Franchises: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

I knew there was going to be a follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03. I just did. Even though it wasn't that well-liked by most mainstream critics, most horror fans at the time seemed to really enjoy it and, more importantly, it made a ton of money. Knowing how eager studios are to capitalize on the success of a particular movie, I knew it wouldn't be long before we saw another film in the continuity established by the remake. And I was all for it. I really, really liked the remake, as you undoubtedly if you've read my review of it, and whenever I really enjoy a movie, save for a few exceptions, I always welcome any sort of second chapter to it. I was a bit curious how they would continue the story, though, since the ending of the remake felt pretty final: Leatherface's right arm was cut off and he hadn't been seen since 1973, Sheriff Hoyt was dead, Erin warned the police and the house had been raided, and the rest of the family, more than likely, had either all been arrested or had gone into exile and, with the police combing the countryside for them, probably hadn't survived. And it wasn't too long before I found out how they were going to continue the story: they weren't. They instead decided to go back and tell the story of how the Hewitt family and Leatherface came to be. While most are opposed to prequels, I feel that prequels can be good if the story is told well and I thought that this story could make for an interesting movie. Also, this would make another first: Not only had I never heard of a contemporary horror movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre being remade but I most certainly had never come across a prequel to a remake. Sequels, yes, like The Fly II (although that's the only one I can think of that existed at that time), but never prequels. So, I felt that this would be very interesting indeed.

However, as the film was actually being made, I found out some things about it that, while I wouldn't say they completely destroyed my interest in the film, I did them questionable. One was the actual title: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. By this point, The Exorcist: The Beginning had been released and when I read that title, I was just like, "Really? That's the only title that you can come up with for prequels nowadays?" It felt very unoriginal to me. And I also wasn't too keen on the plot either, about another group of kids being captured, tortured, and killed by the family. I thought this movie was going to dwell solely on the family, how they came about through the years, how Thomas Hewitt became the sadistic monster he was in the remake and, ultimately, how he became Leatherface. This sounded like they were just rehashing the same basic story that had been done in all but one of the films in the franchise (that different one being the second one that Tobe Hooper did). I was expecting to see how the family killed their first victims but I figured that would be the last act. I wasn't expecting the entire film to dwell on it for reasons that I've already stated above. Maybe it's my fault for giving myself too lofty expectations for the film when I heard it was going to be a prequel about the Hewitt family but that's just what I thought it would be.

In any case, I didn't see the movie when it was released in theaters in 2006. (The reasons for that are, even though I was 19 at that time, I still couldn't drive and I had no official ID on me either, which I would have needed because I've always looked much younger than I really am. So, I couldn't go myself and I couldn't find anybody who would have taken me to see the film either. And I was also in college at that point, having get up at the crack of dawn everyday and drive an hour to Chattanooga to go to school so I doubt I would have had time or had been in the mood to go see it anyway.) I eventually saw it on DVD the following February or so. I wasn't too enamored with it when I first saw it and even now, I'm not too sure about it. While there was some stuff that I liked, I didn't think it was as well-made as the remake and I actually felt that it didn't do a very good job of telling the story that it had set out to tell. I also thought, and I still kind of do think, that it was just a generally unpleasant viewing experience and was a major example of the recent horror trend that I did not enjoy at all then and I don't enjoy now either. It didn't help that I was battling some serious depression at that time and probably shouldn't have watched this type of film anyway but I still did. That was my fault and not the film's so that's not a fair criticism but I still feel that it's necessary for me to mention it since I know that colored my initial opinion of the film. All in all, for reasons that I will elaborate on, this is still one of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films that I watch the least. While I do think it's better than The Next Generation, it's not a movie that I get the urge to watch that much except when I'm doing a marathon simply because, like I said, it's a rather unpleasant film to sit through and I don't think it told its story nearly as well as it could have either.

In 1939, a female slaughterhouse worker suddenly goes into labor and dies while giving birth to a deformed baby. The cruel manager of the plant abandons the child in a dumpster out back but he's found by Luda Mae Hewitt, who takes him home and raises him as her own son. Over the next thirty years, the boy, whom is named Thomas or, as his family calls him, Tommy, grows up while suffering from a hideous skin condition that prompts other children in the town to mock him and he also grows a penchant for self-mutilation as well as cutting up the bodies of dead animals. Tommy begins working at the very slaughterhouse that he was born in but by 1969, the horrid conditions of the place place cause it to be closed down by the health department. This basically kills the small town and forces everyone but the Hewitts to move out. Tommy, enraged at being forced to leave the only workplace that he knows, murders the same cruel manager who left him for dead when he was born. After it's discovered what Tommy has done, the local sheriff takes Tommy's adopted uncle, Charlie, with him to help find and bring him in, hoping that Charlie can reason with him and make him go peacefully. But when they find Tommy, Charlie turns on the sheriff, kills him, takes his identity, and later turns his body into beef stew for dinner. Charlie tells his family that they will not abandon the town that they've lived in their entire life and, having introduced cannibalism to them, says that they will never go hungry again. At the same time, two brothers are driving across Texas with their girlfriends in order to head to Vietnam, with one re-enlisting and the other having been drafted. But, when they arrive in the small town that the Hewitts live in, they are chased by a female biker who intends to rob them but they get into a serious accident. Charlie, now going by the name of Sheriff Hoyt, arrives, promptly kills the biker, and takes three of the kids prisoner (the other, Chrissie, was thrown clear in the accident). As Charlie torments the kids, intending to eventually turn them into dinner meat, Chrissie must try to save her friends not only from him and the reast of the family but from Tommy, whose psychopathic tendencies are being encouraged Charlie and is only a few steps away from becoming the notorious killer, Leatherface.

I was hoping that Marcus Nispel would return to direct the prequel but instead, Michael Bay and his company chose another newcomer, Jonathan Liebesman, to direct this movie. Unlike Nispel, Liebesman wasn't a music video director and had only made a couple of short films, including one that acted as a bridge between the American version of The Ring and its sequel, and one feature, Darkness Falls. I've personally never seen that film but the idea of it being about a killer tooth fairy and the clips of it that I have seen don't make me anxious to do so. Since directing this film, Liebesman has done other films such as Battle: Los Angeles and Wrath of the Titans and is currently working on a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles movie, which Michael Bay is also producing. Looking at his recent track record of films, it seems like he's kind of become Bay's successor. And I also feel that he has just as much talent as well. That may sound like harsh thing to say, given how this is the only film of Liebesman's that I've seen, but it feels like he's going to go on making the same type of loud, brainless action movies that Bay is known for and I honestly think that's all he knows how to do: cater to the lowest common denominator of movies. Looking at this movie, it feels as if Liebesman didn't know how to do anything other than sort of try to emulate the way Marcus Nispel directed as well as wallow in the horror torture trend that had been introduced by Saw and Hostel and from what I've heard and seen of Darkness Falls, it seems as though he didn't do anything other than throw in a bunch of cliched jump-scares, some of which look and sound really stupid, and make the characters the most typical horror movie victims imaginable. It's harsh but in my opinion, Liebesman is hardly a good director and while he may have some technical skill, doesn't know how to make a movie in any way other than purely by the numbers.

