314: Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Greetings and salutations, and welcome to Hack or Slash. If you're joining us again, welcome back. Come on, sweetheart, let's see what you got. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the party. We are a horror movie review podcast dedicated to telling you whether a movie is a hack, a total joke, a waste of time, or a slash.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Totally killer, unintended.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

We believe horror is for everyone, and as such, we're rating these movies with a perspective we've gained from our varying walks of life and the flavors of fear we fancy most. My name is Chris, I'm your friendly neighborhood slasher enthusiast, and this week I'm joined by the classic horror connoisseur Sean.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

We knows what to do with them parts.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

This week we're peeling back the layers of a film that attempted to stitch together the legacy of its predecessors and the ambitions of its creators. As Newline Cinema's reign with the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels began to slow in the early 90s, the studio sought to leave their mark on the third entry of another franchise, one set in the grisly heart of Texas. Despite being the third entry, this film largely abandons the continuity of its predecessors and introduces us to three people who are on a journey through Texas back roads, and their journey crosses paths with an extension of the Sawyer family. Now the film attempts to dance the fine line between homage and reinvention. Despite its lineage though, the movie stumbled in its execution and struggled to find its footing both critically and commercially. This week we're talking about Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3. Have you ever seen this one?

SPEAKER_03 1:43

I don't know if this is surprising or not, but I really haven't seen a whole lot of this franchise, including this movie, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I actually realize I've never seen this movie before, and within the franchise, I've seen, and let's see if it's the same ones that you've seen.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

I've seen the original, the second one. Right, yep. Next generation.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Okay, which one is that?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellwagger.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

Oh, see, I don't know if I've seen that one.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

It's the next movie in the franchise. The Jessica Bill remake.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

Yeah, I've seen that.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

And the 2022 version.

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Yeah. So outside of the one with Matthew McConaughey, that's all I've seen. Up until tonight.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Oh okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Wow. Look at us. We're on this journey together. This can go either way.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

It is. But so you've seen the one that comes after this.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

That's the Matthew McConaughey one.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

That's why I assumed I had seen this because I've seen the next movie. Now, I remember that one being unhinged and off the wall, but I thought surely I I must have seen this at some point. And yet, no, as soon as this thing started, I was like, what the hell is this?

SPEAKER_03 2:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

And then the further we got on, again, what the hell is this?

SPEAKER_03 2:53

It was a lot of what the hell is this for sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Yeah. What were you expecting going into it?

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Call me crazy. But I had this feeling that this movie was going to be bad. I wasn't sure, right? Going into the movie. I didn't watch a trailer or anything going into this one, but just knowing that this is the third film in a franchise where I don't really hear many good things about, right? You know, we talk about like iconic horror franchises, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise will find its way into a conversation for sure, but it's not the franchise that I hear people raving about all the time. And I think it's something to be said that the remake or whatever with Jessica Beale is considered by a lot of people to be the best movie in the franchise, and for that, it's not really looking good for this movie. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Yeah, the bar, it's giving low. I think the thing about this franchise is that people only ever really talk about the original and the Jessica Beale remake.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

But even with that, though, I feel like I also don't hear a whole lot of shit talking about this franchise. Friday the 13th, we know that it gets really loose, right? It's gets a little goosey-goosey. Nightmare on Elm Street, you start hitting it past like the third or fourth one, you're like, ah, this is getting a little bit weird. Same stuff with Halloween, right? I feel like I hear about those a lot, and maybe it's just because I'm not in the Texas Chains All Massacre Demographic. Maybe, but I feel like I never really hear trash about this franchise.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

Yeah, that's a good point. You don't hear people raving about it, you don't hear people talking shit about it, but I don't know why that is. I haven't watched all the movies in this franchise, but when the ones that you have watched, I'm trying to think about it really and just see what it is. Does this stand out? Does it not? Is this something that you know deserves the credit that it gets when it comes into these conversations of horror franchises that have influenced the genre? And you know what? I could be wrong, but I think the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, maybe as a whole, if you can lump them all together, are just movies that aren't horrible, but they're just not great. You know what I mean? And I think people like to see some gore, they like to see people die by some crazy people with chainsaws, and maybe that's the fun of it all, but maybe they're just not bad enough for people to just discredit as a whole. Maybe it's just slipping under the radar. This is like the person that just clocks in and clocks out, and you don't ever hear from.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

It's giving mediocrity.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Exactly. It's so mediocre that you don't even know that it's just there. Like you know it's there, but you don't know, and there's nothing that's gonna make you talk shit about it, and so somehow it stands the test of time.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

It's been stealing time for years, and no one's paid it any mind.

