The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Director: Marcus Nispel

Starring: R. Lee Ermey & Jessica Biel

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: What you know about fear... doesn't even come close.

Plot: A group of friends passing through a small Texas town are stalked and hunted down by a deformed killer with a chainsaw. Yawns ensue.

My Rating: 6

Would I watch it again? I'm on the fence but I would see the first one several times before I'd let that happen




My thoughts on this movie are spoiler laden.

There are really only three reasons why you need to see this film.

1) R.
2) Lee
3) Ermey

"Holy dog shit. Texas? Only steers and queers come from Texas, Private Cowboy. And you don't look much like a steer to me so that kinda narrows it down. Do you suck dicks?"

He's head and shoulders the best thing about this flick. It's been a number of years since I saw the original (my first time, even) and I remember being creeped-out by it due to the rawness of the look and feel as well as the magnificently simple and effective sound design. This one strips the originality and hunger from the 1974 classic and delivers a slick, uninteresting remake to the un-knowing mass of children who eat this drivel up, all-the-while believing that being grossed-out is the same as fear and horror.

I'm not going to go on some long-ass tear about this film. I should. Hell, I'm giving it a 6/10 so it can't be that bad. It's entertaining on a base level. If it wasn't called THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE I would have a slightly higher opinion about it...but it's FUCKING CALLED THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!!! When you set out to remake a classic film such as this you're just asking for trouble when you change a bunch of shit that should never be tampered with!!!


The good...I'm not lying when I tell you that Ermey is the truly greatest thing about it. He steals every scene he's in. Too bad the movie's not really about him but other characters that he's not. It's pretty obvious how Biel got the job as the lead & lone survivor. I'm-a bettin' it's the Doublemint Sweater Meat Twins (that'd be the pair on the left).


She does have a lovely figure and she's given her fair share of scenes of running and light jogging. She does a fine job. I'll give her that much. But then it's not like a role like this is going to go to a top actress (don't confuse actress with movie star). Right off the bat we're introduced to five characters I don't care about. I want them dead, and not that one-by-one dead. I'm talking about a quick and painful death that leaves plenty of room for the film makers to introduce more interesting characters that we can get to know before they get cut up.

MAJOR Error! The girl on the right has her top on backwards!

BIG-ASS GRIPE #1 - This takes place in 1973, right? WHY THE FUCK DO THESE KIDS NOT LOOK LIKE IT'S NINETEEN SEVENTY-FUCKING-THREE? Seriously! There's nothing vintage about this movie except for the van they're in. It takes more than sideburns and a beat up car, people, to establish time. They aren't even trying. And you know how I feel about Southern accents in movies. BIG-ASS GRIPE #2 - This takes place in Texas, right? WHY THE FUCK DO MOST OF THE LOCALS SOUND LIKE THEY LIVE IN KANSAS? Seriously! Take Ermey and two of the older women out of the equation and you're left with a bunch of plain ol' middle American accents that sound as far away from Texas as Seattle.


BIG-ASS GRIPE #3 - KNIFE "SCHWINGS". There's a scene when a character simply picks up a knife off a table. Not from a sheath or anything but off a fucking table. In the real world there would be little to no sound but here we get the exciting "schwing" sound effect. I half expected Errol Flynn to come busting through the door and fight some skeletons emerging from the ground or something. BIG-ASS GRIPE #4 - CAMERA WALK-BY "SWOOSHES". There are several moments when a character/victim is in the background looking everywhere but at the camera when a shadowy figure "swooshes" by the camera. It's like everything Hollywood ever learned about sound effects they learned from watching chop-socky movies from the 70s....except for sound designer Ben Burtt, of course. If he'd done this movie there'd be the prerequisite Wilhelm screams. Ugh!

"EEE-AWW EEE-AWWW"

OK, I distinctly remember the family from TCM '74 being cannibals. For me, this is a HUGE oversight in the remake. That's a pretty big omission. Didn't seen Leatherface's face in the original. You do here. They give his killin' ass a back story so we can, sort of, understand where he's coming from. Whatever. The original was partially effective because we didn't know. We didn't need to. That's a huge problem these days in Hollywood, having to know the "whys" and needing that back story. I don't need it. SO FUCKING WHAT! Oh, he was picked on as a kid. Wahhhhhhhhh. Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ on a Unicycle, I'm gonna bust out cryin'. I don't care about what motivates Leatherface just as I don't care about what motivate other horror legends like Michael Meyers, Jason Voorhees and Joan Rivers.


It was cool to hear John Larroquette's narration at the start of the film just like he did for the original. And seeing Leatherface wear the face of Biel's boyfriend was pretty badass. That put a smile on my beleaguered face.

And the ending? Give me a fucking break. Biel escapes but not before she rescues an infant from the clutches of the evil Hewitt family. Just fucking kill me. Run my sorry ass over and kill me now. They could have at least given us an unhappy ending. We've earned it. Well, I have, anyway.


I see that Ermey is back in the prequel to the remake that came three years later in 2006! Read that last sentence again and wrap your brain around it! Only because of Ermey will THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING play in my house. Listen up, Numbnuts!