Texas Chainsaw 3-D (John Luessenhop, 2013)

Perhaps it's true that any attempt to follow-up or replicate the visceral grue of Tobe Hooper's seminal cinematic charnel house offering The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is doomed to fail.  Each and every attempt to sequelise, prequelise or plagiarise Hooper and Kim Henkel's grim and gritty grindhouse gore has come a Crop Top cropper, whether it be Hooper's own The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 (1986) which adopted a satirical approach so as to not directly ape its original and therefore left some fans slightly baffled and disappointed, 1990's Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III which was New Line Cinema's Great White (well, ol' Leather-mush is a Texan after all) Hope to revive their fortunes after the Nightmare on Elm Street saga saw Freddy fans flagging rather than flocking to the cinemas (and which must have raised serious doubts among horror fans even before its release when it was announced that it would be helmed by Jeff Burr, synonymous with the sub-par sequel due to being the man behind such unalloyed 'joys' as Stepfather II [1989], Pumpkinhead II [1993] and the fourth and fifth installments of the unstoppable Puppet Master series). 

This loose and ill-fitting trilogy was followed, unasked like a stalker, by original co-writer Kim Henkel's Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Next Generation (aka Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre [1994]) which far from being a return to form I recall seeing - just the once - at college in the late '90s and thinking what an unpretty pass the franchise had come to.  Still probably the best film on both Renee Zellweger's and Matthew McConaughey's resumes, though, despite being utterly dire - and I still think that 'McConaughey's Robot Leg' would have made a great name for a band if anyone had listened to me at the time but wisdom doubtless prevailed.

Then, of course, we had the 2003 Michael Bay-produced remake of the original by Marcus Nispel who would later go on to wreck ruin remake Friday the 13th as well.  My main memory of this movie is that it gave the world Jessica Biel in hotpants, which was enjoyable to an extent but couldn't really excuse the "what the fuck is the point of this" of the whole endeavour.  I don't even think the original was still banned in the UK at the time; I know I'd definitely watched it by then rendering the thing Gus Van Sant's Psycho levels of pointlessness.  Then of course was the prequel to the remake: 2006's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning was directed by Jonathan Liebesman, who directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: before that gets taken as a recommendation, though, he did (or perhaps 'perpetrated' is a better word) the Razzie-winning 2014 version rather than the 1990 classic.  It did, however, boast a well-credited co-writer in David J. Schow whose list of credits include Alex Proyas's 1994 The Crow - itself ruined by a needless remake recently - as well as the aforementioned 1990 third entry in the TCM saga and is living proof that one can't always write good things.

All of which brings us to 2013's Texas Chainsaw 3-D, though when I saw it it was merely titled Texas Chainsaw which lacks the retro fun feel of likening it to Jaws 3-D and Amityville 3-D (both released, probably coincidentally, in 1983 [1983-D more like, amirite?]) and I might offer as proof that a franchise has truly jumped the shark not when it goes into outer space like Jason, the Critters and the Leprechaun, but when it expands into the third dimension.

Beginning with a title sequence recap of the events of the original movie, we swiftly move on to new footage that - in continuity-busting style - appear to take place shortly afterwards, with the forces of law and order led by Sheriff  Hooper (Thom Barry) surrounding the Sawyer house, and the under siege (oh God, that conjures images of Seagal) family led by Drayton 'The Cook' Sawyer (a brief cameo by Chop Top himself, Bill Moseley, replacing the late Jim Siedow who essayed the role in the first two instalments) playing the part of a kind of cannibalistic Branch Davidians as the modern for the '70s iteration of the classic Universal horror peasants with pitchforks and flaming torches turn up.  The homestead is swiftly set ablaze by the whooping yee-haws, led by Burt Hartman (Paul Rae), and the clan including Boss Sawyer (the original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen) and Grandpa Sawyer (John Dugan also reprising his role from the first film) fire back at the mob but are soon consumed by the flames; only one family member - a young baby - survives the inferno, being surreptitiously taken by Gavin Miller (David Born) and his wife Arlene (Sue Rock) and raised as their own like some kind of Kryptonian refugee.