SPEAKER_03 5:46

Ain't no one paying them dues. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

I think you summed it up perfectly with the reality that it's not so good it's worthy of talking about, and then it's not so bad that it's worthy of talking about. So it does find this middle ground. Going into this, I expected that this was gonna be something that felt familiar to me as I watched it, and then I saw the opening credits, and I was like, oh what? We have Aragorn in this movie? What? Yes, we have Ken Fourhead in this movie? What? It's so wild! How many people are in this movie?

SPEAKER_03 6:21

The cast.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

I think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre by its major celebrities, and I think Jessica Beale, Matthew McConaughey, Renee Zellwagger.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

I never had pre-Lord of the Rings Vigo Mortenson in here.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

That's so true. There's that draw, too. They just put some big names in there. Man, I will say though, one of the biggest feelings I had while watching this one, aside from boredom, was frustration. Yeah. Aside from boredom was frustration because, and I think I texted you about this. The audio was so delayed, it was delayed by a second or two throughout the entire film. And this was a rental. Like I paid money for this. This wasn't some cheap streamed pirated version. This was something I legitimately paid for from a legitimate streaming service, and the audio, like I'm watching lips move two seconds before the audio hits.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah, you mentioned this, and my struggle is I didn't have I think that same experience. I feel like if it was off for me, it was off by like milliseconds. Because I never once had this feeling of like, oh, what is wrong with the audio in this? And I feel like it would drive me crazy if I had seen that words were coming out of a mouth, and then I didn't hear those words for a full 60 seconds after, or however much. No, like that would drive me nuts for sure.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

It drove me crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

I was frustrated with the movie because I felt nothing. And then once I realized how bland it was, the frustration went away and I just continued to exist with it. The one thing I think that did evoke a kind of sensation was yuck because I was like, damn, y'all really had to slip in the racism, huh?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

There was.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

You really just had to slip it in there where they could.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Yeah. They did slip it in there for sure. But yuck wasn't the biggest feeling that I got. I also felt a lot of confusion with this movie. I felt confusion in the sense of where the fuck these redneck family members were even coming from at this point. You know, watching the the first two films, it's just like honestly, what is happening here? How many of these people exist in this family, and how have the authorities not figured out how to keep eyes on these fucking people?

SPEAKER_01 8:33

Respect my authority. Authorities I actually, now that you say that line in particular, I cannot wait for you to see next generation. That shit's gonna be great. However, oh boy, that's the thing about this movie, it acknowledges the continuity of the previous movie while also erasing it at the same time. Yeah, this movie does a few things narratively that are different, and also it feels like wow, you got some nerves just throwing away history like this. Again, I say this, and I'm the person who is not mad at all that they wreck on most of the Halloween franchise, including the second favorite movie in the franchise in 2018. But this feels too early in the franchise to have been doing that.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Yeah. Well, it's kind of that happy medium between what Halloween did and what Evil Dead did, you know?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Because Evil Dead was just like From the get-go, redoing that first movie.

SPEAKER_03 9:26

From the get-go, they're just like, here's what you get in two seconds, and now we're in. So, you know, it's that happy medium, but still.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Yeah, I don't know about that, man. I don't know about that. It's still a sensation where even looking at the chronology of this movie and thinking about like what gets introduced, all of a sudden we have people in here that feel like they're patting the body count, and then we also have moments that feel like it's a direct pull from the first movie, and none of it feels super coherent, and it's a really bizarre feeling. And I'll tell you that this movie started out as a disappointment even before we got all of that, because we have a narrator and it's not the same narrator. The voice was again giving mediocre.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

It's terrible. There's not much that will really surprise you in this movie, but one thing that I can say is that it did find pockets of suspense throughout the film. Little pockets, very, very small pockets.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Okay, if I could equate these pockets to anything, I'm gonna guess that this is like you are looking for some pocket size on men's cargo pants, but instead you got women's jeans, and they're fake pockets.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

No, not the fake pockets. They're fake pockets. You try to go in and they're not even real.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

It's a little seam. It's sewn shut, it's just decorative.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

No.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

That is what I think your actual pockets of tension in this movie are. It's decorative pockets.

