Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

First, a couple of dedications:

Number one: This one is for Danny Grossman, who, when I announced that a local video store had gone out of business, sent me his copy of this movie. He’s not just good people, he’s great people.

Number two: A moment of silence for Hollywood Video. They were there when I needed Halloween III, then vanished before I could rent “Leatherface.” Video rental places are closing down, and soon the world will never be the same.

That said, let’s talk “Leatherface.”

As per usual, we’ve got a scroll:

“On August 18th, 1973, Sally Hardesty, her invalid brother Franklin, and their friends fell afoul of a bizarre, cannibalistic clan of serial predators. Ms. Hardesty was the sole survivor of that night of terror. She died in a private health care facility in 1977.

“A single member of the murderous “family” lived to see trial. The prosecution recorded his name as W. E. Sawyer. He died in the gas chamber in 1981.

“The jurors concluded that ‘Leatherface,’ presumed to be an unapprehended killer, was in fact an alternate personality of Sawyer’s, activated whenever he donned a crude mask made of human flesh.

“If there was no Leatherface in reality, then Sally Hardesty may at last rest in peace… If there actually was a Leatherface, he remains at large, and the so-called ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre…’

“…Was only the beginning.”

Wow.

Where to even start.

Pretty much everything in this scroll negates all the events that happened in part II, up to and including the scroll at the start of that movie.

II: No one was ever caught, and the massacre never happened.

III: Someone was caught, but only one someone. And while the last name, Sawyer, is the right last name, I don’t think it matches up with the name of any of the previous characters. So who did they catch? The hitchhiker that was run over by the 18 wheeler?

Did that guy survive to be tried?

Also, as far as the last movie went, Sally was still alive. And when that movie ended, Leatherface had a chainsaw through his belly, and the “dad” had just fired off a grenade.

And what happened to Stretch? Why doesn’t she get a mention? And what about Enright? And L.G.?

Are we just pretending part II never happened? I mean, I guess I can play that game, but why not call this one “Leatherface,” and leave the Part III off of it? The III implies that it follows II, and it really, really, really doesn’t. At all.

This is just the first minute-and-a-half.

Then we get a blond woman screaming, and a sledgehammer falling, and then they throw the title at us, which is listed at: “Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.”

No “The” in the title, even though it’s on the box.

Then we’ve got a person writhing on the floor. Who might be the blond. I guess she is.

And the credits. And shots of some hands making a mask out of a human face. Using scissors and such.

Don’t you have to cure the flesh, or do something to it to make it into actual leather you can sew?

At any rate, the back of Leatherface keeps on making arts and crafts. Some woman looks in the window as he does it. She seems way less freaked out than she should be.

She moves her foot. Something goes “snap!” Leatherface looks up, then goes outside and slams a big old metal door, which is supposed to remind you of when that happened in the first movie. Wasn’t that cool, that first time?

Yeah. It’s a little boring now.

And now we’re out on a dusty highway in, I guess, Texas. A car is coming towards us. The radio is blaring something about a pond bed with the remains of several dead bodies in it.

Inside the car, we’ve got Ryan and Michelle, a lovely young couple who are driving across the country so that they can die in this fine motion picture. We get some backstory. One is headed to Florida, and the other to New York. And we learn through some kinda-dull banter that no matter what happens, they’re going to break up.

They hear about the dead people on the radio. Ryan thinks that whoever killed those people should “fry.” Michelle, on the other hand, thinks that violence begets violence. This is known as a “setup,” which will pay off later when Michelle confronts a clan of serial killers, and is unable to get them to make arts and crafts that don’t involve the flesh of humans.

Ryan, by the way, thinks that Michelle needs to join the real world.

The car drives on.

Night falls. We get a walk-on from a female reporter… who… whoa. It’s Stretch! I guess she managed to get un-crazy and carry on her journalistic career. Maybe she forgot to tell everyone about the serial killers?

