For many years,
a fifth Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie was supposedly in the works, but nothing seemed to come of it.
Eventually, distributors New Line Cinema announced they were actually going to produce a remake, much to the
disdain of fans of the original. But how well would it fair?
Set in 1973, the plot this time has a group of teenage friends travelling through the Texas countryside on their way to a Lynard Skynard concert, when they come across a girl staggering across the road in a daze. Stopping to help, they drive her to a nearby gas station to call for help. But upon doing so, she immediately becomes erratic, pulls out a gun and, to everyone's horror, shoots herself.
Phoning the local Sheriff to report what's happened, they are even more surprised when he asks them to drive out and meet him at a deserted mill nearby. With nothing to do but wait for his arrival, a group of them decide to wander off and look around the area, but when one of them fails to return the rest decide to go off looking....
This is where their already troubled day rapidly nosedives, as they are confronted with a cannibalistic family of redneck farmers, headed up by their eldest son Leatherface, who (as in the original film) wears a mask made of human flesh and likes carving up his victims with a chainsaw. Quickly making mincemeat of the hapless teens, the survivors find themselves running for their lives and to make matters worse, it looks increasingly like they're not going to make that Lynard Skynard concert....
Like most remakes, this isn't as good as the original. But I was pleasantly surprised at how good it actually was. There's some nice twists in the plot to distance itself from the original, and it was good to see plenty of on-screen killings this time, unlike the original where it was mostly implied (not that implied killings are a bad thing of course).
Chainsaw fans should definitely get a "buzz" out of it.
