Movies That Suck/Franchises: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) (1994)

I want to start off by saying that if I didn't have this blog, I would have never ever, ever, ever, ever subjected myself to this, nor would I've had the DVD, and later the Blu-Ray, in my house, even if temporarily. And it's not just because this film is universally known as one of the worst sequels imaginable; rather, it's because, when I was reading up on the franchise, I found that most fans acted as if it didn't even exist! During the time before the 2003 remake, it seemed like most die-hard Texas Chainsaw Massacre fans acknowledged the original and the first two sequels, but would then write this off like it was a bad dream or something similar. Even an official publication like The Horror Movie Survival Guide ignored it (or, they may have simply not known about it, given how obscure its theatrical run was), only mentioning the first three films in their entry on Leatherface. That left me dumbfounded. I'd been warned about plenty of bad franchise entries, sure, but I'd never come across one that people seemed to be trying to literally erase from their memories. Seeing one of the VHS covers in stores (the one with the chainsaw lipstick in front of the mouth) definitely gave me an idea as to why that was the case, but when I heard people talk about it, I truly understood. Leatherface as a cross-dresser? Stupid teenagers at a prom? An incomprehensible plot that basically remade the original? The Illuminati? I'm not sure, but I might've thought that some of that was made up, especially since, at the time, I hadn't seen nearly as many crazy movies as I have now. Then, I got the original film on DVD for the first time in late 2004 and among the bonus features on that Pioneer release were trailers for the original and all of the sequels, with the last being a rough promo-reel for this. That was the first time I ever laid eyes on any footage from it... and good lord, did it look like a clusterfuck of insane proportions! That reel was two and a half minutes of craziness that I couldn't make heads or tails of, and it made me decide right then and there, "No matter what, I will never watch that, as it might actually destroy my brain cells." Well, little did I know that I would create a blog to share my opinions on film, television, and video games and, thus, would have to see every film in any given franchise to make my thoughts complete. And I also had no way of knowing just how many people would actually enjoy hearing me bitch and complain about awful films. So, I really hope you guys appreciate what I go through for you sometimes, giving you entertainment and receiving nothing in return to help ease my pain. (I'm just kidding. I love doing this blog and I love all of you.)

In all seriousness, when I started this blog, I knew, as much as I didn't like it, this was a movie I'd eventually have to see. At first, I was hoping I could watch it online for free but, at the time I did the first, bare bones version of this review, I didn't have the streaming choices I do now, so I came up empty-handed (I might've been able to see it on an obscure site I didn't know of, but I didn't want to risk giving my computer a virus). And since video stores had gone the way of the dinosaurs in my area by that point, it became clear that I was going to have to temporarily buy the movie in order to see it. Fortunately, I had seen plenty of cheap copies of it at McKay's in Chattanooga, but I wasn't going to get it and subject myself to it until I knew for sure when I was going to review this franchise. That answer came when it was announced that Texas Chainsaw 3-D was going to be released in January of 2013, and I first decided to do these reviews to tie into it. And as luck would have it, I was at Scarefest in Lexington, Kentucky the September before and a dealer table was having a buy two, get one free deal going on. As I was buying up some DVDs and Blu-Rays, I came across the DVD for this but, while I knew it would be a perfect way to see it without having to spend any money, I still was like, "Son of a bitch! I wanted to get something other than this for free!" Still, I bit the bullet and made it part of my goody haul for Scarefest that year. Even so, I can't call getting this for free a fair deal because, after I got through watching it, I definitely found the price. When it was over, I sat there with this bewildered look on my face that must have been hilarious, thinking to myself, "Wow, I think this really did melt some of my brain cells, as I feel stupider now." I know it's a cliche to ask what someone was smoking when they wrote and/or directed something bad, but that question does apply here. Moreover, as I'll go more into in the actual review, it feels like this was meant to show how stupid the filmmakers thought slasher movies are by cranking everything that can be annoying about them to the nth degree, and making it all so crazy and incomprehensible that you'd think you'd lost your mind. But instead of being a funny parody or satire, it just makes you want to smash your TV and strangle everybody involved with it if you come across them. Make no mistake, I feel that this is not only the worst black sheep of any franchise, horror or otherwise, but it's also among the worst movies I've ever seen in my life. I know that's a major statement, as was my putting this at the top of my list of the worst sequels ever, but I will always stand by it.

And you know what the real bitch of it is? I ended up buying it again for this revision! The month before I did this, I was in Destin, Florida for a week and drove to Pensacola to check out the Cordova Mall, as they still have a functioning FYE. The Scream Factory release for this was in the discount Blu-Ray section at the front of the store and, knowing this was coming up soon, it saved me from having to stream it online for the re-watch. The price was higher than I would've liked ($25), but it was better than the $30 it was before, and I figured the special features may be interesting and give me some insight. Plus, it would also give me the chance to watch and comment on the original version, which I only mentioned in passing the first time, mostly because I was only vaguely aware of it and it was much harder to find back then. Upon re-watching it, yeah, this movie is still garbage. Those interviewed on the special features seem to have good memories of it, despite how trying the shoot was, and God bless them, but this movie is still so mind-numbing that my brain nearly shuts off during its latter half. However, I'm going to try to be a little more constructive this time around, as before, I got really hyperbolic and veered a little too much into Channel Awesome territory. For example, when I was talking about how horrendous and annoying the characters are, I went into this melodramatic, angry diatribe: "SHUT THE FUCK UP! OH MY GOD, HOW DID TWO PEOPLE AS STUPID AS YOU GET TO BE TEENAGERS?! GIVE ME THE CHAINSAW, LEATHERFACE! I'LL KILL THEM MYSELF! NOT ONLY WILL I DO THAT BUT I'LL ALSO... (A full minute of insane, angry screaming, a lot of obscenities, and much pulling of hair later...) ...AND RUN OVER THEIR MAGGOT-FILLED CARCASSES WITH MY FOUR-WHEELER FOR BEING SO STUPID!" I hope some found that funny back then, but that's not the style I go for anymore.

(In regards to the year I put up next to the title, I decided to go with the year it was copyrighted, as the movie ended up having several small releases over a four year period after its production.)

May 22nd, 1996. While at the high school prom, Heather discovers her boyfriend, Barry, making out with another girl. In a rage, she jumps in his car and takes off, with Barry in hot pursuit. He manages to convince her to stop so he can get inside the car and tries to gaslight her into thinking he wasn't cheating on her. They then discover that two other teens, Jenny and her friend Sean, were hiding in the backseat, smoking weed. While they're arguing, Heather drives off the main road and into the backwoods, where she crashes into another car. The other motorist manages to get out but then promptly faints, and Jenny, Barry, and Heather opt to head down the road to try to find help, while Sean stays behind to look after him. They come across an office trailer run by a sexy insurance agent named Darla, who calls up her boyfriend, a tow-truck driver named Vilmer, to come by and clear the wreck. As they head back to the site, Vilmer arrives but proves to be an unhinged maniac when he snaps the unconscious man's neck and proceeds to run down and eventually kill Sean. Meanwhile, Heather and Barry get separated from Jenny in the woods and the two of them come across a farmhouse, where they're attacked by Leatherface and one of his brothers, W.E. Barry is killed immediately and Heather is hung up on a meat-hook. Upon returning to the scene of the wreck, Jenny is met by Vilmer, who offers her a ride, albeit in a very terse, threatening manner. During the short trip, she learns just how psychotic Vilmer is, and discovers the bodies of Sean and the motorist in the back of the truck. She jumps out and runs into the woods where Vilmer is unable to drive after her. He leaves her there, only for Leatherface to appear and chase her. After escaping him, she makes her way back to Darla, only to discover that she's in on it, and is promptly captured and brought back to the farmhouse. There, she endures endless torture at the hands of the psychotic family, and must find some strength that she never knew she had in order to survive.

