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This is the
twisted tale of Vilmer and his crazy family which includes the lovely Leatherface.
They have pastime of killing and stuffing people. Unfortunately, Jenny
and her friends run into Vilmer and his clan in the middle of the night
in the middle of the woods. Can they survive the night?
"Boy you are as dull as dishwater."
- W.E. |
Everything about Texas
Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation points to it not only being
a huge underground success, but achieving some mainstream notoriety as
well, just as its grandpappy did twenty years previous. The original writer
comes back to helm the flick in his directorial debut, and the casting
folks manage to land a few stars who look like they're on their way up.
And my, did they strike a goldmine: two of the movie's stars are Renee
Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. I mean, this has every necessary Hallmark
of underground reverence.
It has gotten
exactly the opposite. Listed near the bottom of IMDB's bottom 100 and universally
reviled by the reviews posted there. Why everyone's bathing on Leatherface
is beyond me. My best guess is that a whole bunch of people who had never
heard of any of the films, but were Renee Zellweger fans, rented it as
a kind of completist thing. Because really, it's not that bad. I've seen
at least five films that make this look like Doctor Zhivago in the past
year alone (and one of them was nominated for a few Oscars).
If you've seen,
or heard about, any of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre flicks, you know
what to expect. The main differences is the bevy of teenagers are out on
prom night; the brainless jock-type Barry and his equally annoying girlfriend
Heather, and the geek, Sean, with the plucky heroine. Following an accident
with another teen (listed in the credits, amusingly, as "I'm Not Hurt"),
various members of the bunch, trying to find help, meet up with various
townsfolk at various times, and realize there's something very odd going
on...
There was great
potential here (unlike the other films, Leatherface's house this time is
located close to a decent-sized commercial area) to have some real fun
with the concept, but instead Henkel and company went with the same straight
horror-comedy mix that the whole series works with. (Only the recent remake
of the original takes itself at all seriously, which is not necessarily
a bad thing.) The comedy is as mean-spirited and ugly as it is in the first
film, which some people are going to hate and some will take as a welcome
return to form (one figures Henkel was probably responsible for most of
the original film's gallows humor). As usual, there's a lot going on that
makes no real sense within the story (McConaughey's Rube Goldberg-esque
prosthetic leg, the insane CIA agent played by a chilling John Gale, etc.),
but again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Some of the acting really
sucks, but you expect that from a B-grade horror flick. But it succeeds
at what it attempts, in a gruesome, low-budget sort of way, and doesn't
deserve anywhere near the amount of revilement it has received.
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- Paul
A. Partain and Marilyn Burns, both from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
have cameos.
- Intended by director Kim Henkel to be the "real" sequel to the
original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The characters of Vilmer and W.E. were
intended to be the Hitchhiker and Cook characters from the original film.
Jim Siedow was approached to reprise his Cook character, but was unable
to.
- TCM4 grossed $94,558 in the USA.
- John Dugan, who played Grandfather in the original Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, plays the cop at the hospital at the end of the film.
- Bill
Johnson, who played Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was offered the role of Leatherface.
- Actor Jim Siedow was also offered the roll of the grandfather,
but he refused.
- The chainsaw is a McCulloch 10-10S.
     
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