Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Sometimes, sequels can be good things. They can continue the story of the original, or tell a new story with familiar characters. But sometimes, a sequel comes along that cannot justify its own existence. One sequel like that is Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, the oddest chapter of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre saga. The movie is just bizarre (and not in a good way), and it's actually the only Massacre movie that has no cannibalism or deaths via chainsaw. The movie is loathed by fans of the series, and rightfully so.

The story follows four teenagers leaving their senior prom: the loud-mouth misogynist Barry (Tyler Cone), his bitchy girlfriend Heather (Lisa Marie Newmyer), stoner Sean (John Harrison), and Sean's best friend Jenny (Renée Zellweger). They head into the woods and almost immediately end up in a serious car accident, leaving them stranded out into the middle of nowhere.

It's not long before the teens stumble upon a family of psychotic rednecks, comprised of Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), Darla (Tonie Perensky), W.E. (Joe Stevens), and Leatherface (Robert Jacks). The movie ends up taking an almost incomprehensible turn when we learn that the family of cannibals aren't really cannibals at all, but just a bunch of whack-jobs that are working for a guy named Rothman (James Gale), who apparently represents the Illuminati. That whole Illuminati thing is just speculation, however. They never say exactly what Rothman's purpose is, which I guess can be said for this movie as a whole.

One of the most noticeable things about the film is its stupidity. All the characters make idiotic moves, like getting in the truck of a stranger that doesn't look like he's all that happy, calmly asking a psychopath to give them a break after he snapped somebody's neck and tried to run over them with a tow truck, splitting up in the middle of nowhere instead of sticking together, and locking themselves in the home of the villains before asking their hosts where the phone is so they can call the police. My biggest complaint is the interpretation of Leatherface. Leatherface is now a whining transvestite whose collection of masks are the faces of his prettiest victims. Sure, Leatherface wears what's called the "pretty woman" mask during the dinner scene in the original, but he's totally queening it up here. I don't have anything against cross-dressers, but Leatherface is supposed to be an intimidating monster, and it's kinda hard to be scared of a serial killer dressed like RuPaul.

Writer/director Kim Henkel co-wrote the original Massacre, and after revisiting many of the original's more memorable moments, he gives the movie its own bizarre flair. The family actually orders pizza for dinner, which (as crazy as it may sound) gives us a great scene in which Darla picks up the food at the pizza place's drive-thru window with Jenny screaming from the trunk of the car while a police car. However, the movie has absolutely zero respect for the series, and blatantly rips off scenes from the original. Leatherface drops a girl on a meat hook here, as he did in the original. But instead of doing it with the intention of making her a meal, it doesn't matter. The family members aren't cannibals, but their motivation is to scare and kill people because Rothman says so.

The only noteworthy things about the movie are Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. They both did the movie before becoming famous, and their performances are actually pretty good, considering what they had to work with. Zellweger does what she can, but any fault should be blamed on the asinine script. And McConaughey's hammy, over-the-top portrayal of Vilmer is the biggest reason that anyone should ever watch the movie. Without him, the movie would have been dead in the water, because he's the life of the whole thing. His character could probably be described as Viggo Mortensen's character from the third Massacre hopped up on angel dust. More movies should have redneck psychos controlling their knee braces with remote controls.

The movie may have been made with good intentions, but good intentions don't make a good movie. Unless you want to see an Oscar winner before she gets famous and Matthew McConaughey acting like a madman, you'd be well-advised to avoid this movie like the plague. You'll only get bad acting, crappy writing, and the reduction of one of cinema's most iconic murderers into an embarrassment.

Final Rating: *

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

I've said a million times that sequels are unavoidable, especially in the horror genre. If a horror movie is successful, then it's almost guaranteed to get more than one sequel. However, sequels to the legendary Texas Chainsaw Massacre were few and far between. Despite being released in 1974, it had only spawned one sequel in 1986 before New Line Cinema released Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III in 1990.

Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler) are driving across the country to deliver a car to Michelle's father. After ending up at a Texas gas station, they're given directions they think will lead them back to the highway, but it leads them deeper into the middle of nowhere. It's in the woods that they meet a survivalist named Benny (Ken Foree) and, like every other movie in the series, they encounter a family of cannibals.