The film came about due to Robert Kuhn, an Austin-based lawyer who was one of the financiers on the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the filmmakers' legal advisor. After the original film, he retained a financial interest in it, and wasn't happy with how the first two sequels turned out. He and others connected with him, understandably, also weren't happy with what happened when the original was released and Bryanston practically stole everything that should've gone to the filmmakers and investors, so this was a way for them to finally see some money off of the property. When New Line Cinema abandoned their plan to make a series of movies after Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III bombed, Kuhn licensed for a new film, which was shot independently back in Texas, with a small budget of $600,000. Both he and Kim Henkel intended for the movie to go back to the spirit of the original (yeah, we'll talk about that), which, as well as due to their mutual disdain for them, led to its opening taking a rather dismissive attitude towards the two previous sequels. But what's sadly ironic about the whole thing is that Kuhn ended up getting into more legal disputes over this film's release. One was with Columbia/Tristar for delaying the release and then unceremoniously dumping it in late August of 1997, in just 23 theaters and with little publicity (thus, the only people who saw it were diehard fans who drove hours to find the nearest screening, and probably dragged their poor wives along with them). The others were with the Creative Artists Agency, who represented both Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, for supposedly interfering with the release because they didn't want their clients to be "exploited" in this kind of movie. It's never easy with this franchise, is it?

After co-writing the original Chainsaw's screenplay with Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel's career virtually went nowhere. He was one of the writers on the screenplay for Eaten Alive, was one of many who contributed to The Unseen, a film directed by the late Danny Steinmann, who went on to direct the underrated Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (Henkel wasn't credited for his work on it), and other little known movies like Last Night at the Alamo (which he also edited and acted in) and Doc's Full Service. From the outset, he was less than enthusiastic about this film, and it seems like it was Robert Kuhn who pushed him into both writing and directing. He even says as much in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth documentary, saying he basically let Kuhn "bully" him into it. A big reason for his lack of interest was because, even though his involvement in the original film is his biggest claim to fame, he's not a fan of the horror genre and, like many others, only stayed with it over the years because there was money in it. If you read or watch a lot of interviews with him, especially in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Companion and The Shocking Truth, he just comes across as very weary about the whole thing and not thrilled about how his involvement in the original film pigeonholed him. Speaking of which, he doesn't even seem to be that big on it, either, as all he can see are the flaws, rather than why so many others have lauded it as a classic. That could be a big clue as to why the film turned out the way it did, but even then, I don't really get what Henkel was going for, as so much of his stated intentions are contradicted by the film itself. This remains the only film he's ever directed, probably because of the experience itself and also because he's admitted to being a solitary person who finds it hard to work directly with so many others. He has continued to work sporadically in some capacity, usually as a producer, including on a little known 2012 horror film called Butcher Boys, which I've heard is basically, and was originally intended as, another Chainsaw movie.

Of the many things that cripple this movie, one of the biggest is the cast. Except for Renee Zellweger's Jenny, all of these characters are either annoying, stupid as hell, or are the definition of loathsome... and none of them will shut up. While Zellweger herself certainly has her fair share of dopey lines and moments of bad acting, she's the only person I kind of like (including Matthew McConaughey, as I'll get into). Jenny goes through the familiar arc of starting out as very demure and mousy, with glasses and scraggly hair, and shrinking down whenever someone

is nasty towards her (before the Sawyers show up, it's mostly Barry) but then, over the course of all the bad stuff that happens to her, she becomes stronger and decides to fight back. In the original version, there was more depth to her arc, with her stepfather being abusive towards her mother and sexually predatory towards Jenny herself, which gave her the incentive in the end to decide she's not taking this crap from anybody anymore, but even as it is here, it's still satisfying to see her grab a shotgun at one point, threaten the family, and yell at them to shut up when they continue arguing, or smack Vilmer across the face, yelling, "Don't you ever touch me!" And while I don't like how Leatherface whines and does as she says, I do love how, during the dinner scene, she gets fed up with everything, tells Vilmer that she's sick of him and is full of shit about the "secret society" he works for (which enrages him), and that she's going to leave and no one is stopping her. Of course, her plans goes awry, but you have to admire her for the gumption to do that. And granted, she could've fought back against Rothman, the Illuminati guy, when she realized he was part of it, especially when he started licking her, but she makes up for it when she's picked up by him after she escapes and, when he's going on and on, apologizing to her, saying all this bullshit about how this was a huge mistake and was supposed to be a spiritual experience, she says what we're all thinking: "Fuck you."

Now, like I said, Jenny still does some dumb things. When she gets separated from Barry and Heather in the woods at one point, she whispers after them, telling them she's going to go back to check on Sean, even though they're clearly out of earshot, and when she first meets Vilmer, she gets into his truck, even though the guy is clearly a nutcase with both his tone of voice and the harsh, threatening stuff he's saying. Also, when she runs back to Darla after learning that Vilmer has murdered Sean and then getting chased by Leatherface, the way she tells her, "No, he... he's out

there with a chainsaw! No, he had a chainsaw. He was chasing me with a chainsaw!... No, the guy with the wrecker killed Sean!", is so badly delivered that you'd never suspect you were watching a future Oscar-winner. But, given how poor Jenny gets dragged into this situation by truly being in the wrong place at the wrong time (in the back of Barry's car, smoking weed with Sean), is chased, manhandled, beaten up, and flat-out bullied by much of the family, and repeatedly tries to escape, only to be dragged

back into the house, I can forgive those dopey moments and lines, as I do feel bad for her. Although, along with the sympathy I feel about the nightmare she's being put through, like with Sally in the original, I also relate to her in having to endure this annoying craziness that feels like it won't end and getting so much satisfaction at her trying to end it and finally succeeding.

Among the other teenagers, the one that's the easiest to tolerate is Jenny's boyfriend, Sean (John Harrison), mainly because he barely does anything and is the first one to die. The character is meant to be a pothead, which may explain why he speaks with almost no emotion whatsoever, even when he's telling Heather about how he and Barry were once friends and how he tricked lots of girls into letting him feel them up. That may also explain the idiotic things he does when he's attacked by Vilmer while waiting at the wreck of the accident. After Vilmer breaks the unconscious driver's neck and then tells him that he's going to kill him, Sean takes off down the road, with Vilmer right behind him in his truck. Instead of running into the woods where he can't follow him, he just keeps running straight down the road, tiring himself out to where Vilmer catches up to him. Even stupider than that, when Vilmer pulls up alongside him, Sean says, "Please, mister, you're scaring me." I like that Vilmer's response to that is, "No shit," because that's exactly what anyone else would be thinking. You just saw him snap someone's neck, look at you with the eyes of a true psychopath, and tell you he's going to kill you, before chasing you down the road. Of course he's scaring you! He wants to kill you, you fucking idiot! I don't care if the guy is a pothead or not, that's just moronic. And as overkill as his death is, with Vilmer running over him again and again, I don't have any sympathy for someone that braindead stupid.

However, the annoying teen award truly goes to Barry (Tyler Cone) and Heather (Lisa Newmyer), the couple whose bickering gets the four of them into this mess. These two are why this film seems to have been meant as a parody, because they are the definition of unlikable and stupid. Barry's just a smug, perverted asshole who treats everyone around him like shit (he constantly refers to Jenny as ugly, even though, as we know, Renee Zellweger is a pretty good-looking woman, and mocks her for just being friends with Sean and not liking to be touched), cares more about what his dad is going to do to him for wrecking his car rather than what happens to the other driver, and is a two-timing tool of a person who comes up with the dumbest excuses imaginable to try to gaslight Heather. At the very beginning of the movie, when Barry and Heather are arguing in the car after she caught him making out with another girl, we get this exchange: "Barry, I saw you. You were kissing her." "Once! I kissed her once! What's wrong with that?! Come on, it's like I can't even talk to my friends anymore. I can't believe how possessive you are." "Oh, right. I guess that's why you were feeling her up." "Look, guys need sex, okay? It's bad if you get all worked up and then not get it. You can get... 'prostrate' cancer. Is that what you want?" A few minutes later, Sean tells Heather that, when he and Barry used to be friends (adding that it ended because Barry got "too cool", with Barry sneering, "Hey, it's not my fault you turned out to be such a little geek), "He used to come over to my house all the time and he'd being laughing about all the girls he'd felt up. His big line was to tell them that his father was a doctor, and that they could get breast cancer if they didn't get felt up." To that, Barry says, "Okay, I lied. Big deal. It's not my fault they're stupid enough to believe it." This is just a little over seven minutes into the movie and I already wanted to turn it off because of this guy. 

