Franchises: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

As I mentioned back in my review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, I bought this movie along with that one and so, I basically watched them both back to back. Given how I tend to watch new movies, I more than likely either watched this later that same day or, at most, the day after I saw the second one. Anyway, like I said in my review of it, I wasn't quite sure what to make of the second film after I watched it because of how freaking crazy it was. Also, although I appreciate them now, the black comedy and satirical tone of that film was rather off-putting, especially after I had seen both the original and the remake many times before. This film felt more like my cup of tea, especially since, as I mentioned in my previous review, I had heard two classmates that were rather snobbish about films say that they really liked the original movie and this one but hated the second one. That, coupled with a few other reviews I had read, gave me the impression that this one was generally more well thought of than its predecessor (however, as we'll see, it's kind of the opposite actually). Plus, everything I read made it feel like this one was more in line with the original in terms of tone than the second film was. I had actually seen the VHS for this movie in the horror section of my local video rental store and it was rather creepy looking, with Leatherface in a dark purple mask and the blade of his big chainsaw coming up from the bottom. Basically, after the initial mixed reaction I had with the second film, I went into this one feeling that it could possibly deliver the goods in terms of what I wanted in this type of movie. And I came out of the movie feeling quite satisfied. It was no masterpiece or anything but I really, really liked the direction this movie decided to take after the second film and I enjoyed it a lot more. While I now hold the second film in just as much regard as this one, I thought and I still do think that, not counting the remake or its prequel, that this was the actual sequel in the franchise that came the closest to being like the original film.

A California couple who are traveling through Texas on their way to Florida in order to drop off a car they borrowed from a close relative and then go their separate ways. However, their trip soon turns macabre when they pass through a security checkpoint at a site where the police are excavating a horrific mass grave. The next day, they come across a small gas station run a very disturbed and perverted man and they also meet a hitchhiking cowboy who asks for a ride but, due to their tight schedule, they're forced to turn him down. After a fight breaks out between the cowboy and the station owner, which leads to the latter seemingly shooting the former with a shotgun, the couple take off in a panic and take a route that the cowboy had earlier said would be a lot quicker. However, they become lost in the backwoods and soon fall prey to Leatherface and his cannibal family. Now, with the two of being hunted, it's up to a survivalist, who has accidentally become involved in the whole affair, to save the couple before they become the main course of the family's next meal.

A big question that often arises concerning this movie is where exactly it falls in the series' timeline. Is it a reboot that takes place in its own continuity or is it, in fact, the second sequel to the original movie? Most people would simply look at the film's subtitle being The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III as proof that it does indeed follow the two films that came before it but it's not quite that simple. We definitely know that it follows the events of the original film since they're mentioned in the opening crawl and so is the eventual fate of Sally Hardesty. So the question really should be, "Does this follow the second film?" That's a trickier one to answer. On the one hand, the opening crawl says that Sally died in 1977, just four years after the events of the original film, whereas the crawl for the second film simply said that she sank into catatonia; as we'll get into shortly, Leatherface is a much different character here than he was previously, especially in regards to the second movie; there is no plausible way to explain how Leatherface survived getting a chainsaw shoved all the way through him and then being caught in a big explosion that apparently killed everyone else that was involved; and, going outside the realm of the movie, screenwriter David J. Schow had said that he was told by New Line Cinema to disregard the second film. However, on the other hand, there are some references to it, the most blatant being that Leatherface gets a new chainsaw with the saying The Saw is Family engraved on the blade and, as we know, Drayton said that in the second movie. Plus, Grandpa is sitting at the family table, although he's now a corpse, possibly after being killed by the aforementioned climactic explosion of the previous film. One other reference that most probably miss is that Caroline Williams, Stretch from the previous movie, appears briefly at the mass grave as a reporter and Williams as well as director Jeff Burr have said that this character is meant to be Stretch. There was a moment in the second film that suggested that Stretch aspired to be a reporter some day(which could have also been what she meant when told Lefty that her involvement in this story was her chance to do something real with herself) and Williams has said that, after the events of the second film, Stretch eventually did become a reporter and her presence here was to meant to say that she had taken it upon herself to track down the family. So, exactly how this film fits in context with the other movies is a little tricky to figure out. It's possible to view it both as the second sequel to the original and as a reboot like Halloween H2O that follows the original but ignores what happened in-between. Personally, I've never tried to rattle my brains over it. Since the opening crawl, as well as the story and characters, of the next film complicate matters even further, I just simply view the movie as what the title says it is: the third entry in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.

After the release of the second film, New Line Cinema, who had distributed the original film in a re-release in the early 80's, picked up the rights to the franchise and, in an attempt to follow up on the huge success they had had with the Nightmare on Elm Street films, intended to turn Leatherface into a full-blown franchise character, which is why his name is the real title of the movie. Apparently, Tobe Hooper was going to be involved in this film in some capacity. I don't know if he was ever slated to direct but, at the very least, he submitted a story treatment to the executives at New Line. Eventually, though, he left the project altogether to direct Spontaneous Combustion which, as we all know, was the better choice on his part (and if you've read my review of that film, you'd know I'm being sarcastic in every sense of the word). Hooper himself has said in recent years that he never intended to make any more after the second movie but I'm not sure how truth I put in that, seeing as how that sounds like something somebody would say when they were originally going to be involved in a sequel but bowed out. In any case, New Line went through a whole line of directors, including Peter Jackson and effects-guy Tom Savini (whose remake of Night of the Living Dead would be released the same year that this movie was). Eventually, the studio chose Jeff Burr, who had just finished directing The Stepfather II. Now, here's where I have a very personal attachment to this film. Jeff Burr is a very good friend of mine. I met him at a convention in Pikeville, Kentucky in 2010 and, due to our common interests in films, we've remained close friends ever since and communicate all the time through e-mails. He's a very good guy and is as modest as you can get, often feeling that he's made more mistakes in his directing career than actual successes (which I, personally, don't agree with). I felt I should bring that up and so, while I will try to be objective towards this film, it is important to know that I do have personal biases when it comes to it as well. In any case, like Hooper before him, Jeff (I will continue to refer to him by first name throughout) would find himself battling the production company behind the film and, while I do like the film as I've said, his original vision for it would eventually be compromised both by the studio and the ratings board.

