TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION (1997) Come back, part 3! All is forgiven! The fourth Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie is one of those catastrophically bad films which nobody in their right minds could possibly defend except as an abject lesson in what not to do, ever. I have no doubt that were it not for the fortuitous casting of two future stars (Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweiger), this would surely have sunk quickly into that abyss of forgotten sequels scarcely anyone even remembers were ever made, like The Hidden 2. As it is, it's a bit of a curiosity for its casting. But, yeah, it's not just bad, it's not just as bad as you've heard, it's...think on this. It's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, but there's no cannibalism angle, and Leatherface is a drag queen. With a mullet. After the most unscarily-read opening paragraph ever in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, it's prom night, and Zellweiger stars as Jenny, the supposed ugly duckling of this bunch. She and some friends (if you think they're dumb calling her the ugly one, you should see how they act when they're being chased) are driving around, have an accident, go to get help...yeah, you know the story. This movie lifts shots, situations, and entire scenes from the original film, writer Kim Henkel apparently thinking that his writing of the original makes it okay to plagiarize himself so blatantly. The dialogue ranges from "There's somebody out there!" to "There's somebody out there! I mean it this time!" These kids are dumb all right. Two of them, a couple, after subjecting us to one of those "Us guys...we have needs!" scenes, are in the middle of a pretty scrappy argument (where the guy actually says "You don't think! You're too damn stupid to think!"), when the girl, seemingly intent on proving his point, says something along the lines of "Wouldn't it be neat if we all got into an accident, and we all died, and they wrote a song about us?" Later, when being chased by a maniac, this guy stops to tell the maniac "Please mister...you're scaring me!" The bulk of the "action" in this movie - action, in this case, being McConaughey screaming like a maniac all the time - takes place in your standard Leatherface haunt where when they run out of clean dishes, they apparently just buy new dishes and leave the old ones in the sink, if that gives you an idea of this place's cleanliness level. There's some bone furniture, and a few dead people sitting at the dinner table, but that's all pretty standard stuff. Lone inspired touch: hundreds of keys nailed to a wall. Why? I don't wanna know, it'd ruin the magic. Even the third Chainsaw movie, which wasn't all that hot, still had a lot going for it. One thing that worked, was an interesting maniac family. This movie doesn't have one. It has Leatherface, whose mask isn't grotesque in the least, looking like a standard, smooth, Halloween-type mask. It has a cattle prod-wielding redneck who keeps reciting quotes about the defence of liberty and such. This does not add up to a personality. It has McConaughey, who seems to want to act crazy in as many ways as he can find, bitch-slapping everyone in sight one moment, slapping his head and grunting "Uy! Uy! Uy!" like a frat boy after a well-chugged beer the next. He's got a hydraulic/robotic leg which can be manipulated with a remote control. That leaves Tonie Perensky as the relatively normal Darla, who gets the movie's single intentionally funny line - after she gets thwacked hard by McConaughey, without missing a beat she cries out "You're embarrassing me in front of company!!!" She also provides the film with its split-second of nudity. I never thought nudity this brief could be this gratuitous. McConaughey and Zellweiger's first scene together is so bad, it's uncomfortable to watch. She's hitched a ride in his truck, and he's trying to make her look in the back where he's got her friends strung up. She refuses to look. He insists. She insists on not looking. Things escalate, and for a while, I thought this was going to be like the "Put the damn sunglasses on!" scene from They Live. I wish. Did I mention there's no cannibalism angle in this movie? Bone furniture, but no cannibalism. They even order pizza, regular pizza, not pizza with extra nipples. We find out (sort of) late in the film that the point of this maniac family is not cannibalism, entrepreneurialism, or any combination of the two, but apparently to give their lucky guests a spiritual experience of supreme horror, or something. It's non-explained with a pretentious speech which actually says NOTHING. Something about a government conspiracy and a thousand-year-old world-ruling secret cabal...really, who gives a shit? Fuck no cannibalism, let's get to the chainsaws. With a title like this, you'd think you'd see people getting killed with chainsaws, right? No, we see Zellweiger get chased with one once, and threatened with one later. That's it. This drag-dressing Leatherface (who, once a semi-toothless freak, now appears to have visited a series of skilled dental professionals) doesn't hurt ANYBODY with that saw. And, of course, there's Leatherface's "dance of defeat" at the end of the film, just after an airplane comes out of nowhere and nails one of the badguys in the head with its propeller - which might make for a pretty neat gore shot, but doesn't. For what it's worth, I really liked Zellweiger here, alternately plucky and quietly resourceful at the right times, and while the movie might be something to be ashamed of, the performance isn't. Hey, Janeane Garofalo made her career on likeable performances in fucking-terrible movies. McConaughey, however...I've never really liked the guy, like Jenna Elfman, he seems like somebody that was just suddenly and for no apparent reason shoved in our face, A LOT, and that tends to lead to resentment. Here, he's so far over the top he's not recognizable as himself, so as an exercise in camp, his performance is kind of interesting as well. If you're a fan, and you watch this movie, maybe you won't be by the time it's over. This crapola supertanker was also directed by Henkel, who must've thought that his co-writing of the original Chainsaw movie made him a better choice than, say, Stevie Wonder, who I'm fairly sure could've done a better job. I don't know if this was a well-intentioned but hopelessly misguided attempt to revive the series, or a KISS-like whoring out of stupidity and formula in the name of good times, when all it's really about is contemptuously picking the fans' pockets. I'm past caring which. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is a somewhat cut version of the oft-delayed 1994 flick The Return Of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I don't think my life will feel any more lacking if I never see the longer cut. This might make for an amusing viewing if you're drunk. I wasn't, but I wish I was. BACK TO THE T's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE