Note: This section of the book is dedicated to Danny Grossman, because he requested it a long, long time ago. He also sent me a copy of “Leatherface,” when I needed to complete my “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” chapters.
I hereby promise not to mention him again in subsequent chapters. I just wanted to say: Danny, this one is for you.
“Children of the Corn” gets right to gettin’, by tossing the credits up. The title on the screen is “Stephen King’s Children of the Corn,” because this movie was made back when the name Stephen King could sell people on a motion picture.
Once we see the title, we get shots of… corn. Not unexpected, I guess.
This is followed by shots of a church – the upcoming sermon is “Corn Drought and the Lord,” which will be given by Rev. Timothy Case. And just because you care, the name of the church is Grace Baptist Church of Gatlin.
A burn-in informs us that this is: Gatlin, Nebraska – Three Years Ago.
The church bell is tolling through all this.
The doors of the church open up, and people start walking out, shaking hands with the priest as they walk out the door.
And then, we get voice-over from a young boy, who is exiting the church:
“It was about three years ago. I was the only kid in church that day. The others were with Isaac out in the corn field. I didn’t get to go because dad didn’t like Isaac. He was pretty smart, my dad. After church we went to Hansen’s. Just like always. Sarah was home sick with mom. She’d come down with a fever real sudden. Dad was worried, so he went to call mom first thing.”
At which point, dad says, “I’m gonna call your mom, okay?”
“That’s when I saw Malachi and the others. I guess their meeting with Isaac was over. They were acting real creepy.”
Obviously, at this point, dad is on the phone. The boy is sitting on a stool in Hansen’s. Malachi is playing pinball in the corner. And a bunch of kids are walking into the eatery, and locking the door.
The waitress puts something in the coffee. She serves the coffee. Several people drink the coffee, and die in rapid succession.
Then the kids all pull out sharp things and begin slashing throats. And stabbing. And generally killing all the remaining living adults in Hansen’s.
In and around all this, on the other end of the phone line, the boy’s dad talks to his mom about his sister, Sarah. Sarah is moaning, and has her eyes closed, but she’s still coloring something.
Now, all the adults in the diner are dead. Including dad.
The kids start to leave. One of them looks meaningfully at the boy.
Time for more voice-over:
“It happened everywhere in Gatlin that day. That’s when Sarah started drawing these pictures.”
And then we see Sarah, lying on the bed next to a drawing she made of the kids killing the adults in Hansen’s.
And now, more credits, while we look at pictures of children killing their parents in various exciting ways. It seems they also plant corn, and burn their TVs.
Finally, we get a shot of a car and a motel. Perhaps the kids are experimenting with the fruits of their puberty?
Nope. It’s a woman, who is inside the motel, setting the lock to “Do Not Disturb.” Then we get a shot of feet stalking across the room, a woman’s hand reaching into a drawer, and then, PARTY HORN.
She wishes the guy in bed happy birthday. She presents him with a donut and asks him to make a wish. He wishes to live happily ever after. She asks if that’s a proposal. Nope. She gives him a gift anyway.
It’s a lighter, with his name and her name on it: They are Burt and Vicky. They kiss. Then she turns on a little tape player thing and sings a song that’s called, based on the chorus, “School is Out.”
I guess the implication is that the dude just got out of medical school. After all that silliness, she finally offers to give him, shall we say, a more personal birthday gift.
Dude rejects her, saying they have to get back on the road. He goes to grab a quick shower.
Man, I’m trying to come up with an appropriate comment here, but this dude just blows my mind. Come on man. It’s your birthday. Take an extra three minutes for yourself, if you know what I’m saying.
But no. Instead, we get a shot of the car on the road. They’re headed in Nebraska, bantering about how he doesn’t want to screw up his internship. She thinks he was being a jerk.
Man, turn a woman down for forty-five seconds of passion and she will never let it go. Ever.
And now we’re back with the kids. Now, if you have kids, or are generally familiar with them, you probably know that they grow a LOT in a three year span. But these kids haven’t. Probably poor nutrition.
But whatever. That’s not what’s important. What’s important is that, so help me, the kid is voice-overing again. WHO IS HE TALKING TO? Himself?
Well, whoever he’s talking to, he tells us that besides himself (I’m going to have to call him Boy, because he doesn’t have a name yet) and Sarah, there’s another boy named Jacob who, it seems, doesn’t like Isaac and wants to get away.
Boy says, in voice-over, that he wasn’t scared. Then he says, “I’m scared.” Sarah adds, “Me, too!”
Jacob, it seems, is running away, though he promises he’ll come back for Boy and Sarah. Jacob says the two of them will be fine, as long as no one finds out about Sarah’s drawings. Crayons are forbidden.
Boy whines that Jacob won’t let them do “anything.” Jacob reminds Boy that if they get caught with something forbidden that… they know what happens.
This might build more suspense if we hadn’t already seen Sarah’s drawings, which featured people being tacked up on crosses. This movie is like a poker player who screams out what’s in his hand before the betting even starts.
Jacob says he’s going to run through the corn, which the kids seem to think is a bad idea. But it’s the only way out. Wherever “out” is.
Jacob sends Boy and Sarah to the sides of the barn they were all talking in, and tells them to let him know if anyone is watching them. Boy runs to one side and yells back that there’s no one, and Sarah yells, “Nobody’s looking! Nobody’s looking!”
Well, Sarah, I bet they are now.
Jacob runs through the corn.
Burt and Vicky drive along the back roads. They’re bored. They turn on the radio, and get themselves a hellfire and damnation radio station preacher. They mock him, then turn the radio off.
They drive by a sign: Gatlin: 7 Miles.
Jacob runs through the corn. He hears children laughing. The music gets all scary. Jacob trips. The director attempts to give us ominous shots of the corn, but mostly makes us think that a corn roast would be mighty tasty just about now.
Jacob gets back up.
Nearby, we see a kid with a knife, though we don’t see the kid’s face. Jacob turns. He’s stabbed, mostly off-camera. Blood artfully falls over his suitcase. Well, not really artfully. In an attempted artful manner? That works, I suppose.
Burt and Vicky drive some more. Vicky checks the map, but they can’t find Gatlin. Burt takes a look, which removes his eyes from the road.
Vicky warns him that there’s someone in the road. It appears to be a dead Jacob, posed in a scarecrow-esque fashion. Burt hits the kid, hard, and the body rolls.
Burt pulls the car over. He checks Vicky for injury. She’s got a bump on her head.
But gets out of the car and goes to check on the kid. Of course, the kid is dead. Vicky asks if the kid the dead. Burt says, “Oh, yeah.” He’s taking this really, really well. Burt says something is very wrong here, and that Vicky needs to go back to the car and lock the doors until he gets back.
Burt gets a blanket out of the trunk. And also, a tire iron. As he goes to wrap Jacob up in a blanket, stalker-cam watches him from behind the corn. Burt wraps up the kid, but doesn’t take him out of the road.
Interesting choice, Burt.
Burt goes to the corn and sees Jacob’s bloody suitcase. He goes into the corn to get it.
Meanwhile, Malachi, bloody knife in hand, walks to the car Vicky is currently sitting in. She’s sort of asleep. She hears a noise, wakes up, and GETS OUT OF THE CAR. If Vicky doesn’t make it through this movie, it’s going to be her own fault.
She wanders away from the vehicle, calling to Burt while Malachi stands by the car, casting an ominous shadow. She walks over to the Jacob, kneels down, and says how sorry she is.
Jacob sits up.
Vicky wakes up. DREAM SEQUENCE!
Burt is there. He calms her down.
Then he stuffs Jacob’s body in the trunk of his car, and drives away. While stalker-cam watches from the corn.
And we’re back with Boy and Sarah. Boy informs us, via voice-over, that they liked to go back to their house to play. Malachi said it was forbidden, but they do it anyway. These kids have a death wish.
Boy and Sarah are playing Monopoly, and bantering in a way that is probably supposed to be funny. But the kids have all the comic timing of a pair of worn-out staplers. So instead they kill a couple minutes of screen time, and then Malachi throws a knife into their Monopoly board.
Burt and Vicky drive. Burt reveals to Vicky that Jacob’s throat was cut. They both suspect they were being watched.
Regardless, they keep driving towards Gatlin. This is puzzling to me, because it seems that if Jacob is dead, and they’re near the barn, they should already be IN Gatlin, not two miles away from it.
But whatever.
Malachi takes Boy and Sarah to go see Isaac, who is the creepy little preacher boy who called for the killing of all the adults. Malachi rats out the tots, stating that they were playing a game, and listening to music, and also they had “this.” This being a drawing of Vicky and Burt’s car, driving towards Gatlin.
Isaac tells Sarah that she has the gift of sight. He tells Malachi to take them back where they were. And also, to tell “the old man” not to tell Vicky and Burt anything.
Malachi is unhappy, because the kids have a game, and also music, and Isaac admonishes Malachi, stating that Isaac is doing “his” will.
Malachi drags the kids off.
Vicky and Burt drive towards Gatlin. Burt wants to open Jacob’s suitcase. He turns on the radio again, and listens to the radio preacher for a second. He turns the radio off.
Vicky opens the suitcase. There are a few things in there, but the notable one is a cross made out of corn cobs. Burt refers to it as “primitive folk art,” while Vicky just says its “repulsive.”
Mostly, I’m wondering why Jacob kept the thing in his suitcase if he was running away.
And now: The Old Man. It seems the old man is a loon who runs the local gas station. As we meet him, he’s working on a vehicle, while yelling at his dog to bring him a bunch of different wrenches.
Vicky and Burt drive up. The Old Man says he doesn’t have any gas, and that if Burt doesn’t buy gas he can’t use the restroom. He tells Burt to take a turn and go to a city that is not Gatlin.
Burt asks about Gatlin, and The Old Man tells Burt that people there got religion and they don’t “cotton” to outsiders.
Burt leaves.
The dog, meanwhile, barks at something behind the corn, and then heads that direction. The Old Man heads after him. A hand goes into his truck and grabs a tire iron.
The Old Man turns around, and he think he hears something in his gas station. So he goes back that way. He goes into the station. He still thinks someone is in there. Outside, the hood of his vehicle slams shut, because loud noises equal cheap scares.
The Old Man goes back outside. He yells at the corn that he kept his bargain, and didn’t tell Vicky and Burt anything.
He opens the hood of his truck. There’s something bloody in there. It appears to be the dog’s scarf. This makes The Old Man sad, and then mad. He picks up a tire iron and heads back into the barn behind the gas station.
Tire irons: The weapon of choice in this fine film. Followed closely by knives.
Malachi is in the barn. It’s go time!
And by, “It’s go time,” I mean, “Now we’ll cut over to Vicky and Burt, who keep trying to avoid Gatlin, but every sign they pass says they’re headed there, so they drive through some corn and arrive back where they started, at the gas station, and Burt yells out the window at the old man, only we get a shot of the old man’s arm, with the strong implication that the old dude is dead.”