One of the weak points of the movie for me are two of the three lead characters: Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler). They're not loathsome or annoying and Hodge and Butler give decent enough performances but I don't find them to be that compelling either. It's weird that they are a couple because, for the longest time, I swear I thought that they were brother and sister instead of boyfriend and girlfriend. I guess it's because they never kiss or anything and since they say they're dropping off the car they're driving at a relative's place, I assumed they meant a relative to the both of them, which would make them siblings. However, according to all the synopses I've read, they're a couple so I guess I'm just not very perceptive. In any case, the two of them are in the middle of some sort of quarrel (exactly what is never explained) and they're going to go their separate ways once they reach Florida. Fortunately, they don't bicker about whatever's happened between them to the point where you wish they'd shut up. It's simply established at the beginning of the movie and, since it's not important to the overall plot, it's not dwelt upon afterward. In any case, both of the characters have their good points. Michelle is the type who likes to avoid trouble, like when she encourages Ryan not to get into an arguement with this police officer who tells him that what happened at the crime scene they pass by is none of his business. Also, she has a sympathetic side, which is shown several times. One is after they accidentally hit an armadillo. Not wanting to leave it there to suffer, she tries to put it out of its misery but can't bring herself to do so and, therefore, Ryan has to. Later, when they get to the gas station, she's still upset about it, to which Tex, the hitchhiking cowboy, says, "There's roadkill all over Texas. It's the natural order of things." Another sign of her sympathy is when Tex asks for a ride and while Ryan turns him down, she says, "Maybe." After they spot Tex on the road again after he was supposedly killed by Alfredo, the gas station owner, and they meet Benny, the survivalist, she becomes concerned for Tex and asks Benny to try to find him. And, finally, when she's looking for help and wanders into a house she finds in the middle of the woods, she tries to comfort a sobbing little girl that she finds inside. However, her sympathy gets her in trouble in this case when the girl is revealed to be a member of the family. Like Sally did with Drayton in the original film, Michelle tries to reason with the mother of the family to make them stop but this proves to be useless. I do feel really bad for Michelle because she's gagged and her hands are actually nailed to the arms of a chair instead of simply being tied. That shot does make you wince. Like Sally, she has enough initiative and sense to get herself out of there when given the opportunity, despite how painful it is pull her hands off of the nails. And while I do wish that she had done something to help Benny in his fight with Leatherface in the marsh, like bashing Leatherface in the head with a rock as she does a few minutes later, she makes up for it when she and Benny are ambushed by Alfredo at the end. She fights with Alfredo, bites and punches him, and eventually blows him away with a shotgun. That's awesome. To be fair, my only real complaint about Michelle is that she tends not to listen to Ryan, even when he's making a good point, like when he's telling her that he needs the flashlight so he can properly change their car's tire but she keeps shining it into the desert and when Ryan tells her to stop so he can finish fixing the tire, which he couldn't because they were ambushed by Leatherface but she refuses to. I know she was scared but still, he had a good point. And she yelled out for Benny at one point when she knows that Leatherface is out there, which was stupid on her part. Didn't make me hate her but that was still dumb. So, all in all, Michelle isn't a bad character but she's not one of my favorite horror movie heroines either.

I would have to say that Ryan is my favorite of the two. William Butler always have a very likable presence to him and he brings that here. He's a bit of a smartass, with his comment of, "I didn't want to be on TV anyway," after that cop tells him what happened at the crime scene is none of his business but he also mainly a likable jokester. At one point, he says, "Here we are," and when Michelle asks, "Where?" he responds, "The middle of nowhere." I also like his comment about the gas station's restroom after he uses it. He tells, "Go ahead. It'll change your life." I also feel that Ryan is more practical than Michelle. He has no problem with putting the injured armadillo out of its misery when Michelle is unable to. He's not sadistic or uncaring about it, he just has to do what he has to do. And when Tex keeps trying to get a ride from the two of them, he says, "Look, I understand. You're trying to get home. But, listen: we can't help you." Some might see that as kind of dickish on Ryan's part but he had already politely told Tex that they don't have time to take him where he needs to go and when he keeps pushing it, Ryan felt he had to be a little more stern to get the message through Tex's head. While he does temporarily lose it after they're first attacked, you also have to like Ryan for keeping a relatively cool head for the most part and being an ever faithful boyfriend when they're being hunted. He helps Michelle get up and get moving in order to metabolize the drowsiness-inducing pain-killers than Benny gave them out of their systems and when they're attacked again by Leatherface and Ryan gets his foot caught in a beartrap, he tells to Michelle to forget about trying to help him and run so she won't get killed too. He sacrifices himself so his girlfriend can get away, which is commendable. Unfortunately for Ryan, he isn't killed right away by Leatherface and is later brought to the family's house where he's hung upside down like a slab of meat for a while and is eventually killed with a sledge to the head. Fortunately, most of the family is killed by Benny and Michelle before he can be turned into barbecue and least Ryan went out as an attempted hero (even though it didn't work since Michelle got captured) but still, poor William Butler never survives these types of movies. (He was killed by Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, he was killed by Freddy Krueger in an episode of Freddy's Nightmares, and he was killed by Leatherface's family here. As Butler himself said, the only one of the major horror icons he was never killed by was Michael Myers.)