Even though I have problems with this movie, the acting isn't one of them. However, that said, one of the weakest characters in the movie for me is Jordana Brewster as Chrissie. Now, like I said, that's not because of the acting. Brewster handles herself fairly well... for what she's given to do, that is. For someone who's listed first in the credits, she's not in the movie that much. Once she gets thrown clear from the car after they hit that cow, she doesn't do much throughout most of the movie other than sneak around the outside and inside of the Hewitt house and unsuccessfully tries to save her friends. Heck, she does something incredibly dumb early on and attempts to get the boyfriend of the biker that held them up to help her. She actually acts all surprised when he refuses to help when they get to the house, calling him an asshole. You can't help but think, "Lady, you knew he was a member of this disreputable gang of bikers who acted really pervy and threatening towards you and Bailey and, again, his girlfriend chased you guys down with a gun. You should have known that he wasn't trustworthy." So, that dumb move on her part really annoyed me. Also, even though Brewster isn't terrible as an actor, she doesn't have the same kind of presence to her that Jessica Biel had as Erin. While she is sweet enough, cares about her friends, and loves her boyfriend, Eric, she not only doesn't come across as smart as Erin but she certainly isn't as tough. She barely fights back against the family when she's captured, with the only major thing she does being when she stabs Leatherface in the shoulder with a knife in order to make him drop her. Other than that, she does nothing but run and hide for the entire movie and while we see at one point during the climax that she does have a knife to defend herself with, she never uses it. Also, I'm not sure if I like how she was about to leave Bailey and Dean behind after Eric was killed by Leatherface. I know that she was probably in utter shock after having to be under the very table that her boyfriend was on when he had a chainsaw shoved through his chest and then had his face sliced off and made into a mask (the latter of which she saw) but it just seemed for a minute that, now that her boyfriend was dead, Chrissie just wanted to leave. She almost became like that biker: only caring about her lover and after he was gone, she was going to abandon everyone else. And even though Chrissie did decide to try to help the others, it didn't make any difference seeing as how Bailey got her throat slashed, Dean got a chainsaw put through him while trying to save her, and Chrissie herself ultimately got butched by Leatherface's saw as well. So, while I don't think Jordana Brewster did a horrible acting job, the character she played was a very ineffective and rather naive heroine who was nowhere near the level that Erin was.

Of the four kids in the movie, my favorite is actually Matt Bomer as Eric, the older of the two brothers. I really like this guy. He comes across as very charming and likable when he's with his friends for the first bit of the movie. I like the playfulness he exhibits when he's with Chrissie by the pool during their first appearance as well as the joking, brotherly banter between him and Dean when he tells Dean, who's in a motel room with his girlfriend, that they're moving out at 1700 hours and when Dean asks what time that is (acting like he doesn't know), he says, "Dean, you better be getting some." I just like the way Eric said that with a smile on his face, showing that he was playfully aggravating his brother. I also like how, when they've stopped at the gas station, Eric notices that the mirror of his car is broken and he says, "Damn, broke my mirror," but with a smile on his face and not a hint of anger. Weird things to praise, I know, but I just like somebody who's that laid back. However, there is a more serious side to Eric's relationship with his brother. It's obvious that he senses that something is off with Dean as soon as they get on the road and when Dean attempts to burn his draft card, Eric eventually tells him why he's going back to Vietnam despite the trauma that it has caused him: he's going back so Dean won't be completely alone over there. Again, shows how much he cares for his brother, even though he's initially angry about the whole situation and says that their father would be ashamed of Dean. And let's not forget that he claims to be the one who burned the draft card so Sheriff Hoyt wouldn't single Dean out. I also do feel that you get a little sense of the relationship between him and Chrissie, such as that thing where they talk about how many kids they'll eventually have, what their respective genders will be, etc., which comes back in a much more tragic way in the scene right before Eric is killed. It's slight, yes, but I think it works, as well as when he gives Chrissie a ring, which she identifies as being from a Cracker Jack box, and he talks about how many boxes he had to go through to get it. And, finally, there's when Chrissie asks him not to leave her and he says, "I ain't never gonna leave you, beautiful." The way he says that with that look in his eyes, I don't think any woman could resist that or anybody could deny the connection between the two of them. (And, again, it makes what happens all the more horrific.)

You can also see hints of Eric's Vietnam experience once they get into danger. When they're being chased by that female biker, who's armed with a gun, Eric eventually pulls his own gun out of the glove compartment and is about to shoot at her. The only thing that stops him is when they hit that cow. Later on, when they're taken hostage by Hoyt, Eric quietly assures Dean that he'll get them out of this, showing that he's a take charge type of person and has probably been in similar situations over in Vietnam. He also makes it clear that he's going to kill Hoyt the first chance he gets, especially later on when Hoyt is torturing Dean by making him do push-ups and constantly beating him with his police baton while doing so. After Hoyt beats on Dean some more even after he does all of the push-ups, Eric angrily yells at him, "I'm going to fucking kill you!" and the way he said that, you can't help but believe it. Eric eventually manages to get himself free, gets Dean on his feet, and also manages to get Bailey out of the house as well but, unfortunately, what happens next is when I think Eric drops the ball. He distracts Hoyt so Dean and Bailey can attempt to escape but all he does is throw a bunch of trash talk at him and tempts him to shoot him. This is Eric's chance to get some revenge on Hoyt for what he's done and he does that. I would have attempted to pry the gun out of his hand and either shoot him or at least beat the crap out of him. But nope, he just taunts Hoyt, eventually gets knocked out by the butt of the gun, and is eventually taken down into Leatherface's basement, where he's tortured, killed, and his face is made into Leatherface's first mask (a truly grisly scene, which I'll talk about later). So, while I liked Eric for the most part, I do think he could have gone out on a higher note than he did.

Funny thing is that I recognized Taylor Handley, who plays Dean, from a Disney Channel original movie from way back in 2000 called Phantom of the Megaplex. Needless to say, this was a change of pace for him. In any case, I thought he handled himself well enough here as Dean. I could actually relate a little bit to Dean because back in the early to mid-2000's when it was rumored that the draft was coming back, I was actually worried about having to go to Iraq and if that had come to pass, I would have probably done what Dean did: burn my draft card and head to either Mexico (which is where he was going) or Canada. So I completely related to Dean's despair about being drafted and also what my family would think if I did that. Not only is he worried about how Eric will react, he wonders how his brother could even go back to Vietnam, especially when he knows how traumatizing the whole thing has been for him. I'm sure that makes Eric's revelation that he was going back for Dean quite a guilt trip for him, particularly when Eric pretends to be Dean so Sheriff Hoyt will be more aggressive towards him. Although Dean almost folds under the pressure when he and Eric are being strung up by Hoyt, he manages to keep his wits about him and eventually reveals that he's the one who burned the draft card when Hoyt is about to suffocate Eric with saran wrap. That's when Dean shows that he is quite tough, managing to do ten push-ups while Hoyt repeatedly beats him with his police baton. However, Dean collapses after being beaten a few more times by Hoyt and even though Eric manages to get him on his feet and tries to help him escape, he gets caught in a bear trap and is left there for a good while. But, later on when Dean is brought to the dinner table and later comes to only to see that his girlfriend, Bailey, has been killed, he decides to give Hoyt some brutal payback. He gets him down on the front porch and bashes his face into it again and again, knocking some of his front teeth out, and giving Hoyt the same taunts that he gave him, saying, "Now, let's see what kind of soldier you are, sheriff. One! That was beautiful. Two! Halfway doesn't count, dickhead! Three! Is that all you got? Is that all you fucking got?!" Particularly satisfying is when, after he's finished, he says, "My money says you're not going anywhere," the same thing that Hoyt told Eric after Dean finished that sadistic round of push-ups. And like Morgan in the remake, Dean goes out a hero. Unfortunately, he goes out a hero for doing something rather dumb. Like Morgan, he stops Leatherface just as he's about to kill Chrissie but all he does is punch and shove Leatherface aside and then turn his back on him in order to help Chrissie up. Did he really think that was going to put Leatherface out of commission? Well, guess what, it didn't, and Leatherface got back up and put his chainsaw through Dean. But, other than that less than dignified death, I did like Dean and I thought Handley gave a fine performance in the role.

