 |
| From http://projectdeadpost.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2013/07/LeatherfaceTexasChainsawMassacreIII.jpg |
Director: Jeff Burr
Screenplay: David J. Schow
Cast: Kate Hodge (as Michelle); Ken
Foree (as Benny); R.A. Mihailoff (as Leatherface 'Junior' Sawyer); William
Butler (as Ryan); Viggo Mortensen (as Eddie 'Tex' Sawyer); Joe Unger (as Tinker
Sawyer); Tom Everett (as Alfredo Sawyer); Miriam Byrd-Nethery (as Mama Sawyer)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #86
The wheels started to fall off
the Chainsaw cart just by the third
film but I don't necessary blame director Jeff
Burr for this. (This isn't a review of his later film Devil's Den (2006), where I'd throw a shoe at him if I could). Gore
removed, gore added back in the DVD release, an alternative ending directed and
the sense, whilst lots of gore wouldn't have necessarily boosted the film's
quality, that Leatherface's problems
stem from the franchise starting to become unstuck on the cusp of the 1990s. In
spite of some critical re-evaluation that it's been getting, it feels stuck as
a franchise film at a time when horror cinema was slowly changing, one with
great odd one-offs but where a lot of franchises were slowly dying, and without
Tobe Hooper in the driver's seat it's
unfortunately a "franchise film" in the negative way, without taking
risks and trying to recapture the first film's popularity without realising the
risk was what helped it. That's weird for me to say when in its unrated form, Leatherface is caked in grim and
unmentionable liquids, one of the most openly provocative of the first four
films in tone and dialogue especially, not as intense as the first or second,
but just deliberately unpleasant in tone where encounters sexually perverse and
racist cannibals, but this is still a safe film. As the 2003 remake will attest
to, that for all the gore and nastiness you still have something staying within
the confines of a mainstream horror movie, one where glam metal is still on the
soundtrack, an irony not realised as, when grunge apparently killed off glam in
the early nineties, horror films in the slasher-like fold like this would get
knocked off quickly too.
To Leatherface's credit, there's plenty of things to pick up on in
spite of the ultimate disappointment with it. It has a credible, menacing
atmosphere of isolated desert highways and swampy woodland that's befitting the
material, where everything feels rusted, old or crusty without it coming off as
ridiculously glamorous in a sick way. Some of the grim, admittedly, can be
heavy handed - Tom Everett's
misogynistic, peeping tom gas station owner and sociopath is a failed attempted
to follow Chop Top from the last film - but the sense of danger is appropriate
everywhere else. It blurs the line between entertainment, a New Line Cinema production, and an
extreme horror film right down to recreating the ran over armadillo from the
first film, replacing the immaculate (but somewhat absurd) taxidermy creation
from a realistic animatronics one that, in a moment I openly admit to feeling
sad about, cries in pain after protagonist Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her obnoxious boyfriend Ryan (William Butler)
accidentally run over and have to put out of its misery. At first it can make
the strange mix of different types of film work; the sense of horror and
underground culture starting to bubble up to the surface, the gore lovin'
horror film fan and music genres like death metal having grown up at the time
of the second film or so, is found even here which explains a lot of the tone.
The gore is still strong, even with cutaways and censorship, alongside its
intensity in general mood.
Helping this is that again, the
Leatherface family is still as interesting as before. By this point, like
marking out the timeline for Highlander
sequels, the family tree for this clan isn't worth trying to map out, instead
worth viewing each version in each of the first four films as different
entities that the scripts all wisely allow to stretch their legs and express
themselves as different groups. It's to the point with the exception of
whenever Ken Foree is onscreen,
especially as Ryan is such an obnoxious prick to suffer as a lead and Hodge only getting a lot more to work
with as the heroine in the final act, that actually the stalk-and-chase scenes
and the horror moments meant to sell it which are tedious, more interesting to
follow the villains instead. A matriarchal clan, a squabbling yet close whose
nicely decorated home comes from an older, nicer period of American only with
more dead animal parts and a homemade skull crushing machine in the kitchen, a
disturbing concept at play too with a little girl amongst them as a born
sociopath with a knife hidden in her dolly. No matter how bland the film can
get, it will always has some redemption for the scene, even if it might offend
other Chainsaw fans, were Leatherface tries learning from a speak and spell
machine only to always type "FOOD" on the screen, one of those
bizarre and fun character pieces that you only get once in a while in Hollywood
horror movies and the only time in the first four films of the series the least
interesting depiction of the iconic character has anything of interest to do
onscreen.
Then of course you have Viggo Mortensen as Tex, first the
handsome cowboy who you'd understand completely wooing Michelle from an obnoxiously
written boyfriend, but is also as great as a gangly, weird loon later on. The
same year as Philip Ridley's The Reflection Skin (1990) where he had
a main role, for a picture of his career at this point, even in a messy,
divisive horror film like this, as with Matthew
McConaughey in the fourth one, you can tell quite early in his career how
good and varied an actor he is, running rings around many of the others to a noticeable
extend. One exception though, and another redeeming part of Leatherface, is Ken Foree as a survivalist, Benny, who ends up in this horrible predicament
with Michelle and having to fight back, an absolute gem in the film just by
himself. He even steals scenes from Mortensen
with his own natural charisma that can juggle humour, even lines that would cause
one to cringe if anyone else said them, with the ability to act like a credible
touch man, harder to do in a genre film in acting than you may presume but what
he managed all the way back in Dawn of
the Dead (1978) and here.
The problems really come in Leatherface attempting to be a horror
film. It's a fool's errand after the first two sequels that three and four
thought of recreating scenes from the first film without realising how poorly
they'd look in comparison, like here when Leatherface chases a woman through
the woods with a chainsaw, as with what I've now realise about my tastes in how,
with great exceptions, stalk and chase scenes in horror are now becoming my
least favourite completely due to their laziness in execution. It's also the
sequel attempting to be a box office hit, which leads to the most egregious
flaws in attempting to keep butts at the edge of the seat. Moments appear
throughout the film, like the misused subplot of a previous female survivor
still rooming the area in a near catatonic state, but it's really by the end of
the film when all hell breaks loose where it starts makes stupid decisions,
ditching the interest it generated following the Leatherface clan for something
more generic. Action scenes of fighting and setting people on fire, the egregious
use of heavy metal riffs in moments that are meant to feel awesome or intense,
such as the final chase scenes, but come off as cheesy, and a general rush to
the finishing line that blurs together with no actual horror to them.
The clash between being a greasy,
cruel movie - where the heroine has to have her hands nailed to chair arms
rather than tied on and dialogue at one point with gruesome implications of
sexual violence - and a mainstream horror sequel really becomes problematic as
if feels as if it's both trying too hard to be extreme and that it's also, for
all the good moments within it, too predictable and even has its legs chopped
off by the finale when it could've gotten interesting, pure gorgonzola topping
it all in an ending that was changed to be happier in spite of an obvious plot
hole and pure luck being involved with the result narratively. Leatherface altogether comes off as a
bastard creation stuck between tones with haphazard decisions alongside the
good ideas.
 |
| From http://wickedhorror.thunderroadinc.netdna-cdn.com/ wp-content/uploads/2015/03/leatherface-texas-iii.jpg |
No comments:
Post a Comment