LEATHERFACE: THE
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3
Well, it's better than part 4
"ORIGINAL UNCUT CLASSIC" reads the front of the box for this movie. "Wait a sec, that can't be right," thinks I, this film largely considered quite bad by most people. But hey, if The Devil's Rain can say that it has the most incredible ending of any motion picture ever, I guess this one can get away with calling itself a classic. Then I turned over the box and saw the blurb on the back describe the film as "the most controversial horror movie of all time". Uh-huh. (the box also brags that it's from the director of Pumpkinhead 2)
The opening prologue of this one states that one lone Sawyer family member, W.E. Sawyer (which one would that be?) was caught and convicted of all this chainsaw killin', and was executed accordingly under the assumption that Leatherface was an alternate personality of his. (seems to me like such a blatant judicial admission of the guy's insanity would spare him from the death penalty, but then, this is Texas) Meanwhile, Sally Hardesty finally shuffled off that pesky mortal coil.
Then we're introduced to a young couple (brother and sister? Boyfriend and girlfriend? Husband and wife? I can't tell), Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler). They're on their way to L.A., and when they stop for gas they come across a smooth-talking drifter named Tex (Viggo Mortensen) and an obviously insane gas station operator named Alfredo (Tom Everett). Conflict ensues, the wacko runs them off (and takes a shot at Tex), and soon they find themselves pursued by Leatherface, who's driving a big nasty pickup and has a bigger chainsaw than ever (complete with the family slogan "The Saw Is Family" engraved on the side). It's a new family of maniacs, and lucky for Michelle and Ryan, Texas is loaded with gun-stockpiling survivalist nutjobs, one of which (Ken Foree) seems right in his element when he adds himself to the equation.
There's a little bit of Psycho here - the voyeur peeping into the bathroom, the "new road" in the desert - it's as if writer David Schow (writer of one great book and three other mediocre or just plain bad movies) wanted to get back to the original Ed Gein-ly inspiration for the first film. The script is occasionally pretty banal (particularly with the Ryan character, who likes to point out the obvious like "It's right behind us!"), but Schow seems to have his head in the right place here, giving us the most likeable heroine in this series and a suitably diverse (and diversely insane) family of cannibals. Director Jeff Burr does a creditable, creating some really creepy scenes, particularly near the film's beginning when we're given a look into a dried-up pond which is being excavated by the cops to pull out a huge pile of dead bodies found in there that have decomposed into a toxic soup, requiring them to wear Outbreak-style anticontamination suits.
Acting is pretty good all around - not bad considering that about half the cast are Friday The 13th and Nightmare On Elm Street grads. It's a new family, but it's built around the same maniacal spirit of the first two films. Everett is hilarious, much like ol' Choptop in that he's clearly from another planet, although it's a different other planet. Mortensen has got to be ashamed of this today, but he's just fine. Hodge is really charming and likeable (although I admit to having liked her more naked in Rapid Fire), and Ken Foree is, well, Ken Foree (he dismisses the notion of the cannibal family as "militant lumberjacks. I see 'em all the time."). Miriam Byrd-Nethery is delightfully loathsome as the family matriarch, a middle-aged emphysemiac who speaks through one of those laryngial amplifier doohickies she holds up to the hole in her throat. And while the character of Tinker has no real gimmick of his own, no obvious tic or trait that sets him apart from the rest of the brood (except for his hook hand), Joe Unger plays him with quiet, determined menace, and he's possibly the creepiest of the bunch. The only cast member I didn't really like was Butler, who fortunately makes a comparatively early exit from the film. (the IMDb claims that Caroline Williams, "Stretch" from part two, plays the uncredited role as "woman in cemetery". I don't remember a cemetery, let alone any woman in it.)
Leatherface is non-acted by yet another new guy here, R.A. Mihailoff. (a quick look at his filmography shows that he plays an inordinate number of truckers) He's a little different this time around - instead of the retarded maniac of the first film or the pathetic, tubby, love-struck, and confused retarded maniac of the second, here he seems to have a little more of his wits about him. For the first time, Leatherface seems, well, competent. (and he's actually learning to read, too, however slowly - he gets a great scene where a "Speak & Spell"-like device shows a clown-shaped icon and asks him to spell out the word, and he keeps spelling "F-O-O-D", much to the machine's protests that he's wrong) Respect for him grows when he's revealed to be a heavy metal fan.
The film's sets and scenes nicely plunge us right into the Sawyer family's weird combination of squalor and cannibal paradise; it may not be quite on the same scale as in part two, but it's still pretty impressive, oppressive and atmospheric.
It sounds like I'm describing a pretty good movie, doesn't it? Alas, no, not really. Somehow, it all comes out as less than the sum of its parts. How does this happen?
Well, there are a few problems. Upon its original release, this movie was widely criticized for how obvious the cuts were that facilitated its R rating. Indeed, it was a real hackjob, my memory of that cut completely dominated by that sense of "man, was this ever badly edited" (much like my first viewing of the heavily-cut Day Of The Dead). So you'd think that this "uncut" version would rectify that, right?
Wrong. You know what's been restored here? There's a little more blood splattering when one chick gets sawed (below the camera's field of view). That's about all that comes to mind. That ain't much. Worse yet, uncut or no, the film still keeps cutting away from numerous violent moments. I've repeatedly heard of scenes written and scenes filmed (a man getting cut right down the middle, for example); the script was reportedly heavily tampered with by Burr and producer Robert Engelman.
There's this subplot involving a girl who escapes from the family which is set up poorly, resolved even worse, and somehow manages to be completely inconsequential anyway, except for introducing a cigarette lighter into the action, obviously the Inconspiculator. And somebody - Schow, Burr, the crew, I dunno, maybe all of them - has no apparent idea of how a chainsaw works, showing us chainsaws that keep spinning without pressure on the trigger, underwater chainsaws, floating chainsaws...guys, do your research!
Leatherface also has problems fitting itself into the TCM mythos - I once hypothesized that, despite the spoken prologue, it took place between the first two, for a number of reasons. Leatherface is wearing a leg brace, probably due to the injury he sustained at the end of part one; no leg brace in part two. Besides, at the end of part two, he was impaled and blown up. How would he get up from that? Additionally, it would make sense that after the intensified police scrutiny sure to follow the events of part one, that portion of the Sawyer family would want to split up for a while until the heat died down. But not all this fits. Grandpa's dead here, but he was alive in the last two. Meanwhile, Mama's alive, and she was dead in the last two. How does that work?
Additionally, despite the torment our heroine is put through (she's literally nailed right into a chair), you just know she's gonna get that big burst of strength and bust out. There are laughs and satisfaction with her final assault on Leatherface, but it's not entirely unexpected. The surprising survival of one character at the end looks an awful lot like "test audience syndrome", although I can't imagine a movie like this getting shopped around all that much to test audiences.
I dunno - like I said, the sum of its parts is more noteworthy than the whole. I get the impression of a movie made by a lineup of people who each get a crack at it in turn. It's really not bad overall, but nothing special either, especially considering the two films it had to live up to. At any rate, it's miles beyond the fourth film.
Silly trivia - a teaser ad for this movie splendidly parodied the "Lady in the Lake" scene from Boorman's Excalibur.