Barry keeps going on and on, becoming increasingly unlikable and stupid, right up to when he finally gets killed. When he and Heather arrive at the Sawyer house, Barry goes around back and runs into W.E., who holds him at gunpoint. And what does he say to this man pointing a loaded double-barrel shotgun at him? "You better not shoot me, mister. There was a man who shot a kid who was robbing his house and they got him for murder." W.E. then makes him go around to the front door and tries to force him into the house. Barry's response? "Hey, if I go in there, that's

kidnapping. My father's a lawyer. I know what I'm talkin' about, okay?" W.E. makes him go in, regardless, and not only does Barry comment that he needs to use the bathroom anyway, but he proceeds to walk in and lock W.E. out, calling him a dumbass. It's his house, idiot. I'm sure if he doesn't have a key, he can at least get in through that other door you saw a few minutes ago! (Or shoot him through the door with that shotgun, which he should've done.) And even though he heard Heather screaming bloody

murder just a few minutes before when she got attacked by Leatherface, he just calmly walks around while calling for her, asking if she's okay and even bragging about locking W.E. out. He also wasn't kidding when he said he needed to use the bathroom, as that's his main priority: find a place to take a leak. And after he takes that leak, he sees a decomposing corpse in the bathtub behind him (which was in his peripheral vision when he first walked in, not to mention that he should've smelled it), runs out the door, and gets bashed in the head with a mallet, just like Kirk in the original (although this guy doesn't deserve to lick Kirk's shoes). This is at just a little over 31 minutes in and you're like, "Thank God!"

As bad as Barry is, though, Heather annoys me even more, and I'm amazed that Henkel didn't cast a blonde actor because it would've been very appropriate (I apologize to any blonde readers). Heather is so stupid and annoying that it may make you rethink your opinions of any dumb girls you went to high school with. Remember Barry's dumb line about guys getting "prostrate" cancer if they don't have enough sex? Well, Heather is stupid enough to buy it, saying, "It's true. It is my fault. I won't have sex with him," and when Jenny tries to reassure her it's not her fault, she says, "Yeah, but what if he gets cancer and all his hair falls out from all the drugs or something? It could happen." In all of my years of watching horror films, I have never wanted a character to die just seven minutes in. Not only is it her dialogue but she talks in such a stereotypical ditzy teenage girl voice, that you want to punch her. It doesn't stop there, either. After that stirring conversation between her and Barry, she randomly says, "I just thought of something so cool. What if we got into a wreck and we crashed into a car in front of us and we all died? They could write a song about it." This is the one time I agree with Barry, when he looks at her after she says that and tells her to shut up. After they hit that other car, the first thing Heather does is look into the mirror and say, "God, this is going to leave a scar!", and when she gets out after the driver faints, the way she asks if he died is comparable to Tommy Wiseau in terms of bad the acting is, with her going on to say, "It's my fault. If he dies, I'll be a murderer." When they decide to go off to try to find help, she tells Barry to keep away from her and yet, when the two of them are next walking with Jenny, she's hanging onto his arm. (Yeah, women, when you're scared, just hang onto any man who's around, even if he's an asshole who's cheated on you.) And she keeps going on and on, talking about how she's had dreams about being stalked in the woods, how some murderer from Chicago is going to kill them and their bodies will show up on A Current Affair, that the killers want them to wander around in the dark, and that they should just stay there (in the middle of the road) and start a fire. She also does the typical, spoiled woman thing of asking Barry to carry her at one point and to get her some water when they arrive at Darla's insurance office, even though the water cooler is right there.

But the exchange of dialogue that about caused me to lose it is when Heather and Barry are walking by themselves after unsuccessfully trying to chase down a passing car and before they came upon the house. "Barry, wait, stop. What if they're murderers and they want us to follow them, so they can hide behind trees and stab us? There could be dead people buried all around us and we'd never know. And they could tie us up in a cellar and no one would ever hear us." "That's dumb. There aren't any cellars in the houses around here." (Um, huh?) "Okay, that's it. Don't call me

dumb, Barry. I may not be the smartest person in the world but I'm not stupid. I just act that way sometimes to get people to like me, that's all." (Hint: it doesn't work!) "Yeah, right." "All those stories about murderers and people following me... I know it's not true. It's better than being bored. I'll tell you what's stupid is that line you gave me about you and that girl, Brenda. Not even a little kid would believe that." "Jenny, that bitch. She started this whole thing. It's all her fault!" "You'd like to think. I'll tell you

what it is: I'm a bitch. I'm just like my mother. She can't stand my father, but she stays with him because she wants a certain kind of life. I don't care what anybody thinks. That's still the best way to get it." "What's wrong with that?" "Forget it." "Okay, fine, but you should've said something. It pisses me off that let you me go on like this. It's embarrassing." "I told you, I'm a bitch." That's when I originally had that outburst I mentioned back in the introduction, as I couldn't believe the crap I was hearing, and still can't.

Anyway, they get to the house, Heather, after not getting any response from knocking on the door and yelling, orders Barry to go check and see if anyone's out back, while she kicks at the door and then sits down on the porch swing. Leatherface comes up behind her, sniffs and plays with her hair, and she's so stupid that it takes her a while to turn around and see him. Leatherface grabs her, drags her into the house, and after a struggle, shoves her into the freezer. She repeatedly tries to get out, Leatherface keeps pushing her back in, and he finally puts something on the

freezer's lid. After he kills Barry and drags his body into the kitchen, Heather manages to get out again and this time, Leatherface finally puts her on the meat-hook. But this is one of those movies that makes you think an annoying character died, only for them to pop up later. While Jenny is being taken back to the house by Darla, we see that Heather somehow managed to get off the meat-hook, crawl out of the house, and get pretty far up the road. She's eventually brought back by W.E., and later on, when Jenny takes

control of the situation by grabbing a shotgun and training it on everybody, she tells Heather, who's lying on the floor after being assaulted by Vilmer, to get up. First, Heather says, "Five more minutes," and then, when Jenny tries to make her get up again, she starts to, but then mumbles, "I can't find my shoes," and lies back down! You'd hope that would encourage Jenny to leave that rock-stupid girl behind and save herself, but nope. She gets recaptured and Heather is finally killed after the dinner scene, when Vilmer, after setting her back on fire, crushes her head with his mechanical leg. Watching said scene, I'm torn between just how mean-spirited and genuinely disturbing her death is and by my elation that she's finally dead.

For many, Matthew McConaughey's rabid, off-the-wall performance as Vilmer, who functions as the Drayton Sawyer for this film, is its one saving grace; to me, though, he's just another loud, annoying, and unpleasant part of a movie that's altogether loud, annoying, and unpleasant. I won't deny that it is interesting to see McConaughey be this crazy, particularly given the types of roles he became known for after he got famous, and if nothing else, he's definitely going for it and seems to be having fun while doing it (he's never been shy about saying that he did enjoy making this movie). But I've never found his performance to be that original: he's just a cartoonishly insane psychopath, talking crazily and nonsensically, berating and insulting his victims before he kills them (poor Jenny suffers so much at his hands that it's hard to watch), mutilating himself at various points, and virtually never shutting up for one moment that he's onscreen, constantly yelling at the top of his lungs and making crazy sounds (much like everyone else in the movie).  For a series as crazy as this, that kind of performance isn't out of place, and McConaughey is good at looking absolutely maniacal in his eyes and face when he really goes off, Even when he's just breathing, you can hear him positively seething, he's so worked up. But, like I said, he's just another crazy part of a movie that's already so crazy and nonsensical that it gets old very quickly for me. There are some moments with him I do kind of like, though, such as when he first appears and menaces Sean, first by insisting that the unconscious motorist is dead and snapping his neck when Sean argues the point, and then telling him, "Well, first, I'm gonna kill you. It ain't no fuckin' biggie. Of course, it's different for every individual." And I do find him entertaining when he knocks Sean to the ground and, before he begins running over him back and forth, puts in a cassette tape and exclaims, "Alright, racing fans, here... we... go! Ha heh heh!" As he does it, he seems to be getting off on every bump, and then, finishing him off, comments, "Ohh, and that should've done it. Yep, that should have done it." But later on, when he's just yelling crazily, especially in that moment with the shotgun or when he kills Heather, it's too much for me.

