‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ remake is lowbrow and over the

top

Applying the Theory of Relativity to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”

would prove this dog of a flick to be relatively stoopid. Emanating

from the far left side of filmdom’s bell curve, this egregious waste

of celluloid is a pathetic remake of one of cinema’s all-time classic

movies, 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

TTCSM is about teenagers in peril. It’s 1973. A gaggle of

oversexed, under-IQ’d stoners is tooling down some dusty West Texas

highway in a van dirtier than a pervert’s mind. They’ve got a few

pounds of weed hidden in pinatas and they’ve got to get to a Lynyrd

Skynrd concert to smoke some grass, listen to some tunes and make a

few bucks playing dope dealers for the weekend.

These morons don’t know synchronicity from serendipity, but while

arguing about the former and clueless about the latter, they almost

squash a hitchhiker mumbling her way along the highway. She’s escaped

from somewhere, and she wants to go anywhere. In their ignorance, the

teenagers start to take her back to where she came from.

The hitchhiker thinks little of this, pulls out a revolver and

faster than you can say “brainless,” she’s got a hole in her head

nearly as big as any in the script of this movie.

Well great. Now our stoners have a dilemma. Middle of nowhere. Pot

in the van. Some dead yahoo in the back seat with her head lolling

back and forth like a bobble-head doll. Blood lousing up the

upholstery. The smart ones wanna dump the stiff. The morally

conscious, don’t-realize-they’re-gonna-

be-dead-real-soon ones wanna find a sheriff.

Off they go to find the sheriff, down that long and winding road

to some joint called Crawford Mill, a little garden spot populated by

scabby rejects wearing Billy Bob teeth. Out there among the weeds,

rusting automobiles and red herrings stands the obligatory scary

house.

Being teenagers -- being especially stoopid ones -- and this being

a horror film, of course several of them go into this charnel house,

not realizing it is but an abattoir for the unwary.

Our friendly neighborhood sheriff shows up in some eight-cylinder

beater running on six, but our Tweedle Dums don’t realize he’s one of

the cannibals. The house is inhabited, at least initially by some

ancient lecher, legless in a cane-backed wheelchair, with more lines

on his face than a ream of graph paper and a few more teeth than IQ

points.

Hidden in the back, behind the door, down the stairs and in the

dark is our pal Leatherface. Mute, monstrous, murderous and a

gourmand of the grotesque, he skulks around in the background looking

for victims to disembowel, eviscerate, amputate and hang on the

always convenient meat hook.

Schlepping through the house like an overweight Hunchback of Notre

Dame, upon taking off his mask (which was never done in the original)

for some unknown reason, you grab a vicarious peek, and go, damn, is

that Michael Jackson a few dozen surgeries and a couple of hundred

pounds later?

Well this half-bred and inbred clan of redneck cannibals chases

our airheads from one dilapidated trailer to another in a

never-ending night lighted by a moon far brighter than any of them.

It turns out our heroine, unfortunately wearing a bra unlike her

counterpart in the original, is a Phi Beta Kappa ju-vee graduate. She

can pick locks and hot wire cars. Chased into the slaughterhouse by

Leatherface, she can fight like Rocky in the packing plant or end up

as summer sausage.

This flick was a waste of my time, even though my time is

worthless. It was a waste of the Pilot’s exorbitant paycheck they

send me, even though that’s always zero. I’d rather listen to Arianna

Huffington speak or gnaw off my own hand than suffer through this

version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” I’ve seen meatloaf that

looked scarier.

* UNCLE DON reviews B-movies for the Daily Pilot. He can be

reached by e-mail at [email protected].