TCM - The Beginning

I was one of the few people who enjoyed the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Most horror aficionados blasted the film, but these were the same people who liked the horribly inferior Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2 and the incredibly awful Texas Chainsaw Massacre -The Next Generation (aka Return to a Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

While the remake did have its flaws, Jessica Biel's performance made the film very worthwhile viewing and the book ending prologue and epilogue of the film provided some excellent cheap scares. And, of course, R. Lee Ermy was tremendous as the crazed Sheriff and stole the show. Budgeted at $9 million, the film did over $80 million at the box office. This was more money than all the original film and the three sequels did combined! And $50 million of that combination came from just the first film. (Note: Adjusting the rate of inflation, the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre's box office receipts would have equaled $198,000,000.00 in 2003 dollars)

With the success of the 2003 film, it was obvious that a sequel would be undertaken. Well, in actuality, a prequel was commissioned to tell the whole story of the sick families origins. (This was also a novel way to skirt the issue of shoot a sequel with a one armed Leatherface as he lost a limb at the conclusion of the first film) The concept was interesting and was purported to involve the family running afoul of two Vietnam Vets Special Forces Vets made for interesting speculation. The end result turned out to be an abomination. Oh, and there is only one Vietnam Vet in the film and he isn't Rambo by any stretch of the imagination.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is nothing more than an exercise in sadism and violence. If one looks at the various killings and carnage, one will notice some seriously choppy editing. The reason for this is that extensive cuts were made throughout the film to avoid an NC-17 rating. It does, however, perform the highly difficult task of making sadism and violence into a very, very boring affair. There is nothing here you haven't seen before.

This film is not really about anything at all. What it is, is a mish mash of quasi-motivations to explain why people do what they do. The evil Sheriff went crazy during the Korean War. Leatherface lost his mind when the local slaughterhouse went out of business. One of the male kids is a Vietnam Vet returning to combat action. The other bad guys simply go along with the killing because, well, ummm, because! (Even the next door neighbor is ok with the cannibalism and killing for no apparent reason! The other male kid is the vet's brother who has been drafted and is planning on fleeing to Mexico to avoid heading out to Southeast Asia.

And then all these themes are dropped almost as quickly as they are introduced. There is no follow up to the themes nor do the themes continue through the film, changing and reacting with the situations in order to heighten drama and provide irony. They are simply presented as a vehicle for the dialogue between the characters to rise above chit chat. Since this film has NO plot, there is no other way to have any type of meaningful dialogue without adding these gimmicky elements. Then again, the dialogue devolves into yelling and screaming almost immediately.

It is really shocking that the producers and studios are so lazy that they crank out such an uninspired film that is really nothing more than a by the numbers slasher film that has been remade one hundred billion times since PSYCHO was first released in 1962. Considering that THREE YEARS have passed since the release of the first film, it is mind boggling that literally no time was spent putting an iota of thought into this film.

Then again, the brilliant writer David J. Schow was contracted to write the script, but when you watch the credits, he only gets a story credit and not screenwriting credit. In other words, whatever he brought to the table was probably written out.

We horror fans are a masochistic lot of people. Why he continually waste money and put ourselves through the misery of watching films like this is a mystery to us all.