‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ remake is lowbrow and over the
top
Applying the Theory of Relativity to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”
would prove this dog of a flick to be relatively stoopid. Emanating
from the far left side of filmdom’s bell curve, this egregious waste
of celluloid is a pathetic remake of one of cinema’s all-time classic
movies, 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
TTCSM is about teenagers in peril. It’s 1973. A gaggle of
oversexed, under-IQ’d stoners is tooling down some dusty West Texas
highway in a van dirtier than a pervert’s mind. They’ve got a few
pounds of weed hidden in pinatas and they’ve got to get to a Lynyrd
Skynrd concert to smoke some grass, listen to some tunes and make a
few bucks playing dope dealers for the weekend.
These morons don’t know synchronicity from serendipity, but while
arguing about the former and clueless about the latter, they almost
squash a hitchhiker mumbling her way along the highway. She’s escaped
from somewhere, and she wants to go anywhere. In their ignorance, the
teenagers start to take her back to where she came from.
The hitchhiker thinks little of this, pulls out a revolver and
faster than you can say “brainless,” she’s got a hole in her head
nearly as big as any in the script of this movie.
Well great. Now our stoners have a dilemma. Middle of nowhere. Pot
in the van. Some dead yahoo in the back seat with her head lolling
back and forth like a bobble-head doll. Blood lousing up the
upholstery. The smart ones wanna dump the stiff. The morally
conscious, don’t-realize-they’re-gonna-
be-dead-real-soon ones wanna find a sheriff.
Off they go to find the sheriff, down that long and winding road
to some joint called Crawford Mill, a little garden spot populated by
scabby rejects wearing Billy Bob teeth. Out there among the weeds,
rusting automobiles and red herrings stands the obligatory scary
house.
Being teenagers -- being especially stoopid ones -- and this being
a horror film, of course several of them go into this charnel house,
not realizing it is but an abattoir for the unwary.
Our friendly neighborhood sheriff shows up in some eight-cylinder
beater running on six, but our Tweedle Dums don’t realize he’s one of
the cannibals. The house is inhabited, at least initially by some
ancient lecher, legless in a cane-backed wheelchair, with more lines
on his face than a ream of graph paper and a few more teeth than IQ
points.
Hidden in the back, behind the door, down the stairs and in the
dark is our pal Leatherface. Mute, monstrous, murderous and a
gourmand of the grotesque, he skulks around in the background looking
for victims to disembowel, eviscerate, amputate and hang on the
always convenient meat hook.
Schlepping through the house like an overweight Hunchback of Notre
Dame, upon taking off his mask (which was never done in the original)
for some unknown reason, you grab a vicarious peek, and go, damn, is
that Michael Jackson a few dozen surgeries and a couple of hundred
pounds later?
Well this half-bred and inbred clan of redneck cannibals chases
our airheads from one dilapidated trailer to another in a
never-ending night lighted by a moon far brighter than any of them.
It turns out our heroine, unfortunately wearing a bra unlike her
counterpart in the original, is a Phi Beta Kappa ju-vee graduate. She
can pick locks and hot wire cars. Chased into the slaughterhouse by
Leatherface, she can fight like Rocky in the packing plant or end up
as summer sausage.
This flick was a waste of my time, even though my time is
worthless. It was a waste of the Pilot’s exorbitant paycheck they
send me, even though that’s always zero. I’d rather listen to Arianna
Huffington speak or gnaw off my own hand than suffer through this
version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” I’ve seen meatloaf that
looked scarier.
* UNCLE DON reviews B-movies for the Daily Pilot. He can be
reached by e-mail at reallybadwriting@aol.com.
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