Out in the corn, Isaac holds up his little corn cob cross and preaches at the kids that he had a dream. It seems a time of tribulation has come – the final test. First, Jacob ran away, but his blood couldn’t be spilled on the corn (um… it was) so he was cast upon the road.
Now, two unbelievers are coming: a man and a woman. We already know about them, so I’ll skip over some details, and go over to Boy and Sarah, who are hiding at the edge of the corn and having the following conversation:
Boy: “I wish Isaac never came here.”
Sarah: “But he’s always been here, just like He Who Walks Behind the Rows.”
This strikes me as a weak answer for moviegoers asking a very obvious question: Where does a little weasel like Isaac come from, anyway? After all, he appears to be a kid, but kids aren’t usually allowed to wander from town to town preaching, or whatever it was he was doing before this movie started.
Isaac says that the “Outlanders” are going to have to be sacrificed, like the Blue Man. The Blue Man is the withered husk of a cop, which is currently residing on a cross made of corn.
The kids all get up and start chanting, and Boy and Sarah sneak off.
Burt and Vicky finally make it to Gatlin, and they pull into the city. There’s no one there. At least, no one they can see.
Two kid spies, however, spot them and go running off.
Burt stops the car at Hansen’s Café and they go inside, looking for a phone. They ponder what’s up with all the corn, which is pretty much scattered everywhere. Burt finds the pay phone and goes to make a call. The phone is dead.
Burt and Vicky prepare to leave. They spot some kids poking in and around their car. They run out, and the kids run off. Burt and Vicky get in the car and give chase. The kids vanish.
Vicky tells Burt they should go on to the next town. Burt decides this is not the worst idea ever, and they drive off.
Just as they’re about to leave town, Burt sees a door closing at the house on the edge of town. So they get out of the car and go to investigate.
No one answers the door, so Burt walks in. They wander around, and find the non-working phone. Vicky shows Burt a magazine that’s three years old. I guess someone cancelled all the mail, after every adult was killed.
Burt hears a noise upstairs, and goes to check it out.
He wanders around for a bit, and then finds a bunch of Sarah’s drawings taped to the wall. He wanders around some more, and the movie decides to use all the pent-up suspense by having Burt run into Vicky all of a sudden.
They hear music, and go to check it out. They find Sarah , who tells them all the adults are in the corn field. Burt figures they’re at a meeting, but Sarah tells them the truth. Isaac put all the adults in the corn field, and also he’s their leader, and also, he’s scary.
Burt doesn’t buy any of this, so he decides to leave the car with Vicky, so he can walk back to the town hall. Vicky asks if they’re safe here.
Burt replies, “It’s a little weird here, but it’s safe.”
Burt’s definition of a “little weird” is WAY different than mine.
Way. Different.
Vicky stays behind to grill Sarah.
She discovers that Sarah is “drawing pictures,” and that Malachi said that was bad. Vicky insists that Sarah draw some more pictures. Sarah thinks this is awesome. So she starts drawing.
Burt goes back into town. He looks in the school. There’s a bunch of corn laying around inside. He goes by the old church. There’s more corn. A kid spots him, but he doesn’t spot the kid.
Malachi and a bunch of other kids go to the house where Sarah and Vicky are currently using the forbidden crayons.
They have various sharp objects.
Burt wanders around the town. Kids spot him. They, too, have sharp objects.
The kids back at the house sneak into the house at various entrance points. Not that there’s any reason to avoid using the door. At all.
Vicky asks to see Sarah’s drawing, and Sarah hands it over. Vicky looks at it, concerned, and asks, “What is this?”
She hears a noise, and calls out to Burt. Only Burt’s not here, man. No, it’s Malachi and company. She asks what they want, and Malachi says, “We want to give you peace.”
Vicky takes that as a bad sign, so she runs upstairs and into a room and she slams and holds the door. One of the kids drives an axe through the door, Vicky backs up, and the kids come in and take her while Sarah just kind of watches with her hands over her ears.
In the town, Burt goes into the cop shop, and finds more corn. And a blood-spattered picture of a woman having fire blown on her by a dragon. Burt remembers the, “Are we safe?” conversation, and he runs back to the house where Vicky is.
He sees his car, which has a bunch of corn stuffed in it.
He goes into the house, and asks Sarah where Vicky is.
Turns out, she’s tied up on a corn cross in a clearing in the nearby field.
In the same area, Isaac and Malachi argue like crazy people speaking in another language. Apparently, He Who Walks Behind the Rows is mad at Malachi because Malachi killed the old man when he still had gas they could use. And He’s not too happy about Jacob, either.
Malachi, in turn, wants to know when they’re going to do something about Job and Sarah. Ah. Boy really does have a name.
Isaac is all, “I am the one true connection to He Who Walks Behind the Rows! Do not question!”
At the house, Burt continues to probe Sarah for answers. Then he finders he drawing, which indicates Vicky is totally going to end up as a sacrifice.
Burt goes out back and calls to Vicky. There’s corn there. The corn suddenly parts for him, indicating which way he should go. So he starts walking, instead of running the other way, which might be a good idea now.
The church bell starts to clang. Burt runs.
The kids pick up Vicky’s cross and get her up in the air. The kids all start chanting, “Kill! Kill!” This goes on for a while, because it’s both menacing and cheap to shoot.
Elsewhere, an older kid takes a knife and carves a star (or perhaps a pentacle?) into his bare chest. Blood flows out. A date is written in blood on a scroll.
Burt goes running into the church.
There’s a verbal confrontation, which lays out like so:
Burt: What are you guys doing?
Dude with Star Cut Into His Chest: We go to He Who Walks Behind the Rows on the first day of our 19th year.
Girl Running the Ceremony: (To Random Kid) Bring Malachi to deal with the interloper!
There’s some light tussling, and the girl stabs Burt with the chest-carving knife. Burt pulls it out and brandishes it at the kids to get them to back off. They do. Burt runs.
The kids chase him.
Burt tries to hide, but there really isn’t anywhere to go. The kids are everywhere.
Finally, he ends up in the center of town, with a bunch of kids circled around him.
Malachi arrives, and yells, “Outlander!” And Burt runs again.
He somehow manages to elude his captors, taking refuge in one of many abandoned buildings. Malachi walks by a window, sees something, and goes inside.
Burt crouches, and when Malachi gets close, Burt stabs him in the leg. Then he stands up and clocks himself in the head.
Still mobile, he runs again. Job finds him, and takes him to a cellar to hide. Sarah is also there. It’s actually an old bomb shelter, complete with food. It seems none of the other kids know about the place.
Job tells Burt about Isaac, and where everyone’s parents went. Burt takes all the news with little show of surprise.
In the corn field, Isaac and Malachi argue about what He Would Walks Behind the Rows really wants. Isaac thinks they should just sacrifice Vicky. Malachi thinks they should sacrifice both Vicky and Burt together.
So Malachi makes a power grab, and demands that the kids cut Vicky down and Isaac be put up on the cross.
Strangely, the kids go along with this, even though Isaac is the entire reason all the adults are dead. None of them even appear to question the idea.
So Malachi takes Vicky and a bunch of his foot soldiers back into town, and he yells out to Burt: “Outlander! We have your woman!”
Love it.
Burt doesn’t come out. So Malachi cuts Vicky, to get her to scream. Then he does some taunting. Only Burt can’t hear Malachi.
Burt tells Sarah and Job to lead him to the clearing where Vicky is being held. They all head out.
Back at the clearing, the kid with the carving on his chest is ready to “celebrate his birthday.” Malachi tells him that Isaac will be joining him. Isaac does the whole, “This is blasphemy!” thing.
Job and Sarah take Burt to a barn, and they look out the window on the second floor. They can see the clearing from there.
Burt leaves the kids there, and heads to the circle.
Night falls.
The kid with the carving on his chest hears the growling of He Who Walks Behind the Rows, and he walks into the corn. The ground moves like there’s something slithery and living underneath it.
Isaac, from his cross, calls out that he did everything the creature wanted. But it doesn’t matter. A really, really, really poorly animated red and yellow light flashes over him, and then his cross shoots in the air while he screams like a woman.
Burt runs into the clearing, grabs Vicky, and shoves her away, telling her to run.
Burt stands in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by kids with weapons, and demands to know what kind of a god demands that kids kill their parents. The kids seem unsure, and somewhat confused.
Burt continues to talk: “Any religion, without love and compassion is false. It’s a lie!”
This is a surprisingly philosophical movie.
Well, it was for a minute, anyway. Malachi leaps from the crowd and tackles Burt. They tussle. Burt gets Malachi on the ground and starts smacking him in the face. He gets up, holding Malachi’s knife.
Then he throws in the knife on the ground as a demonstration of this compassion thing he was talking about, and walks away.
Malachi yells out to the kids to get Burt, but they don’t move.
And then there’s some screaming: “Malachi! He wants you too, Malachi.”
Isaac is back, talking in a deep, and deeply freaky voice. He’s all white and ashy, too, which probably means something. Couldn’t tell you what.
Malachi looks very sad about this.
Isaac walks up to Malachi and grabs him by the neck.
All the other kids run to the barn where Job and Sarah are. So does Burt.
A storm kicks up.
Burt and Vicky debate whether it’s safer to stay in the barn, or to try to get back to the road.
Burt asks Job if anyone ever tried to hurt the creature. Turns out that the “blue man” did. It seems he talked to the preacher, and then came to the field with a page torn out of the bible.
For some reason, Job has the page now. He pulls it out, and Burt reads a highlighted section:
“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone. Where the beast, and the false prophet are, and shall forever be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Burt asks what that’s supposed to mean?
Vicky determines that this means the cop was going to try to burn the creature. Job says yeah, only he was stopped by Malachi.
Burt figures the cop must have been planning to use the fuel the kids were making from the corn (yes, this was mentioned before, but it was sort of ridiculous, so I left it out up until now) to burn the beast.
Burt tells the kids to get him a bunch of hoses and some glass bottles.
He gets one bottle, fills it with corn fuel, and makes a Molotov cocktail. Then he hooks up a hose to the burn-y corn fuel and heads out into the corn with an “I love you, Vicky.”
Things go okay until the corn attacks him, knocking to the ground and administering the kind of beating only corn can give.
Job runs out and frees Burt. Burt tells him to go back to the barn. Job does not obey.
Burt goes to some kind of machine, and jams the fuel hose into it. He tells Job to turn a valve. Then Job guides him through starting the machine.
I really wish I knew what the machine was.
Finally, it starts up. Turns out, the machine is one of those really large sprinkler systems that farmers have when they need to water a really, really, really large area.
So, it seems that Burts plan is to set fire to the entire corn field. I cannot say the man thinks small.
Bad animation rises up from the corn in a semi-threatening manner.
Burt runs over to Job and lights his Molotov cocktail. He throws it. He manages to hit the one part of the field NOT covered in fuel.
Job runs to pick up the cocktail, while the animation looms overhead, and also whatever it is under the dirt continues to run around under the dirt.
Burt keeps calling to Job, and for some reason it sounds like he’s yelling out, “Joey!”