SPEAKER_03 10:55

I guess you're not far off because if you really look at that that way, then you're like, yeah, there's some suspense here. Let me dive in there, and then you only get like the tip of your finger into the pocket before you get, you know, stopped, and then bam, there goes the rest of the suspense. So I like that. We can go with that. Fake pockets.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

I didn't feel a damn lick of fear in this movie. I want to first approach the subject of leatherface and the Texas chainsaw massacre as how scary can this be, right? The idea of someone wearing another human skin with a loud ass chainsaw feels like there should be moments of it being scary, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yet somehow this movie managed to take the bite out of that. In moments where I think we're supposed to have a little bit of a jump scare, it's still not clicking. And again, if I were to look at my heart rate throughout this movie, none of it really naturally spiked into some like, oh wow, I'm just reacting to a loud noise, maybe because the sound was off so terribly for you, Sean. But how can you have a movie like this that doesn't make you feel even a little bit of this like, damn, Leatherface is a bad bitch?

SPEAKER_03 12:05

It's a huge miss. It really is, because I think this movie has a ton of potential to be really frightening or really scary or just really gruesome. And we'll get into it, but because of the editing and all of that, I I think that everything that could have been something that added to this fright factor of this film, it just loses all sense of fright because of the way you don't really get to see everything head-on. Like they cut away from a lot of stuff. And sure, there's a couple attempts at some jump scares, but like you said, it almost feels like the movie is trying to run, but it can't really get on its feet and and really catch that rhythm. And without getting to see the severity of the kills or even the real aftermath of some of these kills, all you really have going for you is that tiny bit of suspense that I was talking about. And so, what are you gonna do with that? And when you're called the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, at the very least, I want to see some fucking crazy ass kills, you know?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

You want to see crazy ass kills, and then you have to remember that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the original, who died by a chainsaw? Almost no one. Leatherface cut himself on the leg with a chainsaw.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

So, you know what? All fucking bets are off, Sean. And really, maybe that's where this movie dared to be different, and that's the only place where it dared to be different because this didn't actually do much else different. Credit where credit is due. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not my bag, but it's beloved for its gritty indie filmmaking. It's beloved for the vibe and how visceral it feels, even though there isn't a whole lot that happens in terms of gore. Like you can just feel how gross and nasty that movie is. This movie is a major studio taking this franchise and sanitizing it. This is a movie where a studio has has taken a dish, tried to recreate it, but there's no salt in it. You know what I mean? It's just mass-produced and it feels degre.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Yeah, it just needs something, but it's not there. It's just too bland. I get it. I don't know how original you can really get when you essentially call the same place every single time, right? This is the same setup that so many movies have. It's just this whole backdrop of on the road, misguided by weird hicks, hunted down for some deranged fun. That's what you're gonna get, but how many times have we seen it? And do we really want to see that whole scenario over and over again? I it's just hard to be original when you're just calling the same plays out of the same playbook that you've been doing for every game.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

And I think that also goes right up to the fucking ending of the movie, which is a shame. And I'll say this the ending was also one of the better parts of it.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Maybe it's again that sensation of okay, thank God we're finally here, but it was one of the better parts of it.

SPEAKER_03 15:12

Oh my god, I was gonna say the ending in comparison to the rest of the film, I'm fine with honestly, and that's probably because it was ending. I don't know. Maybe it was just the rush of euphoria because the movie was ending, and I was like, yes, I can move on.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

There is the light at the end of the tunnel.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Yeah, I think it's interesting because I feel like it ends in somewhat of a similar way as other ones in the franchise. It's not something that's gonna shock you in any way. I think it's something that you can probably predict something wild would happen or whatever, but I hear that the original shot ending was a little bit different than what we got. And if you really look into that, I think it's a little bit interesting.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Okay, well, too bad they didn't stick with interesting. That's the real shame here. It's like this movie made me want to feel a little bit more towards the ending, and I think they did make a decision that I was more happy with. So I was like, all right, cool, we're we're making some good moves here at the end of this, but then I remember how fucking weird the next movie gets. This is like the stepchild that doesn't make sense in the family. You want to think, oh, okay, well, it's like a blended family, et cetera, but it feels like someone just brought someone in off the street and said, You're the kid now, and that's what this movie is. It's bizarre. But obviously, I think we're on the same page here. We haven't had the kindest things to say so far, but let's see and make our way towards our ratings. Before we actually score this movie, though, Sean, how would you describe the gore score?