Years later, the child is all grown up in the form of the lovely Heather Miller (the smoky-eyed Alexandra Daddario, whose image I used as a profile pic years ago on various internet chatrooms and forums ["'Fora', you ungrammatical dunce!" - The Voice In My Head] and got a great deal of unwanted attention from desperate web-bound guys whom obviously didn't know who she was and thought it was a selfie or something) who is unwittingly, due to some kind of genetic predestination perhaps, following in her slaughterhouse family footsteps by working on the deli counter of some supermarket.  This puts me in mind of Steve Coogan's John from The Day Today's mockumentary 'The Office' (far superior to Ricky Gervais' later title and format thieving vehicle): "I like meat.  I like working with meat.  In some ways I respect meat more than people".  Here Heather works with her friend Nikki (Tania Raymonde, no relation to the "No One Can Hold A Candle To You" crooners but had essayed the role of real-life murderer Jodi Arias in the same year as this movie) with whom she plans to travel to Texas - along with her boyfriend Ryan (Tremaine 'Trey Songz' Neverson - I may be in my mid forties now and hopelessly out of touch, but I was paying attention to the music scene back then and I swear this guy completely passed me by) and Nikki's current beau Kenny (Keram Malicki-Sanchez) - to inspect the property she has inherited from her birth grandmother Verna Sawyer (another nice cameo from Sally Hardesty herself, Marilyn Burns). 

I may as well address one of the big problems with the film right now: according to the timeline, Heather should be at least 40 years old and she clearly isn't.  Now, I'm 45 myself these days and mostly in good shape (most of the time) and there are certainly some well-preserved people in their forties who can pass for a decade younger - but Daddario was around 27 at the time of filming and that seems to be pushing credulity a little far.  This could be solved by the film being set earlier than the year of release, say the late '90s.  But the technology on display (mostly the phones) as well as the music scream year of release or at most a year earlier.  This makes the Doctor Who UNIT era timeline look simple.  Maybe Heather really is a well fit 40 year old with a washboard stomach to die for who hangs around with people more than a decade younger.  Bit sad, but okay.

Anyway, our gang head off on their fatal road trip, picking up a hitch-hiker (Shaun Sipos) along the way.  Don't these people know what franchise they're in?  Still, this one is less freaky self-cutting freakazoid like in the original and more an open-shirted male model looking douchebag that you used to get on awful TV shows like Big Brother or... that one where they were on Shark Island and Tiger Island and were all total Quentins and Felicias?  Used to be on Channel 4 on Sunday mornings?  Whatever the hell that was called.  I'd sooner pick up the original hitch-hiker to be honest.  So they make their way to Heather's new inherited manse after picking up the keys from family lawyer Farnsworth (Richard Riehle, who's been in tons of stuff but will always be Donald Sutherland's replacement as Merrick in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for me), unaware of the facts that hiker Daryl is a thieving robbing swine eager to loot the property the moment everyone else's head is turned and - as Daryl finds out when he ventures downstairs - Leatherface (Dan Yeager this time round) is still lurking behind his metal door and eager to cut up some fools and wear their faces.

Obviously, gory fun is to be had by all, and it's certainly not the worst entry in the series by a long chalk (could do with more remote-control leg, though) but I should probably address the other chainsaw in the room: the bit where Heather - her friends having been massacred - is kidnapped by a still vengeful Burt Hartman and his cop son Carl (Scott Eastwood, son of Clint; one wonders if Eastwood Snr ever has a go at his son for being in a film like this.  If so, I hope he ripostes by pointing out that pappy started out in stuff like Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula) and taken to the old abattoir to be slaughtered, before being rescued by Leatherface in a scene that casts the killer as a heroic figure, righteously butchering the bad guys in response to Heather's cry of "Do your thing, Cuz!" 

After all, you know, the saw is family.

You know what I miss? Public service graffiti. The sort that gave out public info, like a pamphlet or moral kiosk or something. There was a wall round these here parts that used to carry that sort of thing, often in blue spray paint. I assume the author used to boff the rest of the contents. Stuff like "DIRTY LISA JOHNSON GAVE ME AIDS" or "ROBIN FRENCH SHAGGED JULIE RUTTER UP THE ARSE AND NOW THEY CALL HIM CHOCK COCK" or "EBANKS NASH SPY SUST".

That last one probably requires translation: it refers to a gentleman on the estate named Ebanks who had been 'sussed', as in found out, to be a grass. I can also confirm the middle one, as Julie Rutter was the only girl at school that I'm aware of who got her A-Levels before we did our GCSEs, if you know what I mean.

Apologies for the seemingly nonsensical segue: it's not noon yet and I'm on the Staropramen. Czech yo'self before you wreck yo'self is what I say. Probably.  But there should be public service warnings about this film in the above manner.  Maybe a series of billboards - outside of Ebbing, Missouri as well as everywhere else on the planet - emblazoned with "Do your thing, Cuz!"