Job grabs the Molotov, and runs back to Burt. He tells Burt to “throw it right this time.” Burt throws it. There is fire.
Also, some more bad animation. Back at the barn, Vicky and Sarah call out to Burt and “Job-y!” I guess that’s what Burt was yelling. Regardless, it sounds ridiculous. I’m wondering if the kid’s name was “Joey” originally, but then someone realized that didn’t sound all that biblical, so they changed it to Job in post, and then tried to cover it up.
At any rate, the four of them watch as the fire goes BOOM a couple of times. Then Burt suggests they run. Good thinking.
The fire rages, burning away the bad animation, which spontaneously develops into a huge, not-very-well animated face. The face screams. There is also animated lightning.
Then the face vanishes.
Job yells out, “Is he dead?” Burt says yes. The kid asks, “Then why are we still running?”
I dunno, Job. Maybe it’s because there are still a bunch of kids running around carrying implements of death?
Everyone reaches the car, which is still stuffed with corn, though for some reason it appears to be less stuffed than it was previously. Burt notes that the nearest town is 19 miles away. Vicky asks if they can walk.
Burt says yeah. Vicky and Burt share some light banter, and they kiss. Job and Sarah giggle. Since we’re getting to the end of the film, and the screenwriter needs to tie up some loose ends, Burt and Vicky determine that Job and Sarah can live with them for a while.
I’m sure that will raise no questions from anyone. I mean, it’s not like Burt is, like, 26, and Job is, like, 9, and he and Vicky aren’t married, and the kids don’t really look anything like them, and also Burt and Vicky were in that town where all the corn burned to the ground, and like 600 other suspicious things. And let us not forget the dead body in Burt’s trunk.
Burt gets into the car to grab their map, which has been SO useful up to this point, and when he sits down, the girl who stabbed him earlier is sitting in the back seat, waiting to finish the job.
She attacks, Burt fights back. He gets out of the car, she lunges, and he slams the car door, which knocks her out cold.
Burt asks aloud what he should do, and Vicky says, “Send her a get-well card from Seattle.”
The words THE END burn into the screen, the credits start rolling, and Vicky, Burt, Job and Sarah walk away from the car and out of town.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
For a change, we don’t get a scroll. Instead we just get a big block of text:
“August 18th, 1973. News of a bizarre, chainsaw wielding family – reports which were to ignite the world’s imagination – began to filter out of central Texas. Regrettably not one of the family members was ever apprehended and for more than ten years nothing further was heard. Then, over the next several years at least two minor, yet apparently related incidents, were reported. Then again nothing. For five long years silence…”
Oh, good gravy.
I guess the “apparently related” incidents are part 2 and part III?
I don’t really want to take the time to unpack everything that’s wrong with this, but I guess it’s my job, so here goes:
Everything.
Easier than I thought.
Astoundingly, this doesn’t mention Sally and her invalid brother Franklin. Then again, it doesn’t mention Stretch, or Enright, or Michelle, or anyone. At all. And in direct opposition to part III, no one was ever apprehended. And we can pretend that Sally is still alive, though we have no idea if she’s in a coma still, or not.
I’m not sure that there are three sequels to “Chainsaw,” at this point. I suspect that, instead, what we have is one original and three different attempts to make a “Part 2.”
All right. Let’s keep moving.
First burn-in: May 22, 1996.
Annnd… credits.
Including an “Introducing,” tacked in front of the guy playing Leatherface.
Credits over. Moving along.
We’ve got a pair of lips. Lipstick is applied.
Then the tube of lipstick is dropped, and the girl who just put it on wipes it off.
A girl puts on what looks like a prom dress. She calls out to her mom.
There’s a flash, and we watch an older woman take pictures of the girl, and a guy. They are dressed up to go to what I’m guessing is the prom.
Then we’re outside a gym, and a bunch of kids are running around, only we haven’t established any of them, so I have no clue who they are.
Then we’re inside the building but outside the actual prom, and some OTHER girl asks an older woman if she’s seen Barry. Who we haven’t met. The woman thought the girl and Barry broke up, but this is not the case.
The girl talks to another girl who talks with some sort of a tick. Then she talks to the first girl we saw, and her date. They haven’t seen Barry either.
So the girl goes outside, where a bunch of people who we don’t know are having a conversation. And the girl yells out, asking if anyone has seen Barry.
I haven’t seen Barry yet, but I really, really, really hate that guy.
The girl walks around, and catches Barry making out with some other chick. Barry calls out to the girl, who runs away. Her name is Heather, by the way.
Heather gets into her car and goes racing around the parking lot, while Barry chases her. He catches up to her and gets into her car as she pulls out of the parking lot.
Heather is mad at Barry. Barry says he only kissed the other girl once. And also, guys need sweet, sweet loving or they’ll get “prostrate” cancer.
In the back seat, that girl we saw at the beginning of the movie and her date sit up, and the girl says, “That’s a lie.”
Then Heather slams her car into another car.
Then she drives away, to complete the hit-and-run.
The girl whose name we don’t know? Jenny. Her date is Sean. There’s a bunch of exposition, so that we can know lots of things about these characters aside from the fact that they’re kind of hateful:
Sean: Stoner.
Jenny: Hasn’t felt the touch of a man. Sean is just a friend.
Heather: Dumb.
Barry: Dumb, mean, and a liar. Also, they’re in his car. Or his dad’s car. I’m not sure which. It’s not Heather’s car. So I’m not sure how Jenny and Sean got in there, or what they were doing there, and I’m not sure why Heather is driving it.
Regardless, they keep on driving, even though it seems they all hate each other and the prom is the other way.
Heather turns off on some freaky side road, which passes through the middle of the woods. Why? Who knows.
Everyone tells her to turn around, but she can’t find a place to do it. Then a car runs into them. Where did that other car come from? No idea.
Now the two cars are in a ditch. The other driver gets out of the car, and says he’s not hurt. Then he falls to the ground. Heather is all, “He’s gonna die.” The rest of them figure the kid will live.
Barry tries to drive his car out of the ditch. It won’t go. No one thinks to try pushing the car, because why would they?
Jenny is smart enough to try random dude’s car, but it won’t even start, so no luck there.
Jenny decides that they need to go get help, and everyone argues about who should go. Heather really wants to come along, but she asks Barry for a flashlight.
Jenny starts walking. Barry and Heather go with her. They have a flashlight. So they walk for a while. To build suspense. Also, Heather talks about a dream she had where she was chased by a murderer. She says they’re all going to die.
Heather jerks around and knocks the flashlight out of Barry’s hands. It falls to the ground and stops working, so Heather thinks they should stop walking and start a fire.
I am growing less and less shocked that Barry cheated on Heather.
Barry gets the flashlight working. There’s something dead on the ground. No clue what that is. This is the most poorly lit movie I think I’ve ever seen. It’s like they shot every outside scene using pen lights with four-year-old batteries.
They find a small building that has the light on. They go in. There’s a woman at the desk.
They tell the woman at the desk to call an ambulance because there’s a guy dying.
Heather demands that someone bring her a glass of water, even though there’s a water cooler perhaps three feet from her arm.
The woman calls some dude named Vilmer, who isn’t there to pick up the phone. She flashes some cleavage, which Jenny admires. For some reason.
The woman tells Jenny that they’re phony as three-dollar bills, but that they changed her life. She doubled her commissions.
Well, this is an awkward conversion.
Barry gets Heather some water. No idea why.
The lady talks to Vilmer, and gets him pointed in the right direction. She hangs up, then tells a blond joke, which Heather doesn’t get. Wow, is this not a fun movie.
The window shatters as something flies through it. Or maybe it just blows up, because really it just goes BAM and there’s glass.
The lady seems not at all worried about this. She claims it’s some “farmer’s wife.”
She goes to the window, and says, “Like I’m even interested.” Then she pulls up her shirt and adds, “See ‘em and weep, boys!”
Outside, a car drives by. There is hooting. The woman says that the high school boys are always doing something to get her to flash them.
She seems pretty nonchalant about the fact that someone just smashed her window.
Moving right along, we head back over to Sean and the hurt kid. The hurt kid mumbles something, and a tow truck drives up. I suspect these two things are unrelated.
A dude with a contraption on his leg gets out of the tow truck, and Sean asks if there’s an ambulance coming.
Contraption man walks over to the hurt kid, and says he’s dead. Sean says the kid is not dead. Contraption man snaps the kid’s neck. Man, some dudes just don’t like to be wrong.
Sean starts backing away from Contraption man. Contraption man tells Sean that there’s no point in Sean running away.
Sean asks what Contraption is going to do to him. Contraption says, “First, I’m gonna kill you.”
He keeps talking, and while he’s talking… um… I guess Sean runs away. We don’t actually see him run away, mind. Instead, Contraption says a few more lines of dialogue, and then gets in his truck and starts driving in an unclear direction.
I guess he’s going after Sean.
And now we’re back with the rest of the gang. They’re going to go back to Sean. The woman who did the flashing a little while ago says she’s can’t give them a ride. They ask if someone at the “service station” across the street could give them a ride, but the lady says the man who runs it is likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
Okay, so, there’s a service station across the street? Why didn’t they go there first?
And maybe it’s just the way the movie is shot, but the “service station” just looks like a house.
The gang starts walking down the road.
And now we’re back with Sean and Contraption. Sean is, in fact, running away, with Contraption driving slowly behind him. Contraption catches up to Sean, and Sean asks what he did wrong.
Contraption says Sean is just out of luck.
Sean asks that Contraption “give him a chance.”
If Sean really wanted a chance, perhaps he could consider RUNNING INTO THE WOODS, where Contraption’s truck can’t drive. That would sure help his cause. Also, as pointed out before Contraption has a crippled leg. So he probably can’t follow all that well, either.
At any rate Sean then runs down the road in the opposite direction, so Contraption starts driving after him. Backwards. He hits Sean. I think. It doesn’t really look like it, because it’s really poorly shot.
Then Contraption drives the truck over Sean’s body a few times, though we don’t actually get to see it, because everything is super-dark. Inside the cab, it just looks like the vehicle is nudging back and forth, and outside, it looks like the truck is just moving forward and backward.
If there’s something under the wheels, it isn’t visible.
I confess I’m feeling less than terrified at the moment.
And now we’re back with the rest of the gang. Heather’s feet hurt, and now she wants a piggyback ride.
Barry tells her to lose 20 pounds. Yes ladies, he’s a catch.
A car comes up the road, ignoring all the kids. Barry yells to the car, saying that they’ll pay the dude in the vehicle. He drives past them, and turns down a side road. Heather and Barry chase after them, leaving Jenny alone with the flashlight.
After a moment, Jenny finally starts walking after Heather and Barry. She whisper-yells to them. Why? Who is going to hear her? A maniac in a tow truck, perhaps?
Either way, she tells her “friends” that she’s going back to Sean.
A motorcycle drives by, but doesn’t stop.
Jenny starts calling out. She wants to know who is there. No one is there. Suddenly, a PLASTIC TRASH BAG BLOWS ON HER FACE.
