Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

 

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) Re-Review

 

The relationship I have had with Leatherface has been not a great one. I think finally that is changing, taking this film as its own work, without the baggage of Tobe Hooper's first two, as a huge fan of the second as much as the first, and aware that the films after, not The Next Generation (1995) but those after, were not spectacular and make the original four together far more appreciated in their quirks. Neither did it help that director Jeff Burr's later film Devil's Den (2006) did not win me over as many of a straight to DVD horror film from a time before I softened on them, which in a previous review of Leatherface I wrote wanting to throw a show at him for.

Leatherface is trying, after the satire and eighties new wave music of the second film, to be grim and serious without over-egging it, as came to be with the reboot cycle. Gore ended up being removed infamously, and then added back in for the DVD release, an alternative ending being directed. This also suffers from what all horror films which gained a franchise did, trying to continue when the premise of the first film back in 1974 which makes sense for a one-off film only. Tobe Hooper wisely, miraculously, figured out a sequel by making its of its time and a black comedy, and with mind there was a 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake I had never even heard of until writing this review, the problem with trying to recreate the film first was never its simple premise - that being chased with a cannibal with a chainsaw will always terrify a person - but that it was a nightmare cacophony of images and sound from an independent film production where the director and crew were stuck in the middle of nowhere, in hellish heat with the smell of real rotting animal meat driving them to their limits as they were filming it.

This had the additional problem, proudly riding in with a Lȧȧz Rockit thrash metal song of the title name, of coming into the world on the cusp of the 1990s. It feels stuck as a franchise film at a time when horror cinema was slowly changing, one with great odd one-offs but where many franchises were slowly dying, and without Tobe Hooper in the driver's seat, it was unfortunately a "franchise film", not taking risks. Only now, I appreciate what it is, as a thrill ride of a morbid kind, but this is "conventional" for the genre, even if this is gristly and has a wonderfully morbid sense of humour midway within it. And it is weird to say this is conventional for the franchise, considering Leatherface is caked in grim and unmentionable liquids, one of the most openly provocative of the first four films in tone and dialogue especially. Whilst not as intense as the first or second, it is just deliberately unpleasant in tone as the plot involves sexually perverse and racist cannibals, but there is still a safe film secretly in its heart that, unlike the second film, you do not get into twisted parodies of Ronald Regan politics or the chainsaw literally being suggested as a phallic metaphor. As the 2003 remake will attest to, that for all the gore and nastiness you can put into a movie, you can still have something staying within the confines of a mainstream horror movie.

Thankfully, there was something to appreciate now in its own icky thrill ride way. The story is basic - a heterosexual couple of Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her obnoxious boyfriend Ryan (William Butler) find themselves stuck in a trap with the Sawyer family of chainsaw cannibals, and there is not a lot to say beyond this barring that. This new version of the Sawyer family has new family members, and there is the delightful sight of Ken Foree, as a survivalist named Benny, who adds a factor as the competent guy who, even if he cannot catch a break, least adds someone with combat skills in this scenario.It has a credible, menacing atmosphere of isolated desert highways and swampy woodland that is befitting the material, where everything feels rusted, old or crusty without it coming off as ridiculously glamorous in a sick way. Some of the grimness, admittedly, can be heavy handed but I have come to admire things I had looked down on upon. One great example of this is Tom Everett's misogynistic, peeping tom gas station owner and sociopath, all in mind that he is having to work against the fact Bill Moseley as Chop Top from the second film is the best the franchise ever got for strange Sawyer siblings in humour and as a character.

The sense of danger is appropriate everywhere else for a film which is to entertain primarily, even over its plot, but made with a desire to not pull its punches. Jeff Burr is someone I wish to return to with a greater openness to the career of a director, as with many in this region of genre cinema, whose career is fascinating just for the tangents - between having a late era Vincent Price in one of his earlier films, From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), to being involved with American Hero (1995), a full motion video game originally meant for the Jaguar CD, a now-rare add-on to the doomed Atari Jaguar videogame console, which never got a release until 2021 as a fully finished curiosity for gamers and people like me. He clearly came to this realising, in mind to the legacy of the first Chainsaw film, he wanted to keep the intensity of the film's reputation, as a film which paradoxically has little onscreen gore but was a cacophonous nightmare, by upping to the intensity in what we get in Leatherface. 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 to a realistic animatronics one that, in a really curious touch, is played with pathos as Michelle and Ryan 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 is starting to bubble up to the surface, the gore loving horror film fan and music genres like death metal having grown up at the time of the second film or so, found here even if with thrash metal and still having a censored theatrical version as a compromise. The gore is still strong, even when there is cutaways, alongside its intensity in general mood. Helping this is that again, the Leatherface family is still as interesting as before, one of the best points of this franchise. Tobe Hooper realised with the sequel's curious tone to humour how they are centre to the tale, both as credible threats but that their personalities are over-the-top and sickly funny. By this point, like marking out the timeline for Highlander sequels, the family tree for this clan is not worth trying to map out, whilst Leatherface was thankfully at a time before Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) where the timeline was entirely mauled trying to reboot the franchise. 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. Particularly as the leads, excluding the great presence of Ken Foree, are really one dimensional, this is a film where its expectations of stalk-and-chase scenes and the horror moments meant to sell it are far less interesting than the dark humour and the eccentricities when we get to be with the family.

This is a matriarchal clan, a squabbling yet close one who's nicely decorated home comes from an older Americana 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. Some would have found scenes in this still, if they hated Texas Chainsaw Massacre II's broad comedy, "betrayed" the original, such as Leatherface trying to learn from a speak and spell machine only to always type "FOOD" on the screen, one of those bizarre and fun character pieces this franchise early into itself found only to sadly lose in the films after the Millennium. Then of course you have Viggo Mortensen as Tex, first the handsome cowboy who you would 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, these offer a picture that he would become a hugely reliable and talented figure, with less of the potential embarrassment with Matthew McConaughey in the fourth one by vividly showing how good and varied an actor he is just from this simple horror role.

All of my issues with Leatherface before were that it was a fool's errand after the first two sequels that three and four could be able to recreate their structures and scenes from the first film without the comparisons being made. Here when Leatherface chases a woman through the woods with a chainsaw it becomes one of the scenes where the film does feel its weaknesses, merely the fate outside its own hands that it cannot match the first. Moments appear throughout the film, like the subplot of a previous female survivor still rooming the area in a near catatonic state, trying to add more to the same plot remade here from before, but its plotting as a horror film, as much as its action beats of fighting and setting people on fire, are far less interesting than being allowed to spend time with the Sawyer family at the dinner table. This is one of the issues with these films where the protagonists we are meant to be in the shoes off are bland ciphers, when here the Sawyers are more interesting being perversely wholesome for a bunch of homicidal psychopaths. Yes, there are parts of them which are still deliberately evil, such as the violence or the marks of racism in their dialogue, which does further another flaw of the film that, with these figures more interesting to watch, the attempt to be extreme at the same time does jar considerably.

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 is still there, a film which was lucky enough to be able to have its tone because this franchise could be sold, but it comes with all the compromises of being a film for the mainstream in that it cannot take the risks the second film did. This film had a trailer parodying Excalibur (1981) and Arthurian legend by having the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend, who gave King Arthur the legendary Excalibur sword, thrust out the lake a chainsaw for Leatherface, and for all the good things I now appreciate about this third film now, that trailer does connect to its clear flaws as well. The film that would have been the best from this time, but would not have been allowed to be made, would have continued the sick sense of humour of before fully, pure gorgonzola in a good way rather than just a film I just appreciate with a fondness for how far a lurid film can be appreciated.