I guess I should mention that no one actually says it’s Stretch. But yeah, it’s her. Or rather, the actress who plays her.

Ryan and Michelle drive by the site of the mass grave, and Ryan determines that they should drive on before they have to meet any of the dead people. Only they can’t drive on. Not sure what’s holding them up. Exposition, I guess.

The exposition is handled by a couple dudes in HAZMAT suits, digging the bodies out of the graves, and taking flash photos, so you can be, “Hey, I remember that bit in part I! It was totally awesome!”

There’s a lot of talk about how the bodies are rotting, which makes them dangerous to humans. In the car, Ryan explains that if you’re buried the right way, “Your skin turns into poison Crisco.”

Which is strange, because you would think that the Sawyer clan, or whoever, would have held onto the skin. The skin is the best part of the meat, after all. Fries up nice.

I guess someone just decided that it was more important for this movie to be icky that for it to make any sense.

At any rate, here comes a cop. Michelle tells him that they’re coming from LA, and headed for Florida. She’s driving the car for her father. I realize they’re trying to give us some backstory on the characters so that we’ll care about them, but who are they kidding? How is anything we’ve just learned relevant to what comes next?

Michelle says she wants to drive through the night. They do. So… shouldn’t they have crossed Texas during the night? Because they’re still in Texas the next morning.

They seem unusually perky the next morning, all things considered.

But then, Michelle hits an armadillo with the car. Her dad is NOT going to be happy. Not even a little bit.

They get out of the car, and realize that the armadillo is still alive, but barely. Michelle wants to kill it, because she feels it’s her duty, but she can’t. So Ryan does.

At a gas station somewhere-or-other, a hitchhiker gets out of a car. He walks to a nearby gas station while the dude who just drove him to the middle of nowhere drives away.

A dude with a messed-up eye is sitting on the porch, cutting up a magazine that has naked women in it.

The hitchhiker goes into the gas station.

Ryan and Michelle pull up to the gas station. Michelle sends Ryan in to use the bathroom first. Ryan walks to the potty.

The station attendant uses some creepy thing to scare Michelle, then takes her picture with a Polaroid camera. He tries to sell it to her for five bucks, but lowers his price to 3.69.

Michelle says she just wants the gas.

Someone needs to tell whoever wrote this thing that it’s not okay to just throw the screenplay of the first movie into a blender and hit frappe. All we’ve gotten up to this point are moments from the first movie, but in a slightly different order.

The only original sequence up to this point is the dead armadillo.

The gas dude goes off on a rant on how he’s going to “service” Michelle, and how she’s going to like it. She starts getting freaked out, and gets out of the car, and then here comes the hitchhiker.

He informs Michelle that the gas jockey is the town loony, and that he hasn’t been right since he lost his job at… anyone? The slaughterhouse! Of course.

The hitchhiker continues to talk to Michelle, asking who she’s traveling with and what they hit. Michelle claims she killed the animal, which just isn’t true. The hitchhiker says that road kill is the natural order of things in Texas, while rubbing his fingers through the blood on the car.

To conclude his opening argument, he says, “If you were the last thing I saw before I died, I’d die a happy man.”

Remember earlier, when I talked about setups? Yeah. Pretty sure this is one too.

Michelle smiles. Aw.

Inside the gas station, the station attendant is all crabby.

Ryan gets done pooping, and says howdy to their new friend, who says they can call him Tex. Of course they can.

Tex says he’ll buy them both a beer or something if they’ll take him a little farther down the road. Ryan says they’re in a big hurry, but Michelle either wants to make Ryan crabby, or is moving on a little sooner than expected. Either way, she says they can “discuss” whether or not they’ll let Tex hitch with them.

And now it’s Michelle’s turn to make a poo. She walks away.

Tex tells Ryan that he has a “really nice car.”

Inside the gas station, the attendant hears noises in the lady-bathroom. He turns towards in.

Inside the bathroom Michelle looks at the wall, which is covered with lady-pictures.