I guess the writer/director couldn’t afford a cat.
Jenny presses on.
And now we’re back with Heather and Barry. Because I want you to understand how little fun Heather is to be around, allow me to share with you the little monologue she gives to Barry while they continue following a car that’s not headed towards their friend in any way:
“Barry, wait. Stop. What if they’re murderers and they want us to follow them, so they can hide behind trees and stab us? There could be dead people buried all around us, and we’d never know. They could tie us up in a cellar and no one would ever hear us.”
Barry points out that no one has cellars in this area.
So Heather KEEPS TALKING: “Okay, that’s it. Don’t call me dumb, Barry. I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I’m not stupid. I just act that way sometimes to get people to like me. All those stories about murders and people following me, I know it’s not true. It’s better than being bored. I’ll tell you what’s stupid, is that line you gave me about you and that girl, Brenda. Not even a little kid would believe that.”
Honestly, I’m not going to say that the original “Chainsaw” was a brilliant character analysis. The characters barely had names, barely had a reason to be where they were, and when you examine everything that happens in the original flick, it’s doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
But at least it was kind of freaky, and you didn’t actively hope that certain characters would be the first to go.
The fact that both these characters are vapid, even if they admit to it? It doesn’t make them fun to be around. Worse yet, it doesn’t make them interesting, either. I can appreciate that the writer is trying to give us something to cling to, but all he’s doing is giving them less sympathy, not more.
Heather concludes her monologue by saying that she wishes she was more like Jenny. It seems that Jenny’s mother is always getting married “every 15 minutes” and her dads are always hitting on her. Heather says, with envy, that she’s had P.E. with Jenny, and Jenny has a body to die for.
Now, somewhere in this world exists a longer cut of this movie, which makes some scenes even LONGER (Why? Why!?) and puts in a subplot about Jenny being molested by her stepfather. I tried to find it, but didn’t have any luck. And I can’t say I’m too hurt by that. Spending another 10 minutes with these characters doesn’t exactly hold a lot of appeal.
And speaking of Jenny, now we’re back with her. She’s still walking along. Alone. Calling out to Sean. At least she’s yelling again, instead of whisper-yelling.
The flashlight dies. Jenny stands there.
Heather and Barry finally reach a house. It probably took them longer to walk there than it would to get back to where Sean was. Heather says to offer them $50, but to not actually pay it. Just have them send a bill. She says her father does it all the time.
They get to the door. Heather knocks. No one answers. Barry says the people might be out back. In the dark. Right. So he goes to check.
All the windows are boarded up, by the way. But there are lights on.
Barry keeps walking, and peeks through a window slat. He just sees a broken-down old house. So he keeps on walking to the general “around back” area.
On the porch, Heather sits. She shuffles a little. Adjusts her dress. Then a dude walks up behind her, and sniffs her hair. The movie is shot in a strangely dark way, so you can’t really see much of anything, but it appears to be our old friend Leatherface.
Leatherface sniffs Heather’s hair. Really, she should clean the wax out of her ears because that porch should have made an awful ruckus when Leatherface climbed up on it from wherever he came from.
Barry keeps walking around the house, until some dude with a shotgun calls him out. They banter, and the dude with the shotgun calls Barry a moron. He speaks the unvarnished truth.
On the porch, they do the hair-smelling thing a couple more times to get some laughs out of it or to try and build suspense. Either way, it doesn’t work. Heather gets up, Leatherface knocks over a broom, and she finally sees him, and screams.
Leatherface grabs her and carries her towards the front door.
Barry almost decides to be a hero, but then he remembers that he’s got a shotgun pointed at him. Though even if the gun weren’t there, I sort of think Barry probably would have been, like, “Whatever. I have other options. Apparently Jenny is super-hot, and has low self-esteem…”
Leatherface drags Heather into the house. She gets free, and goes into another room, and latches the door.
There’s freaky stuff in that thar room.
Leatherface breaks down the door. He grabs Heather, and pulls her down the hall for a while. I will say, Heather puts up quite a fight.
Finally, Leatherface sticks Heather in a large freezer. Heather kicks her way out. Leatherface shoves her back in. They do this a couple of times, and Leatherface finally realizes he should put something heavy on top of the freezer.
Leatherface runs out into the hall, away from the screaming girl in the freezer.
Outside, Barry is still getting walked around by the shotgun guy. They go to the front door. Barry informs the man with the gun that if he goes inside, it’s considered kidnapping.
Then he decides to go in, noting that he needs to use the bathroom anyway. The moment he’s in the front door, he locks the other dude outside. And calls him a name.
The dude does not shoot the door. Even though it appears that none of these people are related to anyone in the first (or second, or third) movie, I guess he still remembers Leatherface getting in trouble for messing up the door in the first movie.
Barry wanders through the house, calling to Heather. And also, he really is looking for a bathroom. He’s very, very leisurely about the whole thing, considering there’s a dude with a shotgun outside the front door.
He finds a bathroom, and goes to make urine. He brags to Heather, wherever she is, about how he locked the dude with the shotgun outside. I like the fact that he has yet to consider how he’s going to get back out of the house.
He finishes emptying his bladder, turns around, and notices the decomposing body in the tub. He freaks, and runs into the hall without washing his hands.
Leatherface is there with a sledgehammer. He clocks Barry in the head.
You know what would be kind of awesome? If Jenny never saw any of these people again. She just wanders out of the woods, and catches a ride home, never to appear in another scene.
How cool would that be? No idea where she went, people all watching the movie and wondering what happened. I’d love that.
And it wouldn’t make any more or less sense than what’s happened so far.
Disagree? Okay, then. Question for you: Who’s the dude with the shotgun? And what’s with the guy with the bad leg? The opening text implied that these were all the same people, but guess what? With the exception of Leatherface, they aren’t.
Speaking of Leatherface, he kicks Barry for a while, then drags him into the room with the freezer. Heather calls out to Barry. Who knows why?
Leatherface pulls her out of the freezer and sticks her on a meat hook. Heather doesn’t enjoy it. But at least she stops talking.
Outside, we finally get back to Jenny, who flags down the Tow Truck O’ Death.
Contraption and Jenny back and forth, with a whole, “Where’s Sean?” “Get in, I’ll take you there,” thing.
That takes a little screen time. Then Jenny gets into the vehicle, and Contraption says that it’s dangerous to get in cars with strangers, and that some girl got in a car with a dude who cut off her arms and left her for dead. Contraption thinks that guy lacked imagination.
Jenny starts to realize getting in the vehicle was a bad idea, and Contraption tells her to look out the back window. She says that if he stops driving, she’ll look. He stops. She looks. She can see a dead Sean and that other random dude hanging there.
She asks, “What’s gonna happen to me?”
I’m not sure I understand why people in a movie like this ask that question. Also, she seems a lot less hysterical than she should be. She just saw that her friend was dead. On a freaked scale, she should be at something like a seven, and she’s at a two.
She throws herself from the vehicle and runs. At first, she does the same thing that Sean did. Run down a road so the truck can chase her easily. But finally, she runs into a group of trees, out of reach of the vehicle.
She’s kind of stuck in there, though, and she stops moving. Which is dumb, but still makes her the brainiac of her social circle.
Contraption shines a light on her, and babbles for a bit. He concludes with, “Okay. If that’s what you want. It’s up to you. Live and learn.”
Then he drives away.
Jenny looks around the dark, dark woods.
Nothing happens. Then: CHAINSAW!
Yep, it’s Leatherface. Time for running and screaming.
They do that for a bit, then Jenny makes it to the House O’ Death. She locks the door, and runs up the stairs.
Once again, Leatherface forgets it’s his house, and he starts slicing up the door.
Jenny, meanwhile, finds a dead stuffed cop. She takes his gun and starts walking down the stairs.
Leatherface breaks into the house. Jenny points the gun. It goes CLICK. Jenny throws the gun at Leatherface and runs upstairs.
She jumps out a window, and lands on part of the roof. Leatherface steps onto the roof, and they run around on the roof for a while. Jenny climbs the TV antenna, and then leaps into the air and grabs a cable, which I guess is the line to their phone?
Either way, it’s pretty strong, as she starts climbing along it, and that works great until Leatherface cuts the line.
(I feel ashamed to say it, but, “Oh, snap!”)
Jenny falls through what looks like a half-completed shed, and lands on the ground.
She gets up. We get a little cleavage shot. Jenny looks around. And then: CHAINSAW!
How did Leatherface get off the roof so fast?
Whatever. Chase sequence.
Jenny runs and runs, until she ends up at that shack again, where the woman who likes to flash guys is.
Hey, remember this scene in the first movie? Where Sally is running, and she talks to the Pump Jockey, who turns out to be evil? I’m sure that won’t happen again, right?
Nah.
The woman goes out and yells for a bit. Then she comes back in, and says, it’s “Nothing.”
Jenny retorts that there’s a guy out there with a chainsaw. She actually saw the word chainsaw three times in about five seconds.
The woman makes a phone call. This time, she calls a guy named W. E. W. E.? The guy who was tried and executed in the opening scroll of part III? The W. E. who never appeared in any of the other movies?
That guy?
My head hurts.
The woman comforts Jenny for about a minute, and then W. E. shows up. He was the dude with the shotgun, earlier. How did he get there so fast?
The woman tells W. E. to tie Jenny up. W. E. pokes Jenny a couple times with a device that administers a little shock. She falls down. He hits her a few times.
A little while later, she’s tied up in the back of the woman’s car. He shocks her a few more times for fun. The woman tells W. E. to tell Vilmer that she’s going to pick up some pizza and bring them home.
Is this another reference to part III? The pizza thing?
Also, don’t they eat people? What’s with the pizza?
The woman drives away, with Jenny in her trunk. She picks up her food at a drive-through window. The dude at the window tells her he can hear something in her trunk.
She says it’s someone she’s got tied up back there. She asks the dude if he wants to come see. He says yeah. She pops the trunk. He says he probably shouldn’t come out and look, as he might get in trouble.
She steps out of the car and goes to close the trunk again. She tells Jenny to shut up and quit kicking the car. Jenny says she can’t breathe.
Um. Jenny. Now is your chance to kick and run. Go! Go! Go!
Another person pulls up at the drive-through. A bunch of kids also walk by, none of them commenting on the woman talking to Jenny in the trunk.
The woman agrees to poke a hole in the bag on Jenny’s head if Jenny will shut up. She pokes the hole, Jenny shuts up. The woman closes the trunk.
A cop gets out of the car behind the woman, and asks what’s in the trunk. She gets all coy, and says she can’t tell the cop. Then the man in the eatery tells her that her drinks are ready, and the woman takes the drinks and drives away.
Then, as she drives away, the cops drive by and she gives a little wave. Just in case you thought to yourself, “Well, THAT was a stupid scene.” This way, you think it was a stupid scene, and you’re extra annoyed, because it’s actually two stupid scenes now.
Next thing we know, the woman is driving along a dirt road, and there’s Heather. In the middle of the road. Lying down. For some reason.