 

Out of all the family heads you get in this franchise, Vilmer takes the cake for being not only the most psychotic but the most abusive, both towards his victims and his own family. While Drayton physically and verbally abused his brothers a lot and, in the previous film, where they felt the most like a family, Tinker had an argument with Leatherface that ended not so well for him, Vilmer comes close to killing his family members, particularly Darla. He beats on her so much and so violently, often for no reason (I know, he's crazy, but still), that it's a wonder she's not

completely black and blue by the end of the movie. Even when they're making out, he has to get rough, and at one point, actually tries to crush her neck with his mechanical leg; it's only through Jenny's intervention that she doesn't get killed. Between that and his sexual abuse and flat-out bullying towards Jenny, he's often more uncomfortable than fun to watch during the film's latter half. And going back to that leg, I don't know why Kim Henkel thought that would be a good idea. In the past, you've head similar elements like Chop Top's head plate, Tinker's hooked

hand, Mama's electronic voice box, and even Leatherface's metal knee brace in the previous film, but this is so overdone and doesn't feel like it belongs in one of these movies. He does use it as a weapon, like when he crushes Heather's head, but his operating it with a remote control is so ridiculous, and when Jenny is escaping near the end of the movie, she gets another one and the two of them actually have a duel, with Vilmer trying to get his leg going and Jenny repeatedly stopping it. It's just stupid. And Vilmer's death is as nonsensical as he is. He gets hit by a crop-duster plane at the end when he and Leatherface are after Jenny. I'll go deeper into that later on but still, what?

I think W.E. (Joe Stevens), this film's Hitchhiker equivalent, may be more aggravating to me than Vilmer. The most outwardly crazy-looking of the bunch (I hesitate to say he actually is the craziest, as Vilmer certainly has him beat in that department), his gimmick is that he constantly quotes famous people, be it while torturing others or when he himself is being threatened. And like Heather's stupid rambling and bubble-headed personality, that gets old very quickly. When it got to the part where Jenny is holding the family at gunpoint and W.E. quotes Shakespeare as he's getting down on his knees, I was like, "Oh, give it a rest!" His constant bickering with Darla also gets tiresome. Yes, family quarrels are another staple of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, but this is done in such an irritating fashion and just goes on and on for so long. It comes down to the typical thing where he's been jealous ever since she came along, complaining that he's the one who "set things up," and thus, does everything he can to annoy her, like not telling Vilmer she's bringing pizza home for dinner and such. W.E. also loves to torture people with a cattle prod, including Leatherface, whom he constantly zaps, and, I'm probably sounding like a broken record but, again, he does it so often and so many times in one moment, like when he's shocking Jenny while she's in the back of Darla's car, that you get sick of it. During the dinner scene, Vilmer kills W.E. by bashing him in the head with a hammer, but that scene is so chaotic and it happens so quickly that, the first time, it didn't register with me that you never see W.E. again afterward.

I will give the movie a little bit of credit with Darla (Tonie Perensky), as she's the first character in any of these movies who was once an outsider and then became part of the family through her relationship with one of them. That would make for an interesting point of view... in a well-written movie, that is. But, this piece of shit being what it is, it completely wastes that opportunity, save for her irritating quarrels with W.E. Without a doubt the most sane member of the family, Darla is the one I could tolerate the most and Perensky, besides being really hot, does seem well aware of what type of movie she's making here and tries to put a smidge of camp into her performance, along with overt sexuality. Like I said, as Vilmer's lover, Darla suffers an awful lot of abuse at his hands but sticks around. She even seems to like some rough love every now and then, as in the scene in the kitchen where she plays around with Vilmer's mechanical leg and that leads to some very intense kissing and making out on the table. But, even though I said she's the most sane member of the family, Darla still shows signs of being unstable, including in her first scene, where she flashes her breasts at some people who throw a rock through her window (she's very proud of her implants and, honestly, she should be!). She also makes bizarre comments, like when she tells Jenny that she thinks Vilmer might be an alien and that there's an explosive device in her head that keeps her from leaving the family (I honestly wouldn't doubt the validity of either of those statements). Like Drayton in the first film, Darla seems to have mixed feelings about capturing Jenny and watching Vilmer and W.E. torture her. Despite her initial threatening demeanor towards her, and her own apparent sexual attraction to her, she sometimes actually tries to comfort Jenny. And she's more than willing to tell Jenny about the family's secrets, the people they work for, and so on.

Back in my review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, I mentioned that a lot of people don't like that film's portrayal of Leatherface and I argued that, while he may not have been as frightening there as he was in the original, at least he was still entertaining and had some great moments, like when he sliced Buzz's head open and had the chainsaw duel with Lefty. I also mentioned that some people have said he was a pussy there and to that, I countered that they just wait until we got to this film, as what Kim Henkel did to this icon of contemporary horror here is a total travesty. He turned Leatherface into a whimpering, crying bitch who spends much of his screentime screaming and whining. Yes, Leatherface was originally a man-child who was terrified of his family and did whatever they said, and was also freaked out when random people kept wandering into his house, but at least he didn't scream like a pussy at the people he was attacking. When Heather finally turns around and sees him on the front porch, he actually screams and cowers when she screams back at him. Admittedly, his screams, yells, and guttural growls when he then attacks her during this scene, later kills Barry, and hangs her on the meat-hook are kind of disturbing, but they quickly grow annoying, as he won't shut up. And when the entire family is constantly yelling and arguing with each other, and Leatherface is crying and whining on top of it, it's no wonder that Jenny tells everyone to shut up (again, I loved her for that). The moment that brings it home is during the dinner scene, when Jenny goes to leave and Leatherface gets up and yells at her. She tells him to, "Sit the fuck down and shut up!", and he does it, even whining as he does so. At that point, you might as well take whatever balls Leatherface had before and cut them off, because he doesn't need them anymore (and I mean that in more ways than one, as we'll see).

Leatherface looks awful as well. Henkel tries to go back to the original motif of him wearing different masks and assuming the identity of each, but like everything else, he messes it up royally (not that it matters because, no matter what he wears, Leatherface is still a big crybaby). The kill mask is beyond laughable. If that's supposed to be human skin, then whoever made that mask doesn't know what human skin looks like, because it looks like he's wearing a big clump of brown play-dough with hair on top of it, and on either side of the mask, there are

actually curled parts hanging off from the top. He's even dressed weird here, with a camouflage jacket over his typical shirt and butcher apron (which, given what comes later in the film, I thought was a dress the first time I saw it). I also think this is the first movie where he never wears a necktie. When Darla brings Jenny back to the house, Leatherface is now wearing the face of an old lady, like in the original, but as with the first mask, it looks dumb, like gray clay rather than human skin, with a gray wig atop, along with pearls and a frilly apron. Since he wore something

similar in the first movie, I normally wouldn't be complaining, but the reason I'm hating on it is because of what comes next. As with the dinner scene in the original, Leatherface dresses up like a woman, but instead of merely putting on the face (which has another awful wig, I might add), he goes all the way, with a low-cut black dress and boobs! Kim Henkel, what the hell is wrong with you?! I know there was a dichotomy in the original where Leatherface became a grotesque version of the female characters during

the third act, but this is like something you'd see in a John Waters movie! (I'm not kidding, he looks like Divine!) And since he goes out in broad daylight, you get a good look at just how awful this getup looks (that fake skin looks like latex with flour dumped on it). And the scene where you see Leatherface putting on lipstick and looking at himself in the mirror in that outfit, with a record playing in the background, is like both the creepiest and stupidest nightmare you could ever have. The same goes for the ending, where Leatherface is running after Jenny and eventually does the chainsaw dance while wearing that dress, screaming at the top of his lungs. And the film's tagline is, "If looks could kill, he wouldn't need a chainsaw."

By the way, that tagline lies, because Leatherface never kills anybody with a chainsaw here. In fact, the only person he kills period is Barry and that's with a sledgehammer (I guess you could say he kills the couple in the RV at the end because he causes them to crash, but you never see them again and Jenny survived the crash, so who knows if they died or not?). In the previous films, Leatherface has usually only killed one person with his chainsaw (two in the case of the last film, if you count Benny's very apparent death in the alternate ending), so they can't

really be called chainsaw "massacres," but if you've got the word "chainsaw" in the title, somebody has to have it taken to them. But nope, that doesn't happen here (which makes the original title of The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre a bigger lie than the tagline, because it sure as hell didn't return). Also, while Leatherface does do a lot of chasing with his chainsaw, his swings with it are just pathetic. When he's chasing Jenny through the woods, she stumbles through a stretch of shallow water, he gets almost directly behind her, and swings the saw, but said

swings are so feeble that, even when he's right behind her, he still misses! He can't even kill her with it when some is holding her down, like Vilmer at the end of the dinner scene. (I guess the metaphor that Tobe Hooper introduced in the second film about the chainsaw being Leatherface's manhood was literal. Now that he's lost his balls, both in the sense that he's a wimp and dresses like a woman, it's useless to him.) If this really is meant to be the same character that we saw in the past films, then I want to know what

happened to him. Did the fact that two more people got away from him at the end of the last one cause him to have a psychotic break that made him regress farther down in his mindset than he ever had been before? (More than likely, this is another alternate continuity, but even then, it sucks to know that the truly scary character we saw in the original ended up like this.) 