She heads into a stall.

Outside, Tex tries to convince Ryan to try a faster alternate route. Of course, anything they do has to be faster than what they’re doing now, seeing as how they’ve been driving through Texas for more than 12 hours without actually crossing it.

Inside the gas station, the angry attendant lifts up a picture on the wall. Yes folks, he’s going to watch Michelle use the restroom. Because cribbing from the original “Massacre” wasn’t enough. Now it’s time to pull a sequence from “Psycho.”

Ryan and Tex argue about how to get through the state, and Ryan finally says they can’t help Tex.

So Tex goes into the gas station for pretty much no reason at all, and catches the attendant watching Michelle. He pulls the attendant out and announces to Michelle and Ryan what the guy was doing.

In turn, the angry attendant runs into the gas station and grabs a shotgun. He holds off on firing until Ryan and Michelle get a little ways down the road. Then the shoots a hole in their windshield but for some reason doesn’t hit Ryan or Michelle in any way.

Ryan looks back, and thinks he sees the attendant shooting Tex as well. So he tells Michelle to takes Tex’s route out of Texas. Except, of course, he has no idea where that route leads. He’s just taking the advice of someone he thinks is a dead man.

Why? Was he feeling a little heartbroken now that they lost Tex?

No matter. They take Tex’s route. And night falls.

Back at the gas station, a garage opens up, and a truck with skin on the front of it is in there. The truck starts up, and drives away, while the station attendant yells out, “It’s Armageddon!” He also fires his shotgun in the air.

What a plan. “Let’s scare these two people off, and then once they’re gone, we’ll wait several hours and then send someone after them. I’m sure they won’t take a side road, or anything.”

So yeah. The car just keeps on driving along in the dark. Michelle and Ryan argue about whether or not to stop. Then they argue about the radio. Ryan turns it off.

Michelle hears something. It’s the truck we met like two minutes ago. How did he catch up so fast?

At any rate, the truck rams them a couple of times. Then pulls up beside them.

Ryan yells out, “What do they want from us?” As if Michelle knows. Maybe they just want to give you a copy of “Watchtower,” dude.

Someone in the truck throws a dead coyote on their windshield, smashing it. Man, is Michelle going to get it from her dad when she gets to Florida. Michelle pulls off the road. Which is dumb. Clearly they’re under attack.

Michelle notes that they blew a tire. She tells Ryan they need to change the tire and get out of there, like, right now.

Ryan tells Michelle to get the jack, and he’ll take care of the dead animal.

They change the tire. Michelle hears a noise. It sounds like metal squeaking on metal. She goes to investigate.

We get a shot of someone’s leg. He’s got a leg brace on. That’s what’s squeaking.

Meanwhile, Ryan finishes getting the tire on. He says, “Let’s hit it.”

Chainsaw go vroom!

Yeah, it’s Leatherface. He stalks on over to Michelle and Ryan, who race to get into the car.

Outside the car, Leatherface first busts out the rest of the back windshield, and then starts sawing in the trunk. Which makes no sense.

Why? Because Michelle can’t get the car started, and once it finally starts, she can’t get it into gear. Leatherface has a good 20-30 seconds in which he could easily come around the side of the car and put his saw through Michelle’s head.

But no. He keeps on hacking at the trunk.

Michelle gets the car started, but can’t get it in gear. Finally, it goes into reverse, and she knocks Leatherface and his saw to the ground.

She tries to get it to go forward, but it just won’t go, and Leatherface gets up.

At long last, she gets it into gear, and Leatherface pulls the lid off the trunk as they drive away.

Incidentally, the truck drove away after tossing a coyote on our so-called “heroes.” Rube Goldberg would look upon the family’s plan to get more victims and declare it laughably complex.

Somewhere else on the road, a black dude is driving.

Ryan and Michelle argue. Ryan wants to fix the lug nuts on the tire they changed. Michelle refuses to stop. Then she changes her mind, and says she’ll stop.