The woman stops, and Heather asks for help. The woman says she needs to go get a blanket, or something. Then she gets a broken branch, and hits Heather with it. Lightly. Because I guess she isn’t very strong.
While Heather says things like. “Don’t hit me. Stop.”
Not that she tries to get up and run away.
The woman gets back into her car, with the admonishment that Heather shouldn’t try crawling away, or anything. Then she gets in her car, and drives to the house. She pops the trunk, and brings the pizza in.
Leatherface and W. E. come out. Leatherface pulls Jenny out of the car and brings her in. W. E. pokes him with his electric toy.
The woman also tells them to go get Heather, since she’s crawling off down the road.
Inside, the woman talks to Vilmer, who isn’t happy that none of his batteries are charged. They argue.
Then W. E. comes in, all mad about the door that got chopped up.
Interestingly, the front door was just fine in the previous shot. Continuity much, people?
Vilmer tells everyone to be quiet a second, and opens the bag that’s holding Jenny, so they can have some crazy banter. I’ll admit, the banter sure is crazy, and I think if we had a movie that consisted of just Vilmer and Jenny, the creep factor would be a lot higher.
But no. We’ve got the other lunkheads in the movie too, which means that Vilmer eventually stops yacking about how he might or might not kill Jenny, and instead tells everyone to look at the busted door. Which he then tosses in the trash on the floor.
W. E. quotes something at the woman. (You know what? I’m tired of calling her that. So I looked up her name. Darla. I’m sorry, I just can’t hack it any more.). W. E. has been doing this the whole movie – at least half his dialogue is random quotes.
Interesting character trait? No. No, it is not.
W. E. goes out, and Jenny asks Darla for help. She wants to know what’s up with Vilmer. Darla says she thinks Vilmer is from outer space.
Vilmer and W. E. drag Heather in, and now Jenny wonders aloud what they’re going to do to Heather. Turns out, Vilmer is going to bite her in the face, while Leatherface lifts Jenny in the air, and W. E. pokes Jenny with his shock-stick.
This scene cuts to one in another room, where Darla comforts Jenny for no reason at all, and says she’s really pretty, and says she’s got a really nice dress that would look great on Jenny.
Jenny says, “I just don’t want to die.” Darla says, “Of course you don’t.”
Okay, first of all? I am SO happy this is the last chapter in the saga. This movie makes no sense, these characters make no sense, and I have no idea what’s going on.
Consider: We still have Leatherface, but no one else from the original family. Up to this point, we haven’t even seen Grandpa, the only character not named Leatherface that appeared in all the other films.
Second issue: So, are these people cannibals, or what? Eating human flesh is what these people DO. But not here. Here I guess they’re just serial killers. Except, not really. There aren’t many bones around, and they just bought a bunch of pizzas.
Consider the original. By now, Sally was well on the way to insane. Most of the second half of the movie is chasing, beating, and the dinner sequence. And what are these yahoos doing?
Talking. A lot. And while a little crazy talk can be fun, it’s more like they’re playing good psycho, bad psycho with her. To what end? This is a horror movie, right? So where’s the horror at? It’s like they keep forgetting what kind of movie they’re making.
But back to Jenny and Darla, with a note on an earlier scene:
A few minutes ago, Vilmer made a comment about the FBI having the house wired. And now, Darla goes off on some rant about there are people who control everything. Not the government, mind you, but some other group that’s been running things for 1000, or 2000 years.
Darla can’t remember which.
Having finished her crazy-speech, Darla is tossed out of the room by Vilmer, who then starts beating lightly on Jenny again.
He pulls out a knife, and counts backwards from 10, giving her these ten seconds to come up with a reason not to kill her. Her answer?
“You want me alive for some reason.”
This is good enough for Vilmer, who walks out of the room, saysing, “It kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? Smart girl.”
Ah. I see. We’re watching a movie about government plots. That might explain the distinct lack of terror I’m feeling.
Leatherface picks up Jenny and drags her back to the kitchen. Darla and Vilmer are beating each other up. W. E. is just kind of standing there. And Leatherface seems to be sad that Vilmer and Darla are fighting.
So Jenny gets up out of her chair, and grabs a nearby shotgun, which she brandishes at everyone. She tells everyone to get on the floor.
Darla, W. E., and Leatherface get on the floor. Vilmer decides to continue with the crazy talk. First, he takes out a knife and cuts himself. Then he tells Jenny the shotgun isn’t loaded. Then Darla says the pizzas are getting cold, so he knocks Darla over and steps on her neck.
Jenny tells Heather to get up, because she’s still lying on the floor. She’s been there all this time. Heather says, “Five more minutes.” Then she almost gets up, but changes her mind and lies back down.
Jenny, who appears offended that Vilmer is still stepping on Darla’s neck, sticks the shotgun in his back. He grabs it, turns around, and sticks it in his mouth. She pulls the trigger. CLICK.
Nothing.
Vilmer takes the gun from her, points it at the window, and pulls the trigger again. It goes BANG. Vilmer begins celebrating like the Sand Person who clocked Luke in Star Wars. Yes, really.
Jenny takes this chance to run away. She gets in Darla’s car, which still has the keys in it, and tries to drive off.
When she backs into the house, Vilmer jumps out of a window on the second(?)(!) floor and lands on the car.
So she drives, while he says crazy things and tries to grab her through the window. She stops the car, and he falls off.
She starts driving forwards, and the hood flips up in front of her.
So she gets out of the car.
And Vilmer grabs her by the ankles.
A minute later, he drags her back in the house, has W. E. hold her, and then he hits her in the face with a shotgun, knocking her out.
Elsewhere in the house, Leatherface dresses in drag. Including lipstick.
Darla goes to the kitchen. Remember how Vilmer has that contraption on his leg? Well, it uses a remote of some kind. Darla tells Vilmer he has to be nice to her, because she can always go back to her husband.
Then she takes the remotes and starts playing with his leg. They go into a passionate embrace. On the kitchen table. Darla appears to be dressed in a prom dress now.
Darla kind of shoves Vilmer off, and grabs a pizza, and goes into the other room, telling him to join her before the food gets cold.
It’s been like an hour. The pizza is cold, lady.
So now we’re in the dining room. Jenny is dressed in some crazy black and silver dress. And there appear to be more bones in the décor, though they don’t look human, for the most part.
Vilmer says, “Welcome to my world!” No idea why. Jenny is still unconscious.
He slaps her awake.
Leatherface, W. E., Darla, and a bunch of dead people are at the table. Jenny starts screaming. Her arms aren’t tied. Vilmer screams back. Finally, everyone stops screaming.
W. E. quotes something at an old dead guy who I guess is grandpa. Or not. No one ever says, and he looks younger and less dead than previous grandpas.
After all the screaming ends, Darla brings over a paper bag for Jenny to breathe into. Jenny says, “Are you gonna help me or not?”
Pretty sure she fell on the side of “not” a long time ago. Why keep asking?
Jenny goes on to say that Vilmer doesn’t work for anyone. He’s just crazy.
Darla says there’s something in her head, and if Vilmer touches a button, her head will explode. Jenny says there’s nothing in her head.
W. E. agrees. Tee-hee.
Vilmer pulls Jenny out of her chair, and says that Leatherface is sick of his current “face,” and that he wants Jenny’s. Jenny slaps Vilmer in the face a couple times, and says, “Don’t you ever touch me!” Vilmer gets the crazy eyes, and then takes a book off the shelf and starts to read it.
Jenny says, “If you’re gonna kill me, then do it.”
This makes Vilmer mad. So he hits Darla, and also W. E.
Grandpa gets up from the table and walks away.
Jenny says, “Now, I’m gonna leave, and no one is gonna stop me.”
I’d just about kill to have even one person in this movie act like a normal human being, or something close to it.
Leatherface gets up and yells. Jenny tells him to sit down and shut up. He does.
Vilmer comes in, throws lighter fluid on Heather, and sets fire to her. She waddles away. Darla puts her out with a fire extinguisher.
A horn honks outside. There’s a car there.
A moment later, there’s a man in a suit at the front door. And also his driver.
Vilmer asks the man what he wants. The man in the suit says he assumes that’s a rhetorical question. Then he refers to Vilmer as a “silly boy.”
He goes into the dining room. Jenny runs into his arms, and says that the people are crazy, and he has to help. He tells her that it’s all right, and does a whole, “There, there,” thing. And he has her sit down.
Suit asks if anyone knows what “this” is. I’d like to know, too.
Then he goes to talk to Vilmer. He says this is appalling, and continues:
“You are here for one reason, and one reason only. Do you understand that? I want to hear you say you understand that. It’s very simple. I want these people to know the meaning of horror. Horror. Is that clear? You don’t want to be a silly boy. Is that clear? Is that clear?”
Suit undoes his tie, and starts to unbutton his shirt. His torso has a strange pattern on it, and also it’s pierced in three spots.
First, he berates Darla for being with Vilmer. Next, he licks Jenny’s face, while Leatherface holds her.
He walks away. He picks up two pieces of pizza off the floor and puts them on the table. He leaves.
Vilmer goes to stand in the corner, and presses a button on his belt. He puts his foot on Heather’s head, and presses another button on his belt. There are crunching noises.
Jenny is finally getting her crazy on. She starts weeping and getting to like a six on the scale of ten.
Vilmer pulls out a knife and starts cutting himself again.
Darla says, “Don’t, it’s not your fault!” She tries to stop him.
Jenny stands up, and walks into the next room. She tries to break through the window, but it’s boarded up.
Vilmer comes and gets her.
They go back to the dining room. Velmar holds Jenny down while Leatherface brandishes his chainsaw.
Jenny grabs the remotes for Velmar’s leg, and starts pressing buttons. She wiggles out of his grasp.
Jenny runs out the front door.
Vilmer tells Leatherface to go get Jenny.
The sun has risen. An old couple, in an RV, drive along the road.
Jenny jumps in front of them and asks them to stop.
The wife says, “Don’t stop.” And also, “There’s a monster chasing her with a chainsaw!”
Then, after she lets Jenny in while they continue to drive, “Step on it, Mr. Spottish!”
I don’t know if he steps on it or not. About a second later, here comes the tow truck, with Leatherface on it, swinging his saw.
They pull alongside the RV, Spottish freaks, and they go off the road and ram into some branches, which causes the RV to flip onto its side.
A small plane flies by overhead.
The tow truck pulls up next to the RV. Jenny runs.
Leatherface and Vilmer chase her.
The plane dives, and rams a wheel into Vilmer’s head. He falls to the ground. There’s lots of blood, so he’s probably dead.
Leatherface, in turn, stands in the middle of the dirt road and screams.
A car honks. Jenny turns and sees it, and runs to get in. The car drives away.
Suit, from earlier, is in the passenger part of what I guess is a small limo. Jenny tries to get out, but Suit says, “You have nothing to fear.”
The car drives past Leatherface, who is still freaking out a bit. Leatherface watches it go, then does his little Leatherface dance from part 1.