One last curious thing about Leatherface is the actor who played him: Robert Jacks. Born in Monterey, California, he was a good friend of Viggo Mortensen's, oddly enough, as well as Patricia Neal and Deborah Harry, the latter of whom he recorded a CD. (One of its songs is featured in this movie, and its cover has Harry standing in front of a portrait that features Jacks in all three of his Leatherface costumes. It's surreal, to say the least.) A rather flamboyant, openly gay person, he seemed to have a pretty miserable time making this movie, and in some of the behind the scenes footage, like you see in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Shocking Truth documentary, he comes off as derisive towards some direction given to him by Henkel, and complains about his mask and how it keeps slipping off his face. Then again, like most of these movies, I've heard the shooting conditions were rather uncomfortable and it was tough on everybody. Jacks never acted again afterward and died in 2001 of an abdominal aneurysm, the day before his 42nd birthday. The first Leatherface actor to pass away, while I didn't appreciate his performance (I've heard some who say they do, which is fine), it's still a shame that he died so young and that he will likely be best remembered for playing a horror icon in its most embarrassing incarnation imaginable.

There is a grandfather character (Grayson Victor Schirmacher) who appears briefly at the dinner table. W.E. talks to him continuously while they're sitting there, but he never responds or moves and so, you assume he's just another one of the corpses the family has sitting around the table. And then, after Vilmer clobbers W.E. with the hammer, he gets up and walks away, holding a knife. This is something else that complicates the notion of where this film falls in the timeline, since Grandpa actually was a corpse in the previous film. And even if it is meant as a direct sequel to the original, it still doesn't make sense given how Grandpa was so old and weak there that he couldn't even stand up.

Just when you think this movie couldn't get any stupider, right before the climax comes a character who causes this derailing train to finally crash. Throughout the film, Darla keeps talking about how Vilmer and the rest of the family work for a mysterious group that controls everything and has been doing so for centuries, engineering tragedies such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy; in other words, the Illuminati. Now, you would think this was just the ramblings of a crazy woman... until Jenny attempts to leave after the dinner scene. Suddenly, this black limousine pulls up outside and in walks this guy in a dark suit, accompanied by his chauffeur. The man, Rothman (James Gale), not only seems to be the possible head of this organization that employs Vilmer, but is actually offended by his methods and reminds him what his purpose is: "I want these people to know the meaning of horror. Horror. Is that clear?" And that's where any belief that this film could possibly salvage itself goes out the window. Basically, what Henkel is saying is that the horrible things that happened in the original film, and possibly the two previous ones, weren't due to fate, the influence of sunspots and Saturn being retrograde, or the simple fact that all of these victims just ran across these insane people who wanted to murder them for no reason they could possibly understand. There was no terrifying randomness to it all; it was because the Illuminati (it's never flat-out confirmed that's who Rothman represents, and Henkel is always reticent to confirm it one way or the other, but he definitely fits the criteria) willed all of this to happen in order for people to have some spiritual, transcendental experience. The idea of the Illuminati and the elites who supposedly run the world is a scary one, for sure, but it's not what The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is about.

It doesn't help that Rothman and what he represents are implemented in such a nonsensical manner. He comes out of freaking nowhere, tells Vilmer that he's disgusted with what he's doing (whatever their criteria is, it seems as though Vilmer is too crazy even for them), opens up his shirt, exposing some weird tattoos and piercings on his belly, inexplicably licks Jenny's face, and then just leaves. And after Jenny escapes from the family, Rothman picks her up in his limousine and apologizes for what's happened. The stuff he says, like the character himself, makes no

sense: "This, all of this, it's been an abomination. You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. I suppose it's something we all live with, people like us who strive for something... a sense of harmony. Perhaps it's disappointment that keeps us going. Unfortunately, it's never been easy for me. I suppose it's something we all live with... raison d'être. One of my many failings." I love how, as he's going on, Jenny is

getting increasingly angry at the bullshit he's saying. I have no clue what in God's holy name he's talking about, and for Henkel to try to put in some sort of deeper meaning after all of the nonsense he's subjected us to over close to an hour and a half is not only pretentious but a slap in the face. He really expects us to take something from this crud, like he's making an art film. Not only do I agree with Jenny telling Rothman, "Fuck you," but I would like to think it's directed at Henkel as well for all of this.

The side-characters aren't treated with much dignity either, and some of them are as weird, crazy, and/or stupid as the main ones. The guy (Vince Brock) whom Heather crashed into is perhaps the most normal one, since he only says one repeated line before passing out until Vilmer snaps his neck. He's credited as "I'm Not Hurt," as that's the one thing he says. When Heather arrives at the prom, there's a girl (Carmen Nogales) out in the hall who's acting like she's doped up on medication, calling a nearby teacher a bitch several times for discernible reason. 

Even Heather is confused by that! There are these two cops are at the pizza place that Darla stops at and, while the woman (Debra McMichael) is fine, the guy (Derek Keele) is really stupid in that he comes up to Darla and tries to hit on her, even though he was close enough to hear her tell Jenny in the trunk that she was going to tape her mouth up if she didn't keep quiet, and to hear her respond. I know he couldn't see Jenny because of the dark garbage bag she's wrapped up in, but he still. I guess he's so much of a horndog that it just didn't register with him. Even the couple in the

RV (Geri Wolcott and Axel L. Schiller) at the end are weird, because they keep calling each other Mr. and Mrs. Spodish (all of their dialogue is ADR, and by different actors). And, finally, we have several cast members from the original film who got roped into appearing here. The cop at the hospital who talks with Jenny is John Dugan, and as they're talking, an orderly walks by, pushing a gurney. The woman on the gurney is none other than Marilyn Burns (credited simply as Anonymous in the ending credits, possibly

to avoid getting her in trouble with the Screen Actors Guild for appearing in a non-union film) and the orderly is Paul Partain. The way the camera lingers on Burns as she's wheeled by, with her and Jenny exchanging looks, and the cop notes, "You know, this isn't the first time something like this has happened," before asking Jenny if she knows who the woman is, seems to be implying that she really is Sally. But if that's the case, then why is she at a hospital instead of a mental asylum or rehabilitation center? It's likely just meant to be an homage to the original, but it's not one that makes any kind of sense. 

Like Leatherface, exactly where The Next Generation falls in the continuity is rather sketchy. If it wasn't for the opening text, you'd probably think it's in its own continuity, given how it often functions as a remake of the original. Like the previous film, it does seem to follow the original (I says it "seems to" because the text doesn't specifically mention that film's events, only the date of August 18th, 1973), but whether or not it acknowledges the first two sequels is very up in the air. It does mention, "At least two minor, yet

apparently related incidents," which could allude to Chainsaw 2 and Leatherface, but it's so vague that it could be almost anything. Also, ignoring the issue of whether or not Leatherface itself even acknowledges the one before it, this opening text says that not one member of the family was ever caught, contradicting the crawl for Leatherface that said one was caught, tried, and executed in the gas chamber. That family member happened to be named W.E. Sawyer, the same name as one of them in this film! And going back to whether or not that girl on the gurney was

meant to be Sally, remember that Leatherface's opening stated that she died in 1977. This is why the series' timeline is a confusing mess: after the second film, they could never decide whether they wanted to follow the previous movies, make a direct sequel to the original, or create their own continuity, and it sometimes feels like they're trying to do all three. It doesn't matter, though, as the idea of this being in continuity with any of those other, far superior movies is a travesty, especially given Leatherface's portrayal and the possible Illuminati connection, which would retroactively diminish any of them.

