Zellweger, for her part, gets the shit knocked out of her every other scene. No longer a "family," this is a predatory cabal that eschews eating long pig in favor of – wait for it – pizza. and screaming), while McConaughey's off-the-hook performance as mecha-legged leader of the pack, Vilmer, is all shit-eating grins and incendiary rage. The late Robert Jacks' version of Leatherface plays like an addled hausfrau, alternately cringing and screaming (and screaming. And so there's some really interesting stuff going on in his head, and it comes out in the movie."Īll true. Kim is a very thoughtful, dare I say, intellectual kind of a guy. It's more of a thinking person's Chainsaw film. According to Brian Huberman, director of the exhaustive on-set chronicle of the making of this fourth Chainsaw, The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Documentary, "I think a lot of people weren't very happy with because it's kind of low on the gore and the slasher aspect. Watching Henkel's uncut version today injects multiple levels of ghastly, paranoiac intrigue and horror that wasn't immediately apparent at the time it was made. It’s more of a thinking person’s Chainsaw film.” “I think a lot of people weren’t very happy with because it’s kind of low on the gore and the slasher aspect. Until now, that is, thanks to Scream Factory's Collector's Edition Blu-ray, which comprises both the theatrical version (in HD) and Henkel's preferred cut (in standard definition), a brand-new commentary track, multiple interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. The director's cut, a full six minutes longer than the version shown in theatres, has remained unseen for 25 years. It played on a mere 20 screens for fewer than as many days. Unfortunately, and due in part to Columbia TriStar's resistance to having Creative Artists Agency's newest signees turn up in a low-budget genre movie, Henkel's film sat unreleased until 1997, when it opened domestically in a truncated version as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (find out more about that legal kerfuffle in our 1997 interview with producer Robert Kuhn, "Chainsaw Courthouse"). Filmed in Austin, it starred two then-unknown locals: Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. You can't keep a good cultural metaphor down, however, and so in 1993, original Chain Saw scribe Henkel put pen to paper – and took over directing duties – and created a horror movie 25 years ahead of its time, The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It seemed then that the 'saw was flat outta gas. In 1986, Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 brought on board an abattoir of Tom Savini's gruesome gore effects while poking subversive fun at President Reagan's misplaced notion of "morning in America," underscored by Timbuk 3's misunderstood anti-nuke anthem "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades." Four years later, the California-shot Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III came and went with barely a shudder, its original X rating slashed down to a tame R. Leatherface and the Sawyer clan were the all-American nuclear family gone haywire, a perfect metaphor for the times.īut times changed, and the emergent franchise kept apace despite the law of diminishing returns. Director Tobe Hooper and screenwriter Kim Henkel's initial foray into the outer limits of, shall we say, original Austin weirdness echoed the shell-shocked psyche of a country not yet ready to come to terms with the grisly debacle that was the Vietnam War – Saigon would fall just six months after the film's October 1, 1974, release – and reeling from the OPEC oil embargo, the spectacular implosion of the Nixon presidency, and the grim death by attrition of Sixties idealism. But what do you expect of a nation that was settled by religious fanatics, ne'er-do-wells, and criminals?" – Writer/Director Kim HenkelĮvery generation gets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre it deserves. We're almost as good at raising crazed mass murderers as Utah. "Texas as a mythical place is one place, but the reality of Texas, of course, is entirely different. " – Opening narration, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation Then, over the next several years, at least two minor yet apparently related incidents were reported. Regrettably, not one of the family members was ever apprehended, and for more than 10 years nothing further was heard. News of a bizarre, chainsaw-wielding family – reports of which were to ignite the world's imagination – began to filter out of Central Texas. Before they were famous: Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger in Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre
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