This time, the family is comprised of family alpha male Tex (Viggo Mortensen), technophile Tinker (Joe Unger), the oft-disrespected Alfredo (Tom Everett), matriarch Mama (Miriam Byrd-Nethery), and a little girl (Jennifer Banko) who's always clutching a doll that looks like it was made from the skeleton of a dead fetus. And let's not forget Leatherface (R.A. Mihailoff), who somehow managed to survive being gutted and blown up at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Despite having the House Party and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies raking in all kinds of cash at the time, New Line Cinema was still "the house that Freddy Krueger built." After the disappointing box-office numbers for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, New Line decided that Freddy was running out of steam and they saw a new horror cash cow in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. The movie was intended to be the start of a full-fledged horror franchise on the level of the Nightmare and Friday the 13th movies, but a poor showing at the box office killed that idea (although New Line did distribute the remake of the original Massacre).

Horror movie connoisseur Joe Bob Briggs once commented that this was the the Massacre with the least gore, and he's not too far off. The MPAA-imposed cuts really hurt the movie. According to director Jeff Burr, the movie was submitted to the MPAA eleven times (a record at the time) before it got an R rating. It ended up making some sequences almost incomprehensible, and the movie actually missed its original release date due to the constant editing.

It also had one of the stupidest endings I've ever seen. I don't want to spoil what it is, but it seriously left me wondering what happened and why. Sometime that can work in a movie's favor, but not here. And what happened to the little girl? Her name is never said once, not even in the credits, and we never learn what happens to her in the end. She just disappears. And since she doesn't return in the fourth Massacre, we're just left guessing her fate.

I can't complain about everything, though. I really liked the movie's look. It goes from the glaring reds, oranges, and yellows of the Texas desert to deep blues and blacks of nightfall, and the interior of the Sawyer house feels like a normal family lives there (well, an insane version of a normal family). The score, composed by Jim Manzie and Pat Regan, is also great. It gives us a haunted house feel that really compliments the movie. Most of the acting is actually pretty good. Kate Hodge isn't bad as our heroine. She starts out as a non-violent pacifist (she actually says something to the effect of "violence is never the answer" during the movie), but by the end, she goes nuts and has to resort to some serious violence to save herself.

Ken Foree was also good, but to be totally honest, anybody could have played his character. Foree gave it some legitimacy, however, thanks to his part in the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. And I can't forget Viggo Mortensen, who you may recognize from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The feminine apron and painted fingernails gave Tex a weird ambiguity, but he seems like the kind of guy you could bump into on the street and not think he's a cannibal nutjob.

However, I wasn't too big on Jennifer Banko. I just hated the character (sort of a little girl version of Chop-Top from Massacre 2) and I'm glad she didn't show up in the fourth one, but I did get a giggle from her doll being named Sally (which could have been a reference to the character of Sally Hardesty from the original Massacre).

Overall, I'll give the movie two and a half stars. It's a fun way to kill some time, and you might enjoy it if you're into horror movies. Of the three sequels of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this one is probably the best, but you're not missing anything if you skip it.

Final Rating: **½

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2 (1986)

All the way back in 1974, Tobe Hopper directed one of the most important and influential movies of the horror genre: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Twelve years passed while Hooper made movies like Poltergeist, Salem's Lot, and a remake of the 1953 sci-fi flick Invaders From Mars before he finally returned to what brought him to the table in 1986 with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2.

Our story begins with Stretch (Caroline Williams), a radio DJ working the night shift when two annoying rich kids heading to Dallas for the big Texas/Oklahoma football game decide to prank call the station's request line from their car phone. Stretch can't hang up on them (why, I don't know), so she's forced to listen as a truck the punks ran off the road earlier meets up with them on a bridge. Someone climbs out of the truck bed and starts swinging a chainsaw at their car, and in the chaos, the driver gets the top of his head sawed off and the car crashes into an overpass.