I must say that the movie greatly benefited from the Scream Factory Blu-Ray's HD transfer, because when I first saw it on DVD, it looked like shit. It had this orange tinge to it, like it was shot through a filter made of cheese, and just came off as ugly. That was actually the result of a bad transfer combined with cinematographer Levie Isaacks' technique of trying to give the movie a look that would reflect the hot, humid conditions it was filmed under. Despite being set mostly at night, the film, like the original, was

shot in Texas in August, and it was very muggy most of the time. And, as much as I loathe to compare this to the original in any way, the conditions do come through in a similar manner, as there is an uncomfortable atmosphere about it, with everything looking hot and steamy due to the lighting and all the mist hanging in the air, and you can also often see sweat on the actors (Matthew McConaughey's hair is almost constantly drenched in because of how much he was throwing himself around in those conditions).

he scene with the four kids in the car at the beginning was done in a warehouse and, according to Isaacks in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Comparison, it got unbearably hot in there while they were shooting. Between knowing about the conditions and how the kids were meant to be dressed for the prom, it does make your skin crawl, especially if you're like me and can't stand it when it's humid. And I won't deny that there are some great visuals of the misty woods and ominous POV shots of the characters' surroundings. But, all these compliments aside, I feel like the

exterior scenes are lit far too brightly. Yeah, I know, I complained about it being too dark in the original and Leatherface, and I now I have the opposite issue, but it's hard to ignore when it looks so bright that the sun might as well be out and yet, after he drops their flashlight and it stops working temporarily, Barry complains, "Great, now we can't see jack!"

The majority of the locations are pretty bland, from the outside of the high school (we never actually see the prom that's going on inside; the closest we get is the immediate exterior hallway), the highway and a bit of the small town, to the woods where so much of the film takes place and Darla's randomly-placed office trailer out there. Said woods, which were actually a pine forest preserve in Bastrop, are especially unappealing to me. Much of the first half involves the characters walking down the dirt road

that runs through this murky, mist-filled forest, and it feels so generic and gets old really fast, especially with how, again, it's often so brightly lit that it doesn't look as creepy as it could. I know they had a very low budget, but it's amazing how the infinitely smaller original was able to be far more visually dynamic. Speaking of which, the sequence where Leatherface chases Jenny through the woods, while exciting enough, doesn't come off much better visually, and as for the climactic chase that takes place out in broad daylight, the sight of this happening in a wide open field surrounded by woods, with a dusty, dirt road in the middle of it, is nowhere near as scary or striking as the original's ending on that open, public road with a vast horizon all around. 

One credit I will give the art direction is that the house, which was a real location in Pflugerville, does look a lot like the house in the original, both on the outside and on the inside, with a similar lived-in feel to the latter. There are also some unsettling aspects to it, with the room in the back where Leatherface first stuffs Heather in the freezer and hangs her on the meat-hook looking quite nightmarish with all the sharp implements that are in there, and the horrors that Barry finds in the nasty bathroom, like the 

decaying corpse in the bathtub and what looks like a big chunk of flayed skin hanging on the back of the door. And sometimes, there are cool-looking shafts of blue light coming through the windows (in fact, the house interiors are generally better photographed than the woods). But, it's still not on the level of the original, and a big reason for that is because, instead of being filled to the brim with bone sculptures and the remains of their victims, the house is mainly just cluttered with a bunch of junk, with small rooms that

seem to have no purpose other than to act as a storage space for beat up, antique furniture and the like. There are some animal bones and creations made from them here and there, like a chandelier above the dinner table, the chairs (the one Grandpa is sitting on is actually one of Bob Burns' props from the original), and some lamps, as well as parts, bones, and hides nailed to the walls in random spots, as in the original. The very cluttered kitchen and the dining room are the spots we see the most of, with the latter being the standout, not just for the bone sculptures but also for

the table, which makes the one in the original look perfectly organized by comparison, and a section of wall decorated with keys, which production designer Deborah Pastor said in an interview on the Scream Factory Blu-Ray was meant to allude to all of the people Vilmer has killed in his job of driving a wrecker. I have to give credit when that kind of detail is considered. And like in the original, we don't see much of anything of the upstairs, although there is one room up there, which we see when Leatherface is chasing Jenny, that's full of weapons, as well as what could be the stuffed corpse of a real police officer..

The house's similarity to the original leads me to another problem with the movie itself: it often feels more like a remake than a sequel. You could argue that the house looks similar because it's meant to be the same one but, putting aside the vastly different location and details of the house's interior, Henkel still copies so much from the original (I even remember the movie being promoted as a remake on the back of the early DVD releases, and Tyler Cone, who played Barry, said on the Scream Factory Blu-

Ray that it was pitched to him as such). The kids come across a place run by someone who initially appears normal but later turns out to be part of the family; a girl sits on a swing in front of the house while her boyfriend goes to investigate it; said girl is grabbed, hauled through the house, put on a meat-hook and into a freezer (here, the order of the latter two is switched); Leatherface bashes the boyfriend in the head with a sledgehammer and his body twitches before being dragged away; Leatherface chases the main girl through the woods, into his house, saws the

door down in order to get to her (which someone later complains about), chases her up the stairs, she goes through a window, makes her way back down to the ground, and the chase continues up to the aforementioned public service establishment; the seemingly normal person who runs it initially tries to calm her, then turns on her and brings her back to the house; she suffers a lot of mental and physical torture before escaping; she's chased by Leatherface and another family member out into the morning light and the latter is killed; and the girl gets away in another vehicle, while Leatherface does the chainsaw dance. 

There are notable changes in the details, like how Leatherface chases Jenny onto the roof after she climbs through the window, Vilmer is killed by a random crop-duster plane rather than a cattle truck like the Hitchhiker, and you think Jenny is going to get away in the RV but it crashes and she ultimately escapes in Rothman's limousine, so it doesn't always feel like a total xerox, but regardless, some of the scene-lifting doesn't even make sense in context within the film itself. The major one is

Leatherface putting Heather on the meat-hook, because it seems as though the family isn't cannibalistic, given how Darla brings pizza home for dinner. I kind of doubt a family so destitute that they've turned to cannibalism to fill their stomachs would be able to afford enough pizza for at least four people (five if you count Grandpa), and even if they could, why cannibalize people at all, then? Did they just decide to eat something other than human flesh that night? And yet, placed at the dinner table are the pale corpses of many other people, so they're

clearly not devouring their victims. I can buy the bone sculptures probably being all that's left of people they killed long ago and they decided to do something with the parts, but still, why the meat-hook? You could argue that this randomness is more evidence of how crazy they all are, but that's grasping at straws. I think the real thought process behind it is simple: "Well, it's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, so we have to have someone treated like a piece of meat, even if they're not going to be eaten." 

To this day, I just don't know exactly what Henkel's intention was with this movie. At the time, he said he intended to make "the real sequel," as that promo reel called it, and told Fangoria that he made far more believable villains than those in the original, whom he decried as "outlandish" and "buffoonish," and that the victims would be people you'd have sympathy for... and then, years later, he admitted to writing the latter as complete caricatures of American teenagers. There are some who were and are still able to get something

out of this approach, with critics who saw the film during its initial limited release in 1995 viewing it as a reflexive parody of the original movie, adding that it explains why Leatherface is such an ineffective villain, why the family is now dining on pizza, and why the dinner scene here is far from the intense sequence in the original. It definitely does have the air of a parody from the very beginning, with the melodramatic tone of the opening text's narrator and the dismissive attitude towards the previous sequels, but I just don't get why you would claim to be going

fback to the feeling and spirit of the original, and promise another hard-edged, gritty film with characters whom you care about and frighteningly real villains, only to throw such a complete curve-ball at everyone. I suspect it came from Henkel's lack of enthusiasm for the project and personal disdain for the horror genre, with the teenage characters meant to be the most exaggerated versions of unlikable slasher movie victims. And granted, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 did prove that biting satire and dark humor can work in what is still meant to be a

legitimate sequel, but the attitude behind this amounted to little more than self-sabotage, especially since most fans of the original are not going to care to see a movie they love being mocked in such a derisive manner.

Whatever aspirations and intentions Henkel may have had also don't work because, aside from the annoying and/or loathsome characters and horrendous writing, the movie is just too damn crazy for its own good. An odd criticism for an entry in a franchise that's well known for being insane, yes, but this one just goes way, way too far with it. Tobe Hooper himself definitely made some pretty insane and nonsensical movies throughout his career, but this makes the craziest of his look downright sober by comparison.

There are so many scenes where it's evident that Henkel has no clue how to instruct actors to rein in their performances or how to plot and structure what's going to happen without it becoming overlong and tiresome. Some may feel that scenes in the original film go on too long, like Leatherface chasing Sally or the montages in the dinner scene with her screaming and her tormentors laughing at her, but that was done in such a way that it was horrifying and disturbing; here, it's just constant chaos, made up of people acting crazy, smacking and beating on each other, and

nonsensical yelling, especially from Leatherface and Vilmer, for almost five full minutes or so, to the point where you agree with Jenny when she yells at everybody to shut up. It's not entertaining, it's just a bunch of madness that makes you want to turn it off. 

