Wow. Did I really just witness that? I don't know what to say. TEXAS CHAINSAW 3-D is dumber than a sack of hammers. It's so hilariously punch drunk that it left me giddy. I believe it's magically moronic and if you can add numbers together, you'll agree. I could go on and on with everything that's ridiculously wrong with this movie but I decree today that if paid screenwriters are allowed to slack off so brazenly then certainly unpaid me can too! O.K, you and I both know that I enjoyed every shoddy second of it. It made me giggle like vandalism and I can't help it if I have a chronic fetish for "research" scenes. The one in this movie is phenomenal in its redundancy. They cut back and forth to the final dolt reading the same information over and over again as giant random words appear on screen. It goes on forever and how am I supposed to resist that?
Sorry if that makes no sense, but I ‘m suffering from a contact high from over exposure to incomprehensibleness. Whatever. In the new world order this film is heralding, sense has no place. This movie is an insulting outrage and it's also probably the most endearingly daffy horror sequel since FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART 7: THE NEW BLOOD. Save your dignity and stay home or gather your worst friends and go observe what's destined to become a highly quotable ("Do your thing, cuz!", "Ladies make-up? What a fruitcake!") camp classic. I'll be over here cackling like a lunatic wondering if I dreamt the whole thing and counting the days until I can force poor long suffering Aunt John to watch this heap at home. Oh geez, now I know exactly how Sally felt at the end of the original film! It's all so horrible that I can't stop laughing. But at least I got away! Didn't I?
http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2013/01/03/texas-chainsaw-3d-horror-director-leatherface-abused-stunted-lethal/?_r=true
I haven't seen the movie, but since you have: does anything the producers and director claim in this article ring true?
They say there's a *15 minute* prologue of footage from the original movie?! In a 90 minute movie? Holy Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2. Although, if they converted that stuff to 3D, it might be interesting.
Taylor,
The opening is pretty neat. They show a montage of scenes from the original in 3-D and then they start things off at a pretty cool replica of the original house complete with swing. The police even drive by the truck that stopped for Sally. Once we see inside the house, things start going of the rails a bit. The place is inexplicably filled with people (Maybe they were called for back-up?) and some kind of Hatfield vs McCoy thing is set up. The interior is all wrong, it's very open but small and with zero sense of isolation. It almost looks like it's decorated for a stage play version of TCM with one bird cage in a corner and one lone string of bones hanging from the ceiling. I love the idea of starting right from the end of the original so it was sad watching this good idea start to fall apart, especially since they were doing a great job there for a minute.
I'm not sure how long the whole sequence is but the scenes from the original are only used during the opening credits.
Anyway- I still had fun. It's got sort of a light eighties slasher feel to it and it was refreshing that it wasn't all dour and serious. It's just incredibly dumb. A good comparison would be the Black Christmas remake.
I saw it tonight, and I really didn't hate it overall. I liked the dumb slasher of the first three quarters, but my God, by the end it's so far off the reservation that I don't even know what to say. But I'll hand it to them that I never ever would have expected a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie to end that way. I can understand the Black Christmas remake comparisons, but at least there wasn't 40 years of sequels and remakes with varying degrees of lameness in between the Black Christmases to lower my expectations to the level they were for this one.
In the opening there's a really quick shot of one or two guys running into the house right after the lynch mob show up…And then when they cut inside again it's *full* of people who weren't there the night before…It was a really weird way to go.
It was very cool to see Gunnar Hansen and Marilyn Burns in there, and of course Bill Moseley, who happens to be just about the right age to be a good facsimile of The Cook. I thought it was funny that they disregard the other sequels completely, except for using the family name and first names that were only first established in part 2.
I also like that when I googled "Jedidiah Sawyer" just now the first result was Jedidiah Sawyer Tree Service in Benton, AR.
Oh, and I almost forgot…I love that they manage to cover up the year that the original event took place — as in August 19, [garble garble something's in the way] — because otherwise either a) the main girl would be 40 years old (ew, old people!), or b) it would take place in the late 90s so there'd be no iPhone camera scene and no current hip hop for the soundtrack album.
Taylor,
So glad you went to see it! I'm always afraid that when I say something is stupid that people think I hate it but that's not always the case. The weird thing is that so much of the nonsensical stuff in this movie could have been fixed so easily. Well, Maybe.
The timeline thing is one for the ages. Why not just have the baby grow up and have a baby and then die in childbirth leaving the new baby the last Sawyer? You'd have to get rid of the "S" necklace burn thing but who'd miss that cheese?
Why have the kids leave the hitchhiker in the mansion when you can just have him pretend to leave and come back while they are gone? At least they wouldn't look so stupid.
My favorite part though is when after her friends are killed and she is attacked etc. she goes to the bar to meet the lawyer like she's having a normal day. I also love the way she screams "He's your dad?" to the cop too.
So hilarious!!! But again it kind of reminds me of the way cops are presented in Friday the 13th movies (and in Scooby cartoons) and I kind of love it.
The twist ending is really interesting. I'm so fascinated by that line being blurred and it's too bad they didn't work to earn it a little better. Her "change of heart" makes little sense. But at least she gets a mansion!
I'm glad it did well financially. Maybe we'll get some more horror films out of it. I feel bad for the makers of Scary Movie 5 though! They might want to add a few more scenes now!
I saw it last night, mostly because of your review, and totally loved every stupid minute of it. Your comparison to '80s-lite horror movies is right on. I, too, was profoundly relieved that everything wasn't serious and dour, and that the movie featured colors other than gray, brown, and maroon. The entire time my friend and I were saying (quietly to each other, not obnoxiously!) "Open the letter! OPEN THE LETTER!" But of course I would have enjoyed the movie 100 times less if she actually had opened the letter at a sensible time.
Ben S.
Hahah, that letter!!! Thanks for mentioning that! What in the world prevented her from opening the letter? She's lamenting that she knows nothing about the family or the house and yet she never thinks to read it? I just had a friend ask me if the movie was any good and I had to tell them that it was funnier than any comedy that I've seen in the last ten years so… YES! My only regret is that I did not see it with a group of people but this is going to my go-to party DVD once it comes out (along side POLTERGEIST 3 and GREASE 2.) So glad you had fun with it too!