SPEAKER_03 16:40

You know, this really should have been an extremely gory film. It should have been. It's the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but sadly it wasn't. And maybe the unrated, unbchered version is better because we actually get to see a lot of the stuff that was pretty much chopped out of this movie, probably, but we don't get to see much, which is the problem. So we do see some gruesome stuff in the very beginning of the film. And again, when they uncover a bunch of decomposing bodies, and I'm not going to give too much away, but that is what we get. And maybe aside from a few shots, it just becomes non-existent almost. And and the problem is that this should have been way better, but because of what they did and because of what they chose to edit out of this film to get whatever rating they were trying to get, it left it with a low goer score.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

But what about the animal report?

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Well, there is some roadkill, so it's not a hundred percent safe, but it's not the worst.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Well, let's go ahead and get into our ratings then. Leatherface, Texas Chains on Massacre 3 from the year 1990. Was it a hack or was it a slash? And I'll just go ahead and throw this out there. Sean, give you a little bit of a break here from your diligent reporting. We are a few episodes into the new year. I've been 100% slash on 2024. I slashed Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey. And maybe that's gonna get me some hate. That movie, though, made me feel something. Night Swim, which you and Binks hacked, made me feel something in two different ways. Both of those movies hit on a spectrum for me. This franchise is absolutely not my thing. This movie is a lot, but yet somehow it's also nothing all the same time. And this movie lacks the quality in the camp of its predecessors, and I think that's the real crime here because we have, you know, even though it's not my cup of tea, the grittiness and the rawness of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and then the polar opposite direction of how wild the second one got. That's insane. So we have that, and then it also lacks the will to push the envelope in the ways that some of its shittier, but albeit more amusing sequels do. And so this movie, it's almost like it's lacking some semblance of identity. And the worst part is that it's a blend regurgitation of some iconic moments in the original. It's just copy-paste, rinse, repeat. It's a mediocre assembly of parts that could actually be really good, and you have a cast that even in the roles that they're in, they deliver, but everything else around them isn't strong enough to do justice to those performances. The execution overall fell short, hence it's a forgettable hack.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

You know, we keep bringing up this next movie that I haven't seen, and I just picture Matthew McConaughey saying, You know what I like about chainsaws? I get older, but they stay the same age.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Oh God, little perv.

SPEAKER_03 19:38

I think the concept of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is decent. I think it should make for some really good, gory, brutal horror. It should. Just in the name alone, you're expecting that at the very least. And some of the films in the franchise pull it off, I think. Right? Oddly enough, I think most people enjoy the remake and don't really even think of the original. A lot of people I talk to bring up the Jessica Beale Texas Chainsaw Massacre as the one that they were introduced to, which is strange to think about when you're when you have a remake. Not many remakes can do that to an audience, but I like them both, but I don't like this film. The third film in the franchise, and it has only gotten worse. The plot is okay, but there are too many holes. Who the fuck are these family members and where the fuck are they coming from? I want to know because the soundtrack to this movie, I think when you look at that, that actually works. But the gory visuals to go with the soundtrack were cut out of the film, and so it just feels like the way they edit this film was like they cut it as though it was done with a fucking chainsaw. I don't know. I just there's something to be said. Like I can get down with Leatherface is cool, but this Leatherface was a little bit silly to me. Everywhere I looked, there was something that I was picking apart out of this Leatherface or this movie in general. And so, listen, this one is a hack for me.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Well, there you have it, folks. Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1990 has earned a universal hack. Now you can find this movie available for rent online, but beware. 50-50 shot according to our experience that you might get fucked up audio. We'll drop a link in the show notes to a few options of where you can find this movie. Go check it out. Then join us in the second half so we can continue dragging it together. We'll see you in a bit.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

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SPEAKER_01 22:54

Welcome back, folks. You're now entering the spoiler zone for Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 from 1990, which has earned a universal hack. Now we have a lot to unpack here. We have a lot of things to talk about, but before we get into the specifics of our ratings and why we are dragging this, let's go through the kills.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Yeah, so we can break down the kill count in a couple of different ways here. We have the three character kills that are mentioned as having taken place prior to the events of this film, right? We have Sally, W. E. Sawyer, I believe, and Drayton Sawyer, right? Those three were mentioned.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah. You know what? I love that you're patting the body count with the ones that were just mentioned.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

Listen, I gotta fill in.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

You're a benevolent god.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

I'm trying here. I'm really trying. So we got those three. Okay, we'll put them over here. But then we have the kills that we kind of see happen throughout the film, and that number is seven. So, okay, we get seven kills that we'll say we see on screen, but we don't really see all of it on screen. We just see what's happening. But then you finally have the mentioned deaths from the mass burial site or whatever they find, and they mention 40 to 50 bodies. So now here's the thing: if we are giving credit to this fucked up family for the work that they've put in and include the mentioned deaths, then we have 60 kills andor deaths in this movie.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