The movie also has a very bad habit of repeating itself. Besides the amount of purely insane and unbearable scenes I mentioned above, the sheer number of times Jenny either escapes from her captors or is about to, only to be captured again, is really egregious. She gets picked up by Vilmer, jumps out of the truck when she realizes he's a psycho, gets chased by Leatherface, ends up at the real estate trailer office, where Darla captures her and then takes her back to the house. Later, during one of the family

arguments, Jenny manages to get the shotgun, make it out the front door, and almost gets away in Darla's car, but she's captured again by Vilmer. During the dinner scene, she manages to, once again, regain control and tries to leave, but is stopped yet again and is then briefly tortured by Rothman. And after that, she runs out the front door, with Leatherface and Vilmer in hot pursuit, and finally gets away for good. (I bet by this point, when the RV turns over, most may panic and think she's going to be recaptured again and the movie will go on for another fifteen minutes or so!) Can you spell repetitive?

I feel that you can go one of three ways with horror films: you can genuinely try to terrify and disturb the audience (with or without bloodletting), you can make it into a fun time with a lot of over the top gore and death scenes, or you can do both. Obviously, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a prime example of the first method and Chainsaw 2 took the second route; The Next Generation, however, doesn't do any of them. Henkel, possibly trying to make it like the original but also, as he himself admitted, due

to his aversion to the horror genre, puts in almost no blood (I'd say there's even less blood here than in the original), and the end result is neither genuinely scary nor fun in any way. You don't see any blood whatsoever when Barry gets bashed in the head or when Heather is hung on the meat-hook; Sean's death happens virtually offscreen since you don't see a closeup of Vilmer's truck running over his body (the aftermath isn't even close to looking as bad as it should; and you don't see anything at all when Vilmer crushes Heather's head. The only bits of blood you

see for the most part are whenever Vilmer cuts himself or bites into Heather's face, as well as a little around Heather's mouth when she's lying on the floor, and a small puddle by Vilmer after he's killed. There are a couple of fairly gruesome-looking corpses, like a dead animal that Jenny, Heather, and Barry come across in the middle of the road and the heavily-decomposed person that Barry finds in the family's bathtub (which does look quite gross, I must admit), but that's all there is basically. 

Despite the lack of gore, however, the film actually is quite violent, and as is often really mean-spirited and uncomfortable to watch. Another odd criticism for an entry in this franchise, I know (and this won't be the last one with it, either), but as mean-spirited as the previous films got, they were worked in conjunction with what each film was trying to accomplish: the original was truly trying to scare the crap out of you, the second was trying to be a gory black comedy and satire, and the third was trying to bring in a very

nasty, hard edge. Since this one is not scary, fun, or gory, and the satire and commentary that Henkel might've been going for don't work, the violent scenes just make you cringe and not in a good way. When W.E. first beats the hell out of Jenny, then puts her in a trash-bag and stuffs her into Darla's trunk, constantly zapping her with the cattle prod as she screams and whines in pain, it goes on far longer than it should and comes across as bullying sadism on the part of both the character and the director. The same

goes for Heather's torture and death. As much as I hated that character and wanted to kill her myself because she was so annoying, I hate it when Darla, after coming upon her in the road after she escaped, hits her in the head with a large stick while she whines and curls up in a ball. Then, Vilmer later biting into face and pulling back with blood in his mouth, setting her back on fire, and slowly crushing her head, all feels overly sadistic and drawn out (her screaming and the cracking sounds you hear during the latter make it all the more hideous). Heck, you

could even argue that Sean's death, with Vilmer driving over him again and again, is a case of overkill. In fact, aside from him being so obnoxiously over-the-top and loud,another reason why I don't enjoy Vilmer is because of how utterly sadistic he is, from how he beats on and throws Darla around, nearly crushing her neck at one point, to often all but threatening to rape Jenny until she likes it (and probably even far worse), and that's when he's not just flat-out bullying her. And Rothman suddenly licking the side of her face before he leaves is not only random but unnecessarily crude and vile.

It's a shame that the movie is so bad, as there are some fairly good sequences here and there. For instance, when Leatherface attacks Heather on the front porch, even though it starts with him screaming at her like a bitch, the attack itself is actually rather intense. He grabs her when she tries to run, drags her through the door, she manages to temporarily escape his clutches and run through and close another door. He pounds on it, screamingly crazily, then smashes his fist through it, grabs her, and pulls her to him. After some struggling, she manages to break free, but

he angrily knocks the door completely down, knocking her to the floor with it, then grabs and drags her down the hallway going past the staircase. She, again, manages to break free, but he promptly grabs her again and drags her into the room with the freezer and meat-hook. She grabs onto the edges of the door-frame but he's able to pull her free and shove her into the freezer. Though he closes it, she tries to get back out, forcing him to slam it down again, yelling at her through the lid. She still tries to get out and he, in

turn, grabs an enormous pot from nearby and puts it atop the lid. He then screams as she continues doing so, before running off elsewhere in the house. A few minutes later, when Barry manages to escape W.E. and uses their bathroom, he's promptly killed when Leatherface whacks him with a sledgehammer and drags his body down the hall, into the room where Heather is still in the freezer. He removes the enormous pot from the lid and Heather, yet again, tries to escape, but he catches her and puts her on the meat-hook.

Right after that is when Jenny is picked up by Vilmer, despite his already coming off as a psycho, and he, after bullying her and taking her glasses, forces her to look in the back of his wrecker, where she sees both Sean and the motorist's bodies. She then jumps out of the truck while it's still moving and runs off elsewhere, across a field. Vilmer chases after her, coming close to running her down, until she runs off into the treeline. But instead of going on, like she should, she just stands there, apparently not taking into account that he could continue after her on foot.

He even says, "You don't know what the hell you're doin'," when he gets out of the truck and shines a light at her. But instead of coming after her, he turns the light off, telling her, "Okay. If that's what you want. It's up to you. Live and learn," and drives off. There are a few moments of dead silence, save for the sounds of the surrounding woods, when she's startled by a twig snapping. Then, Leatherface appears with his chainsaw and chases her out of that patch of woods, through a large puddle of water, and towards the farmhouse. She ducks inside, closes and locks the

door when he's almost on top of her, and runs upstairs, while he starts sawing the door down. Up in one room, she finds that seemingly stuffed body of a police officer, but takes his gun, despite her disgust, and points it at Leatherface when he saws through the door. He momentarily stops at the sight of it, but it turns out to be empty when she pulls the trigger and he continues the chase. In a twist that I do like, when she runs back upstairs and jumps through the window, she ends up on the roof and crawls across it, with

Leatherface climbing out after her. She climbs to the back of the house, with him swiping at her with the saw and destroying the chimney while trying to get at her. In desperation, she climbs up the TV antenna, with him swiping and sawing at it, and she jumps on a line stretching across from the roof. But as she's crawling along, he saws through it, sending her falling through the open roof of a small greenhouse. After lying there for a few moments, she slowly gets back up and stumbles out of it, when she hears the chainsaw rev up again. She runs for it, as Leatherface plows through the greenhouse's wall and chases her through the woods again, until she ends up back at Darla's trailer.

The first time Jenny tries to escape, after she tries to shoot Vilmer with the shotgun, only for that to backfire completely, she runs outside, gets in Darla's car, and backs around, hitting the side of the house with the car's rear. Vilmer jumps down from a second-story window above her, rolling across the top and onto the hood. He crawls up to the windshield and reaches in through the driver's window, grabbing at her, until she hits the brakes and flings him off. She does drive forward, ostensibly trying to run him over, but then, the hood randomly pops up and she slams

into the side of a tank beside a tree. With no other choice, she opens the door and slowly steps out, but hangs around too long, as Vilmer reaches out from underneath the car and drags her down to the ground, before hauling her back to the house and knocking her unconscious with the butt of the shotgun.