The teen that I have the least to say about is Dean's girlfriend, Bailey (Diora Baird). There's nothing loathsome or annoying about her (unlike another female character who shall remain nameless that has appeared in this franchise) and she does genuinely care about Dean's plight, telling him that Eric will forgive him because he's his brother, and she plans to go to Mexico with Dean but other than that, there's nothing at all to say about her character. She's hot, sure, and despite his situation, I think Dean realistically would have been able to enjoy what she was doing with him in that motel room just a little bit, but she's by far the character with the least amount of depth. That said, though, she suffers quite a bit torture at the hands of the Hewitts and with her constant screaming, it's not hard to feel sympathy for her. She's tied underneath a small kitchen table for a long time, with Luda Mae creepily acting like she's her little girl by washing her face and singing to her; she almost manages to escape but Leatherface hooks her in the chest with a meat hook and carries her back to the house like she was a piece of meat while she screams in agony; she's later tied to a bed upstairs by Hoyt, who did God knows what to her while he had her like that; and when she appears at the dinner table near the end of the film, it's revealed that she's had all of her teeth pulled out for some reason, and she's eventually killed by Leatherface, who slashes her throat with a pair of scissors. So, even though there wasn't much to the character, I still felt bad for Bailey simply because of the sheer horrific crap that's she put through by the family.

I had to get the teenage victims out of the way because, let's face it, the members of the Hewitt family are the real stars of this movie. The whole point of making this movie was to show how they came to be the way they were in the remake. And did the movie succeed in that aspect? Eh, in some ways I think they did but in other ways, I feel they messed up. In any case, though, this movie shows us that the Hewitts are, indeed, cannibals, something which was only hinted at in the remake. And I do think the film did a fair enough job in showing how they came to be cannibals, although it's pretty much the reason that had been hinted at in past films: they've been put out of a job and, with no money to buy food, they have to find another way to fill their stomachs. They go into more depth about it here, with the entire town shutting down and being abandoned because of the closure of the slaughterhouse, where most of the townsfolk found work. Because of that, we have a more concrete reason as to why they had to resort to cannibalism to survive (and even though Luda May still runs the gas station, the lack of any townspeople or visitors to buy gas, save for the occasional passersby like the group of kids and the bikers in this film don't bode well for that being a solid source of income). Some may say that the fact that the slaughterhouse was clearly up and running by the time of the remake is a huge plothole between the two films, that if the place did open back up, there would be no reason for the Hewitts to continue to cannibalize people. I would agree with that except I think, if you remember back to the reason why the Sawyer family in the original films resorted to cannibalism, automation of the slaughterhouse, that could be what had happened by the time of the remake. The place had opened back up but now, everything was automated and the Hewitts still didn't have a way to make a living. That made since because in this film, the slaughterhouse looks more rundown and dirty whereas in the remake, it was almost spotless and had a lot of shiny steel surfaces as well, suggesting a major refurbishing. However, this is just speculation on my part. (Even if that was the case, why they would open the slaughterhouse back up in a town that was almost completely deserted by this point is a good question.)

In talking about the family, I might as well start with Charlie a.k.a. Sheriff Hoyt because he's the real star of this movie and it makes no since that R. Lee Ermey is listed last in the opening credits. While the filmmakers have said that they made this movie in order to show how the family came to be, I've also heard that the character of Hoyt got a lot of praise from fans. So, they decided to make a movie that would star him in order to capitalize on his popularity and since he was killed at the end of the remake, this was the only way to do so. In any case, there is no question that Hoyt dominates this movie, which is both a good thing and a bad thing in my opinion. The good thing is that we get to see Ermey chew the scenery to his content in this film and he does appear to be having fun in making even more sadistic and loathsome than he was originally. We learn that he took charge as the head of the family, killing the local sheriff when he tried to arrest his nephew Tommy after he killed the manager of the slaughterhouse, taking his identity, and introducing the concept of cannibalism to his family as a means to survive since the same thing happened to him years ago. You learn that, while serving in the Korean War, Charlie was taken prisoner and, in order to survive, he and the other POWs would single out one poor soul and eat him. Charlie also makes no secret that he enjoys the taste of human flesh with how matter-of-factly he tastes the sheriff's blood after he kills him as well as how nonchalantly he introduces it to his family. And he assures them that they will that they will survive and never go hungry again. I must say that the image of Hoyt parking his car on the side of the road and stepping out in the middle of it with a shotgun, waiting for some hapless people to come that way, is quite strong and has a sense of doom about it, that the Hewitts' reign of terror has truly begun.

As I said, Ermey seemed determined to make Hoyt far more evil and loathsome in this film than he was in the remake and I think he succeeded above and beyond in that aspect. The way Hoyt is here makes his characterization in the remake seem downright mellow. He takes full pleasure in killing and torturing people, particularly those of the younger generation, which he absolutely despises. His first act as "sheriff" is to blow away the biker chick who attempted to hold the kids up before she knew what hit her, beat Eric in the face with the butt of his gun when he doesn't do what he says, and force Dean and Bailey, who has bits of glass stuck in her from the crash, out of the wreck at gunpoint (on top of that, in the unrated version, he cops a feel on Bailey and then removes a piece of glass from her chest after she sits down). His contempt for these members of the younger generation grows even worse when he discovers that one of the guys attempted to burn up his draft card and he then decides to dish out double the punishment. He strings Eric and Dean up by their arms in the barn and does stuff like spray them with water and attempt to suffocate Eric by wrapping plastic wrap around his face. This forces Dean to admit that he was the one who burned his draft card (although there are hints that Hoyt already knew that and just tortured Eric in order to get Dean to admit it) and once he does so, Hoyt cuts him down and then puts him through a sadistic round of push-ups, saying that he can go free if he does all ten. He continously beats him with his nightstick while he does the push-ups to make it even more painful and takes full enjoyment out of it too, telling Dean, "Are you going to be the motherfucker who eats... or are you going to be the sorry motherfucker who gets ate?" (That's a reference to his Korean War POW experience.) Even though Dean does all ten push-ups, Hoyt beats him a few more times and stomps on his back, and then tells Eric, "My money says he ain't going nowhere." After the kids' failed escape attempt, he leaves Dean outside with his foot caught in the beartrap, lets Leatherface deal with Eric, and ties Bailey to a bed upstairs. We see him hovering over Bailey, sniffing her and saying, "I love you," in a very perverted way. Who knows what else he did to her while she was tied up there. It's very likely that he raped her, knowing how sick he is (and I have a really, really bad feeling as to why her teeth were pulled out-- let's just say it might have been so she couldn't bite... something off).

We also learn just how instrumental Hoyt was in Thomas Hewitt's transformation into Leatherface. Even though he said Tommy was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen when he first saw him as a baby, Hoyt does seem to be rather protective of his adopted "nephew" (even though he would technically be his adopted brother since they both see Luda May as a mother figure). Besides the fact that he killed the sheriff when he attempted to arrest Tommy, there's a deleted scene that takes place during Tommy's childhood where Hoyt sees some kids bullying him (it's off-camera, though) and he yells at them to get away from Tommy. However, without that scene actually being in the movie, there's a hint that his killing the sheriff could also have been him ceasing an opportunity to take control of both his family and of the now deserted town, something that he might have been planning on doing for a while given how sadistic and evil he had become by this point, and he was probably using the situation with his nephew as an excuse to do so. (Although, he did tell the sheriff that Tommy isn't retarded but just misunderstood.) Whatever the case, once he introduced the family to this more gruesome way of life, he certainly encouraged Tommy's psychotic tendencies in order to get things done. He tells Tommy to get the body of the female biker out of his police car and when he takes it down into his basement, Hoyt tells him, "Come on, Tommy. It ain't no different from the slaughterhouse. Meat's meat, bone's bone. Get it done." He also calls on Tommy to help recapture the kids when they're about to escape and he lets him "play" with Eric. Most importantly, he encourages Tommy to use his chainsaw as a murder weapon for the first time, telling him that the male biker is one of the bullies who used to pick on him when he was a kid, and he also gets him to use it again in order to amputate Monty's legs. Finally, when he's made his first face mask out of Eric's face, Hoyt tells him, "I like your new face" (I like that line, by the way), which may have encouraged him to continue doing so with the faces of other victims over the years. When Chrissie runs out of the house and Leatherface chases after her, there's a quick shot of Hoyt watching him chase her with an evil smile on his face, no doubt admiring what he's molded his nephew into. He even says, "There comes a time when a boy becomes a man." He feels that he's "taught" Tommy everything he needs and now, he knows exactly what to do with it.

