The Texas Chainsaw Massacre «
R, 98m. 2003
Cast & Credits: Jessica Biel (Erin), Jonathan Tucker (Morgan), Erica Leerhsen (Pepper), Mike Vogel (Andy), Eric Balfour (Kemper), Andrew Bryniarski (Thomas Hewitt - Leatherface), R. Lee Ermey (Sheriff Hoyt). Screenplay by Scott Kosar based on the 1974 screenplay by Kim Henkel and Toby Hooper. Directed by Marcus Nispel.
The best advice studios should heed is to stop remaking the great movies and concentrate more on remaking the bad ones. What I liked most about director Gus Van Sant's remake of "Psycho" (1998), for example, was that in shooting the film exactly the way Alfred Hitchcock shot it, he proved that the classics should be best left alone.
The original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974), directed by Tobe Hooper, who years later would go on to make the supernatural ghost story, "Poltergeist" (1982), was by no means a classic. I thought it was perverted garbage, but it was perverted garbage made on a cheap stylish independent level that could well be the stuff nightmares are made of. If the film was shocking when it came out, it was because like the foul mouthed, vomit-spewing obscenities uttered by the demon possessed Megan played by Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (1973), no one had ever seen horror like this on the big screen before.
The most haunting shot in Hooper’s film, if I remember correctly as it's been years since I have seen it, is the way it ended showing the director’s certifiably psychotic creation, Leatherface, running around in a Texas field brandishing his buzzing chainsaw like a wild man. By comparison, the most frightening image in this remake is the last shot of Leatherface being captured on a grainy black and white crime film.
Movie remakes are, after all, curiosity pieces; a chance to see another filmmaker's take on what was already, if it wasn't one of the greatest movies of all time which "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not, it was at least the most chilling. Curiosity is the only reason why this remake grossed close to $30 million opening weekend, other than a good marketing campaign.
I went into this updated version produced by director Michael Bay ("Pearl Harbor" - 2001) stupidly thinking this might be an even better improvement upon the original. It took less than 10 minutes to realize how wrong I was. If curiosity does indeed kill cats, then chances are I'm probably "already dead" like the grungy, wheelchair bound old man says to one of the victims who has trespassed on his grounds.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake is completely devoid of any scares, suspense or vivid horrific imagination. Like the original, the remake is a nightmare but it's a nightmare of our own choosing, paying to sit through this formulaic piece of celluloid trash. It's a joyless, slow moving, masochistically twisted geek show that might as well have been shot as a snuff film since all we are really watching for more than 90 minutes is seeing five young people terrorized. Four of whom are hacked to death by either the villain's chainsaw, machete or hung up on meat hooks in a slimy, wet underground dungeon filled with preserved body parts in jars. By the time the film was over, I felt like I needed a bath.
Jessica Biel is the fifth person, not to mention the heroine who does everything she can to keep from being sawed up by a demented, disfigured being called Leatherface whose visible trademark, other than the skin sewn face he wears from his victims, is wielding a chainsaw. Watching it, I almost wished the Biel character hadn't escaped. This way, we would have been spared the disturbing tale begun by the narrator (John Larroquette) who also narrated Hooper's original film telling us how the story we are about to see is true (but really isn't).
The picture has no shred of originality unless you count the scene where a hitchhiker, who Biel and her pot smoking entourage picked up, blows her brains out creating a blood-stained hole in the back window of their van. It's the way the scene is shot as the camera focuses on the shock of the five travelers and then moves backward taking the audience through the woman's bullet ridden skull that soon takes us outside the vehicle. I'll give the filmmakers this much. I have never seen a scene like that done before except when the characters on "CSI: Miami" (2002) conduct autopsies.
If there is any real difference between this new version and its predecessor, it is that this one was likely made on a larger budget. It features two known stars (Biel from television's "7th Heaven" - 1996) and R. Lee Ermey, best known as the sadistic drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) as a deranged toothless Texas sheriff. For me to say that the best shots in the movie are of how ominous and isolated Leatherface's old run down, two-story farmhouse looks at night when surrounded by fog would be a waste of newsprint.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not a tribute to the original nor is it an improvement. It's as much a waste of a movie-goers time as it is a waste of my time in writing a review of it. I can think of no real rhyme or reason as to why anyone would recommend it except maybe they're as sick as the murderer is in this movie. The film was inspired supposedly by the true story of Ed Gein, a serial killer who back in the late 1950s butchered up several people including the mother of a deputy in Wisconsin. He was also the inspiration for Wild Bill; the vile transvestite cross-dressing villain Jodie Foster's novice FBI agent Clarice Starling went after in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991).