Michelle and Ryan may not be the strongest lead characters in a horror movie but, fortunately, Benny, the survivalist played by Ken Foree, picks up the slack. He's by far my favorite character in the film. He gets caught up in this madness purely by accident when he and the two kids almost run into each other while he's coming back from a survival retreat and while he's not too happy about his truck being totalled in the crash, he doesn't hesistate in helping the injured Michelle and Ryan. Naturally, he's skeptical about Ryan's claims that they're being stalked by some insane people, one of whom is carrying a chainsaw, feeling that it's just a delusion caused by his dazed condition but when he sees enough evidence that they're telling the truth, he knows exactly what to do and goes back to his truck to get some weapons. Granted, he should have been suspicious when this odd man with a hooked hand just shows up out of nowhere but it doesn't take him long to realize that he's part of it and he attempts to load his gun. He soon ends up getting attacked by Leatherface but is saved by the intervention of a survivor of the family's carnage. One thing that's great about Benny is that he's ever grateful when someone saves his life and, also, he becomes a Rambo-like badass. He's walking around, managing to avoid the traps that the family has set up around the woods, punches out Alfredo, saves Michelle from the family by blowing most of them away, beats up Tex and sets him on fire, and has a scuffle with Leatherface in the marsh. He also has some great lines, like when he sees Leatherface sitting in his room in the house and, upon seeing the bones and stuff lying around, he says, "What kind of sick shit is this?" When he's fighting with Tex, he says, "The fuck is wrong with you people?! Why don't you leave us alone?!" When Tex answers, "We're hungry," Benny yells, "You ever heard of pizza?!" And, even though they're not much, I like it when Benny yells, "Motherfucker!" right before he saves Michelle and, before he lights Tex on fire, he says, "You're toast, fuck!" Benny is a great character but, even though I like that he lived, it's one of those situations where you go, "Wait, that makes no sense." We saw Leatherface put his head right to the blade of the running chainsaw and yet, he suddenly shows up with barely a cut on his forehead! Jeff himself says that your bullshit alert should go crazy at that point. The reason for this nonsensical ending is because the executives at New Line asked for the bleaker original ending to be changed and, even though it doesn't make sense, for Benny's life to be spared since test audiences really liked him. Like I said, I have such mixed feelings about because, on the one hand, I'm glad Benny survived but, on the other hand, it's just preposterous. Oh, well. Despite that, Benny is an awesome character and is worth rooting for.

There are a couple of aspects about the family in this film that I really like. For one, I like that by this point, they've become much more technologically efficient in their methods of trapping and killing people. They've got traps set in the woods around their house such as beartraps and one elaborate trap that swings around and impales the victim against a tree with sharp, bladed sticks. And instead of bludgeoning people themselves with a sledgehammer, they've now got this elaborate piece of equipment that hangs people upside down like a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse and a system where this sledgehammer comes down and whacks the person in the head, spilling a lot of blood. There's even little stuff like when Leatherface whips out this tiny little cutting weapon to get Benny off of him when the two of them are fighting at one point. They've also got an elaborate setup of radios in the house (I think those were radios) as well as a gigantic lighting system that illuminates their entire front yard. And they now will even use their truck to stalk and run people down, something that the members of the family never did before (although they probably could have when given the opportunity). Basically, this side of the Sawyer family is much more technologically proficient and it increases their chances of catching victims. (Although I doubt Drayton and the other family members who hated the new technology that was installed in the slaughterhouse would be too happy about it. Maybe that's why they were never mentioned before; Drayon refused to have anything to do with them when he found out about the advanced methods they were using.)

The other aspect I like about the family as a whole in this film is that they really do feel like a family. The cannibalism aside, you actually do get a feeling that this is a close-knit bunch, rather than it just being an angry patriarch who beats on and verbally abuses his younger siblings. It helps that there's actually a mother figure as well as a younger daughter and the characters of Tex and Tinker do really feel like close, working brothers to me. And, while there are little quarrels that sometimes escalate rather extremely, like when Tinker throws Leatherface's new walkman into the oven and Leatherface, in a rage, forces him to get it out, there's no over the top physical and verbal abuse like the stuff that Drayton dished out to his brothers. The moment that brings the feeling of family home for me is when the little girl asks if she can pull the cord that will make the sledgehammer hit Ryan in the head. Tex picks her up, puts her on the counter, shows her how to do so, and as she does it, Leatherface and the mother watch on like you would expect to see in a real family. It's sick but it also shows the bond these characters have with each other, as does when the mother blows a kiss at one point. And when Benny attacks them when Leatherface is about to kill Michelle, they're very distressed about the mother getting shot as well as what happens to Tinker, something that you never saw at all in the previous films. So, despite the gruesome ways that they fill their bellies, there is love amongst this section of the Sawyer clan and, for me, up until the remake and its prequel, this is the closest the cannibal family ever came to actually being a family.

It's interesting that Peter Jackson was once on tap to direct this film since Viggo Mortensen plays one of the lead members of the family, Tex. He's both the most normal, good-looking family member and yet, at the same time, he's sort of like Drayton from the first two films. When Michelle and Ryan first meet him at the gas station, he comes across as kindly, charming, and even helpful, telling Ryan that a route that isn't on their map is a lot faster than the one that is. But, when he shows back up at the family's house, he proves how sadistic and cruel he really is. In fact, he may be the cruelest member of this clan. He nails Michelle's hands to the arms of a chair and threatens to put one in her head if she doesn't shut up, later puts a gag in her mouth and tapes her up with the help of the little girl, tells Ryan, while he's barely alive and hanging upside down, that if he needs anything, "Just twitch," and while fighting with Benny, he continuously taunts him. That's another thing that Tex does: he loves to dish out some verbal torture, which is another thing that makes him a little like Drayton, although he does it to his victims instead of to his siblings. When he grabs Michelle at the house, he says to the little girl, "They just keep getting dumber and dumber,"; while nailing Michelle's hands, he says, "So, how you like Texas?"; while stripping Ryan down, he makes fun of his under-shorts; and when they find out that Ryan will supply them with enough meat to last them for a while, Tex tells Michelle, "Seems we get to wait a spell on you. Maybe we should let Junior (Leatherface) have some fun. He always does make the prettiest damn babies." Finally, even though he's eerily calm during a lot of this, you do see just how unstable Tex really is when Tinker calls him Eddie instead of Tex and he angrily slams a cleaver down on the table and says, "I wish you'd call me Tex. I told you." And yet, despite how sadistic and unstable he is, he clearly loves his family, with how he lets the little girl finish Ryan off and also due to his interactions with his brothers. At least that's one good point that you can give him (if you can call that a good point).