Finally, there's a feeling that, despite how cruel and sadistic he is, Hoyt doesn't see anything wrong in what he and his family is doing. When they're about to have dinner, they say grace, with Hoyt saying, "I was hungry and he gave me meat, I was thirsty and he gave me drink." I can't exactly remember but I think they also give thanks for their"bountiful harvest."In any case, when Chrissie asks them whether they, "fuck all their relatives or just the ones they find attractive," Hoyt retaliates by saying, "You blasphemous bitch! This is redemption, lady! That's what this is. Oh, you're all going to pay for your sins, and especially you!" Even though he could just be saying that so as not to be judged for what he and his family has been doing, he could also sincerely believe that as well, that they're not doing anything wrong, that they're just trying to survive, whereas Chrissie's generation is the one that has caused all of the evil that's going on in the world at this time. Whatever his true feelings, Hoyt does actually pay for some of the horrible stuff he's done, getting attacked by Dean and having his front teeth knocked out. (Too bad Dean couldn't kill him since he had to be alive for the remake because I think that would have been far more satisfying. But, Erin eventually killed him so I guess there was retribution; it just took a while.)

While I do think it's great that they gave R. Lee Ermey even more to do in this movie, I also feel that, by expanding his role so much, they short-changed the character that was supposed to be the actual focus of the film: Leatherface. While the movie is also meant to be about how the family came to be, the filmmakers said many times that the primary concern of the movie was to show how Thomas Hewitt became the notorious chainsaw-wielding killer and while we do get that to an extent in this movie, I think they could have fleshed it out even more than they did. As I said in my introduction, maybe it's my fault for creating such an expectation, but I was expecting this film to show Tommy's childhood through the years, shen show him become an adult and culminate in his becoming Leatherface. While the film does begin with his actual birth, and I do like the idea that Leatherface was literally born in a slaughterhouse, all we see of his childhood are suggestive snipits in a montage that the opening credits play over: his birth certificate, a brief medical report about his skin condtion, a file that tells us that he developed a tendency to mutilate himself (which we do see during this montage), a shot that shows when he first started wearing something around his face (a cloth in this case), a couple of shots suggesting that he mutilated dead animals and used pieces of their flesh to cover his face, etc. That's all fine and dandy and I do think those opening credits are well done but I wanted to see those parts of his life in full detail. I wanted to see him first develop his skin disease, get picked on by other kids because of the way he looked (I really wish they had finished that scene of Charlie yelling at those kids to get away from Tommy and put it in the film) and how this made him despise his face, which led to him mutilating himself as well as trying to hide his face behind something else, which would come full circle when he makes his first face mask, how exactly he came to work at the slaughterhouse, and so on. If they had spent more time on this than simply skipping to 1969 after the opening credits, I think the events that happen in the latter part of the film would have had a greater impact (plus, I also think it would have added more depth to that part in the montage where he burns the pictures of himself as a baby). Some might argue that would make the movie over two hours long but so what? Where exactly is it written that horror films have to be around 90 minutes? (I know I took that from the Never Sleep Again documentary but it's a good point.) Now, I do like some of the things they did with his history, most notably how he spends most of his life working in the very place where he was born and also that his first kill is the very man who left him for dead right after he was born, but I do think they could have done much, much more and made those aforementioned aspects even more impactful.

Besides his childhood, there are two others aspects to Leatherface's story that I think they could have done better. One is, as one producer put it, "how the love affair with the chainsaw began." Well, according to this movie, there wasn't much to it: after he killed his boss, he just saw it sitting there and he took it with him. Other than a brief shot in the opening montage of him petting the blade, that's pretty much it. While I do like the idea that his adopted uncle is the person who encouraged him to use it as a murder weapon, and that scene where he kills someone with it for the first time is quite epic, they could have gone into much more depth about why he liked chainsaws to begin with. Maybe he liked how much easier it was to cut up big slabs of meat with them or maybe he admired the sheer powet they project when they're running. Heck, show the first time he saw one working and how much it mesmerized him. Just give me more meat is all I'm saying. The other aspect is when he decides to make his first face mask and, again, if they'd gone into more detail about how much he hated the way he looked because of how much misery it caused (in fact, other than that medical report, his skin condition isn't mentioned at all), it would have made the scene where he skins Eric's face and turns it into a mask even more powerful than it already was because we would truly know why he decides to do so. There was a build-up to it when he first starts touching and feeling Eric's face and then touches his own, but they could have given it more depth and impact. In fact, that would have added even more to a brief bit at the end of the movie. After Leatherface kills Chrissie in the car, before he gets out, he touches and rubs her face the same way he did Eric's, suggesting that he will probably turn her face into a mask as well. Again, that would have had more meat to it if they had showed us how much he hated his own face when he was a child. I'm just saying that if you're going to make a movie about how Leatherface came to be, go all out instead of just giving us not even half of it.

One aspect about Leatherface that I do think they did well is the explanation of how he became such a merciless killer: it was all due to Hoyt. When he chases after Chrissie with his chainsaw roaring during the climax of the movie, it's the end result of everything his uncle has "taught" him. Hoyt encouraged Tommy's psychotic tendencies by introducing the concept of cannibalism to him and telling that cutting up these people for meat is no different than what he was doing at the slaughterhouse. And, as I said, Hoyt is the one who inspired Tommy to use the chainsaw as a murder weapon, actually cheering him when he slices that biker in half with it. Now that he's been inspired to use it, Tommy wastes no time in killing Eric with the saw as well as using it to perform "surgery" on Monty. Hoyt also approves of his wearing other people's faces, cementing his transformation into Leatherface. So, I thought that the filmmakers did a good job in showing how pivotal a role Hoyt played in Thomas Hewitt's "coming of age" so to speak but, that said, I do think yet again that they could have done more with it. They could have gone deeper into why Tommy was so loyal to his uncle, what he did that earned him his complete trust and devotion, and why what Hoyt thought was so important to him. If that had been explored more, then I do think that shot of Hoyt, with that evil smile on his face, watching Tommy, now having fully become Leatherface, chase after Chrissie would have been more impactful, that this was truly what it had all been leading up to. And also, I think it would have been better to give Leatherface just as much screentime as Hoyt rather than letting Hoyt dominate the entire film. In fact, Leatherface is in so little of this movie that I sometimes forget that I'm watching a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and by the time he skins and puts on Eric's face, there's only like twenty or so minutes of the movie left. If they had made the movie equally about both of them, I think it would have been stronger. So to sum up, I think the filmmakers did have some good ideas about how to tell Leatherface's story but they could have expanded and fleshed them out a whole lot more. If they had done that, I think the movie would have been better and more generally liked.