At that moment, some dude, covered in blood, runs out on the highway. It looks like Tex, so I’m gonna say it’s him.

Somehow, Tex timed it so that both Michelle’s car and black dude’s jeep are in the same spot, at the same time, so both of them swerve to miss the dude in the road and go off the road and crash their vehicles, totaling them.

The black dude walks away from his jeep with pretty much no damage to himself, though he does say that his jeep is, “Totaled.” So the audience doesn’t wonder why he doesn’t just drive away.

Black dude grabs a large flashlight and shines it around, making it easier for murderous thugs to find him.

On the other side of the road, Michelle and Ryan are deep in a ditch. Black guy goes to help them.

Turns out black guy (man, I would love a name right about now) is the most competent dude ever. Not only does he have a flashlight, he’s carrying a canteen. He goes over to the car, tells Ryan to go walk somewhere else, and gets Michelle out of the car himself.

Then he lays Michelle up against a tree and uses a first-aid kit to take care of Ryan. Who starts babbling about dudes with guns and chainsaws. To which black dude replies: “Militant lumberjacks, I see them all the time.”

By the way, we still appear to be working from snippets of the original “Chain Saw,” wherein the black dude helps out the white people who need some saving.

I confess I like this progressive aspect of the film, but so far the only original element in “Leatherface” is the dead armadillo.

Black dude still doesn’t have a name. Instead, he starts explaining what he’s doing. Apparently, he goes up into the hills every two weeks or so to hang out with some buddies at a survival camp. “Trying to keep in training for the big blowup, you know what I mean?”

He’s never seen anyone on this road before.

Ryan gets all mad and tells black guy that they’re being hunted. Black guy clearly doesn’t buy it.

Then Michelle wakes up, babbling about Tex in the road (hey, it was Tex!) and about how they’re being hunted, and the black dude is all, “I’m Benny,” and also, “Oh, you’re serious about being hunted?”

Benny the survivalist. Nice naming job there, screenwriter-guy. Perhaps Benny was originally an accountant? Or possibly a wacky sidekick?

Benny examines the saw marks in the truck and notes that they were made with a “big saw.” No idea how he can tell. Must be a survival skill thing.

Michelle realizes she feels a little woozy, and Benny confesses that he gave them both painkillers, which might make them feel somewhat drowsy.

And they’re all, “But we need to get out of here!” and Benny is all, “I’m going to get some goodies from my truck, and then I’ll find your friend, Tex,” and then he heads off into the darkness.

Back on the road, Benny sees that someone has put down a bunch of road flares. The dude has a hook. He doesn’t offer a name, just notes that they all had an “accident.”

Back at the car, Ryan and Michelle pass out.

On the road, Benny tells Hook that he needs help turning his jeep over. Even though he referred to it as “totaled” just a few minutes ago. Hook says he’ll help out. Benny is about to jump in the back of Hook’s truck, when he sees that there’s a chainsaw back there.

Oh, and on the front of the truck? Big old tarp that appears to be made of flesh. So I would guess it’s “that” truck. Which Benny doesn’t know.

Either way, Benny no longer trusts the man driving around in the middle of the night with a chainsaw and a hook for a hand, so he says he has to get something from his jeep.

Benny runs to his jeep and gets a big old gun. Which he puts together and loads.

Well, he almost loads it, only he panics, and doesn’t get it loaded in time. And Hook, who figures something is up, drives down the hill, right at Benny.

Benny falls and rolls way, way, way down the hill. Hook rams his jeep.

At the bottom of the hill, Leatherface revs his chainsaw and Benny and Leatherface go mano y mano. Benny kicks the saw out of Leatherface’s hands, and knocks Leatherface to the ground.

He starts choking Leatherface, who pulls a tiny electric saw out of his pocket, and uses it to cuts Benny’s leg.

Further up the hill, that woman who we saw right at the start of the movie? The one who was looking in Leatherface’s window? She’s up there. She yells at Leatherface that Leatherface wants her, not Benny.