But at least Suit is going to explain what we just wasted our time on, right? Wrong. This is what he says:
“This. All of this. It’s been an abomination. (Wow, is this guy ever right!) You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. I suppose it’s something we all live with. People like us who strive for something – a sense of harmony. Perhaps it’s disappointment that keeps us going. Unfortunately, it’s never been easy for me. One of my many failings. Would you like to go to the local hospital? Or to a police station?”
Does anyone else think that whole thing reads like an apology from the writer/director, for making such a horrifically awful flick? “Sorry, folks! I tried to make a scary one, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense. My bad.”
A short while later, Jenny is sitting in a hospital, talking to a cop, who says: “You know, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. We will find out what this is all about. This is not the end of it.”
A woman is wheeled by on a hospital bed. Wow. It’s actually Sally, from movie number one.
Fade to a shot of the sun. Oh, and Leatherface doing his little dance.
And credits.
A fun note: The voices of “Couple in RV?” They aren’t the same as the people playing them. Those dudes are dubbed. That’s going to plague me. Though probably not as much as this little fiddle tune playing under the credits.
Though once again, I guess I’m just happy it doesn’t feature Leatherface rapping.
“August 18th, 1973. News of a bizarre, chainsaw wielding family – reports which were to ignite the world’s imagination – began to filter out of central Texas. Regrettably not one of the family members was ever apprehended and for more than ten years nothing further was heard. Then, over the next several years at least two minor, yet apparently related incidents, were reported. Then again nothing. For five long years silence…”
Oh, good gravy.
I guess the “apparently related” incidents are part 2 and part III?
I don’t really want to take the time to unpack everything that’s wrong with this, but I guess it’s my job, so here goes:
Everything.
Easier than I thought.
Astoundingly, this doesn’t mention Sally and her invalid brother Franklin. Then again, it doesn’t mention Stretch, or Enright, or Michelle, or anyone. At all. And in direct opposition to part III, no one was ever apprehended. And we can pretend that Sally is still alive, though we have no idea if she’s in a coma still, or not.
I’m not sure that there are three sequels to “Chainsaw,” at this point. I suspect that, instead, what we have is one original and three different attempts to make a “Part 2.”
All right. Let’s keep moving.
First burn-in: May 22, 1996.
Annnd… credits.
Including an “Introducing,” tacked in front of the guy playing Leatherface.
Credits over. Moving along.
We’ve got a pair of lips. Lipstick is applied.
Then the tube of lipstick is dropped, and the girl who just put it on wipes it off.
A girl puts on what looks like a prom dress. She calls out to her mom.
There’s a flash, and we watch an older woman take pictures of the girl, and a guy. They are dressed up to go to what I’m guessing is the prom.
Then we’re outside a gym, and a bunch of kids are running around, only we haven’t established any of them, so I have no clue who they are.
Then we’re inside the building but outside the actual prom, and some OTHER girl asks an older woman if she’s seen Barry. Who we haven’t met. The woman thought the girl and Barry broke up, but this is not the case.
The girl talks to another girl who talks with some sort of a tick. Then she talks to the first girl we saw, and her date. They haven’t seen Barry either.
So the girl goes outside, where a bunch of people who we don’t know are having a conversation. And the girl yells out, asking if anyone has seen Barry.
I haven’t seen Barry yet, but I really, really, really hate that guy.
The girl walks around, and catches Barry making out with some other chick. Barry calls out to the girl, who runs away. Her name is Heather, by the way.
Heather gets into her car and goes racing around the parking lot, while Barry chases her. He catches up to her and gets into her car as she pulls out of the parking lot.
Heather is mad at Barry. Barry says he only kissed the other girl once. And also, guys need sweet, sweet loving or they’ll get “prostrate” cancer.
In the back seat, that girl we saw at the beginning of the movie and her date sit up, and the girl says, “That’s a lie.”
Then Heather slams her car into another car.
Then she drives away, to complete the hit-and-run.
The girl whose name we don’t know? Jenny. Her date is Sean. There’s a bunch of exposition, so that we can know lots of things about these characters aside from the fact that they’re kind of hateful:
Sean: Stoner.
Jenny: Hasn’t felt the touch of a man. Sean is just a friend.
Heather: Dumb.
Barry: Dumb, mean, and a liar. Also, they’re in his car. Or his dad’s car. I’m not sure which. It’s not Heather’s car. So I’m not sure how Jenny and Sean got in there, or what they were doing there, and I’m not sure why Heather is driving it.
Regardless, they keep on driving, even though it seems they all hate each other and the prom is the other way.
Heather turns off on some freaky side road, which passes through the middle of the woods. Why? Who knows.
Everyone tells her to turn around, but she can’t find a place to do it. Then a car runs into them. Where did that other car come from? No idea.
Now the two cars are in a ditch. The other driver gets out of the car, and says he’s not hurt. Then he falls to the ground. Heather is all, “He’s gonna die.” The rest of them figure the kid will live.
Barry tries to drive his car out of the ditch. It won’t go. No one thinks to try pushing the car, because why would they?
Jenny is smart enough to try random dude’s car, but it won’t even start, so no luck there.
Jenny decides that they need to go get help, and everyone argues about who should go. Heather really wants to come along, but she asks Barry for a flashlight.
Jenny starts walking. Barry and Heather go with her. They have a flashlight. So they walk for a while. To build suspense. Also, Heather talks about a dream she had where she was chased by a murderer. She says they’re all going to die.
Heather jerks around and knocks the flashlight out of Barry’s hands. It falls to the ground and stops working, so Heather thinks they should stop walking and start a fire.
I am growing less and less shocked that Barry cheated on Heather.
Barry gets the flashlight working. There’s something dead on the ground. No clue what that is. This is the most poorly lit movie I think I’ve ever seen. It’s like they shot every outside scene using pen lights with four-year-old batteries.
They find a small building that has the light on. They go in. There’s a woman at the desk.
They tell the woman at the desk to call an ambulance because there’s a guy dying.
Heather demands that someone bring her a glass of water, even though there’s a water cooler perhaps three feet from her arm.
The woman calls some dude named Vilmer, who isn’t there to pick up the phone. She flashes some cleavage, which Jenny admires. For some reason.
The woman tells Jenny that they’re phony as three-dollar bills, but that they changed her life. She doubled her commissions.
Well, this is an awkward conversion.
Barry gets Heather some water. No idea why.
The lady talks to Vilmer, and gets him pointed in the right direction. She hangs up, then tells a blond joke, which Heather doesn’t get. Wow, is this not a fun movie.
The window shatters as something flies through it. Or maybe it just blows up, because really it just goes BAM and there’s glass.
The lady seems not at all worried about this. She claims it’s some “farmer’s wife.”
She goes to the window, and says, “Like I’m even interested.” Then she pulls up her shirt and adds, “See ‘em and weep, boys!”
Outside, a car drives by. There is hooting. The woman says that the high school boys are always doing something to get her to flash them.
She seems pretty nonchalant about the fact that someone just smashed her window.
Moving right along, we head back over to Sean and the hurt kid. The hurt kid mumbles something, and a tow truck drives up. I suspect these two things are unrelated.
A dude with a contraption on his leg gets out of the tow truck, and Sean asks if there’s an ambulance coming.
Contraption man walks over to the hurt kid, and says he’s dead. Sean says the kid is not dead. Contraption man snaps the kid’s neck. Man, some dudes just don’t like to be wrong.
Sean starts backing away from Contraption man. Contraption man tells Sean that there’s no point in Sean running away.
Sean asks what Contraption is going to do to him. Contraption says, “First, I’m gonna kill you.”
He keeps talking, and while he’s talking… um… I guess Sean runs away. We don’t actually see him run away, mind. Instead, Contraption says a few more lines of dialogue, and then gets in his truck and starts driving in an unclear direction.
I guess he’s going after Sean.
And now we’re back with the rest of the gang. They’re going to go back to Sean. The woman who did the flashing a little while ago says she’s can’t give them a ride. They ask if someone at the “service station” across the street could give them a ride, but the lady says the man who runs it is likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
Okay, so, there’s a service station across the street? Why didn’t they go there first?
And maybe it’s just the way the movie is shot, but the “service station” just looks like a house.
The gang starts walking down the road.
And now we’re back with Sean and Contraption. Sean is, in fact, running away, with Contraption driving slowly behind him. Contraption catches up to Sean, and Sean asks what he did wrong.
Contraption says Sean is just out of luck.
Sean asks that Contraption “give him a chance.”
If Sean really wanted a chance, perhaps he could consider RUNNING INTO THE WOODS, where Contraption’s truck can’t drive. That would sure help his cause. Also, as pointed out before Contraption has a crippled leg. So he probably can’t follow all that well, either.
At any rate Sean then runs down the road in the opposite direction, so Contraption starts driving after him. Backwards. He hits Sean. I think. It doesn’t really look like it, because it’s really poorly shot.
Then Contraption drives the truck over Sean’s body a few times, though we don’t actually get to see it, because everything is super-dark. Inside the cab, it just looks like the vehicle is nudging back and forth, and outside, it looks like the truck is just moving forward and backward.
If there’s something under the wheels, it isn’t visible.
I confess I’m feeling less than terrified at the moment.
And now we’re back with the rest of the gang. Heather’s feet hurt, and now she wants a piggyback ride.
Barry tells her to lose 20 pounds. Yes ladies, he’s a catch.
A car comes up the road, ignoring all the kids. Barry yells to the car, saying that they’ll pay the dude in the vehicle. He drives past them, and turns down a side road. Heather and Barry chase after them, leaving Jenny alone with the flashlight.
After a moment, Jenny finally starts walking after Heather and Barry. She whisper-yells to them. Why? Who is going to hear her? A maniac in a tow truck, perhaps?
Either way, she tells her “friends” that she’s going back to Sean.
A motorcycle drives by, but doesn’t stop.
Jenny starts calling out. She wants to know who is there. No one is there. Suddenly, a PLASTIC TRASH BAG BLOWS ON HER FACE.
I guess the writer/director couldn’t afford a cat.
Jenny presses on.
And now we’re back with Heather and Barry. Because I want you to understand how little fun Heather is to be around, allow me to share with you the little monologue she gives to Barry while they continue following a car that’s not headed towards their friend in any way:
“Barry, wait. Stop. What if they’re murderers and they want us to follow them, so they can hide behind trees and stab us? There could be dead people buried all around us, and we’d never know. They could tie us up in a cellar and no one would ever hear us.”
Barry points out that no one has cellars in this area.
So Heather KEEPS TALKING: “Okay, that’s it. Don’t call me dumb, Barry. I may not be the smartest person in the world, but I’m not stupid. I just act that way sometimes to get people to like me. All those stories about murders and people following me, I know it’s not true. It’s better than being bored. I’ll tell you what’s stupid, is that line you gave me about you and that girl, Brenda. Not even a little kid would believe that.”
Honestly, I’m not going to say that the original “Chainsaw” was a brilliant character analysis. The characters barely had names, barely had a reason to be where they were, and when you examine everything that happens in the original flick, it’s doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
But at least it was kind of freaky, and you didn’t actively hope that certain characters would be the first to go.
