Review - Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

Okay, so I saw Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III back in 2002 or 2003 because I had mistaken it for Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. I had seen a horror movie tribute on television and they showed clips of Leatherface holding his chainsaw and I knew it wasn’t the original so I found the 3rd movie and I watched it all the way though, thinking that was the movie they used. It wasn’t. However, I really enjoyed the movie back when I was 12. Now, I had a chance to see it again and I can honestly say… “What the fuck was I thinking?”

The film is about a young couple that ventures across the desert when they stop at a gas station only to be greeted with a mysterious hitchhiker and an insane gun-toting gas station attendee. Well, after a gunfight the couple leaves (without the hitchhiker) and takes a side road the hitchhiker recommended. Then, a maniac in a truck pushes them off the road. Elsewhere, a survivalist gets driven off the road by hitchhiker. The three of them meet and find themselves thrown into the middle of a cannibalistic family that lives in the woods that want them for dinner.

Leatherface is not quit as serious and brutal as the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre but not nearly as funny, ridiculous and over the top as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre II. The film is just really corny in a bad but pretty entertaining way. What I mean by this is, there are scenes that are just so ridiculous and weird it’s just campy and the scenes that I am talking about are like the one where the little girl kills the guy with a sledgehammer and then high-fives her older brothers. The over exaggerated design of the chainsaw (Thought it was pretty cool) or the four minutes of screaming and chainsaw dancing before Leatherface finally approaches the girl to kill her. It’s cheesy but so entertaining.

That’s one thing that saves this movie is that it’s very entertaining. I mean, when you have Ken Foree shooting an old lady in a wheelchair with a machine gun… it just spells “awesome.” From the time it started to the time it ended I was captivated by how ridiculous it was. And, that’s another thing that is pretty cool to see; Ken Foree and Viggo Mortensen star in this movie and it’s pretty cool seeing Viggo act like homicidal mama’s boy. It’s trying to be almost as serious as the original but you can’t really take it serious. The entire land surrounding the house is decked out in militia-type booby traps and not to mention the giant searchlights and the monster truck that the family has in their front yard.

The movie is not good and I did nitpick here and there (like, why did Leatherface have a metal brace on his leg?) and I did have problems with out idiotically funny they portrayed Leatherface (as shown when he was trying to relate a clown to food on a kid’s game). However, despite all these critiques, I did enjoy the movie and it was very entertaining. The acting will piss you off but if you listen to some of the dialogue that the characters say… it’s quit funny and fucked up. If you are a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan and you enjoyed the first two, I am sure you can stand this movie but don’t go in thinking that it’s the best TCM movie out there. IT’S NOT. It’s terrible compared to the first one but the kind of terrible that you can watch over and over.

Note: Pay attention to the random electric guitar score that plays throughout some of the fights, and how much of a pussy the cleanup guy is. He goes down after getting punched in the chin. AND, also look at how much of a tank that Ken Foree is. He get's beaten up, he get's sliced by a chainsaw, knocked out from the butt of a gun and he i still able to kick ass.