 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Case in point, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a remake of the 1974 Tobe Hooper classic, starring that half-naked girl from "Seventh Heaven" and the yelling army guy from Full Metal Jacket. The original has a twisty, unnerving magic, with its nonstop screaming and shockingly bizarre characters. It's hard to take even once, and sears itself in your brain with subsequent viewings. Without question, it is an unforgettable horror classic. So it's no surprise that the remake is not just an epic disappointment, but deeply misguided and pointless, reeking of mindless profiteering. Though it's actually quite satisfying as a modern-day horror film, it seems simply pathetic in comparison to the 70s-era horror flicks it so desperately emulates. Like most modern horror films are, it skimps on showing any realcarnage and spend eons developing characters we'd rather just see torn to pieces. In this "X-Tremely" Hollywoodized version, a group of filthy hippies in the early 70s are on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert when they stop to help what appears to be a hitchhiker in distress. Soon, they're all running from Leatherface and hanging from meathooks; only in this version, there's also a psychotic cop who's somehow in on the mayhem. (Which only means that we're bound to have an inferior update of Maniac Cop soon enough.) Though clearly placed in the film to provide a logical explanation of why this group of acid-dropping sex perverts would bother sticking around such a disgusting backwater, the cop forces the film to a grinding halt every time he shows up onscreen. Every time the dirty longhairs get stuck waiting for or hiding from the cop, we're forced to sit through endless blathering and blubbering when all we want is for them to fuck, die, or fuck-then-die. The beauty of the original is that, like so many cool 70s horror films, it dispenses with logic and gets right to the killing and screaming. In the remake, we instead get "clever plot twists" and "social commentary." We also get several moments of truly unintentional hilarity, like the old grandpa in the wheelchair telling the reprobates to "Bring it!" (Mind you, since this is set in 1973, the appropriate response to such a statement would have been, "Bring what?") At one point, Leatherface takes off his mask to reveal his hideously deformed face, followed in a later scene by his mother lamenting how teenagers used to tease her poor boy for having a skin disease. Now, the real Leatherface was a psycho who lost his job slaughtering cattle and so turned to slaughtering humans. He wasn't the nerd with bad acne who got picked last at baseball. I was that nerd, and I've never killed a single hippie … who didn't totally deserve it. What works in this version are all the ways in which it imitates the original – namely, the very few moments of graphic violence. Unfortunately, despite a de-legging and a de-arming, the filmmakers mostly cut away from the removal of body parts. Most disappointing was the opportunity Leatherface had to chop a guy in half at the waist – he sawed off something, but from the camera angle, it was impossible to tell exactly what. I had to re-watch that Iraqi beheading video (fortunately, stored on my portable MPEG player) just to get some satisfaction. The one clear improvement is in the casting of Jessica Biel as the female lead, and more specifically, in giving her a very modern white tank top and tight lowrider jeans, and lasciviously finding every chance to get her drenched to the skin. In the 70s, most horror ingénues were bone skinny or just plain ugly … whereas the one saving grace of the modern horror film is the use of teen lingerie models as fodder for the faceless killer or flesh-eating virus. Still, today's horror films are mostly so squeamish that they're afraid to show the carnage or even have their stars get naked (or perhaps they're hiring actresses who think they're important enough to not have to undress their breasts … and there is no actress that important). You get the feeling these nitwits think they're making "films" when they are in fact making "movies." In films, there's emotions and stories. In movies, there's violence and sex. Get it straight, Hollywoodland.
Review by Crimedog |