The fact that both these characters are vapid, even if they admit to it? It doesn’t make them fun to be around. Worse yet, it doesn’t make them interesting, either. I can appreciate that the writer is trying to give us something to cling to, but all he’s doing is giving them less sympathy, not more.
Heather concludes her monologue by saying that she wishes she was more like Jenny. It seems that Jenny’s mother is always getting married “every 15 minutes” and her dads are always hitting on her. Heather says, with envy, that she’s had P.E. with Jenny, and Jenny has a body to die for.
Now, somewhere in this world exists a longer cut of this movie, which makes some scenes even LONGER (Why? Why!?) and puts in a subplot about Jenny being molested by her stepfather. I tried to find it, but didn’t have any luck. And I can’t say I’m too hurt by that. Spending another 10 minutes with these characters doesn’t exactly hold a lot of appeal.
And speaking of Jenny, now we’re back with her. She’s still walking along. Alone. Calling out to Sean. At least she’s yelling again, instead of whisper-yelling.
The flashlight dies. Jenny stands there.
Heather and Barry finally reach a house. It probably took them longer to walk there than it would to get back to where Sean was. Heather says to offer them $50, but to not actually pay it. Just have them send a bill. She says her father does it all the time.
They get to the door. Heather knocks. No one answers. Barry says the people might be out back. In the dark. Right. So he goes to check.
All the windows are boarded up, by the way. But there are lights on.
Barry keeps walking, and peeks through a window slat. He just sees a broken-down old house. So he keeps on walking to the general “around back” area.
On the porch, Heather sits. She shuffles a little. Adjusts her dress. Then a dude walks up behind her, and sniffs her hair. The movie is shot in a strangely dark way, so you can’t really see much of anything, but it appears to be our old friend Leatherface.
Leatherface sniffs Heather’s hair. Really, she should clean the wax out of her ears because that porch should have made an awful ruckus when Leatherface climbed up on it from wherever he came from.
Barry keeps walking around the house, until some dude with a shotgun calls him out. They banter, and the dude with the shotgun calls Barry a moron. He speaks the unvarnished truth.
On the porch, they do the hair-smelling thing a couple more times to get some laughs out of it or to try and build suspense. Either way, it doesn’t work. Heather gets up, Leatherface knocks over a broom, and she finally sees him, and screams.
Leatherface grabs her and carries her towards the front door.
Barry almost decides to be a hero, but then he remembers that he’s got a shotgun pointed at him. Though even if the gun weren’t there, I sort of think Barry probably would have been, like, “Whatever. I have other options. Apparently Jenny is super-hot, and has low self-esteem…”
Leatherface drags Heather into the house. She gets free, and goes into another room, and latches the door.
There’s freaky stuff in that thar room.
Leatherface breaks down the door. He grabs Heather, and pulls her down the hall for a while. I will say, Heather puts up quite a fight.
Finally, Leatherface sticks Heather in a large freezer. Heather kicks her way out. Leatherface shoves her back in. They do this a couple of times, and Leatherface finally realizes he should put something heavy on top of the freezer.
Leatherface runs out into the hall, away from the screaming girl in the freezer.
Outside, Barry is still getting walked around by the shotgun guy. They go to the front door. Barry informs the man with the gun that if he goes inside, it’s considered kidnapping.
Then he decides to go in, noting that he needs to use the bathroom anyway. The moment he’s in the front door, he locks the other dude outside. And calls him a name.
The dude does not shoot the door. Even though it appears that none of these people are related to anyone in the first (or second, or third) movie, I guess he still remembers Leatherface getting in trouble for messing up the door in the first movie.
Barry wanders through the house, calling to Heather. And also, he really is looking for a bathroom. He’s very, very leisurely about the whole thing, considering there’s a dude with a shotgun outside the front door.
He finds a bathroom, and goes to make urine. He brags to Heather, wherever she is, about how he locked the dude with the shotgun outside. I like the fact that he has yet to consider how he’s going to get back out of the house.
He finishes emptying his bladder, turns around, and notices the decomposing body in the tub. He freaks, and runs into the hall without washing his hands.
Leatherface is there with a sledgehammer. He clocks Barry in the head.
You know what would be kind of awesome? If Jenny never saw any of these people again. She just wanders out of the woods, and catches a ride home, never to appear in another scene.
How cool would that be? No idea where she went, people all watching the movie and wondering what happened. I’d love that.
And it wouldn’t make any more or less sense than what’s happened so far.
Disagree? Okay, then. Question for you: Who’s the dude with the shotgun? And what’s with the guy with the bad leg? The opening text implied that these were all the same people, but guess what? With the exception of Leatherface, they aren’t.
Speaking of Leatherface, he kicks Barry for a while, then drags him into the room with the freezer. Heather calls out to Barry. Who knows why?
Leatherface pulls her out of the freezer and sticks her on a meat hook. Heather doesn’t enjoy it. But at least she stops talking.
Outside, we finally get back to Jenny, who flags down the Tow Truck O’ Death.
Contraption and Jenny back and forth, with a whole, “Where’s Sean?” “Get in, I’ll take you there,” thing.
That takes a little screen time. Then Jenny gets into the vehicle, and Contraption says that it’s dangerous to get in cars with strangers, and that some girl got in a car with a dude who cut off her arms and left her for dead. Contraption thinks that guy lacked imagination.
Jenny starts to realize getting in the vehicle was a bad idea, and Contraption tells her to look out the back window. She says that if he stops driving, she’ll look. He stops. She looks. She can see a dead Sean and that other random dude hanging there.
She asks, “What’s gonna happen to me?”
I’m not sure I understand why people in a movie like this ask that question. Also, she seems a lot less hysterical than she should be. She just saw that her friend was dead. On a freaked scale, she should be at something like a seven, and she’s at a two.
She throws herself from the vehicle and runs. At first, she does the same thing that Sean did. Run down a road so the truck can chase her easily. But finally, she runs into a group of trees, out of reach of the vehicle.
She’s kind of stuck in there, though, and she stops moving. Which is dumb, but still makes her the brainiac of her social circle.
Contraption shines a light on her, and babbles for a bit. He concludes with, “Okay. If that’s what you want. It’s up to you. Live and learn.”
Then he drives away.
Jenny looks around the dark, dark woods.
Nothing happens. Then: CHAINSAW!
Yep, it’s Leatherface. Time for running and screaming.
They do that for a bit, then Jenny makes it to the House O’ Death. She locks the door, and runs up the stairs.
Once again, Leatherface forgets it’s his house, and he starts slicing up the door.
Jenny, meanwhile, finds a dead stuffed cop. She takes his gun and starts walking down the stairs.
Leatherface breaks into the house. Jenny points the gun. It goes CLICK. Jenny throws the gun at Leatherface and runs upstairs.
She jumps out a window, and lands on part of the roof. Leatherface steps onto the roof, and they run around on the roof for a while. Jenny climbs the TV antenna, and then leaps into the air and grabs a cable, which I guess is the line to their phone?
Either way, it’s pretty strong, as she starts climbing along it, and that works great until Leatherface cuts the line.
(I feel ashamed to say it, but, “Oh, snap!”)
Jenny falls through what looks like a half-completed shed, and lands on the ground.
She gets up. We get a little cleavage shot. Jenny looks around. And then: CHAINSAW!
How did Leatherface get off the roof so fast?
Whatever. Chase sequence.
Jenny runs and runs, until she ends up at that shack again, where the woman who likes to flash guys is.
Hey, remember this scene in the first movie? Where Sally is running, and she talks to the Pump Jockey, who turns out to be evil? I’m sure that won’t happen again, right?
Nah.
The woman goes out and yells for a bit. Then she comes back in, and says, it’s “Nothing.”
Jenny retorts that there’s a guy out there with a chainsaw. She actually saw the word chainsaw three times in about five seconds.
The woman makes a phone call. This time, she calls a guy named W. E. W. E.? The guy who was tried and executed in the opening scroll of part III? The W. E. who never appeared in any of the other movies?
That guy?
My head hurts.
The woman comforts Jenny for about a minute, and then W. E. shows up. He was the dude with the shotgun, earlier. How did he get there so fast?
The woman tells W. E. to tie Jenny up. W. E. pokes Jenny a couple times with a device that administers a little shock. She falls down. He hits her a few times.
A little while later, she’s tied up in the back of the woman’s car. He shocks her a few more times for fun. The woman tells W. E. to tell Vilmer that she’s going to pick up some pizza and bring them home.
Is this another reference to part III? The pizza thing?
Also, don’t they eat people? What’s with the pizza?
The woman drives away, with Jenny in her trunk. She picks up her food at a drive-through window. The dude at the window tells her he can hear something in her trunk.
She says it’s someone she’s got tied up back there. She asks the dude if he wants to come see. He says yeah. She pops the trunk. He says he probably shouldn’t come out and look, as he might get in trouble.
She steps out of the car and goes to close the trunk again. She tells Jenny to shut up and quit kicking the car. Jenny says she can’t breathe.
Um. Jenny. Now is your chance to kick and run. Go! Go! Go!
Another person pulls up at the drive-through. A bunch of kids also walk by, none of them commenting on the woman talking to Jenny in the trunk.
The woman agrees to poke a hole in the bag on Jenny’s head if Jenny will shut up. She pokes the hole, Jenny shuts up. The woman closes the trunk.
A cop gets out of the car behind the woman, and asks what’s in the trunk. She gets all coy, and says she can’t tell the cop. Then the man in the eatery tells her that her drinks are ready, and the woman takes the drinks and drives away.
Then, as she drives away, the cops drive by and she gives a little wave. Just in case you thought to yourself, “Well, THAT was a stupid scene.” This way, you think it was a stupid scene, and you’re extra annoyed, because it’s actually two stupid scenes now.
Next thing we know, the woman is driving along a dirt road, and there’s Heather. In the middle of the road. Lying down. For some reason.
The woman stops, and Heather asks for help. The woman says she needs to go get a blanket, or something. Then she gets a broken branch, and hits Heather with it. Lightly. Because I guess she isn’t very strong.
While Heather says things like. “Don’t hit me. Stop.”
Not that she tries to get up and run away.
The woman gets back into her car, with the admonishment that Heather shouldn’t try crawling away, or anything. Then she gets in her car, and drives to the house. She pops the trunk, and brings the pizza in.
Leatherface and W. E. come out. Leatherface pulls Jenny out of the car and brings her in. W. E. pokes him with his electric toy.
The woman also tells them to go get Heather, since she’s crawling off down the road.
Inside, the woman talks to Vilmer, who isn’t happy that none of his batteries are charged. They argue.
Then W. E. comes in, all mad about the door that got chopped up.
Interestingly, the front door was just fine in the previous shot. Continuity much, people?
Vilmer tells everyone to be quiet a second, and opens the bag that’s holding Jenny, so they can have some crazy banter. I’ll admit, the banter sure is crazy, and I think if we had a movie that consisted of just Vilmer and Jenny, the creep factor would be a lot higher.
