Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

(1990) *1/2

When you press "play movie" on this dvd menu, they make you watch a short clip to whet your appetite. A woman gets in a car and says "there's roadkill all over Texas," and the black guy from Dawn of the Dead says "I heard that." And you can just tell it's the very last line of the movie. It' even obvious that she's saying that ironically, because someone else, probably a bad guy, already said it. Sigh.

Hand me a marker flag, I've found the low point in the Texas Chainsaw family of fine cinema experience. We start with a gripey couple griping about some damn thing. You know how people who have nothing to say often resort to complaining in order to speak? It's the same with people who can't write. Just have the couple bicker, that'll fill up some time. I was instantly ready to see either of these two die brutal, motorized deaths.

Man, trying to summarize this is like psyching myself up to do laundry. The couple are tricked by Viggo Mortenson into going into chainsaw country. The obligatory car accident is courtesy of Dawn of the Dead guy, who's ditched the SWAT uniform but not the M-16. There's some running around in the dark, and a spaced-out previous girl victim wanders in to a few shots. Leatherface has been somewhat Jason-ized, sporting utility coveralls and a Mad Max leg brace that creaks in the night. The first time he lowers a chainsaw towards a screaming victim, the shot cuts away. Later, that same victim is hung upside down in the kitchen -- not a scratch on him. When they finally kill him with a home-made device that delivers a sledgehammer blow to the head, the shot cuts away again. Oh, excuse me, I'm in the wrong theater. I thought this was the Texas Chainsaw movie. 'Scuse me...'Scuse me...'Scuse me.

I can handle some continuity fluffery with the solo slashers like Mssrs. Myers, Voorhees, and Krueger. Jason's just an invincible corpse in a mask, does it really matter where he ended up last movie? But in this flick they rebooted the entire family from scratch. There's Leatherface, or "junior," Viggo Mortenson playing the best-looking hillbilly ever, two other guys, an old lady in a wheelchair, and a little blonde girl with bangs and pigtails that you just want to... no, need to punch. It's supposed to be edgy or shocking when the little girl does something evil, but it's just grade A, top choice suck.

At the end, well, see above.