So Leatherface gets up, revs his saw, kicks Benny in the side, and chases after the girl.

Never mind that it probably would have taken maybe three seconds for Leatherface to saw off Benny’s head. Who has time when there’s a lady up the hill?

At any rate, the girl runs, and Leatherface follows.

Back by the car, Michelle and Ryan wake up. Good timing, guys. They get up and get ready to go somewhere. Which doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Out in the trees, the girl continues to run while Leatherface gives chase.

Only I guess she doubled back, because she goes back to Benny. And indicates he should follow her. But then they go anywhere.

Instead she stands around looking both a little freaky and a little freaked out. Benny first tries yelling at her, and then realizes that her hand is hurt, and instead lets her babble. The short version: Her family was caught by the bad guys about a week ago. She escaped, but can’t get out of the woods because the bad people watch the road. Apparently the “pretend to have a hurt person in the road” trick is the one they usually pull.

So, Benny. I understand you want all this exposition really bad, but shouldn’t you go see about the health and safety of the people you doped? Because you really don’t seem to care, even though you just got chased by a dude with a chainsaw, and also by a dude with a hook.

Instead of doing any of that, Benny decides to sit and smoke a cigarette. He gives one to the girl. As a thanks for saving his life.

Out in the woods, Michelle and Ryan start calling to Benny. Never mind the fact that there are at least two killers that they know of chasing them right at this very moment.

Out in the woods, Leatherface hears Michelle yelling.

Benny, in turn, has an attack of conscience, and picks up his gun, which is still sitting there. He asks if the girl wants to come along, but she opts not to. She figures Ryan and Michelle will be dead soon.

The girl just sits there smoking, until she hears a twig snap. Then she goes to check it out.

Benny heads into the woods, where he almost walks over a trip wire. But he sets it off with his gun instead so the trap doesn’t hurt him. He says, “Nice neighborhood.”

The girl walks until the sees a chainsaw hanging from the tree. She turns around, and there’s Leatherface, who picks her up by the neck and holds her against the tree until she passes out.

Then he fires up his chainsaw.

We see him going towards her. We hear the chainsaw running. We see the girl screaming.

We do not, at any point, see the chainsaw touch flesh. Though we do see bits of something-or-other flying through the air.

Oh. Wait. We see blood on the girl now.

She falls to the ground.

And now we get shots of Michelle and Ryan walking around. And Leatherface walking around.

Finally, Leatherface locates Ryan and Michelle, though just how he does it is a complete mystery. Having finally spotted them, he cranks up his chainsaw to alert them to the fact that they’re going to get cut up.

Leatherface isn’t really into the element of surprise this time around.

At any rate, Michelle and Ryan hear the saw and start to run, which works great until Ryan gets his foot caught in a bear trap. He falls down. Michelle tries to help him, but of course she can’t, so she runs away.

Leatherface catches up to Ryan, and brings the saw down on him.

Benny wanders around the woods.

Michelle spots a house with all the lights on, and runs towards it. She runs to the house, then opens the door and walks in without, say, stopping to consider whether or not all the other killers are there.

She hears crying, and goes to the stairs. There’s a little blond girl there. The girl walks away.

Michelle runs up the stairs after her, and then walks into her room. There are a lot of bones on the floor.

I realize that Michelle is heavily doped, but you know what? If you see a bunch of bones on the floor of a room? You leave. You leave the very second you see the first bone. I know care how many painkillers you’ve had.

But no. Michelle walks up to the little girl, and asks what her name is. She doesn’t say. But she does hand Michelle a little doll with a skull for a head, and tells Michelle, “This is Sally.”

Yet another reason to RUN AWAY.

At any rate, the little girl stabs Michelle in the leg, which Michelle finally decides is a reason to leave.

Doesn’t happen though, because Tex is in the doorway. He grabs her by the neck, tells her she’s late, and then tells the little girl, “Boy, they just get dumber and dumber.”