And that's hacker math.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

And that's it right there. Hacker math.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Wow. How do you go from being so fucking mediocre to having 60 deaths? You know what I mean? 60 deaths, and you you still see almost nothing.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Isn't it crazy? When I was pulling this together, I was like, man, 60 deaths, and I feel like I didn't see a single one.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Yeah, no, that shit is wild. I do want to say though, I want to give her RIP to one of the kills. And I have to just point out the logistics of this. And I know if Binx were here, she would say it's the kangaroo in the middle of the road. But the armadillo gets hit by a car. Can we acknowledge the fact that this armadillo has blood on the car at a point that is too high? Like, why is the blood all the way up there?

SPEAKER_03 25:06

That's so true.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

It doesn't make sense to me. I would be a terrible forensics person, maybe, and I don't actually know shit about shit. Maybe I'd be a bad serial killer, I don't know. But for the armadillo to be on the ground and for the tires to be lifting the car from the ground, it gets hit not by the car, but by the tires, I thought.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Yeah, you would think.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

But if for damn sure the armadillo didn't just do a fucking Mario and jump up to then meet the car, you know what I mean? It wasn't like he was like, oh, let me just evade this. There's no reason for there to be blood on the car.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Man. Wow, I didn't piece that together at all, but now as you're explaining it, I'm like, how did I not piece that together? Listen, maybe the armadillo was trying to, you know, tap into its inner chi and try to jump over this car and just couldn't get there. Just couldn't get there. That's exactly what it is. You're trying to make that jump and you just get hit and it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Oh man, now I need to like see like an 8-bit armadillo trying to jump over a car. But it doesn't make sense. Okay, credit to him, R.I.P. Armadillo. So sorry for you, that sucks. However, my real favorite death will go to Sarah, who inexplicably survived the entire opening of this film while her sister was getting killed. Her sister Regina, the first kill of the movie. She's creeping on Leatherface, watching Leatherface do crafts, make his own mask. She then finds Benny, is smoking a cigarette, and then just like Jason Voorhees, Leatherface comes out of fucking nowhere and just impales her abdomen.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

Dude, it is true. I just wanted more from the kill, but yes, I mean if you had to pick from the whole list, that's at the top for sure. But I'd wanted to see more from that kill. Like, give me the whole I'm gonna scoop you up with that chainsaw and raise you into the air and just saw right through your body. Give me that shit.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Like pull a Sally Hardestin Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2022?

SPEAKER_03 27:16

Yes, yes. Give me that shit. Like that's more of what I need all the time in these movies. I want to see a ton of just brutal sawing through people with the chainsaw kills. That's what we're signing up for. But we just never get that, I feel like. We very rarely get that.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

We absolutely do. And I think that's the real struggle here. I feel like this movie had so much potential to do things a lot cooler. And listen, I am very happy that Benny lives. Don't get me wrong. But I do need to point out that he could have absolutely been taken out by Leatherface. Now, he kicks away the chainsaw and then Leatherface gets back on him, right? But the fact that Leatherface chose in this moment when there was a distraction to just kick him instead of finish him off is absurd. And it should be on his annual performance review.

SPEAKER_03 28:08

Oh my gosh. Not the performance review.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Again, mediocre.

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

It's time that we fucking performance coach these guys because they gotta fucking step it up.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Man, that's wild. Liz listen, yeah, you're you're trying to look at at some of these, and here's the thing we've got Tex, right? I think Tex gets set on fire, he dies, that's cool, but I guess in the original cut, Tex doesn't even die. Like he gets set on fire or whatever, but he doesn't die, and he comes back at the end and fucks shit up. So there's that. But also, I think Tinker, we get this mystery with Tinker Sawyer. We get this mystery of, you know, does Tinker die? Does Tinker not die? But the reality is in the original cut, Tinker does die from bleeding out, but they cut that out for this cut, so it's like this whole kind of mysterious wonder, but let's just say Tinker bled out. So I think that it's interesting. Why do you make these decisions for these two characters and then hide those decisions in the edit? Why do you need a mystery that this person died? Why do you not want this person to come back at the end, or why would you want the person to come back at the end after they got set on fire?

