insane dinner(oh, sweet originality) complete with human entrées, throats slashed with scissors, busted fronts, and a chainsaw impaling, before the desperate girl can escape the carnage in a car that's parked out front.As she's coming up on a state trooper and a citation he's pulled over, Leatherface inexplicably pops up in the rearview mirror, running Chrissie through at the labonza with his chainsaw from the backseat, you know, the one she apparently didn't hear him revving up back there, causing her to plough into the traffic on the roadside in a brutal crash, from which he emerges unscathed, to walk along down the scorching Texas highway with chainsaw in tow, as we hear the narrator(John "Night Court" Larroquette, again, nice touch) attribute some thirty murders to the Hewitts(Weren't they the Sawyers?), and utter the titular line in describing them.

"This is for Archie Bunker, ya draft dodgin' pinko!", sez Leatherpuss.
Of course, a new Chainsaw pic is in the works, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D, scheduled for release in January of '13, from a screenplay written by Adam Marcus, who you might remember as the director of Jason Goes to Hell:The Final Friday(1993), though I'm sure most choose to try and forget(good thing we'll be covering it next here at the Wop, huh, kiddies...), and featuring John "Grandpa" Dugan and Bill "Choptop" Moseley, as well as cameos by Gunnar Hansen and Marilyn Burns.As unnecessary as it undoubtedly is, it'll probably do well at the box office, and I'll eventually see it, too, no matter how much I might piss and moan about it along the way.As exhausted as the whole premise is by now, I still don't mind seeing it from time to time, whether by revisiting the original, one of my all-time faves, or by enduring the latest overhyped sludgefest bearing the TCM stamp and hoping it's not a total scareless waste of time, you know, kinda like Beginning ended up being.I've written entirely enough about it, already.One Wop.

S'alright 'face(Andrew Bryniarski), my attention walked out about ten minutes in.

"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?

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre Pt. 2"(1986)d/Tobe Hooper

My junior year in high school had to be pretty uneventful, since I don't remember much of it.A lot of ball-busting during classes followed by a lot of post-date blue balls from dating underclassmen chicks from rival area schools, maybe.Yin and Yang of the high school universe, I guess.One thing I do remember was how amped up I was for the long awaited sequel to Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only intensified by the more I read and saw about it; Hooper was again in the director's chair(we all know how sequels usually go when that duty gets passed off to somebody else) with a budget, Dennis Hopper, a long-time fave of mine in front of the camera, the splatter was to be handled by none other than Tom Savini, my long-standing childhood horror hero of heroes, and Leatherface was gonna be mincing up yuppies, for which I'd never held back one iota of deep-seated repugnance.What could possibly be better'n that?As I walked out of the theater, I remember being highly disappointed with the experience; cheated by the censors out of most the magnificent gore I was looking forward to, loathing Dennis Hopper's Lefty character like he was onions personified on the big screen(I hate onions btw), and lastly, wondering where the fuck the mad brilliance that screamed its way off of every frame in the original was...
As the years passed though, I found myself warming up to the production more and more, finding little things that I dug, the excellent soundtrack featuring Lords of the New Church, The Cramps, and Oingo Boingo, and even appreciating the dark humor that Hooper emphasized over horror this time around.Did I mention the equally beautiful and talented Caroline Williams?The girl's got legs for days and a throaty southern twang that's just hot.Wop approves.Ultimately, after the theater, two VHS releases, and a bare bones dvd, I finally got what I was asking for when MGM issued a special "Gruesome" edition disc with deleted scenes in 2007.I can say now, without a shred of doubt, this is a cult classic, indeed.