I can’t disagree with the guy.

The little girl and Tex start giggling, and Tex drags Michelle away.

Somewhere off on the road, the pump jockey wanders around with a bag of people parts mumbling to himself.

In the house, Tex nails Michelle’s hand to a chair, and says, “So, how you like Texas?”

Did I mention Michelle is tied to a chair? I know! When have we seen that in a “Chainsaw” movie before, right?

To recap: New elements in this movie include: An armadillo. A little girl.

Everything else has pretty much been done before.

Moving along. Michelle asks why they’re “doing this.” The little girl says something about poking and leaking, and then takes a cup of blood to “grandpa,” who appears to be more dead than previous grandpas. She pours a little blood into his mouth.

Then out comes “Mama,” who speaks though a voice box in her neck. She’s in a wheelchair. Michelle pleads with Mama to stop what’s going on. I have no idea why. It’s not like Mama came in looking all shocked and surprised at this turn of events.

Hook comes in with Ryan, and Hook and Tex hang Ryan up on meat hooks. Michelle screams. As if that’s going to help.

Ryan has surprisingly little gore on him, considering the fact that he was attacked with a chainsaw.

Hook and Tex banter. Hook calls Tex Eddie, which makes Tex upset. Okay, we’ve got like four people who don’t have names, and now this yahoo gets two? And what’s with the character-building anyway? These people are all insane, I can’t say that giving them feelings is going to make for a better movie.

Whatever.

Tex gets the job of gagging Michelle, because it appears she’s going to start screaming. Tex pulls part of Ryan’s shirt off, and discovers that Ryan is still alive. All right then.

So they gag Michelle with Ryan’s shirt and some duct tape.

Hook, meanwhile, goes out to get a “present” for “Junior,” who I guess is Leatherface.

Out in the woods, the pump jockey does a whole lot of babbling, while Benny watches him from a distance. The pump jockey, who calls himself Alfredo, throws a bunch of body parts into some sort of body of water.

Which begs the question: Why didn’t the cannibals eat whoever that was? For that matter, why didn’t they eat all the people in the mass grave from earlier in the movie? Do they kill more than they can eat?

That just seems wasteful.

Alfredo wanders away from the water, and Benny follows.

Back at the house, Michelle sits in the kitchen and watches Ryan. She pulls at the nails in her hands.

Leatherface walks up to her, and puts a pair of headphones on her. Michelle screams. Leatherface takes the headphones away.

He keeps looking at Michelle. I guess he got lonely after Stretch and he couldn’t make it work.

Tex walks in with Leatherface’s present. A really snazzy chainsaw that says, “The Saw is Family” on the side. Which is from a line in part 2, which this movie is pretending never happened.

My brain hurts.

Leatherface brandishes the saw at Michelle, but it’s not nearly as suggestive as part 2. Alas.

By the by, Tex has used the name “Tink” twice, but never at anyone we could see on the screen. So I’m guessing it’s the dude with the hook.

Speaking of the dude with the hook, he comes in all mad, accusing Leatherface of not finishing the job – namely, killing Benny.

Leatherface looks sad, and offers his headphones to Tink. Tink takes them and throws them in the oven, to teach Leatherface a lesson. This doesn’t work out too well, as Leatherface grabs Tink by the neck, and forces Tink to take the headphones out of the oven using his hand instead of his hook.

Then Leatherface goes and cries to his Mama.

Tex tries to make Tink feel better by talking about how to kill Ryan. Head shots are discussed.

Mama tells Leatherface to go work on his lessons. I can’t say I really want to know about these so-called lessons, but it would be kind of awesome if a piano was involved. Or ballet.

In the woods, Alfredo wanders around talking crazy. Benny finally catches up to him, and asks him how many people are there, and what are they up to. Except Alfredo won’t stop talking crazy, so Benny whacks him in the face with his gun, and knocks him into the little pond where Alfredo threw the body parts.