I must say that I do think Leatherface looks effectively creepy in this film. For most of the movie, he wears this thing that looks like the bottom half of a leather bandage mask which covers every part of his face from his nose down. Whatever this thing is, it gives Leatherface a look that we haven't seen before and it allows us to see his eyes as well as the top half of his face. That way, we can see his facial expressions and get just how full of rage and anger he is. Plus, I do think he looks genuinely unnerving when he has that thing on. If a big guy with that thing on his face came after me, I would be pretty freaked out! And then, there's the mask he makes out of Eric's face and like the Kemper mask featured in the remake, this thing is uncomfortable realistic. It does look like he skinned Matt Bomer's face, sewed it up, and started wearing it. The shot of him in that mask that gets me is when you see him standing on the stairway when Hoyt tells him that he likes his new face. The way it's lit when he looks up at Hoyt after he says that makes it look all too real. It does look as if he's wearing that guy's stitched face. It looks good in the rest of the movie as well but that one particular shot makes me go, "Oh, God!" So, I have to give this movie props on the way they actually made Leatherface look.

One odd thing is that when this movie was in pre-production, I had heard rumors that they were looking for a new actor to replace Andrew Bryniarski as Leatherface. I couldn't find any explanation as to why but I read several actors that made it feel like that was indeed the case. It wasn't until the E! True Hollywood Story on the franchise whose debut coincided with the release of the movie that I learned that Bryniarski had actually played Leatherface. I was glad he did because I did like his portrayal of Leatherface in the remake and, despite my mixed feelings about this movie, I thought he also did well here. Even though he seemed to have slimmed down a little bit in order to get across the fact that Leatherface was younger in this film (which is why, when I saw the TV spots, I thought they had actually cast someone else), I think he's just as physically intimidating here as he was in the remake and with the brutal way he attacks people, I do think you could believe that he would brutally murder you. So, I have no problems with Bryniarski's performance in either of these movies. But it was when I watched making of documentary on this film's DVD that I began to see that Bryniarski is a dick for lack of a better word. In one part of the documentary when they talk about how they brought him back in the role, there was an interview clip of him where he says, "I was born to wear the mask. Nobody can be as scary as me or bring what I can bring to it." I had two initial thoughts when I watched those interviews with him. One was, "What's wrong with his voice?" It's just a random thing that I noticed. His voice sounds weird in those interviews. And the second thought I had was, "What an arrogant douchebag." While he did say that he was born to wear the mask on the documentary on the making of the remake, he didn't come across as arrogant to me but rather as someone who was very enthusiastic about playing an iconic horror movie character. But that statement he made in the documentary on this film rubbed me the wrong way and I hated how he basically buried anyone else who thought they could play Leatherface. That was when I started to have second thoughts on Bryniarski as a person and, as I described in my review of the remake, I would eventually learn that he pretty much is an arrogant asshole. Bottom line: like the performance, not too hot on the man himself.

Marietta Marich has a bit more to do in this film as Luda May (I know I spelled her name as Luda Mae earlier but these two films spell her name differently so I'm just going to spell her name the way I did in my review of the remake). She comes across as more complex here than she did in the remake. She's initially horrified when Hoyt introduces cannibalism to the family as well as by some of the other hideous things that he and Tommy do, like when she first sees Tommy in his face mask and when the two of them perform "surgery" on Monty. But, she adjusts rather quickly, actually cooking food made up of human body parts at one point as well as allowing Tommy to continue wearing his face mask. This points out to her being as unstable as the rest of her family, which is confirmed when she tells Leatherface to kill Bailey as well as the very fact that she allowed both her and Dean to be put at the dinner table, even when she thought Dean was dead. Speaking of Bailey, there was some weird mother thing going on with Luda May when Bailey was being held hostage. She treats her like she's her child, washing her face at one point because they have company coming, singing to her, and even cutting bits of her hair when she's sitting at the dinner table. She tells Bailey, "I never had me a little girl before," (which makes me wonder exactly how Henrietta from the remake is related to her if that's the case) so I guess she wanted to see what it would be like to have a daughter. But, like I said, that doesn't stop her from ordering Leatherface to slit her throat, "setting her free" as she puts it, which adds another level of creepy to her. She actually does show some concern when Hoyt embarks on this new gruesome lifestyle for the family but it's not because she has sympathy for the kids. She doesn't give a crap about them at all, which is evident at the way she scoffs at Bailey's statement that her gas station looked nice when they first arrived into town and when she tells Chrisse at the dinner table, "I will not have you speak ill of this family." She's worried about the consequences of what they're doing, telling Hoyt that people will come looking for those kids, later telling him, after Monty gets shot by that biker, that he's created a major mess by killing the sheriff, and finally tells him that Chrissie will warn the authorities if she gets away, which is right before Leatherface comes charging out of the house after her. While it may not be the most in-depth look into a character's psyche, it does give us a bit of a foundation for the person we saw in the remake.

There's not much else to be said about Old Monty (Terrence Evans) here that I didn't say in my review of the remake. Other than the fact that he has legs for most of the film, he's the same grumpy, crusty old man as he was in the previous film. The only major role he plays in the family's evil deeds is that it's his job to remove any signs of accidents on the side of the road that are caused by the family's acquisition of victims. He drives this wrecker out to the spot where the kids' wrecked car and the biker girl's motorcycle are, loads them up, removes all traces that there was an accident there, and takes the vehicles back to the Hewitt house, where they no doubt became part of that junkyard we saw in the remake. The only other contribution that he makes to the movie is in a brief moment where Eric and Dean ask him for help and he says, "I don't get involved in his affairs." This suggests that he goes along with what Hoyt does out of sheer fear, even if it means having to start eating human flesh. You can't blame him either. If I was in that family, I would no doubt just do what Hoyt told me to as well. Finally, though, I have to wonder what the point was in showing how Monty lost his legs. Was it absolutely necessary for us to see that? It adds nothing to the story save for another scene of gruesome gore. Plus, you no doubt already suspected that Leatherface had something to do with him losing his legs. Heck, even Scott Kosar, the writer of the remake, suggested that in the documentary on that film, so when you watch this movie, you're likely just going to be like, "Oh, Leatherface did cut his legs off. Okay. Whatever." And the reason why he had to have his legs amputated is nothing special either. While I don't mind the character of Monty, I just cannot believe that a lot of people were curious as to how he lost his legs because it's not that compelling of a mystery (and neither was how Hoyt lost his front teeth, for that matter).

The last returning character from the remake is the tea lady (Kathy Lamkin) and she adds as much to this movie as she did to that one... which is nothing. In fact, I feel that this character is even more pointless here than she was in the previous film. All she does is talk to Luda May about how important it is to keep hydrated when the weather is very hot and about how much she loves, "those little chocolates." Why is this scene necessary? Even though didn't care for the scene with her and Henrietta in the remake, at least served some purpose. This is just pointless and it leads up to a moment that is out and out silly: after getting loose, Eric bursts in to save Bailey and actually pushes the table, with the tea lady still sitting at the end of it, towards the door so Hoyt can't get in. He just used an obese person as a way to barricade a door. Something that silly is not a good thing to have in a movie that is meant to be dead serious, particularly in a scene like this that is meant to be tense and exciting. And speaking of which, you really see just how fat this woman is in this movie and... wow. I may not exactly be a fit guy either but, good God! I hope for her sake, that actor loses some weight before her heart explodes one day. Crimeny! All joking aside though, I don't care for this character, I think she's pointless and laughable, and I think both of these movies would have been just fine without her.