At the crash scene the next day is Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper). As a former Texas Ranger and the uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty from the first Massacre, he's been on a fourteen-year quest to exact revenge on the chainsaw killers. After Lefty puts an article in a Dallas newspaper asking for witnesses to make a statement, an enthusiastic Stretch shows up at his hotel room and offers to give him a cassette tape of the phone call made by the rich kids. He asks her to leave, stating that he wants to do things on his own.

But Lefty soon realizes he needs help, so he confronts Stretch at the radio station and persuades her to play the tape on the air with the hope that it will bring the killers out of hiding. It succeeds, as members of the cannibalistic Sawyer family show up at the station and trash the place, killing station manager L.G. (Lou Perry) in the process. Lefty and Stretch follow them back to their hideout, climaxing in a chase throughout a series of subterranean caverns beneath an abandoned amusement park.

The movie is about as far as from the original as it could. While the first Massacre was a raw "take no prisoners" nightmare, the sequel is a little more lighthearted. The movie isn't as much about Stretch or Lefty as it is about the family, who've become almost parodies of themselves here. Returning from the first film are Leatherface (Bill Johnson), the crusty heap of dust the family calls Grandpa (Ken Evert), and Drayton (Jim Siedow), who's now a caterer using the meat of the family's victims to make his award-winning chili. Replacing Edwin Neal's hitchhiker is Bill Moseley as "Chop-Top,", a wise-cracking hippie with a metal plate protruding out of his scalp thanks to a tour of duty in Vietnam. While this isn't totally a bad thing, it could have been better. The story of Lefty getting revenge on the Sawyers would have made for an intriguing movie. While this one is watchable, it was disappointing too.

Dennis Hopper is great as Lefty. He give the character its own unique charm and elevates the movie, hamming it up all the way through. He's the biggest reason to watch the movie, so Hopper's fans would do good to check this one out. Meanwhile, Caroline Williams (who has a quick cameo in Texas Chainsaw Massacre III as a TV reporter with no dialogue) is good as Stretch, though she isn't really required to do much outside of screaming her head off. I also enjoyed Jim Siedow's portrayal of Drayton. While he was a bit different from he was in the prior Massacre, I thought he worked great as a total sleazeball. I did like Bill Moseley as Chop-Top as well, though the character's biggest drawback is that he almost hits Jar Jar Binks levels of annoyance at times.

And finally, Bill Johnson isn't too bad as Leatherface. Leatherface is still a menacing figure, but he seems like a wuss because he actually develops a crush on Stretch. What self-respecting horror villain falls in love? I could see it if Stretch was a chainsaw killer too, but come on now. She's the victim, not the villain. On the aspect of the film's music, the score (composed by Jerry Lambert and Tobe Hooper) isn't too bad at all. Its cartoony feel really lends itself to the similarly cartoony feel of the movie, and I can't complain about it. The makeup effects, created by a team led by makeup legend Tom Savini, look really cheesy and fake at times, but look good at other moments (L.G.'s face being peeled off, for instance).

The major complaint that I do have with the movie is the previously mentioned cartoony feel. It starts off like it could be as gritty and jarring as the original, but it does turn into a big cartoon with blood and violence. One scene features Lefty showing up at the Sawyer hideout with an arsenal of chainsaws, and instead of the family attacking him, Drayton just offers him a giant wad of cash from his catering business. It does lead to a cool Leatherface/Lefty chainsaw vs. chainsaw showdown, but what purpose does it serve? It just really numbs the family's animalistic nature from the first movie. The final twelve minutes of the film is absolutely perhaps the most odd. From Drayton trying to pay off Lefty, to the chainsaw duel, to Chop-Top chasing Stretch through the caverns (which had a major letdown of an ending), it's all a mish-mash of the bizarre and the insane.

Overall, I'd give Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 a fitting two stars. It's probably just for fans of Leatherface and crazy B-grade horror movies, but the first film and the remake remain the best of the five Massacres.

Final Rating: **

Cube 2: Hypercube (2002)

Nowadays, everything gets a sequel. If a movie doesn't have a sequel, something's wrong with it. Case in example: Cube. A low-budget movie from Canada that received much critical acclaim, it was only time before a sequel was made. And as of this writing, a third one is in production. See? Sequels and trilogies really are taking over Hollywood, even the "direct-to-video independent movie" market. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. I have a review to do.