Look out!That blood is gonna overstate your pastel sweater!
It's broadcasting as usual for radio dj, "Stretch" Brock(Caroline Williams) until two drunken yuppies who've been abusing their call-in priviledges play chicken with the wrong monster pickup on a bridge.Hiding behind his hitchiking brother's corpse, now a gruesome puppet, on the roof of the truck, is Leatherface(Bill Johnson), who ruins the boys' evening with his trusty revving chainsaw, the vicious murders all captured on tape at the radio station.After seeing one of his newspaper articles, Stretch reaches out to Lefty Enright(Dennis Hopper),the vengeful uncle of two missing persons from a decade earlier(Sally and Franklin Hardesty from the original movie) he believes to be victims of the mysterious chainsaw killings occurring across the state of Texas, and he suggests that she play the tape live on the air.Meanwhile, she covers a Texas-Oklahoma Chili Cookoff, which is won for the second year in a row by Drayton Sawyer(Jim Siedow), who staunchly refuses to name his secret ingredients with good reason.When she finally plays the tape on her show, she's startled to find Chop Top(Bill Moseley), a 'Nam vet with a metal plate in his skull and twin brother to the Hitchhiker, hiding in the shadows as she's about to shut the station down for the night.He's soon joined by Leatherface, who traps her behind the metal door of a storage closet as her co-worker L.G. returns, only to be viciously pummelled by a pun-spewing, tack hammer-wielding Chop Top.When Leatherface saws his way into the closet, Stretch charms the pants off of him, and after he yanks his wankie(blech), he destroys everything in his path with his signature buzzsaw, save for his new gal pal.Believing that Bubba has done the dj in, Chop Top and sibling drag L.G.'s battered body back to their digs:a massive abandoned carnival ground strewn with human remains and strings of colored lights.

Stretch(Caroline Williams)is clearly impressed by the size of Bubba's(Bill Johnson)weapon.
Stretch follows the killers to their home, finding herself trapped there only to be further wooed by Leatherface, who puts the freshly removed face of her still breathing bud, L.G. over hers(!), clumsily dancing with her amidst a bevvy of slaughtered bodies.Love is a many splendored thing.She's finally captured by the Sawyers, who sit her down to a home-cooked plate fulla insanity then bent over a bushel to get head-whacked by the greatest killer of them all, Grandpa(Does any of this sound familiar to you?).Meanwhile, elsewhere on the compound, Lefty, screaming for vengeance like Rob Halford after discovering a Dear Bruce letter in his dressing room, decked out with three chainsaws, stumbles upon the skeletal remains of his nephew Franklin, still in his wheelchair.He chainsaws through a wall, dropping in on the Sawyers' festivities, and when Drayton offers to pay him off, Lefty chainsaws him in the keester(!) and frees Stretch.A buzzsaw battle of epic proportions ensues between the former Texas Ranger and the unemployed cattle slaughterer in the human skin mask, with Bubba taking a Poulan to the labonza.Drayton sets off a grenade while hiding under a table, apparently snuffing everyone but Stretch and Chop Top with the explosion.The two end up in a carved out rock tower overlooking the entire property, where Chop Top repeatedly slashes her with a straight razor until she stumbled upon a makeshift shrine where a mummified Grandma is kept, holding a signature chainsaw, which Stretch uses to dispatch the plate-headed goon, who's just cut his own throat several times to show he means business(!!).As the smoke clears, we see Stretch atop the tower imitating the swinging, spinning chainsaw dance Leatherface ended the first movie with.

Compared to the average Monteforte family reunion, these chappies are positively lucid.
Two noteworthy scenes that ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor involve Leatherface chainsawing a crowd of boisterous football fans in a parking garage, and movie patrons in a theater, to the glee of Joe Bob Briggs, cult reviewer/personality extraordinaire, who gives a signature review("Saw Fu!") of Bubba's bloody handiwork and the end of the sequence.There was also a scrapped alternate plotline where Lefty turns out to be Stretch's father.A lot sillier than they were gory, it's still cool to be able to finally see what you've been missing all these years.Looking at the film through more experienced eyes, and taking it as the black comedy it was intended to be, TCM2 is pretty enjoyable overall.The cast is solid, with great performances by the original cook, Jim Siedow, cult vet Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson as a new Leatherface, and even Hopper's turn as Lefty isn't nearly as abrasive as I once thought it was.Oh, did I mention Caroline Williams? She also gives a stellar performance here.Savini is at the top of his game, with clever gore set pieces that are sparingly used in the final cut.On the scale, this often hilarious sequel to one of the greatest horror movies ever made merits three big ones, and a firm recommendation.Love it!