The other actors in the movie do okay with what they're given. The two bikers, who, according to the credits, are named Holden (Lee Tergesen) and Alex (Cyia Batten), are nothing more than the typical assholish hoodlums who just like to terrorize and rob people and Holden proves that he's quite capable of violence when he shoots Monty in the leg and holds Hoyt at gunpoint as he demands to know where Alex is (and that, of course, costs him his life). I did feel sympathy for Sloane (Leslie Calkins), the poor woman who gives birth to Leatherface at the beginning of the movie. She just seemed very pitiable with how she begins crying when her water breaks and how she's praying for God to help her. You feel even worse for her because of how cruel the manager of the slaughterhouse (Tim deZarn) is. He's not in the movie much but you can tell that he's an asshole, with the stuff he says and the way he acts. After Sloane falls onto the floor after her water breaks and she's apparently dead, all he can say, "That's what you get for drinking on the job, Sloane." He wouldn't let her go to the bathroom when she asked either. And, of course, let's not forget that he put the newborn baby in a dumpster outside and left it for dead. What a dick. And he's even stupid enough to insult Leatherface when he discovers that he's still hanging around the slaughterhouse after it's shut down, telling him, "Your kind belong in this shithole." (He's referring to the now virtually abandoned town.) It never ceases to amaze me that some characters in horror films are stupid enough to hassle someone who clearly is not to be trifled with. There's this huge man with a weird mask over his face standing in the doorway to his office, looking at him as if he's about to rip his head off, and he says that stuff to him. Did he not realize in all the years that he was working there that this guy is someone you don't push around? Moreover, did he just not notice the enormous sledgehammer he was holding? Either way, he gets what he deserves. And finally, you have Lew Temple in the very brief role of the unlucky sheriff whom Hoyt kills and then takes his place. Honestly, I think this guy also had it coming. First, he made the dumb decision to refer to Leatherface as a retard to his uncle and decides that he doesn't deserve to be called a human being either. Moreover, the guy asks Charlie to come with him in order to help talk Leatherface into turning himself in but when they do find, the sheriff tells Charlie to stay in the car. What was the point of bringing him along then? Perhaps he told him to stay in the car because he didn't expect to find Leatherface walking around with a chainsaw but that's never made clear. I just feel he was another dumb character that deserved to get killed. (Plus, in the unrated version, he talks about how he heard, "You could bring a horse to organism {orgasm} using your finger." Uh, thank you for sharing that with us, sheriff. Sick bastard.) I do like Charlie's line when he kills him though: "Shit, I just killed the whole fucking sheriff's department. Damn it, I wonder what that felt like." Pretty good, as far as I'm concerned, since that character was so dumb.

One of the compliments that I will give this movie is that it actually feels like it's taking place in the same universe as its predecessor, which is a first for this franchise. After four movies that are as different from one another in both tone and style as you can get, we get two that each look and feel pretty much the same as the other does. This feeling is helped not only by the fact that every character returning from the remake is played by the same actor but also because it takes place in the same town with most of the same locations and the film itself was even printed in that same bleach bypass process that the remake was. Granted, the color palette for this film is more of a brown rather than the tobacco green of the remake but it's still identifiable as the same sort of look as its predecessor. While my opinions on both films are very different, I have to say that it is nice that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise finally developed a sense of continuity in terms of tone, story, and character, even if it lasted for only two movies.

Unfortunately, this movie shares something else with the remake: the idea that the teens in the film don't look at all how teens from this period would look. In fact, I think the situation here is even worse since this movie is supposed to take place in 1969. As I said in my review of the remake, I didn't believe that those teens lived in the early 1970's but, in the case with this movie, I really don't believe that these four kids are of the youth generation that was prevalent in the late 1960's. They don't dress like kids from that period did (no bell-bottoms, long, hippie-style hair, or anything like that), they don't talk like them, and they certainly don't look like them either. I explained before why people who look like these kids simply would not have existed back in this time period, due to the simple fact of ongoing human evolution, and I think that concept doubly applies here. Bottom line, Platinum Dunes needs to either stop making films that take place in these time periods or, at the very least, make the effort to get them to feel authentic because when they do this stuff, it just screams, "We don't give a shit," on their part.

Another compliment I can give this film is an extension of the one I gave up above: the production design here looks a lot like that of the remake, just aged backwards a few years. There are three locations that return from the remake: the Hewitt house, the gas station, and the slaughterhouse. The only difference with the first two is that they don't look quite as rundown or dirty as they did in the remake. They still don't look like places you'd want to be in if you could help it but they're not as aged is what I mean. The inside of the gas station isn't as digusting and nasty as it was in the remake and the sight of customers actually sitting at the tables inside give it a bit more of a lively feel than it was originally where it was just a dead place that no one visited. The same goes for the Hewitt house. It's the same big plantation house that we saw in the remake but, I guess since the family has just now started cannibalizing other people, it hasn't become as unkempt and unpleasant as it eventually would. There are no pieces of meat hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen or disgusting, old food inside the refrigerator. You also don't get that sense of mold in the air and on the walls that I feel you could originally (although, the film is so darkly lit that you probably couldn't see it anyway). Even downstairs in Leatherface's lair, it's not as grimy and waterlogged (although there are some shallow puddles here and there) as it was before. And since Leatherface has just now begun his own reign of terror, there are no grisly souvenirs from his victims lining the walls and shelves of the room. He also hasn't become as sophisticated at disposing of people as he eventually would since, instead of the kill table where he would put the bodies of his victims and let the blood drain out, there's nothing but an old-fashioned wooden table on which he straps Eric in order to butcher him. And while you do see some chains where the butchered body of Alex, the female biker, is hung, there's no sign of the infamous meat hook. Even the sliding door that leads down into the place doesn't look as sophisticated as the one that was present in the remake (just watch the films back to back and you'll see what I mean). You also get to see some new parts of the Hewitts' property that you didn't before. You see more of the inside of the house, such as the upstairs where there are bedrooms (including a very brief shot of what could be Hoyt's room when he puts on the sheriff's uniform) as well as some type of sitting room that has glass double-doors leading into it. And since there is a dinner scene in this film, which there wasn't in the remake, you get to see the dining room, which isn't much but it is interesting to see where the family actually has dinner. There's a similar room with a smaller table and a door that leads directly outside as well as another set of double-doors that lead into the actual house. (I'm not sure if that's the dining room and I just didn't recognize it when it was filmed in broad daylight but it seemed a lot smaller than that room.) And finally, there's the barn where Eric and Dean are hung up. The only thing I wonder about that barn is that I don't remember it being there in the remake. They must have torn it down by that point or something. There are other interesting parts of the property like a little fence as well as a more definite road from the house to the highway that wasn't quite there originally and a little area where the wrecked vehicles are dumped that I think add to the feeling of this actually being a house in the middle of nowhere.

The location that changed the most between films is the slaughterhouse. Whereas it was the only location in the remake that wasn't dirty or grimy in some rooms, here it's the exact opposite. First off, whereas there were rooms that were filled entirely with steel cabinets, counters, and doors in the remake, here the only parts of this place that are made of steel are the meathooks and the chopping utensils. Everything else is wooden and you see workers chopping up pieces of meat and wrapping them up the old-fashioned way, both in the beginning that takes place in 1939 and in the scenes that take place in 1969. And, like the other locations were in the remake, you have a feeling of filth while inside that slaugherhouse. It just looks like a place where, after spending a hard day's work inside of it, you would come out feeling completely soiled. On top of that, like the other films in this franchise, the weather is really hot and it's probably stifling inside that slaughterhouse. Looking at the interior scenes of that place when it's working, it does feel as if you couldn't even breathe in there. It's not that hard to see why the place ultimately got closed down by the Texas Department of Health. You also see some other areas of the location, such as the outside where the cows graze (which you briefly saw in the remake) and the spot where they are led into the section of the place where they're killed as well as a room that houses tanks filled with blood and other discarded parts of slaughtered animals. The slaughterhouse in this film is just a disgusting place and you can see why they had to give it a major overhaul in order for it to be reopened by 1973.