The movie's plot is similar to the first Cube, yet with a few twists. Our story revolves around seven strangers: Kate Filmore (Kary Manchett), detective Simon Grady (Geraint Wyn Davies), blind college student Sasha (Grace Lynn Kung), Jerry Whitehall (Neil Crone), video game designer/computer hacker Max Reisler (Matthew Ferguson), the senile Mrs. Pasley (Barbara Gordon), and Julia (Lindsey Connell). The seven find themselves trapped in a futuristic "hypercube," where the rules of time and space have absolutely zero relevance. We soon see various alternate realities and timelines within the hypercube begin to overlap, and those realities and timelines quickly begin to collapse atop one another as the group tries to find their way out.

I loved the original film, and I was quick to watch the sequel when I saw it air on the Sci-Fi Channel. Predictably, Cube 2 borrowed some from the original. But that's unavoidable, because what else can you do in a setting like this? While I do appreciate the sequel for trying to further the story behind the existence of the cubes and trying not to give the viewer the same thing, the movie is still a mixed bag. On the downside, the need to explain the origin behind the cubes dented the original's ambiguity. Another faux pas was the lack of unpredictable and random booby traps that gave the original its excitement. The sequel only had one really fake-looking CGI shredder. Cube 2 also spent way too much time talking and not enough time being exciting. I don't always have a problem with that, but the dialogue was just so horrible. It made the actors look bad and the characters look worse. I also disliked the bright lighting and each room's white walls. In the original, the varying colors of the walls added to the mood of each scene. But here, it's harder to get an emotional grip for things, and it's tougher to connect with how the characters feel.

On a positive note, the concept behind the movie is neat. It gave the filmmakers carte blanche to mess with our heads and make the movie as weird and psychedelic as possible, and they tried. Norman Orenstein's techno-esque score can be chalked up in the "thumbs-up" column as well. I also thought that hiring Andrzej Sekula as both director and director of photography was a good idea. His background in cinematography (you might have seen his name attached to such movies as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and American Psycho) really helped the movie. The idea of timelines and alternate realities overlapping was a great way for creepy sound effects to work their way into the movie too. Had the rooms been a bit darker (see also: my beef with the wall color), it would have almost been like a haunted house.

In the acting category, I really liked Geraint Wyn Davies as Simon. Even though Simon is built as the villain over the course of the movie, he ended up being the only likable character in the movie. I thought Simon's growing collection of watches and nametags near the end of the movie was a neat twist, but that's just me. The rest of the cast was okay with the horrible script, but I absolutely hated the character of Mrs. Paley. I just wanted to reach through my TV screen and smack her around. Mrs. Paley is probably the single worst character I've ever seen in any movie ever, quite possibly worse than Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project. She's that awful.

There's just so much you can do with the concept of people trapped in a maze of cubes, and Cube 2 at least made an attempt. Unfortunately, it tried too hard with too little, and it ultimately came off as being a Sci-Fi Channel Original with a bigger budget (which is odd, considering I first saw it on the Sci-Fi Channel). A lot of the mystery and tension from the original were gone, and the dialogue is crap, but the trippy audio experience and the neat idea behind a "hypercube," as well as having a lunatic you can cheer for, boosts my rating a little. Overall, I'll give Cube 2: Hypercube two stars. Not awful, but nothing that you should beat yourself up over if you miss it.

Final Rating: **

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Way back in 1991, a video store clerk from California wrote and directed his first movie. The movie was the talk of the Sundance Film Festival, it became a cult classic after its 1992 theatrical release, and it made its director one of the hottest underground filmmakers in Hollywood. That director is Quentin Tarantino, and that movie is Reservoir Dogs.

The movie opens on a nondescript diner, with our main characters finishing breakfast and discussing pop music. One analyzes Madonna's "Like A Virgin," claiming that it was all about a sexual veteran who hooks up with a well-endowed man. Another, totally oblivious to the conversation at hand, flips through an old address book trying to put a face to one of the names inside. This quick opening scene introduces us to our cast, then leads into the story itself. Through a series of flashbacks, we get to know Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), and Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino).

