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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre |
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THE MOVIE |
THE DVD |
REVIEWER |
REVIEW DATE |
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WesCraven |
12th October, 2004 |
Review Quote
 "One of the things that made the original so damn good was the gritty raw feel that it had. So while this remake didn't quite chalk up the same grade in that aspect it did do a pretty good job of it. Everything about the film was just dirty and scary. That house, Leatherface's lair, the forest, the trailer, the slaughterhouse. All of it was perfectly crafted or was aided by a severe amount of luck."
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The Plot
A group of five friends travel through rural Texas on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. When they pick up a hitchhiker things began to go wrong. They meet the local sheriff and the notorious Leatherface, sounds like a rockin' good time!
The Movie
With the original "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" being my all-time favorite horror, I was admittedly, a little alarmed when I heard those all too familiar tuning fork sounds as I sat in the darkness in a movie theatre. Had I never seen the original I might be amazed by the trailer that followed. However, I had seen the original, I knew it was a masterpiece; what were they doing!?!? Regardless I plopped down my money a couple months later and saw this suck opening night. I came out, much to my surprise, a pretty happy camper.
One of the things that made the original so damn good was the gritty raw feel that it had. So while this remake didn't quite chalk up the same grade in that aspect it did do a pretty good job of it. Everything about the film was just dirty and scary. That house, Leatherface's lair, the forest, the trailer, the slaughterhouse. All of it was perfectly crafted or was aided by a severe amount of luck.
One thing that I think helped me enjoy this film was how much they stayed true to the original, and yet were able to deviate enough from it for the film to not just be a total rip-off. One of these in particular was Andrew Bryniarski's take on Leatherface. The immortal Gunnar Hansen will always be Leatherface to me; he played the part as a frighteningly scary madman, you're just never sure what he's gonna do. Bryniarski not only played Leatherface with a little more rage, showed a little more of his sadistic side, but he also let us see the softer side of his character; who was soon back onto his killing spree mayhem. I didn't necessarily like it better by any means, I just liked to see something different, especially since I felt it worked.
All in all if you liked the original "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" you should see this. Your more hardcore and even average horror fans should like this. Again I apologize to the gorehounds, another film with the word chainsaw another film that lets down; there are some blood and guts here and there (especially in the extras), but nothing that fits nicely with a tree-slicing tool as deadly as the Chainsaw. See it!
The DVD
When the DVD first came out there was no way I was gonna get the single-disc release, I mean c'mon, why would I do it? However, being somewhat poor, I didn't want to shell out $30 for the New Line Platinum Series one either. I figured I could wait it out. Months pass, and more months pass, and this thing is still $30. What am I to do, wait some? That's what I do. Well low and behold my fucking kick-ass girlfriend gets it for me for my birthday, and I'm not only impressed but overjoyed as this baby is fucking loaded with goodies (Thanks Tamara!). Anyway, the visual and audio transfer are wonderful; the look is fantastic the metal chomping chainsaw sounds like it could be outside ripping apart my car, it sounds so real, I don't go outside to check.
The extras are just amazing. On disc 1 we get three audio commentaries, broken down by the production, the technical, and the story aspects of the film. I thought this was a wonderful idea! Not only are there three commentaries but each is topic specific I ate this stuff up. I was a little worried at the beginning though. I'm not a big fan of commentaries with a lot of people doing them, you get confused about who's talking everyone's fighting for time, it just doesn't work for me; and on these things we got like five, six, seven people on each one, I was again a little worried. However, what they did was quite novel, and I felt worked wonders for my worrisome mind. They had the speaker state his name before each time they said something. At first it was a little jarring, but in the end it was great, because you had a lot of ideas flowing, and I knew exactly who was saying them. I'm not even sure if they were all watching the film together or not. It didn't matter though, all three commentaries were wonderful and full of interesting and entertaining information, I was and still am quite impressed.
Disc 2 gets us a whole new batch of goodies. We get a plethora of deleted scenes. They can either be watched individually or they can be watch as part of the "Severed Parts" featurette. This featurette goes in-depth into why the deleted scenes were filmed, but ultimately cut. I found this feature to be a great one. We also got two documentaries. One "Chainsaw Redux: Making a Massacre" was an over a hour long look at the start to finish of the film, and was highly entertaining and very very interesting. We also get "Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield", a documentary on the murderer the film is roughly based on. This was also pretty interesting. We also get screen tests, an art gallery, theatrical trailers, TV spots, and a Motograter music video for their song "Suffocate". We also get some DVD-Rom extras too if you're into that. Overall this DVD is awesome, and one of the best I have ever seen. I'm not exactly sure what's on the single-disc release, but you should steer clear of it in favor of this one no matter what, it's pure gold.
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Director
Marcus Nispel
Cast
Jessica Biel
Jonathan Tucker
Erica Leerhsen
Andrew Bryniarski
Eric Balfour
Screenplay
Scott Kosar
Tagline
"Inspired by a true story."
Country
USA
Classification
R
Year
2003
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Format
NTSC
Region Coding
1
Aspect Ratio
1.85:1
16x9 Enhanced
Yes
Running Time
98 minutes
Year Released
2004
Packaging
Custom Case
Extra Features
3 Audio Commentaries
4 Documentaries
Alternate Opening
Alternate Ending
Deleted Scenes
Screen Tests
Art Galleries
TV Spots
Music Video
Teaser Trailer
Theatrical Trailer
And more...
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