The only new location in this film is the small motel where we first meet the kids and that was a place that I think all of us can relate to. If you've ever been on long road trips, then you undoubtedly have had no choice but to stop at little hole-in-the-wall motels such as this one and, as shown here, the accommodations aren't always luxurious. While the room that we see Dean and Bailey in doesn't look all that bad (although it's certainly not ideal either), the swimming pool that Eric is goofing around in is definitely not something that I would swim in if I could help it. There are leaves floating on the water and it's green as well, as if the hotel owner doesn't even bother to try and keep it clean (I was about to ask if they've ever heard of filters but I don't know if they existed in 1969). Chrissie has a point when she tells Eric while he's practicing catching "gooks" (I apologize to any Asian readers for that; I'm just quoting him) in the swamp in that pool that the only thing he's liable to catch in that water is a disease. While I've seen, and stayed in, far worse motels than the one featured here, I do think this scene captured that feeling of having to stay somewhere that isn't the best out of sheer necessity.

Finally, I have to compliment the way the open roads of Texas are shot in this film. While they are beautiful when juxtaposed with the landscapes and the countryside in the part of the movie before the kids are taken hostage, when things become sinister later on, they give off a sense of extreme isolation. This is best exemplified in the part where Chrissie runs out onto the road and screams for help. She gets no response at all and in the miles and miles of empty road and countryside that you see all around her, you realize that there is absolutely no help coming and, as she tells Dean later on, there's no help to go to either. Even though I do have mixed feelings about this film as a whole, I do think that one part shows the atmosphere that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies can give off: the feeling that you are completely alone out there and you'll have to fend for yourself, which is quite a frightening concept.

I've already talked about one of my two major problems with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning: that I feel the filmmakers kind of dropped the ball when it came to telling the history of Leatherface. The other one will seem like a strange complaint for a movie in this franchise but it's honestly how I feel: this movie is 90 or so minutes of sheer unpleasantness. Moreover, it's a prime example of a trend in horror films in the 2000's that I never liked and I'm glad has pretty much died out now. Once Saw and Hostel came out and were both enormous hits, it seemed like every horror film made over the next three or four years had to revolve around torture, just watching people suffer in all sorts of horrific ways. I know that those types of films existed before this period but it was after those two movies came out that they started popping up everywhere and it got old really fast. While I did enjoy the original Saw since that had elements of thriller/mystery as well as the torture stuff, I never got any enjoyment out of those films. In fact, I don't get why they were so popular to begin with. What is fun about watching somebody being slowly mutilated, getting their fingers and toes cut off, getting their tongue and eyeballs removed, and so on? To me, there's nothing fun about that and while the makeup effects in those movies are often well done, I can only watch that kind of stuff for so long before I start to become uncomfortable and wish it would just end. And that's where we have this film. Since this came out a little less than a year after Hostel, the filmmakers thought they had to outdo that movie in terms of sheer gore and unpleasantness and I do think they succeeded on that score. While there are some things in Hostel that do make me wince, I just thought that movie was stupid for the most part. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, on the other hand, has a lot more stuff in it that, while effective in what they're trying to do, make me want to turn the movie off in some scenes rather than keep watching. Now, in my review of the original film, I did acknowledge that there are some elements of the whole torture thing in that movie, like Pam being hung on the meathook and all of the physical abuse that Sally is put through, but it didn't feel as excessive to me in that movie as it does here. This movie just absolutely wallows in its torture scenes, having them go on and on, like when Hoyt is beating the crap out of Dean as he does those pushups and when Eric is strapped to the table in Leatherface's lair and he cuts his shirt off of him, slices his arms up, and such. It's like, "Okay, okay, just get on with it already." Some of you may feel that I'm being overly sensitive about this and it's possible that I am but I just feel that the movie lingers on the suffering of the characters for far too long and, for me, that doesn't make for an enjoyable picture; it makes for one that I wish would just ened, which is not what you should be wishing for when watching something that's meant as entertainment.

Even though I think a lot of the scenes in this movie are borderline unbearable to watch, I will say that the makeup effects by KNB are very well done. KNB almost always does quality effects-work despite the type of film they're working on and this is no exception (though I don't know why these types of movies have to have blood that looks like chocolate sauce for the most part). And unlike the remake, which wasn't much bloodier than the original, there's wall to wall gore in this film. I know some feel that the baby Leatherface at the beginning of the film looks fake but I thought it looked fine. I've seen much worse as far as stuff like that goes. I thought they did well in making it look as if Sloane really was giving birth, with the water and the blood spilling out from between her legs, followed by the slimy, deformed baby crawling out (she apparently wasn't wearing underwear too). The first kill scene in the movie is where Leatherface beats the slaughterhouse manager to death with a big sledgehammer and there are some real wince-inducing shots of the guys' legs getting smashed and broken by the hammer before Leatherface finishes him off by hitting him right in the head. The death of the sheriff is nothing special and neither is the death of Alex but what becomes of their bodies afterward is truly gruesome. You see how the sheriff's body parts have been cooked up into stew by Hoyt, with some good shots of certain pieces of meat, and when Leatherface brings Eric down into the basement, you see the horrific image of Alex having been chopped up, with her arm and leg missing, and she's hanging off some chains. There's a quick shot of some glass sticking out of Bailey after the car accident and it's another little thing that can just make you wince. Speaking of which, the way the accident happens, by the kids slamming into a cow that's crossing the road, results in an explosion of pure gore. That was the one makeup effect in this movie that I thought was so over the top that it was ridiculous and kind of funny (plus, people in horror films seriously need to stop running into cows because it's becoming overdone with this film and Rob Zombie's Halloween II). For a while, there aren't that many makeup effects or kills, just Eric and Dean being tortured by Hoyt, including that sadistic round of pushups (although the shots of Hoyt's nightstick hitting Dean's elbows and arms is painful to watch), but there are some during the kids' botched escape attempt, like when Dean gets his foot caught in a beartrap (simple but painful-looking) and when Leatherface stabs Bailey right under the chest with a meathook and then carries her into the house that way. That really looks painful and her screaming amplifies that feeling ten-fold.

Things really start to ratchet up when Leatherface takes Eric down into the basement (by the way, when he does so, Eric tries to grab onto the sides of the door and the walls and, remembering what happened to Andy in the remake when he did the same thing, I was thinking, "Dude, don't. Just don't.") After he straps him to the table and inspects his face, there's a brief moment where Leatherface slices Eric's arms up to the point where they're very painful-looking in just how torn to pieces they are, with exposed muscle, flayed skin, and blood everywhere. After that is when Leatherface kills Holden by shoving him down on top of his chainsaw, starting the thing up, and then yanking it upward, slicing the guy in half. There's an added shot of his blood flowing over the floor just for a little more impact. And then there's the kill in the movie that really gets to me. Leatherface puts his chainsaw right through Eric's chest and then proceeds to skin his face and turn it into his first face mask. The kill with the chainsaw is just a typical gory kill but the flaying of the face is truly sick. When I first saw this movie, I went, "Aah!" at that visual. It's not bad enough that we see Leatherface cutting along the sides of the guy's face, with blood oozing out all the while, but when he's finally got it cut all the way, we see a reverse shot of him pulling it off. The part of it that gets me is, even though it's darkly lit, you can see slimy, stringy stuff going from the face to where it used to be. I cannot tell you how downright gross that is to me. You also Leatherface take the face in his hands and then bring it over to his chair wear he proceeds to sew it into the mask. The part where he finally puts it on is quite memorable, partly due to the image and also simply because of the feeling that Thomas Hewitt now truly is Leatherface. Whatever else I have to say about this movie, I do think that was a well-done moment, despite how sick it was.