TCM without a demented dinner scene? Not on yer meat, you bitch hogs!

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"(1974)d/Tobe Hooper

If you ask horror aficionados which movie tops their list of the greatest of all-time,chances are,the vast majority will cite tonight's entry(OR one we'll be looking at sometime next month)as the granddaddy of 'em all.Few films can boast of capturing real,honest to goodness terror within their frames,but if any have ever done so,this one has.So effectively,it would seem,that former college professor and director of tonight's feature,Tobe Hooper,has never been able to live up to it,or escape from the shadow of it.Even Gunnar "Leatherface" Hansen learned early on,that taking a girl to see his exploits on the big screen probably isn't the world's greatest idea for a first date(Lamberto Bava's Demoni(1985) was always my movie of choice,as many of you women lucky enough to have dated me out there can attest).Loosely based on the handiwork of the "Butcher of Plainfield",Wisconsin's infamous serial killer,Ed Gein,and inspired by the growing brutality of the changing culture of the seventies and governmental falsehoods heaped upon the unsuspecting populace.It stood as the single most successful independent film ever made,until Halloween dethroned it four years later.
My first exposure to tonight's review dates back to the pre-rental days of video,when twenty bucks of my allowance was spent buying a grainy unlabeled bootleg out of the back of a black van in Edwardsville(no lie!),and upon being popped into my eight hundred dollar wood grain top loader,instantly became a regularly watched favorite of me and the boys,with deadpan imitations of Edwin Neal and Jim Siedow not an unusual sound around my house.I can't remember ever seeing broad daylight so effectively used to evoke harrowing feelings of terror the way Hooper does here.And when the sun goes down,well that's another story.The finale has got to be one of the most memorably maddening experiences ever committed to celluloid,drawing reserved reviews of praise from critics and moviegoers alike.With a brilliant pre-credit sequence delivered by John "Night Court" Larroquette(!) scrolling upwards,nothing could have prepared us for the most bizzare crimes in the annals of American history that were to follow...

The Hitchhiker(Edwin Neal) sure knows how to break the ice on awkward van rides,or head cheese,Polaroids,gun powder,straight razors,and you.
Sally(Burns)and her yappy invalid brother,Franklin(Partain),drive across the state of Texas on a sweltering summer day with Jerry(Allen Danziger),Kirk(William Vail),and Pam(McMinn) in a van to investigate recent news reports of grave robbery and corpse defilement in state cemeteries,and see if their grandfather's plot is among those that have been tampered with.On the way to a family property with a much needed swimming hole afterwards,the group stops to pick up a weird hitchhiker(Neal)along the road,who leeringly rambles about his family's history as slaughterhouse workers,the pros and cons of bolt gun steer execution,and his brother's head cheese,before taking Franklin's pocket knife and slicing his own palm open with it.He then takes a Polaroid of the fat chatterbox on wheels and demands five dollars for it.When Franklin declines to pay,the hitchhiker blows the picture up with a small pile of gun powder,and cuts Franklin's forearm with a straight razor before being forced out of the van,and giving half hearted chase,kicking the vehicle and giving the terrified youths raspberries.They stop at a gas station,where the proprietor(Siedow) tells them he's out of gas,then feeds them his own barbeque.They decide to drive ahead to the Hardesty property,returning to the gas station after the fuel truck makes its delivery.After arriving at the abandoned house and discovering the watering hole has dried up,Kirk and Pam decide to walk to a nearby house and ask the residents for gas.After disgusting his girlfriend with a human tooth he finds on the front porch,he goes inside,only to have the bejeezus clobbered out of his domepiece with a sledgehammer by a hulking retard in an apron,wearing a human skin mask.When Kirk doesn't return,Pam enters and stumbles into a room mobbed with piles of animal and human bones,some of which have been fashioned into garish,macabre furniture.As she tries to escape,she is chased down and dragged back inside by the lumbering murderer(Hansen),and slammed onto a meathook,where she is forced to watch as Leatherface perforates her dead boyfriend with a smoking chainsaw on a table in front of her disbelieving eyes.