I can think of a better horror/suspense film to see that was loosely inspired by Gein’s murder spree which is "Psycho" (1960). It is the one black and white suspense thriller that to this day still spooks actress Janet Leigh every time she steps in the shower.
©10/20/03
R, 98m. 2003
Cast & Credits: Jessica Biel (Erin), Jonathan Tucker (Morgan), Erica Leerhsen (Pepper), Mike Vogel (Andy), Eric Balfour (Kemper), Andrew Bryniarski (Thomas Hewitt - Leatherface), R. Lee Ermey (Sheriff Hoyt). Screenplay by Scott Kosar based on the 1974 screenplay by Kim Henkel and Toby Hooper. Directed by Marcus Nispel.
The original "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974), directed by Tobe Hooper, who years later would go on to make the supernatural ghost story, "Poltergeist" (1982), was by no means a classic. I thought it was perverted garbage, but it was perverted garbage made on a cheap stylish independent level that could well be the stuff nightmares are made of. If the film was shocking when it came out, it was because like the foul mouthed, vomit-spewing obscenities uttered by the demon possessed Megan played by Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" (1973), no one had ever seen horror like this on the big screen before.
The most haunting shot in Hooper’s film, if I remember correctly as it's been years since I have seen it, is the way it ended showing the director’s certifiably psychotic creation, Leatherface, running around in a Texas field brandishing his buzzing chainsaw like a wild man. By comparison, the most frightening image in this remake is the last shot of Leatherface being captured on a grainy black and white crime film.
Movie remakes are, after all, curiosity pieces; a chance to see another filmmaker's take on what was already, if it wasn't one of the greatest movies of all time which "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not, it was at least the most chilling. Curiosity is the only reason why this remake grossed close to $30 million opening weekend, other than a good marketing campaign.
I went into this updated version produced by director Michael Bay ("Pearl Harbor" - 2001) stupidly thinking this might be an even better improvement upon the original. It took less than 10 minutes to realize how wrong I was. If curiosity does indeed kill cats, then chances are I'm probably "already dead" like the grungy, wheelchair bound old man says to one of the victims who has trespassed on his grounds.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake is completely devoid of any scares, suspense or vivid horrific imagination. Like the original, the remake is a nightmare but it's a nightmare of our own choosing, paying to sit through this formulaic piece of celluloid trash. It's a joyless, slow moving, masochistically twisted geek show that might as well have been shot as a snuff film since all we are really watching for more than 90 minutes is seeing five young people terrorized. Four of whom are hacked to death by either the villain's chainsaw, machete or hung up on meat hooks in a slimy, wet underground dungeon filled with preserved body parts in jars. By the time the film was over, I felt like I needed a bath.
Jessica Biel is the fifth person, not to mention the heroine who does everything she can to keep from being sawed up by a demented, disfigured being called Leatherface whose visible trademark, other than the skin sewn face he wears from his victims, is wielding a chainsaw. Watching it, I almost wished the Biel character hadn't escaped. This way, we would have been spared the disturbing tale begun by the narrator (John Larroquette) who also narrated Hooper's original film telling us how the story we are about to see is true (but really isn't).
The picture has no shred of originality unless you count the scene where a hitchhiker, who Biel and her pot smoking entourage picked up, blows her brains out creating a blood-stained hole in the back window of their van. It's the way the scene is shot as the camera focuses on the shock of the five travelers and then moves backward taking the audience through the woman's bullet ridden skull that soon takes us outside the vehicle. I'll give the filmmakers this much. I have never seen a scene like that done before except when the characters on "CSI: Miami" (2002) conduct autopsies.
If there is any real difference between this new version and its predecessor, it is that this one was likely made on a larger budget. It features two known stars (Biel from television's "7th Heaven" - 1996) and R. Lee Ermey, best known as the sadistic drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) as a deranged toothless Texas sheriff. For me to say that the best shots in the movie are of how ominous and isolated Leatherface's old run down, two-story farmhouse looks at night when surrounded by fog would be a waste of newsprint.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not a tribute to the original nor is it an improvement. It's as much a waste of a movie-goers time as it is a waste of my time in writing a review of it. I can think of no real rhyme or reason as to why anyone would recommend it except maybe they're as sick as the murderer is in this movie. The film was inspired supposedly by the true story of Ed Gein, a serial killer who back in the late 1950s butchered up several people including the mother of a deputy in Wisconsin. He was also the inspiration for Wild Bill; the vile transvestite cross-dressing villain Jodie Foster's novice FBI agent Clarice Starling went after in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991).
I can think of a better horror/suspense film to see that was loosely inspired by Gein’s murder spree which is "Psycho" (1960). It is the one black and white suspense thriller that to this day still spooks actress Janet Leigh every time she steps in the shower.
©10/20/03
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