But no. We’ve got the other lunkheads in the movie too, which means that Vilmer eventually stops yacking about how he might or might not kill Jenny, and instead tells everyone to look at the busted door. Which he then tosses in the trash on the floor.
W. E. quotes something at the woman. (You know what? I’m tired of calling her that. So I looked up her name. Darla. I’m sorry, I just can’t hack it any more.). W. E. has been doing this the whole movie – at least half his dialogue is random quotes.
Interesting character trait? No. No, it is not.
W. E. goes out, and Jenny asks Darla for help. She wants to know what’s up with Vilmer. Darla says she thinks Vilmer is from outer space.
Vilmer and W. E. drag Heather in, and now Jenny wonders aloud what they’re going to do to Heather. Turns out, Vilmer is going to bite her in the face, while Leatherface lifts Jenny in the air, and W. E. pokes Jenny with his shock-stick.
This scene cuts to one in another room, where Darla comforts Jenny for no reason at all, and says she’s really pretty, and says she’s got a really nice dress that would look great on Jenny.
Jenny says, “I just don’t want to die.” Darla says, “Of course you don’t.”
Okay, first of all? I am SO happy this is the last chapter in the saga. This movie makes no sense, these characters make no sense, and I have no idea what’s going on.
Consider: We still have Leatherface, but no one else from the original family. Up to this point, we haven’t even seen Grandpa, the only character not named Leatherface that appeared in all the other films.
Second issue: So, are these people cannibals, or what? Eating human flesh is what these people DO. But not here. Here I guess they’re just serial killers. Except, not really. There aren’t many bones around, and they just bought a bunch of pizzas.
Consider the original. By now, Sally was well on the way to insane. Most of the second half of the movie is chasing, beating, and the dinner sequence. And what are these yahoos doing?
Talking. A lot. And while a little crazy talk can be fun, it’s more like they’re playing good psycho, bad psycho with her. To what end? This is a horror movie, right? So where’s the horror at? It’s like they keep forgetting what kind of movie they’re making.
But back to Jenny and Darla, with a note on an earlier scene:
A few minutes ago, Vilmer made a comment about the FBI having the house wired. And now, Darla goes off on some rant about there are people who control everything. Not the government, mind you, but some other group that’s been running things for 1000, or 2000 years.
Darla can’t remember which.
Having finished her crazy-speech, Darla is tossed out of the room by Vilmer, who then starts beating lightly on Jenny again.
He pulls out a knife, and counts backwards from 10, giving her these ten seconds to come up with a reason not to kill her. Her answer?
“You want me alive for some reason.”
This is good enough for Vilmer, who walks out of the room, saysing, “It kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? Smart girl.”
Ah. I see. We’re watching a movie about government plots. That might explain the distinct lack of terror I’m feeling.
Leatherface picks up Jenny and drags her back to the kitchen. Darla and Vilmer are beating each other up. W. E. is just kind of standing there. And Leatherface seems to be sad that Vilmer and Darla are fighting.
So Jenny gets up out of her chair, and grabs a nearby shotgun, which she brandishes at everyone. She tells everyone to get on the floor.
Darla, W. E., and Leatherface get on the floor. Vilmer decides to continue with the crazy talk. First, he takes out a knife and cuts himself. Then he tells Jenny the shotgun isn’t loaded. Then Darla says the pizzas are getting cold, so he knocks Darla over and steps on her neck.
Jenny tells Heather to get up, because she’s still lying on the floor. She’s been there all this time. Heather says, “Five more minutes.” Then she almost gets up, but changes her mind and lies back down.
Jenny, who appears offended that Vilmer is still stepping on Darla’s neck, sticks the shotgun in his back. He grabs it, turns around, and sticks it in his mouth. She pulls the trigger. CLICK.
Nothing.
Vilmer takes the gun from her, points it at the window, and pulls the trigger again. It goes BANG. Vilmer begins celebrating like the Sand Person who clocked Luke in Star Wars. Yes, really.
Jenny takes this chance to run away. She gets in Darla’s car, which still has the keys in it, and tries to drive off.
When she backs into the house, Vilmer jumps out of a window on the second(?)(!) floor and lands on the car.
So she drives, while he says crazy things and tries to grab her through the window. She stops the car, and he falls off.
She starts driving forwards, and the hood flips up in front of her.
So she gets out of the car.
And Vilmer grabs her by the ankles.
A minute later, he drags her back in the house, has W. E. hold her, and then he hits her in the face with a shotgun, knocking her out.
Elsewhere in the house, Leatherface dresses in drag. Including lipstick.
Darla goes to the kitchen. Remember how Vilmer has that contraption on his leg? Well, it uses a remote of some kind. Darla tells Vilmer he has to be nice to her, because she can always go back to her husband.
Then she takes the remotes and starts playing with his leg. They go into a passionate embrace. On the kitchen table. Darla appears to be dressed in a prom dress now.
Darla kind of shoves Vilmer off, and grabs a pizza, and goes into the other room, telling him to join her before the food gets cold.
It’s been like an hour. The pizza is cold, lady.
So now we’re in the dining room. Jenny is dressed in some crazy black and silver dress. And there appear to be more bones in the décor, though they don’t look human, for the most part.
Vilmer says, “Welcome to my world!” No idea why. Jenny is still unconscious.
He slaps her awake.
Leatherface, W. E., Darla, and a bunch of dead people are at the table. Jenny starts screaming. Her arms aren’t tied. Vilmer screams back. Finally, everyone stops screaming.
W. E. quotes something at an old dead guy who I guess is grandpa. Or not. No one ever says, and he looks younger and less dead than previous grandpas.
After all the screaming ends, Darla brings over a paper bag for Jenny to breathe into. Jenny says, “Are you gonna help me or not?”
Pretty sure she fell on the side of “not” a long time ago. Why keep asking?
Jenny goes on to say that Vilmer doesn’t work for anyone. He’s just crazy.
Darla says there’s something in her head, and if Vilmer touches a button, her head will explode. Jenny says there’s nothing in her head.
W. E. agrees. Tee-hee.
Vilmer pulls Jenny out of her chair, and says that Leatherface is sick of his current “face,” and that he wants Jenny’s. Jenny slaps Vilmer in the face a couple times, and says, “Don’t you ever touch me!” Vilmer gets the crazy eyes, and then takes a book off the shelf and starts to read it.
Jenny says, “If you’re gonna kill me, then do it.”
This makes Vilmer mad. So he hits Darla, and also W. E.
Grandpa gets up from the table and walks away.
Jenny says, “Now, I’m gonna leave, and no one is gonna stop me.”
I’d just about kill to have even one person in this movie act like a normal human being, or something close to it.
Leatherface gets up and yells. Jenny tells him to sit down and shut up. He does.
Vilmer comes in, throws lighter fluid on Heather, and sets fire to her. She waddles away. Darla puts her out with a fire extinguisher.
A horn honks outside. There’s a car there.
A moment later, there’s a man in a suit at the front door. And also his driver.
Vilmer asks the man what he wants. The man in the suit says he assumes that’s a rhetorical question. Then he refers to Vilmer as a “silly boy.”
He goes into the dining room. Jenny runs into his arms, and says that the people are crazy, and he has to help. He tells her that it’s all right, and does a whole, “There, there,” thing. And he has her sit down.
Suit asks if anyone knows what “this” is. I’d like to know, too.
Then he goes to talk to Vilmer. He says this is appalling, and continues:
“You are here for one reason, and one reason only. Do you understand that? I want to hear you say you understand that. It’s very simple. I want these people to know the meaning of horror. Horror. Is that clear? You don’t want to be a silly boy. Is that clear? Is that clear?”
Suit undoes his tie, and starts to unbutton his shirt. His torso has a strange pattern on it, and also it’s pierced in three spots.
First, he berates Darla for being with Vilmer. Next, he licks Jenny’s face, while Leatherface holds her.
He walks away. He picks up two pieces of pizza off the floor and puts them on the table. He leaves.
Vilmer goes to stand in the corner, and presses a button on his belt. He puts his foot on Heather’s head, and presses another button on his belt. There are crunching noises.
Jenny is finally getting her crazy on. She starts weeping and getting to like a six on the scale of ten.
Vilmer pulls out a knife and starts cutting himself again.
Darla says, “Don’t, it’s not your fault!” She tries to stop him.
Jenny stands up, and walks into the next room. She tries to break through the window, but it’s boarded up.
Vilmer comes and gets her.
They go back to the dining room. Velmar holds Jenny down while Leatherface brandishes his chainsaw.
Jenny grabs the remotes for Velmar’s leg, and starts pressing buttons. She wiggles out of his grasp.
Jenny runs out the front door.
Vilmer tells Leatherface to go get Jenny.
The sun has risen. An old couple, in an RV, drive along the road.
Jenny jumps in front of them and asks them to stop.
The wife says, “Don’t stop.” And also, “There’s a monster chasing her with a chainsaw!”
Then, after she lets Jenny in while they continue to drive, “Step on it, Mr. Spottish!”
I don’t know if he steps on it or not. About a second later, here comes the tow truck, with Leatherface on it, swinging his saw.
They pull alongside the RV, Spottish freaks, and they go off the road and ram into some branches, which causes the RV to flip onto its side.
A small plane flies by overhead.
The tow truck pulls up next to the RV. Jenny runs.
Leatherface and Vilmer chase her.
The plane dives, and rams a wheel into Vilmer’s head. He falls to the ground. There’s lots of blood, so he’s probably dead.
Leatherface, in turn, stands in the middle of the dirt road and screams.
A car honks. Jenny turns and sees it, and runs to get in. The car drives away.
Suit, from earlier, is in the passenger part of what I guess is a small limo. Jenny tries to get out, but Suit says, “You have nothing to fear.”
The car drives past Leatherface, who is still freaking out a bit. Leatherface watches it go, then does his little Leatherface dance from part 1.
But at least Suit is going to explain what we just wasted our time on, right? Wrong. This is what he says:
“This. All of this. It’s been an abomination. (Wow, is this guy ever right!) You really must accept my sincere apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. I suppose it’s something we all live with. People like us who strive for something – a sense of harmony. Perhaps it’s disappointment that keeps us going. Unfortunately, it’s never been easy for me. One of my many failings. Would you like to go to the local hospital? Or to a police station?”
Does anyone else think that whole thing reads like an apology from the writer/director, for making such a horrifically awful flick? “Sorry, folks! I tried to make a scary one, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense. My bad.”
A short while later, Jenny is sitting in a hospital, talking to a cop, who says: “You know, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. We will find out what this is all about. This is not the end of it.”
A woman is wheeled by on a hospital bed. Wow. It’s actually Sally, from movie number one.
Fade to a shot of the sun. Oh, and Leatherface doing his little dance.
And credits.
A fun note: The voices of “Couple in RV?” They aren’t the same as the people playing them. Those dudes are dubbed. That’s going to plague me. Though probably not as much as this little fiddle tune playing under the credits.
Though once again, I guess I’m just happy it doesn’t feature Leatherface rapping.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
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.
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.
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