Alfredo does not come back up.

Benny says, “One down.”

Leatherface goes to his work shed and sits down. He looks at himself in a mirror.

Benny walks through the woods.

Leatherface brings out some kind of toy that shows him pictures and asks him to type in the word saying what it is. The first thing he sees is a picture of a sad clown. He types in F-O-O-D.

The toy tells him he’s wrong, but he types it in again anyway. Why not? It’s cheap to film, and fills an extra 30 seconds or so, since Leatherface is a slow typer.

Though here’s a good question: How many clowns have driven through the middle of Texas? Not many, I’d wager. Perhaps FOOD is the only word Leatherface knows how to spell.

Benny makes it out of the woods, and watches Leatherface through the window while he runs the FOOD gag into the ground.

Finally, Leatherface gets frustrated and stands up. He grabs his new saw.

Inside, mama sets the table, and Tex informs Michelle that Tink figured out a new way to perform a hit to the head.

The little girl comes in and says it’s her turn to administer the blow to the head. Tex and Tink figures she’s right.

So the girl sits down next to a little string, she and Tex count 1-2-3 (we’re building anticipation here, people!) and then she pulls the cord and a hammer swings down from the ceiling and hits Ryan right in the face.

Of course, when we go back to looking at Ryan, he doesn’t look all that damaged. Though I’ve never actually seen someone killed by a blow to the face before, so what do I know?

No matter.

The little girl is told to go wash her hands for supper, and Tex and Tink make fun of the fact that Ryan had colored underpants. “California!” they both say.

They also determine that they have enough food for a while, so Tex suggests that perhaps they’ll have Junior “play” with Michelle. Just so everyone’s clear, he points out that Leatherface makes “The Sweetest Little Babies.”

Mama pipes up, “Junior likes them private parts. We knows what to do with them parts.”

You know, I just noticed that Tex has fingernail polish on.

Mama keeps talking. “Cut my own out years back. I did. Took care of Papa’s, too.”

Tex goes to help Tink skin Ryan.

Mama gives some lipstick to Leatherface, who uses it to draw on Michelle’s face. Then he fires up his saw at brandishes at Michelle, who does some screaming.

Finally, Benny figures out that what’s going on is really, really bad, so he points his rifle and starts shooting through the window. Mama is hit, and she slumps over, partially dead. Tink gets his ear shot off.

Michelle yanks her hands up, to get them free of the nails that were pounded through them.

Tex grabs her. She grabs a knife, and stabs Tex with it. She runs away.

Randomly, we get a shot of Grandpa, who has a bullet hole where his nose was. So if he wasn’t dead before, he’s really, really dead now.

Michelle runs out of the house, into the arms of Benny, who tries to reassure her. Um, dude, she has no reason to trust you. So far, all you’ve done is pull her out of her car, hand her a flashlight, and then dope her and her boyfriend. That’s ALL she knows about you.

He says, “Let’s go!” and she adds, “Run!”

So they run, and the little girl flips on a bunch of outside lights, making it easier to see them.

Leatherface gets in the skin truck, and runs over Benny. Then, despite the fact that Michelle isn’t that far away, he gets back OUT of the truck and revs his chainsaw.

Michelle turns around and says, “Just you and me then, huh?” She’s still got the knife she took from the house. And also, crazy, crazy eyes.

Not to mention a bad memory. To her knowledge, there are at least four people alive who actively want to hurt her: Leatherface, Tex, Tink, and the little girl. She’s also unaware of Alfredo, but he’s probably dead, so I guess that’s all right.

Inside the house, Tink appears to be okay, and he tells Tex to go get “the meat.” Mama is also somewhat alive, as she manages to rasp out another line of dialogue.

Outside, Michelle runs, and Leatherface stomps along behind her.

Outside the house, Benny crawls out from under the truck. Tex is there. They fight. Benny wants to know, “what’s wrong” with these people, so he keeps asking. He also says, “You ever heard of pizza?”