The same time we meet Tex, the most normal looking of the Sawyer clan, we also meet the most out there member, Alfredo (Tom Everett). Whereas Tex is sort of like Drayton, Alfredo is a combination of Drayton and the hitchhiker from the original film, in that he runs the gas station but unlike Drayton, who managed to put on a sympathetic public face, Alfredo acts unstable and crazy all the time. You learn that, like most other members of the family, he used to work at a slaughterhouse but was put out of a job by automation (another callback to the hitchhiker). Although apparently, he lost his mind a whole lot more than the rest of the family. He has sort of the same weird speech pattern that the hitchhiker did and he also likes to take pictures of people and demand money for them, saying, "It's a good picture." He tends to ramble on about stuff like the hitchhiker and Chop Top as well, only much more so than they ever did. He's a bit of an outcast of the family in that they keep him at the gas station all the time, they make him dispose of the remains of their victims, a task that he complains about endlessly, he never shows up for dinner (although one could argue that he was on his way after throwing the body parts into the marsh and Benny interrupted him) and the only family member he interacts with is Tex at the gas station. He just seems like he's full of bitterness and contempt for the rest of them, talking a lot of trash about them when they're not around, even going so far as to make up a song about how much he hates being ordered around them by them. And yet, despite all of this, he gleefully takes part in their trapping of victims, like how he happy runs around, shooting his shotgun in the air, when Leatherface drives off to hunt Michelle and Ryan down, yelling, "It's Armageddon! It's Armageddon, you bitch! Goddammit! The trap is sprung now!" So he does get some enjoyment out of what the family does. And finally, I have to comment on how he's the most sexually deprayed member of the family so far. He runs the entire gambit, from cutting up dirty picture in magazines and pasting them on the walls of his office, saying off-color remarks to Michelle when he's filling the car's tank up ("I'm gonna service you real good, babe"), and peeping at Michelle while she's in the bathroom to more hideous stuff like kissing the decapitated head of woman and saying, "We had some good times, didn't we?", which suggests that he's engaged in necrophilia before, and saying that he had a girl in Tupelo who had to, "go down below," which suggests that he's murdered other women outside of Texas. This sick pervert is finally killed by Michelle at the end of the movie. I like the last exchange between the two of them. "What are the chances a brainless bitch like you knows how to use that thing? Hmm?!" "Pretty goddamn good, you backwoods motherfucker!", and then Michelle blows him away.

Given how everybody felt that Leatherface was a pussy in the second movie, and since this was supposed to be the start of a new franchise starring him, the filmmakers felt that they'd better make him into a more threatening character and so, to that end, R.A. Mihailoff plays him with a lot more anger and rage than Gunnar Hansen and Bill Johnson before him. This Leatherface isn't the wimpering, cowering man-child who, while dangerous to the family's prey, was terrified of his older siblings and let them beat on him and order him around. This guy isn't scared of anything, is much more intentionally fierce when attacking victims, and, as Tinker says, is a bit hard to control and keep in line. This Leatherface also doesn't take any crap from his brothers. While he initially slinks down in shame when Tinker admonishes him for not catching Benny, when Tinker throws the walkman that he took from Ryan into the oven, Leatherface grabs him and forces him to stick his good hand inside and pull it out. On top of that, Leatherface now knows how to drive a truck, something that I doubt the mentally challenged creature from the first two movies would have known how to do. That's what I meant earlier when I said that Leatherface's characterization here makes it a little difficult to accept that this is the same character who was in the first two films. It is hard to imagine that character doing things like this. But, there are two things that I use to try to rationalize it. First, Jeff and the other filmmakers have said that if, in the first films, Leatherface had the mindset of a frightened child, here he's more of a rebellious, out of control teenager. So take that piece of information from the filmmakers themselves and juxtapose it with what happened to the character in the previous film: he felt his first sexual kicks when he met Stretch. Maybe this sexual awakening in his retarded, childlike mind eventually stirred something up in there and led to his mindset growing into that of an angry, hormonal teenager. In other words, maybe it allowed him to grow some balls so to speak.

Not only is Leatherface fiercer and smarter in this film, like I said, but he's also more sadistic. When he kills Sara, the only person who was able to escape from the family, he doesn't just simply gut her with the chainsaw. He lures her into the spot where he wants to kill her, grabs her, slams her up against a tree, and then takes the chainsaw to her. Later on, when he's about to kill Michelle with his new saw, his doesn't do it right away but actually holds it in front of her for a little bit before finally lunging towards her, as if he really wanted her to know that she was about die and how he was going to kill her before he actually did it. There's also a sick, sexual perversion to Leatherface here that's much different from the innocent, curious mindset of the man-child who had just discovered arousal in the previous film. As if the idea of Leatherface having sex and apparently siring a daughter isn't disgusting enough, he also seems to be a sexual deviant. Look at the way he looks at Michelle when Tex suggests that maybe they should let him have some "fun." You can't see his facial expressions or eyes behind the mask at that angle but that stare says it all. He has really bad plans in store for her. Even worse is that we're told that Leatherface loves the private parts and that, "We knows what to do with them parts." When you take into account that Leatherface was about to kill Michelle after we've heard all this nasty sex talk, it's not too difficult to think that he may intend to engage in necrophilia as well as do "things" with her private parts. (I think Leatherface needs to quit hanging out with Alfredo. Also, does anybody else feel like they need to take a shower after reading that sick stuff I just wrote because I do. I may need to scrub my brain as well.) And yet, despite how much different of a character he is here, there are still signs of the childlike mindset that Leatherface used to have, like how he wimpers to Mama Sawyer after Tinker gives him back his now melted walkman or, in one of my favorite moments, he plays a word game on this little computer-like device and keeps typing that an image of a clown that he's shown is food even though the thing tells him several times that he's wrong. (You have to love how he becomes more and more frustrated each time he's told that he's wrong, eventually banging the table with his fist in anger.)

