After finishing the 1974 version of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” on video last week, I thought I’d seen the worst slasher film possible. When I thought I’d heard a thump coming from my neighbors in the apartment above me, however, my heart jumped.
When I walked out of the theater from the 2003 remake of the film, my teeth were chattering so hard I couldn’t talk for ten minutes.
The newest remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” came just in time for Halloween, and if feeling terrified and disturbed on Halloween is what you’re looking for, this film is your ticket. Compared to the original, the 2003 version has a thicker plot and more thrilling audience-scaring techniques. Along with this come more distressing scenes and stomach-turning images.
The original film was said to be based upon the Ed Gein killings, which occurred in Wisconsin during the 1950s. Although Gein did not commit his murders with a chain saw, he allegedly decorated his rickety farm house with the body parts of his murder victims, as do the crazed family of killers in the films. The Ed Gein killings are also said to be the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”
The story begins with five horny youths driving the deserted roads of Texas, eventually encountering a lost-looking character on the side of the road. In the 1974 version, they pick up a hitchhiker who later gets kicked out of their van after slicing his hand with a knife in front of the group — later, he appears as one of the killers. This time it’s a frazzled girl whom they attempt to comfort, but she sticks a pistol into her mouth and blows her brains out all over the back of the van anyway. Her horrified state is an interesting foreshadowing of the frenzy to come, but that still doesn’t make up for the gross sight of her remains covering the back seat.
The group stops at a nearby farmhouse in order to wait for the sheriff, who picks up the body. The sheriff’s mocking of the corpse is comical until it turns out he is part of the family that includes the chain saw-bearing madman, Leatherface. Jessica Biel’s character Erin is the equivalent of the 1974 version’s Sally, who is left to escape Leatherface and his crew after her friends are slain one by one.
In the original, the deadly family consisted of three men and a decrepit old grandpa; in the new version, the family is a larger clan of weirdos, including a few homely women and a little boy. This is a case where more doesn’t equal better. The original characters were classically simple, while the new ones bring an overkill of frightful and shocking moments.
The most cleverly disturbing moment in the film is when Leatherface, who wears a mask of his victims’ faces, turns to Erin wielding his chain saw and wearing the face of her dead boyfriend. One moment that stuck with me hours after the film ended was when Erin finds one of her friends alive but missing a limb and hanging from a hook in Leatherface’s basement of dismembered bodies. She stabs her friend to death to put him out of his misery.
From the first kill on, the film is a non-stop ride of climaxes, chase scenes and body mutilations. Unlike the original, which has more sporadic high-intensity scenes, the new version doesn’t leave enough time between scenes to take a deep breath.
The new film’s elaborately gross setting, overdone suspense and graphic killings deliver thrills very successfully. They’re more like I-want-to-throw-up thrills instead of exciting thrills, but maybe that’s what Halloween is all about.