The rest of the makeup effects in the film are good but none of them had the visceral impact that face-skinning scene had on me. Leatherface slicing off Monty's legs with the chainsaw does look pretty good and is well, with blood and bits of flesh going everywhere as well as the visual of his bloody stumps. When Luda May and Hoyt are preparing dinner, there are some small and hideous shots of fingers lying on the floor as well as a sickly funny exchange of dialogue about whose tongue Luda May has at one point, which Hoyt says is from Holden. At the dinner table, we see that horrific visual of Bailey's teeth having been yanked out and that's soon followed by Leatherface slicing her throat open with a pair of scissors. A lot of blood flows out all over the table afterward. There isn't much to say about the effect when Hoyt's front teeth get knocked out but it looks good enough and the vats of blood that Jessie hides in at the slaughterhouse are pretty disgusting looking, with the chunks of meat floating in the blood as well as the sound of buzzing flies. And then, Dean gets killed when Leatherface shoves his chainsaw through his back and out his stomach, sort of like the reverse of what Lefty did to Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Leatherface even lifts Dean's body up on the chainsaw and lets the blade grind his insides a little more before continuing to chase after Chrissie.

Now, the final death in the movie, that of Chrissie, is the only part of the movie that legitimately made me mad instead of just making me cringe. The death itself is nothing special: Leatherface puts his chainsaw through the back of the driver's seat in the car and it slices all the way through Chrissie. Seen kills like that before so whatever. But the circumstances leading up to that death made me go, "No, you cannot do this!" After Leatherface kills Dean, Chrissie runs out of the slaughterhouse, makes it to the manager's car, and drives away. When I first saw this movie, I realized where this movie was possibly going and I went, "No, don't you dare!" But it did: Leatherface pops up in the backseat and then kills Chrissie with his chainsaw. Now, there are two ways in which this final kill is completely idiotic. First, Chrissie was well ahead of Leatherface when she got to that car and yet, he still managed to show up in the backseat. Even though he gets lumped in with them a lot, Leatherface is completely different from Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. He's just an insane man who is a cannibal and wears other people's face. There's nothing supernatural about at all. And yet here, they have him teleport the way Michael and Jason tend to do. Since those two characters are clearly more than just mere human beings, it's easy to let it slide. But this doesn't cut it. While I'm happy that it took a long time for them to do this type of horror cliche with Leatherface, it was still infuriating when they finally did do it. And now for the other way in which this is stupid. Let's just suspend disbelief and accept that Leatherface somehow managed to get to that car before Chrissie. How in the name of God did she miss such a huge man with a big chainsaw lying in the backseat of such a small car? You would have to absolutely blind in order to not see him. In fact, they originally realized how preposterous that idea was and originaly filmed it to be that Leatherface stabs Chrissie with a knife instead. But, because Leatherface's signature weapon is his chainsaw (ignoring the fact that he has killed with other weapons before, including in this very film), they reshot it to include the chainsaw. Even if you can buy that she didn't see him lying back there, how did Leatherface line that saw up with the back of the driver's seat and crank it up without being seen or heard? It's too preposterous to swallow whichever way you choose to look at it. It may be the very end of the film but you need to go out on a better note than that. All in all, I do think the makeup effects in the movie are well done but that last kill is really cliched and stupid for a franchise that up to this point had, more or less, been quite believable.

As with the remake, the music for the film was composed by Steve Jablonsky. While I don't like this score quite as much as the one for the remake, there are still some effective themes present here. The best one by far is the creepy theme that plays over the opening credits as well as over the sadistic pushups and the first part of the ending credits. That theme captures the nightmarish feel of this franchise perfectly and works well with the horrific, suggested images that we see playing behind the opening credits. It's almost enough to make me forgive the fact that I wanted to actually see that stuff in full detail (emphasis on "almost" though). I also like foreboding themes that play when Leatherface is walking away from the slaughterhouse with his chainsaw and when Sheriff Hoyt parks his car on the side of the road, waiting for his first victims to come by. Those themes give a feeling that the nightmare has begun. The music that plays when Leatherface makes his first chainsaw kill gives that scene a very epic and monumental feel and theme that plays when he skins Eric's face and makes it into a mask does a good job in signifying the birth of a monster. And finally, I do like theme that plays over the last part of the movie as Leatherface, having killed Chrissie, walks back to his house, while John Larroquette informs us that the Hewitts' reign of terror from 1969 to 1973 claimed the lives of 33 people. That music combined with the visuals and the narration give the feeling that this truly was just the beginning of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As good as those themes are, though, the music that plays during the "scare" scenes as well as the chase scenes is not as memorable to me as its counterpart in the remake. Maybe it's because I've watched the remake so many times that I've memorized almost all of the music in that movie but I felt that Jablonsky didn't do as well with that type of music here. But, other than that, this score does have a lot of good themes and cues on it.

While the remake only had Sweet Home Alabama as well as some obscure country songs on its soundtrack, this film has a couple of songs that most would recognize. Unfortunately, though, they made a huge mistake in that they put in the song All Right Now by Free in the scene at the beginning where Dean and Bailey are making out in the motel room. Why is that unfortunate? Because that song wasn't written until 1970, a whole year after this movie is supposed to take place. It's a very minor nitpick, I know, but this is why, if you're making a period piece, you should read the year on the copyright information of a song before you put it in there. They also play the song Vehicle by Jim Peterik when the kids leave the motel and are driving down the road. I'm really glad they did, too, because I like that song a lot (I love ya, I need ya, Good God in heaven I love you!) There were some other songs on the soundtrack like The High and Low of the Blues and A Church At The Foot Of The Hill but those first two were the ones that grabbed my attention.

This may surprise all of you, seeing as how my opinion on this film is rather mixed, but I wish there was one more Texas Chainsaw Massacre film made in this continuity. I'm dead serious. Even though this one isn't one of my favorites, I still enjoy the character of Hoyt as well as this incarnation of Leatherface and I wouldn't have minded seeing one more movie featuring them. I actually hoped that it would have been a "midquel" (that is a term that has been created in recent years, just so you know) that told the story of that hitchhiker in the remake. Like I said in my review of that film, I think it would have made for a quite horrific film if we were to see what exactly happened to that poor girl. In fact, I thought there was going to be another one since I saw a trailer on YouTube that purported itself to be for a movie called The Legend of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and that Marcus Nispel was back as director... but it turned out to simply be a fan trailer and I was not at all happy when I discovered that. It wasn't too long after that that I learned from a statement issued by Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, who were executives at Platinum Dunes as well as having been producers on both of these films, that there was no third film coming. I was disappointed to hear that. While the franchise did start up again when Lionsgate bought the rights from New Line Cinema and produced Texas Chainsaw 3-D, I still think it's a shame that we didn't get one more movie featuring the characters created for this continuity.

Needless to say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is not one of my favorite entries in the franchise. While I would definitely watch it over The Next Generation any day (I'm never watching that thing ever again, though, so it's not much of a contest), I still feel that it's a severely flawed film that doesn't tell its story nowhere near as well as it could have and its attempts to take advantage of the so-called "torture porn" trend that was big at the time end up making it a very unpleasant film in many respects. While I do still enjoy this incarnation of Leatherface as well as the character of Hoyt and I didn't mind the kids in this film either, I just feel that this movie had a lot of potential that was not properly tapped into and is a real missed opportunity. I know that, like the remake, this movie does have its fair share of fans and if you're one of them, power to you. However, while I feel that the remake was a great flick and a nice companion piece to the original, every time I watch this movie, I come away from it with the feeling that it could have been so much more.