While I still the masks that Leatherface wore in the original film, especially the "kill-mask," were the creepiest, I think there's a really sick, twisted quality to the one he wears here that makes it probably my second favorite. It looks a lot more real to me than the one in the second film for one. It's hard to describe but it has a moist quality as well as a crudeness to it to where I can buy that it is sewn from various different faces. Again, it's hard to put into words but if you've seen the movie, then maybe you know what I mean. It also helps that the closeups of his face, and there are a lot of them, are quite nasty and creepy-looking, particularly when you can see Leatherface's ugly teeth and chapped, diseased lips up close as well. Plus, R.A. Mihailoff's facial expressions behind the mask are very effective as well. And also in this film, we actually get to see a montage of Leatherface making his mask, something we haven't seen yet up to this point. We see him kill a girl with a sledgehammer and then, after flaying her face off-camera, begins cutting it up, getting rid of some of the excess moisture by dabbing it with a towel, and then sewing it. Since the face was so small and he cut bits of it up, we can safely assume that it really was one of several faces that he sewed into one whole mask. While not done to the point where you can't watch it, it's a grisly montage nevertheless and, being the first scene in the movie, it does a good job in setting the tone. And I also have to comment on the new silver and gold chainsaw that Tinker makes for Leatherface. That thing is pretty damn cool, with its shiny, chromed blade with The Saw is Family inscribed on it and its golden body and handle with the sharp points going parallel to the blade. It's the weapon than any chainsaw-wielding maniac would love to have at his disposal. It's just a shame that it isn't used for any kills except for Benny's supposed death, which you barely seen anything of, and it never appears again in any future films either.

The member of the family that got them hooked on using more advanced methods to catch and kill their prey is Tinker (Joe Unger). He has a real affinity for technology and machines, constantly saying that, "Technology is our friend," and, at one point, saying, "We got the means, we got the machines." He loves technology so much that he actually made it part of his body, putting a big metal hook in place of his right hand when he lost it (whether he lost his hand by accident or did it on purpose is never made clear though). Other than his role of introducing technology to his family, Tinker doesn't do anything that important in the film though. He almost runs over Benny when he first meets him, helps Tex hang Ryan upside down, gives Leatherface his new chainsaw, and, as I described earlier, tries to give him a lesson in discipline that goes very bad for him (the latter are probably his most notable parts of the film). He also says something that suggests that there's an underlying reason why Tex doesn't like to be called by his real name of Eddie. After Tex says, "I wish you'd call me Tex. I told you," Tinker pats his brother on the back and says, "I'm sorry, boy. Goddamit, I'm sorry." Nothing more is made of it after that but it makes me wonder why Tex has such a problem with being called Eddie. And we learn from the not so PC stuff that he calls Benny that Tinker is a racist (I would write what he says but I'm afraid I might get some angry comments over it). By the end of the movie, it's not made clear whether Tinker died or not. He gets shoot up by Benny but the only injuries we see are two of the fingers on his left hand getting shot off as well as one of his ears. The last we see of Tinker is him sitting on the floor, telling Tex to, "Go get the meat!" His last line is, "I'll be in Hell for breakfast," suggesting that he was fatally wounded after all. Since we don't see him again after that, I think it's safe to assume that he did die shortly afterward.

The idea of there being a 9 to 10 year-old girl amongst the family (Jennifer Banko) and that she's as sadistic and twisted as the rest of them is a disturbing thought in and of itself but that she's supposed to be Leatherface's daughter, possibly conceived from the rape of a past female captive, as well makes it even worse. They never actually say that she is his daughter but there are subtle hints, like when the mother-figure of the family tells her to go wash up for dinner. She looks at Leatherface, who nods his head and kisses her before sending her off to do so (honestly, I always thought that just meant that Leatherface is a member of the family that she's particularly fond of). Also, when Tex tells Michelle that they're thinking about letting Leatherface have some "fun" with her, he adds, "He does make the prettiest damn babies." Whether or not she is Leatherface's daughter, there's no doubt that, as young as she is, she's a very malevolent individual. When Michelle first comes across her, she acts like a scared little girl in order to gain Michelle's sympathy and, before Michelle knows what hit her, she stabs her with a sharp object and, while operating the mouth of her doll (which I thought just looked like a skeleton but, apparently, it's actually meant to be the remains of an infant, adding a horrific new dimension to the family and her in particular), she says, "Yakkity-yack, don't talk back!" in a growly little voice. She also laughs when Tex grabs Michelle from behind and takes her away (we then see that her room is filled with bones). While the reason that the family has resorted to cannibalism is that they have no other way to get food, to the little girl, who has been around this stuff from the beginning of her life, it's simply a second nature that she doesn't question. When Michelle asks the family why they're doing this, the little girl matter-of-factly says, "Because if you don't poke 'em, then they don't leak, and if they don't leak, we can't feed Grandpa. Silly!" Not only does she view her family's ways in that manner but they've taught her to take pleasure in killing people, which she does very much so when she pulls the rope that makes the sledgehammer bash Ryan in the head. She also enjoys watching her family members attempt to kill other people, like when she's looking out the window and going, "Whack! Whack! Whack!" while watching Tex and Benny fight. In the actual film, her fate is never revealed but in the original ending, it's revealed that she's been picked up by the police, although whether or not she's been arrested is made unclear since she's not handcuffed.