The six total strangers have been hired by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his son "Nice Guy Eddie" (Chris Penn) to steal a shipment of diamonds from a local jewelry store. Each have been given their odd codenames with the intention of nobody knowing anyone else's real identity. That way, if any of the thieves are arrested, they'll be unable to implicate their accomplices.

The flashbacks help to fill in the gaps in the main story. From the dialogue, we learn that the diamond heist went bad. An employee pulled the alarm, Blonde started shooting random people, and the cops were on the scene before anyone had time to blink. We learn that Brown is dead from a gunshot to the head, nobody knows what happened to Blue, Pink stashed the diamonds in a safe hiding place, and Orange took a nasty shot to the stomach and has passed out on the floor of an abandoned warehouse that serves as the group's rendezvous point. Pink theorizes that the police had the jewelry store staked out, and that a member of the group is actually an undercover cop. As Pink, White, and Blonde look back at the events that transpired, it becomes more and more evident that Pink's theory just might be right. But which of the six was the mole?

A quasi-remake of one of Tarantino's favorite movies (City on Fire, a 1987 movie from Hong Kong starring Chow Yun-Fat), Reservoir Dogs is the kind of movie that might take multiple viewings to completely get what's going on. That's how it is with most Tarantino movies, so if you're unfamiliar with his work and decide to go rent his movies after reading this review, be warned. Tarantino's trademark out-of-sequence scenes actually help to further the plot here, because if we'd seen them in order, the entire context of the movie would have been changed. The movie would have gone from a "whodunit" to a "when will they find out" movie.

Tarantino's script is well-crafted, yet the characters don't do a whole lot besides stand around and talk. The script's dialogue and character development are frequently entertaining, though those offended by excessive profanity will be turned off. And although it isn't apparent on first viewing, or even on second viewing, Tarantino uses the opening scene in the diner to firmly establish our characters. Mr. White butts heads with Joe, at which point Mr. Blonde offers to shoot White for him. Mr. Pink protests when the others say he should leave a tip for the waitress, after he stubbornly refuses to leave one. Mr. Orange squeals on Mr. Pink when Joe notices the tip is short. Nice Guy Eddie establishes himself as a daddy's boy. All of these characteristics are reprised over the course of the movie. But the idea here is that except for Joe and Mr. Blonde, all of the characters are bluffing. They act tough, but aren't exactly great at handling themselves in desperate situations. The majority of the movie features the group panicking and jumping to conclusions.

The script is supported by the stellar cast. Having a small cast means that those involved have to work harder, and the cast does that and more. Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel, and Steve Buscemi carry the entire movie on their shoulders. Buscemi is hilarious as the paranoid Mr. Pink, Madsen is both humorous and disturbing as the calm-yet-psycho Mr. Blonde, and Keitel is strong as Mr. White. Having Keitel in a crime drama should be a license to print money, because he's awesome here. Tim Roth is fine as the apprehensive Mr. Orange, and is really good in the scenes that don't require him to be unconscious and covered in blood. Also noteworthy are Lawrence Tierney and Chris Penn, though they don't exactly drive the movie or anything.

Along with the profanity-laden dialogue, people may also may be turned off by the violence. While the majority of the violence is implied, the idea of such carnage is enough to make squeamish members of the audience squirm. Meanwhile, I loved the soundtrack as well. Punctuated by a mock '70s rock station featuring deadpan comedian Stephen Wright as the DJ, the movie has some of the most memorable use of music I've ever seen. Michael Madsen's big scene, in which he tortures a police officer while "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel plays on the radio, is proof enough of that.

Reservoir Dogs is, for all intents and purposes, a low-budget B-movie that viewers will either like or hate. While his work improved with his subsequent movies, It is most definitely fun, though, and it was a great debut for Quentin Tarantino. If you claim to be a Tarantino fan and have yet to see Reservoir Dogs, you owe it to yourself to at least run out and rent a copy of it right now. I'm sure you won't be let down.

Final Rating: ***½