The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - Unrated (New Line Platinum Series)
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Movie Reviews of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - Unrated (New Line Platinum Series)
Movie Review: Gore alone does not equate to scary
Summary: 2 Stars
This movie is not scary and for a horror movie that is an unforgivable sin. The back story is fine, what little there is of it. I enjoyed finding out more about the serial cannibal family the Hewitts. But I'm afraid over-the-top gore is used to replace dramatic tension and suspense and it doesn't work. I'm not a prude in the gore department, just that it's less scary than disgusting to me. And because the movie is almost wholly dependent on the gore for scares, I found myself getting bored with this prequel. There is a distinct lack of tension or build up to the violence. The characters are tortured and dispatched one by one in gruesome ways and that's about it. It's almost matter of fact. To make matters worse I had little emotional connection to any of the characters. Which is absolutely necessary if I'm going to care when they're tortured or killed. I just didn't. I would recommend renting this before you buy. I can't think of any reason I'd want to see this movie again.Movie Review: this is a great horror movie
Summary: 5 Stars
Look, I realize people don't usually like remakes and always find ways to search for things that were remade in a bad way, and so on and so forth. I can't find any problem with this movie, and thought it was very entertaining because it was totally bloody and violent without letting up and giving you time to catch your breath. Sure, it was far fetched as well, but I can't fault that since what's most important is how much entertainment I got out of it.
Oh yeah, and there's some really surprising twists that I never seen coming, such as the final 10 minutes. Wow, what an ending! As far as blood and violence are concerned, this movie had more of that than any other movie that comes to my mind right now. It was truly violent from beginning to end while making sense the entire time. Job well done.
Movie Review: Meat is meat.......Bone is bone
Summary: 5 Stars
Folks this movie made me realize that this is the future of America. But more of that later.
The origin of Leatherface is highly far-fetched. First of all look at his mother. Now seriously, who would have sex with that? OK getting beyond the thought of climbing that mountain, we have to assume that a new born baby can birth itself and also break through his mother's underwear. ALthough in all fairness, perhaps there is no underwear to cover that woman's bulky behind.
Now then America is in deep trouble and little towns everywhere are drying up and disappearing. Why you ask? Wal-Mart is one of the reasons, sending a thousand jobs to China is another. So put yourself in these shoes gentle reader. You owned a farm in a town that up and died. Six generations of your family were buried on that farm. WOuld you leave to Michigan like a cowardly sherrif? NO! You would stand your ground and do the right thing. YOU would stubbornly hold onto your land, your house, and your family.
But how does one survive when there are no jobs, no food, and no money? Well folks the hard truth is cannibalism. The Donner party did it, Brazilian soccer players have done it, so who's to say it is wrong when you need to survive? Afterall, meat is meat and bone is bone.
Now this film serves as a prequal to the highly succesful 1974 original. This movie actually shows the family as the victims, not the monsters. They are a proud and religious family trying to survive! So what is Tommy is retarded and needs to wear someone else's face? If you're dead you don't need it anymore! It's just organ doning without all the paperwork.
The Hewitt Family are survivors and I appreciate them for what they are. Simple, God Fearing, red blooded Americans trying to achieve the Great American Dream.
Movie Review: The saw is family
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm one of those people who weren't terribly impressed with Tobe Hooper's original Massacre film. However, I thought the recent remake was quite decent and this film is pretty much more of the same.
Production values are high, the effects work excellent, the gore is over the top, and it manages to be quite scary and unpleasant at times. It does try to offer some background for the deranged family of cannibals and does so in a fairly subtle way throughout the film. This adds surprisingly little to the film, because how do you explain a nightmare like this?
Apart from the attempts to provide backstory, it is essentially the same story we have seen again and again before. A group of youths end up in the clutches of Leatherface and his family. Brutal death, a lot of running around in the dark, screaming, hiding, more death, etc. It feels tired and uninspired. The violence is gruesome, but also very predictable and there's never any real sense of danger or menace. You've seen it before and here's some more. As always, I'm amazed that these backwater mutants can carry on killing people by the dozens, without anyone really noticing.
Spoiler Alert!
If you've seen the remake, you know that all the youths in this film must die, because Leatherface is still at it in the remake. The film does avoid most logical pitfalls right up until the end, when the last survivor gets into a car without noticing that the huge Leatherface is hiding in the backseat! Not only is he big, he is covered in blood (both fresh and old), shreds of flesh (human and animal), sweat, filth, and must stink to the back of beyond. Then there's his chainsaw, which he manages to power up in the blink of an eye and kill the last unlucky girl. It was a cheap and silly way to end the film and I couldn't help but laugh at the stupidity of it.
Movie Review: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Sheriff Hoyt Edition
Summary: 4 Stars
Following up on the surprsingly somewhat successful Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake starring Jessica Biel, The Beginning is a prequal to that movie, made to show us how it all came to be. While there are elements of how Leatherface and the rest of the family got so crazy, this is more of a continuation of the prior film, again taking a group of teenagers and placing them again in a similar situation of capture and survival. While the prior TCM film was actually scary at times, this time, the prequal chooses to focus more on gore than anything else.
Perhaps the biggest feature of the entire film is not Leatherface, but the man who becomes Sheriff Hoyt. He is the real menace behind all of the mahem, and the leader of the clan. He is cruel and sadistic, yet delivers line after line of inetersting sick humor that admitadly, is funny at times. Hoyt is the man who encourages Leatherface to become what he is, and then it is Leatherface who begins to create his own ideas for torture and death.
Unfortuately, the prequal does not act too well as a great horror movie. While there is a lot of gore, the classic scare factor is missing, at least until the end, where we do get your typical classic chase scene through the woods at night, with Leatherface and his chainsaw closely following.
There isn't too much exploration into the background of how Leatherface comes to be, but we do learn more about the family in this prequal. The creators did take time to show us even the smaller details, like how Hoyt loses his teeth and how the man in the wheelchair loses his legs. In the end this is a satisfying thriller, just not what one might have expected.
Acting - 4
Characters - 4
Gore - 4.5
Horror - 3.5
Story - 3.5
Overall - 4