Finally, we have Miriam Byrd-Nethery as Mama Sawyer, the true head of the household. She's an elderly woman who is confined to a wheelchair and has to be speak with the use of an electronic voice box. As I said earlier, while she's like Drayton in that she's the actual head of the family in this film, she shows a lot of love and affection for them all instead of physically and verbally abusing them like Drayton always did. She does complain a little bit when they're making a lot of noise in the kitchen when she first appears and does tell Leatherface to take get his new chainsaw off of her cutting board but she never becomes screaming and hateful towards them. However, she makes it clear that she has no sympathy for the people who fall prey to her family. When Michelle pleads with her to make her sons let her go, she tells Michelle that if she doesn't shut her mouth, she'll shut it for her. Later on, she tells Michelle that Leatherface loves, "them private parts," and that she cut her own off years ago. She also says that she did the same to Grandpa! (Maybe that's why Grandpa quit his job at the slaughterhouse and didn't give a crap in the previous films. She took his privates! He had nothing else to live for! Although, I do wonder how she's related to Grandpa. Is she his daughter or his wife? Heck, knowing this sick clan, she may have been both. And if that's the case, then who was that mummified woman in the attic in the original film?) When Benny saves Michelle, Mama is the one who is undeniably killed in the attack. She gets shot to pieces and the shock of her getting shot causes Tinker to get shot as well.

One final character that I'll mention here is Sara (Toni Hudson), the sole survivor of an attack by the family. I'll say right now that I'm not a great lover of this character. Granted, she does save Benny from Leatherface early on, as well as give him the lighter that he eventually uses to kill Tex, and I do get that what has happened to her has left her half-crazed (her sister is the woman whom Leatherface murdered at the beginning of the film and whose face he sewed into his mask; she watched the whole thing through the window) but, in the small part of the movie that she's in, she does nothing but annoy me. The way that she talks, gestures, and moves just gets on my nerves. Again, I understand why she's acting that way but all it does is get on my nerves. The fact that she gets killed by doing the typical dumb horror movie cliche of going off to investigate a strange noise didn't endear her to me either. I know you're supposed to sympathize with Sara but she was a character that did little other than get on my nerves.

I've always felt that the look and tone of this film is a middle-ground between that of the original and the second one. While it's shot in 35mm like the second film, I think it has a bit of the rawness and crude quality that the original had. What I'm getting at is that, because of its tone, the second one had a hyper-realism look to the deaths as well as the settings and the film itself. This film to me is what the original would have felt like if Tobe Hooper had shot it on normal 35mm instead of 16mm. But this movie also has a slightly nastier and sleazier quality to it that the original didn't have. While the original wasn't exactly prudish, there's some stuff in this movie that can make you feel positively soiled. I've already described how much more sexually deviant Leatherface is in this movie as well as the talk about private parts that Mama Sawyer gives and how Alfredo is a truly disgusting individual in the way he talks about women, the pornographic pictures has on the walls of his office at the gas station, and the possible references to necrophilia, rape, and murder that he makes. That's stuff that would make any exploitation filmmaker proud. While the violence in the movie was severely neutered before its release, it's still much more gruesome than the original was, with Leatherface making his mask at the beginning, Michelle's hands getting nailed to the arm of the chair, Ryan getting hung upside down like a slab of meat and getting his head bashed in, Mama and Tinker getting shot to crap, and so forth. And yet, it comes across as being in line with the original since what you see feels quite realistic and not as over the top and cartoonish as the second one. Think of it as the original if they put a little more, for lack of a better word, meat on it. And finally, there are a couple of scenes in particular here that just make me go, "Ugh!" (in a complimentary way, mind you) not only because of what they show but also what they make me think about. The biggest one is the excavation of that mass grave at the beginning. That is nasty stuff right there. It's not just the image of these guys having to shift through the mushy decomposed skin and body fat in order to remove the bones and the body parts that are still intact (all of which looks very real, I might add) but it's also the talk about how potentially toxic this crap, with the one guy being told to make sure his bio-suit is zipped up tight and with Ryan's description of just exactly what's happened to these corpses. It just gives me a feeling that makes my skin crawl and causes me to shudder. That one guy at the scene describes it perfectly: "This is fucked." The other one that gets me is the idea that the family has a marsh where they dump all of the unused parts of their victims. I find the idea of Alfredo taking this garbage bag full of body parts (the idea of anything wet or moist in a garbage bag has always given me a gross feeling for some reason; it's weird, I know) to this bog where he throws them in the water is just disgusting to me. And let's not forget that a lot of characters fall into this death marsh as well. Ignoring the logicity that everybody who fell in there should later be dying from all of the diseases that are running rampant in that water, the thought of having to swim around in that nasty swamp water with skeletons and corpses floating around in it as well is another thing that will make you feel like you need a shower. To sum up, if the original is the scariest and the second one is the funniest, then Leatherface, to me, is the nastiest, both in what it shows and what it implies.

I feel that the film's production design mirror's the film's nasty grittiness. Basically, nothing is spotless here: not the inside of Michelle and Ryan's car, not the truck that Tinker and Leatherface drive, and the gas station and house are quite grimy. Alfredo's cluttered office as well as what you see of the restroom give the air of a disgusting place that you don't want to be in and in the family's house, particularly the kitchen, you get the feeling of a place that has been lived in for a very long time, with grime and dirt on just about everything. And, as in the previous films (although not as much I might add), there are bones strewn here and there, mainly in Leatherface's part of the house as well as in the little girl's room (I guess she is his daughter since she has his same longing to be surrounded by human remains). I'm not exactly sure if there were bone sculptures since the bones weren't as in your face here as they were in the original or even in the second movie but, given this franchise, I'm sure there were and I just didn't see them. I've already talked about how disgusting the mass grave and corpse swamp locations are so I don't think I need to go into any more detail on those. Basically, every environment of this film is enough to make you feel soiled and unclean. (The only thing in this film that's spotless is Leatherface's new chainsaw!) But, I do have an actual complaint about the movie's locations, it's with the major environment of the film: the pitch black woods. Since so much of this movie takes place in the woods at night, it can be hard to tell what's going at some points. That was a complaint I had even when I first saw the movie. It was hard to tell in a lot of those scenes exactly what was happening and so, after a few watches, I eventually was forced to turn my TV's brightness up. I'm not saying that the movie sucks because of that but, be advised, if you're going to watch it, you'd better make sure your TV's brightness level is fairly high. Other than that, I do think that, as with its predecessors, the design of this film works well in giving it its tone and atmosphere.