Tex replies, “I like liver. And onions. And pain.”

Remember when horror movies didn’t have all that sarcasm and irony, and it was just people killing people, and we were supposed to be scared, and not all, “Haw-haw, check out that quip? Benny brings the funny!” I miss those days. I do.

In the middle of the fight, they puncture a gas can. Gas flows out. Onto Tex. Benny yells out, “You’re toast!” Then he lights a lighter and throws it into the gas. Tex flames up.

There’s also heavy metal music playing, so the scene can be AWESOME. Instead of, you know, part of a horror movie.

Oh. Wait.

Benny runs away, and the truck blows up real good. Because that is AWESOME. Even if the gas tank of the truck wasn’t punctured, so this bit makes no sense. It is still AWESOME. You can tell because Benny is chuckling. At least until he remembers that the girl he met a few hours ago and then doped is running away from a killer with a chainsaw.

Michelle runs. Leatherface lumbers. Michelle gets her foot caught in a snare, which drags her a really, really, really long way, until it drops her in that little pond-thing. She gets free of the snare, and gets out of the water, but there’s Leatherface, brandishing his saw.

But wait! Benny leaps from the woods, ramming into Leatherface, so that Benny and Leatherface and the saw go tumbling into the water.

Benny and Leatherface tussle for a couple minutes, while the saw continues to run, floating on the top of the water.

Finally, Leatherface jams Benny’s head against the saw, and it looks like that’s it for Benny. Regardless, Michelle looks sad, and she finally decides to try running away again, instead of cheering for Benny.

Leatherface grabs her legs, and she falls over. She picks up a rock, and starts braining Leatherface with it, saying, “Sorry… Little… Guy…” This is supposed to be meaningful, because you, yes, YOU the audience member, will see this and think, “Oh yeah, I remember when she couldn’t even end the life of that poor armadillo.”

At any rates, she hits him and hits him and hits him, and finally he goes unconscious, or maybe just gives up, and slips under the water. So does his saw.

The next morning, Michelle walks to a dirt road, then sits down. A truck pulls up, that says, “Last Chance Gas” on the side, which is the name of Alfredo’s gas station, so the audience is all, “Nooo!”

Then the door opens up, and it’s Benny.

He’s alive. Despite the fact that his head got cut up with a saw and also he was drowned by Leatherface, and it probably took Michelle longer to beat in Leatherface’s head than it would have for Benny to run out of oxygen under the water.

But whatever. Benny is alive.

He helps Michelle into the truck, and goes around to the driver’s side. But just as he’s about to open the door, he gets a sledgehammer to the head.

It’s Alfredo. It really is. That little pond must have magical healing properties or something, because everyone who goes into it lives.

Al says, “It’s knock-knock time in Lubbock, and I’m back!” Then he starts smashing his own truck with the sledge.

Michelle kicks open the door and knocks him down, and reaches for the shotgun that was in the vehicle. Alfredo attacks her from behind. She bites him. He backs up, and jumps into the bed of the truck.

She picks up the shotgun, and sticks it in his face. He says, “I hate when this happens, you know.”

He backs up, then wonders if Michelle knows how to use the gun. She shoots him in the face, and he falls backwards into the truck.

A short while later, Michelle helps Benny into the truck. Then she drags Alfredo’s body, wrapped in some kind of tarp, off the truck and onto the ground.

She gets in, looks at Benny, and says, “There’s road kill all over Texas.”

He replies, “You got that right.” Because this was actually a buddy comedy all along, and not a horror movie.

They drive away in the truck, and Leatherface’s legs walk into frame. Oh, and there’s the saw. Leatherface holds it up, and revs it.

But do we get the emotional catharsis of a Leatherface dance? We do not.

We do get a super-loud hard rock song, though. Just in case we needed one. It’s called “Leatherface.” I guess we should just be happy that the credits don’t feature Leatherface rapping.