Betcha didn't read this in your horoscope,Pam(Terri McMinn)!
As the sun begins to set upon the Hardesty house,Jerry sets out to find Kirk and Pam,who've never returned from their attempted swimming excursion.After finding their blanket outside,Jerry enters the neighboring house,only to discover a half dead,bluish Pam inside a freezer,before getting brained by Leatherface's mallet.As night descends on Sally and her brother,they take a lone flashlight into the thick brush in attempt to find their friends.As Franklin calls out their names,he's interrupted by Leatherface,who springs out of the blackness,bissecting him in his wheelchair with his revving chainsaw to the horror of his screaming sister.Sally runs from the squealing monster,unwittingly into the killer's house,and is greeted upstairs by the inert remains of an elderly couple propped up in easy chairs,before jumping out a second story window,and running the entire distance to the gas station they'd visited earlier,with Leatherface close behind.The cook reassures the hysterical girl at first,but then clobbers her with a broom handle and hogties her in a sack,throwing his acquisition into his truck and driving off into the night.Outside the house,he picks up the hitchhiker,and then chastises he and his younger brother,Leatherface,for what he's done to the door with his chainsaw(!).Inside,Sally comes to,to find herself in the middle of an ongoing nightmare,bound to a chair made of human bones,at a dinner table surrounded by bickering,hooting and hollering cannibals.Leatherface has donned a mask made of a girl's face,and appropriately applied makeup to it,before he and his brother fetch their elderly,vampiric grandfather(John Dugan) to kill the girl,as he was,afterall,the best killer there ever was.They hold the screaming captive's head over a metal apple barrel,but the ancient psychopath is too weak to wield the mallet,and drops it repeatedly.While they bicker back and forth,Sally manages to free herself and jump through a window.As she runs,the hitchhiker sweepingly slashes her with his straight razor,but unknowingly strolls into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler,which runs him over and kills him.Leatherface attacks the truck cab,but the driver throws a monkey wrench,hitting him in the head,buying Sally enough time to jump into the flatbed of a passing pick up truck.She giggles hysterically,in shock,as the sight of a furious Leatherface,angrily spinning swinging his chainsaw in circles in the middle of the highway,gets further and further away.

Leatherface(Gunnar Hansen) gives a Poulan-derived STFU to mouthy cripple,Franklin(Paul Partain).
Tonight's entry spawned several sequels,a terrible Michael Bay remake,and a subsequent prequel,none of which ever recaptured the greatness of the original(big surprise).Hooper followed it up with Eaten Alive(1977),Salem's Lot(1979),The Funhouse(1981),Poltergeist(1982),Lifeforce(1985),Invaders from Mars(1986),and the first sequel in 1986(all of which range from decent to excellent),before falling off big time.Burns,the lovely Pennyslvanian,played Linda Kasabian in the tele-picture Helter Skelter(1976),and genre fare like Hooper's Eaten Alive and Future Kill(1985).Neal has worked steadily ever since in films and television in everything from Power Rangers to Nick Palumbo's excellent Murder Set Pieces(2004),and is a real pisser to talk to.Hansen has also kept busy in mosty genre fare,with roles in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers(1985) and the aforementioned Murder Set Pieces on his impressive resume.You can find most of these rascals at horror conventions on a lucky weekend.We depart the classics for now and set our sights back on the familiar shores of mediocrity in July,with an occasional masterpieces thrown in for good measure,as usual.TCM stands as either number one or two of all-time,depending on my mood at the time of query,and for that impressive status,a perfect scale rating is bequeathed upon it,and a full recommendation from your(not so)humble N...

Sally(Marilyn Burns),up to her glutes in piles of animal and human bones,wonders where her hosts buy their curtains.