One complaint that I hear about Leatherface from time to time is that, because it wasn't actually filmed in Texas, it doesn't have the authentic feel that the others have. I must admit that I do get that. Up until Texas Chainsaw 3-D, which was filmed in Louisiana, Leatherface always stood out like a sore thumb as being the only one in the series that wasn't filmed in Texas. It was actually filmed in California and you can tell. Texas has a certain look to it and California has a certain look to it and the location in this film, with its long desert highways and mountains in the background, looks like California or, at the very least, some other state on the west coast. (The location actually reminds me more of The Hitcher than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) When they get into the backwoods for the majority of the film's latter half, it's easier to believe then that it is in Texas but still, I have to be honest: the first half hurts your belief that this is Texas (sorry, Jeff). I can't deny that. But, New Line Cinema didn't want to spend the money to go down to Texas and shoot there so, what can you do? One interesting bit of trivia is that the ranch that they shot the film at was very close to Six Flags Magic Mountain and Jeff swears that, if you listen, you can hear the screams of people riding the roller coasters in some spots. On my latest viewing of the film, I actually do think that I did hear them. It was during some of the quiet moments in the woods. If you listen closely, you will hear something that sounds like screams (and no, it's not the screams of Michelle and Ryan being chased by Leatherface because that wasn't going on at the time).

There are two aspects of the film that people criticize the most. One is the plot, which many feel is very run of the mill and a rehash of the original. I can't deny that the basic plot as well as some story elements and characters do feel like they were photo-copied from the original. Writer David J. Schow has said in interviews that one of his directive for writing the screenplay was to "tip the hat" to the original but not completely copy it. I'm not a screenwriter but if I were and were given that directive, I don't know if I would know how to do that. I'm not sure how you're supposed to pay "homage" to something without ripping it off. (In fact, John Carpenter has said that paying homage is a polite way of saying that you're copying something.) I'm not trying to defend the fact that the movie is a lot like the original, I'm just saying that's what Schow was told to do with the script and he did it the best way he could. But, yeah, I can't deny that this film does feel like a remake of the original in some ways (at least they did it well, though, unlike the next movie).

The other criticism that people level towards the film is that, even in its "unrated" version on the DVD, it's tame, with hardly any substantial gore or extremely gruesome moments. Ironically, though, it didn't start out that way. The original script that David J. Schow wrote was apparently so horrific and gruesome (apparently, Ryan originally was supposed to be naked when he was hung upside down with a long split down the middle, as a nod to a very gruesome crime scene photo taken inside of Ed Gein's house) that the producers asked it to be changed before it was even shot. However, the real trimming down of the film began after it was finished. When New Line Cinema was told that the foreign markets wouldn't accept the film because of how gruesome it was, that it would be banned in every country, and so forth, the executives took their scissors out and just gutted the film. All of the really gruesome effects scenes were taken out and you can only see them either as extras on the DVD or on a workprint version of the film that you can find at most horror conventions. But, as if that wasn't bad enough, the MPAA got ahold of it not too long afterward. By this point, the ratings board had become very dickish towards these types of horror films and would let hardly any bloodletting pass. The year before, they had butchered Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood to the point where there is basically no gore in it at all so they were definitely going to be harsh towards this film and, unlike Cannon, New Line Cinema couldn't afford to release the film unrated so they needed an R. The ratings board was so dickish to this film that the filmmakers basically had to cut little frames of it, like Tinker's fingers and ear getting shot off or the sledgehammer hitting Ryan's head, out to avoid an X-rating, which they got several times by the board. And, finally, due to the audience reactions at a test screening, Jeff had to reshoot the ending to where Benny lives even though, as I said, it makes no sense that he does. (They cut out the closeups of Benny's head getting shoved into the saw to try to make it more plausible that he lived but even then, what you do see still looks impossible for anyone to survive.) In the end, many forces came together to destroy a lot of potential and impact that the film could have had. Because of all this editing, re-editing, and reshooting, the film missed its initial release date of November of 1989 and ended up being dumped in January of 1990 where, despite having an awesome trailer (where Leatherface gets his chainsaw from the Lady of the Lake like King Arthur), it died at the box-office.

Because of all the cutting that was done to it, this film has gone through several incarnations since its release. For a while, the 81-minute, R-rated theatrical cut was the only one you could get on video. A few years after that, New Line Cinema released a version on video and laserdisc that they called the "uncut European version." This is the same version they eventually put on the DVD along with the theatrical cut except for one difference: the version on the DVD has the scene where the little girl pulls the rope that causes the sledgehammer to bash Ryan in the head, which was missing from all previous versions. This cut is known as the "Unrated Version," although it's not a true unrated version since none of the extreme stuff that was cut for the foreign markets is in there. Sadly, according to Jeff and other sources, the original negatives for that stuff is probably gone forever and the only ways to see it are, like I said, either in the special features section of the DVD or on a special workprint version. And none of these official releases have had the original bleaker ending (with Benny being definitely killed, a severely charred Tex briefly showing back up, and Michelle seeing the little girl in a police car, suggesting that the officer is possibly part of the family and that they will never be stopped) put back into the film although, like the very gruesome gore, you can see it as an extra on the DVD. Bottom line, like the second movie, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see an official release of what this film was originally meant to be simply because it's not possible.