The climax, after Rothman appears and leaves, and Vilmer has a sudden mental breakdown, cutting into himself here and there while screaming like a baby, starts when Jenny takes the opportunity and slips into a draped off room by the dining room. But she finds no way out, and Vilmer quickly comes in and drags her back into the dining room. He holds her down, intending for Leatherface to saw her up, but when he takes too long to get started, she grabs the remote control for Vilmer's leg out of his pants and messes with it to keep him from getting at her. Grabbing

another control, the two of them have a virtual battle of the remote controls, with Vilmer continuously trying to crawl across the floor after her. Eventually, she manages to get up and run out the door, taking off down the road, with Leatherface chasing after her. Upon finding a remote that works for him, Vilmer joins in the chase. With morning coming, Jenny comes across the RV being driven by the older couple. Though they're initially reluctant to stop for her, when Mrs. Spodish sees that Leatherface is chasing her, she opens the door and lets her in.

Leatherface tries to get at them through the door but Mrs. Spodish tells her husband to step on it and they pull ahead of him. But just when it seems as though they've gotten away, Vilmer comes along in his wrecker, picks up Leatherface, and when they get alongside the RV, he swings and stabs at them with the saw (though Kim Henkel said he didn't like either of the two prior Chainsaw movies, he clearly had no problem stealing from them, as this is a lot like the first setpiece in Chainsaw 2). This very quickly sends

the RV off-road and it turns over onto its side when it hits a large chunk of brush. The wrecker comes back around, as Jenny climbs out of the RV and runs off on foot again, with Leatherface and Vilmer following suit. That's when that crop-duster, which has been circling the area this whole time, comes down and hits Vilmer, killing him instantly (either that was a hit ordered by Rothman or that pilot saw what was going on and decided to be a hero). As this sends Leatherface into a tizzy, Jenny is picked up by

Rothman in his limousine and is taken to safety. Leatherface is left there by himself, initially confused, and then goes into the chainsaw dance, which, a few minutes later, we see he's still doing even as the sun sets, and which is the last thing we see before the credits.

After the film was completed, it was shown at the South by Southwest Film and Media Conference, and later at the Boston Film Festival, both in 1995. That September, it was given a limited theatrical release by Cinepix Film Properties. At this point, it was still called The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but that changed when Columbia/Tristar purchased the home video rights and also agreed to give it a wider theatrical release. According to Robert Kuhn, the studio, feeling that Renee Zellweger would be a box-office draw after starring in a big movie with Tom Cruise, decided to delay the release until after Jerry Maguire. While the filmmakers agreed to that, the Creative Artists Agency supposedly stepped in and pressured the studio not to release the film at all, though both Matthew McConaughey and Zellweger have denied being an active part of that. Regardless, the film was released in theaters in August of 1997, but in just twenty cities and with almost no marketing, leading to box-office returns that were positively anemic. Kim Henkel and Kuhn were, naturally, not happy about how this went down, with the latter saying that the studio should've either given the film back and let them distribute it themselves, or done the best release they possibly could have. (Maybe they simply realized what an awful film they had and didn't want to embarrass themselves by releasing it all over the country.)

In addition to renaming it, Columbia/Tristar also re-edited the film, cutting it down from the 94-minute version that Cinepix released to an 87-minute one (according to Variety, the version that played at South by Southwest was 102 minutes long). This was the only version of the film you could get in the United States for many years, while the longer version, with the original title, was only available on a Canadian DVD from 2001. But then, in 2018, Scream Factory released their collector's edition Blu-Ray, which came with both versions, with the other being referred to simply as the "director's cut" (tellingly, this is the version that Henkel did an audio commentary for). On that Blu-Ray, this cut's picture quality tends to jump back and forth from high- to standard definition, and not just whenever it gets to the material excised from The Next Generation version. I will also admit that this version is a tad more coherent, although it's not any more pleasant of a watch. As for content, the most significant difference is a scene at the beginning, when we see just what a reprehensible person Jenny's stepfather (David Laurence), as he not only verbally

abuses her mother (Susan Loughran) but walks into Jenny's room, sexually harasses her, and threatens her to keep her from telling, saying her mother will never believe her. Like I said before, this is meant to create more of an arc for Jenny, to make it more understandable as to why she's so repressed and doesn't like to be touched, and make it more vindicating when she stands up against the family and escapes. There are other touches, like a little more dialogue between Barry and Heather, both in the car

and later on, and when Barry gets in the house and locks W.E. out, he demands to know where the phone is so he can call the police; to that, W.E. exclaims, "Boy, you are as dull as dishwater!" There's a shot of Jenny squatting in the road by herself for a little bit. And later on, after Jenny has been captured and she and Darla are in the bathroom, there's a bit more dialogue between them, where they learn each other's names and Darla advises Jenny not to do anything to

make Vilmer mad. The editing is also different sometimes, like how, in this version, you see Vilmer stalk and kill Sean in one go, rather than briefly cutting back to the others at Darla's trailer right as the chase begins. And at the end, the color timing is wildly different, with the climactic scene out in the field having a yellow tint to it, while the penultimate shot of "Sally" being wheeled down the hall is a vivid blue.

Wayne Bell, who scored the original along with Tobe Hooper, returned to do the music here, but it's probably the most forgettable score this franchise has seen yet. The music that plays over the first part of the opening credits is fairly menacing, although it does give you a false impression about the movie you're about to watch, and there's a nicely eerie piece that plays when Jenny is out in the woods by herself after she's first separated from Barry and Heather, but other than that, the music, when you can make it out, is just as bizarre and weird as the movie itself, but not in a memorable way. There are also some sound effects from the original film that are redone and scattered throughout, particularly the camera sound, which you hear when the prom pictures are being taken at the beginning, right before the car crash, and right before the movie cuts to black and the credits start. I can also make out some of the unsettling percussive tones from the original here and there as well.

Much of Bell's work was replaced by songs performed by Texan singers and groups. Among them are Torn and Tied by Pariah, during the first scene at the prom, and it switches over to Mumbo Jumbo by Tail Gators when Heather takes off in Barry's car; I Got It Made by Skatenigs, which Vilmer plays on a cassette tape when he kills Sean; Love To Turn You On by Pariah, which he puts on while chasing Jenny; Brownskin Woman by Beau Jocques & The Zydeco Hi-Rollers (which was added especially for The Next Generation version), which plays during the dinner scene; Blue Moon at Dawn by Coffee Sergeants, during the climactic chase and the final scene with Leatherface; and Wolf At Night by Erik and Erik, an off-beat, silly fiddle piece that plays over the ending credits. Brownskin Woman is actually played twice in The Next Generation, with the other time being when Jenny first tries to escape; in The Return, both that and the dinner scene are actually scored.

Before I end, I want to comment on how, despite how much I and a lot of other people don't like this film, it does have some defenders. Its biggest fan, by far, is Joe Bob Briggs, who called it, "The best horror film of the nineties," and said it made the first two sequels, "Look like After-School species." Like I mentioned earlier, other critics also gave it fairly good notices at the time of its release, with the Village Voice saying that Leatherface crossed Divine (see, I told you) with Hannibal Lecter (I think they may have gotten Lecter mixed up with Buffalo Bill) And today, there is a fairly passionate cult following for it. I only bring all of this up to reiterate my stance that everybody likes what they like and if you enjoy something that I don't, great. It doesn't make you an idiot or a bad person or anything else. It'll just remain one of those odd mysteries of life as to how someone can get any type of enjoyment out of this but, again, if you do, no foul.

Maybe I'm missing something and Kim Henkel really is a genius. It's possible. But given how so many others also consider Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, or The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to be one of the worst horror films ever, I'm clearly not the only one who isn't getting it. This is an absolutely insane, nonsensical film, with characters who, except for Jenny, are either so annoying and obnoxious that you can't stand them, batshit insane, or both; a very embarrassing depiction of Leatherface; a plot that rehashes elements from the

far superior original and does it very poorly; sequences of pure craziness that go on for so long that they become tedious; a main location that's not all that visually interesting; a tone that sometimes feel like that of a spoof, despite what Henkel claimed he intended to do with the film; a lack of gore that's offset by a truly mean-spirited tone; an "eh" music score; and a twist that's both stupid and robs this franchise of its power. There are good elements, like the look of the house, some gruesome makeup effects, Renee Zellweger's performance, despite some rough patches, and some fine sequences, but on the whole, it's one of the worst sequels ever and leaves you baffled as to what the real intent behind it was, other thank to bank on the name. And while the other version is better, it's not enough for me to keep that Blu-Ray. Now that this review is done, I can say for certain that I will never endure this train-wreck ever again.