After looking at a lot of the deleted scenes from the film, most of the material that was cut for the foreign markets involved much more graphic and gruesome shots of stuff that you briefly in the "unrated" version on the DVD. You see lingering shots of Ryan's body when he gets killed while being hung upside down, including a bloodier shot of it after Benny has saved Michelle (the dummy looks rather fake in some of those shots though); there are longer and more excruciating shots of Michelle pulling her hands off of the nails on the chair's arms; more detailed shots of the little girl "feeding" Grandpa some blood as well as a deleted one of her feeding some of Tinker's blood after he's been killed to her doll; the aforementioned closeup of Benny's head getting pushed into the saw blade that they cut out of both official versions; and when Leatherface kills Sara, you see much, much more blood than you do in either official version of the film. Most of these deleted gore effects look great (KNB did the effects so, naturally, they look great) but there's one very graphic effect that they could never get to look right: Leatherface was supposed to bisect Sara in half with his chainsaw and she was supposed to split off in two. If you watch that raw footage, you can see the flailing arms of the dummy and some of the spewing blood but you never see the effect of her being cut in half (or at least I didn't; they probably couldn't get that far because the effect just wouldn't work). However, other than that botched kill, the effects work in the raw footage as well as in either official version of the film does look great. The flayed face you see at the very beginning as well as the shots of Leatherface cutting it up do look realistic as well as those corpses in that mass grave and the ones that Alfredo throws into the swamp (I already talked about those in nauseating detail), those wince-inducing closeups of Michelle's nailed hands, and the effects of Tinker's ear and fingers getting blown off (well, the fingers are a little suspect but the ear looks good). And one final deleted makeup effect that's worth mentioning is in the alternate ending where Tex shows back up. It's a shame that, even though you can see that ending as an extra, the scene is lit so darkly that you can't get a good look at the burned makeup on Viggo Mortensen because, judging from the behind the scenes footage on the documentary, it looked really good. In fact, there's a shot in that documentary where Mortensen turns to the camera and smiles with that makeup on his face and it is terrifying! I wish that effect had not only been left in but that it would have been more well lit so audiences could have seen it.

Long before I met him, I could feel that Jeff had mixed feelings about the film. The experience he had filming it was frustrating and difficult, mainly because he had to crank it out on a low budget of just over $2 million (which made it even cheaper than the second one) on a tight schedule of 30 days. He also had the disadvantage of not only working on a ranch near Magic Mountain but also having to shoot a movie that is set at night for the most part during a time of year where the evenings are quite short. And long before the issue of the film's content came up, Jeff had to contend with the studio, who were constantly on his back about getting the film done in the time alotted and without going over budget by a cent. Members of the cast and crew have said that they heard the producers and the execs saying not so nice things about Jeff, saying that he wasn't qualified to make this kind of movie, that he didn't know what he was doing, etc. And remember, the studio was also banking on this to be the first in a franchise so Jeff was under a lot of pressure to really deliver on this film. After the filming was completed, Jeff then had to deal with that whole headache of making the film "acceptable" to the masses, which has to be an awful thing for a filmmaker to endure. Jeff has said that the theatrical version of the movie made him look like an incompetent director (the theatrical version isn't the best, I'll give him that, although that's the version I first watched and liked so there's that as well) and that, before the film was released, he had an angry phone conversation with executive producer Michael De Luca where he told him, "I want my name taken off the fucking movie!" Now, I'm not telling you all of this to make you pity Jeff and I'm trying to say that because you know this, you must now like the movie if you didn't already. I just want you to understand that Jeff was put into a very frustrating situation that lasted all the way to post-production and release and that he himself feels that the movie is far from perfect and that he had to make a lot of damaging compromises in regards to what he initially intended the film to be. (It's kind of akin to what happened to David Fincher on Alien 3, although I think this was far less embittering. Even though he's not the proudest of it, at least Jeff will talk about Leatherface!)

For me, the most run of the mill aspect of the film is its music score. After the frightening banging and clanging sound-design score of the original and the insane carnival-style score of the second film, you'd would expect another distinctive score but, unfortunately, that's not the case. Jim Manzie and Pat Regan composed a score that is just typical horror film music and not much else. It's not awful, mind you, and it does serve the visuals well, but it's largely forgettable. The only part of the score that is memorable to me is the theme over the opening credits. That is really creepy and lets you know that this movie is going to more serious than the one before it. But, like I said, that's the only part of the score that stands out to me. The theme that plays during the fight with Benny and Tex outside the house is okay but it's generic rock music and there's nothing special about it. I can't remember any other themes besides those. The songs in the film are even more bland to me. The only song whose title I know is the actual Leatherface song by Laaz Rockit that plays over the ending credits. Not a fan of that song, I must say. It's so unmemorable and it's another sign of just how much the studio wanted to turn Leatherface into a more marketable character. But, again, it's the only song whose title I know. The rest of them are so generic that I don't know which is which and I really don't care to figure it out either. But, while the music and the songs leave a lot to be desired, there is a bit of sound design in the film that I must applaud. It takes place during the excavation of that mass grave. They're taking pictures of the decomposed corpses and every time the flash on the camera goes off, you faintly hear that iconic screech sound from the original. The way that it's more in the background instead of being front and center adds to the atmosphere of what's going on and I thought it was a nice, subtle way to connect this movie to the original. Although, I don't know why some of the stinger sound effects from Halloween 4 and 5 are in this film. I swear that sometimes during this film, you can hear those noises during some of the creepy parts and, like the screech, they're mainly in the background as part of the atmosphere instead of being really loud and making themselves known. I don't hate that they're present but it is odd. Do horror franchises just borrow sound gags from each other? Wouldn't that be hard to do legally? Who knows?

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is an odd bird of a film when put into the context of history but, for my money, is an enjoyable horror sequel. While you can't look at it without remembering that it was, first and foremost, an attempt to create another money-making franchise for New Line Cinema that failed and, for someone who has just seen the first two, it may feel like just a run-of-the-mill, virtually goreless horror film, I think there are some aspects of it that make it worth watching. While its feel is that of a middle-ground between that of the first and second films, it has a nasty, sleazy tone to it all its own, Ken Foree makes a great hero, the members of this part of the family are quite interesting in their own right, and there are some moments, scenes, and locations that will make you wince and cringe in a good way. It does definitely have problems, mostly due to its troubled post-production, and it may not be the greatest horror sequel ever, but I do think it deserves a little more credit than it gets and is worth watching by fans of the franchise at least once. And, look at it this way: if you're somebody who doesn't like black humor and zaniness of the second movie and you want an entry in the series that goes more for the feel of the original, this is as close as you're going to get apart from the 2003 remake.