SPEAKER_01 29:21

You know why? Because they lack conviction to do literally fucking anything else. That's why.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

Maybe that's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

So Tinker actually brings me to a really interesting part because I was just thinking about as you're talking about, I can't remember Tinker, like what a stupid fucking name. Every time I hear it, I think Tinker Bell.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

But then we think about Tex, and I think the family dynamic, and we'll talk about it a little bit in characters, but the family dynamics of it all is really interesting to me, and thinking about like the supportive nature of it, because in the previous films, we just got a bunch of dudes, just dudes being dudes, generations of men, and now we have a more diverse family mix, which I think is interesting, also problematic. There's a lot of weird shit happening here. But I think about the contraption he built so that the little girl could have her first kill. Right. I'm like, yeah, man, good for you. You and uncle? Maybe, I guess. Cousin brother, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Are you saying that you you like to see the family work together?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

I do like it a little bit, yeah. I do like it a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 30:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Now the logistics of the family working together and who they are in relation to another. Listen, we'll talk about that again. It gets a little bit weird. It's giving Halloween six the curse of Michael Myers a little bit, and in a way that I'm not fond of.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Listen, a family working together to achieve a singular kill and create a memory for a child, you know, you gotta like throw it a bone somewhere, right?

SPEAKER_03 30:45

I guess so. I guess you do. It's a wild concept, but I will tell you, it it's hard to really when you look at this movie or you reflect on this movie, it's really hard to pull out a lot of nice things to say about this movie. I know we're trying here, but I I know it sounds harsh. It's true. Watch it. If you haven't watched it, watch it, you'll know it's true. But I would honestly have to say, to me, and I'll pour one out for Binks here tonight, because for me, it is the music, it is the music playing throughout this movie. I gravitated to it. A song would come on, it would be some kind of rock song or some kind of thing that sounded like it was gonna be some kind of power metal ballad or something. And I think I even two times tried to see what the song was that was playing, and I couldn't find it. It wasn't working out for me. But the interesting thing about the music was that it oddly worked really well with the film, it complemented some of these scenes really well without really distracting you from the film itself, and I think that is hard to do sometimes, and it was just a weird thing that stood out to me.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

I can't even remember music in this movie. That's how forgettable this movie is. Nothing, absolutely nothing. I cannot hear it in my mind. I'm sure it was great, maybe it was hidden when it hit, but the music was so lost on me, and I think it's because all sound has been replaced with a sound in my mind of the shoot 'em up moment where Benny is just fucking lighting people up, and then all of a sudden we reveal that grandpa it was just a doll. When they shoot his face and it's obviously just a doll, I'm like, okay, we have to fucking know what they're doing, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:26

This is where I struggle with this movie. A, he looked fake as fuck in the first movie. Now we're back again doing this bullshit. At least they leaned into the crash test dummy of it all. But that's the one sound in my mind that's overpowering it. Maybe because it was overstimulating. That might be what it is. I might have like really felt the music, and then it was just replaced with a bad memory. I might have blocked it out.

SPEAKER_03 32:49

Yeah, I don't know. I think it was meant to just be a decomposing grandpa, you know? Super dusty. Dusty it was.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Ancient bullshit is what Paris would call this. Ancient bullshit. I know you gave it to the music, but I'm gonna give it to the opening scene. And by opening scene, I mean Leatherface stitching together his mask. The opening titles, awful. Absolutely hated the graphics there. But Leatherface actually tightly assembling a la Freddy manufacturing his glove because of the new line cinema of it all. A thousand percent a fantastic moment. And it was there, when you look at that gore and you look at like just how like ugh it is, it feels like it's a really great opportunity for this movie to do way more than it actually does.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

It was a great opening sequence. How do you squander that and just go downhill from there? Because yes, it was great when that was happening. I'm like, okay, yes, we're seeing some gruesome shit right from the get-go. We're watching somebody's face get ripped off and sewn into a mask or whatever the fuck. I'm here for it. Okay, this is how we're starting off, and then I feel like I just sat there with my dumbfounded face like I was watching Bambi or something. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

I will say though, that opening scene with the mask assembly actually is my favorite scene in the movie, and that's saying a lot because that's the first few seconds of the movie. This is peak potential, and then all of a sudden just fucking.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

Oh no. Yeah. You know, I I did enjoy the whole uncovering the mass grave scene or scenes where they're uncovering bodies or body parts. It's all muddy and gross in there. I thought you got some of the best visuals of decomposing gross bodies. Outside of the scene you're talking about, the opening scene, I think that was another scene where it gave me some false hope of what this movie could or was going to be with this gory, grotesque looking stuff that they were pulling off, you know?

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah. And again, it's like false advertisement. This movie catfished us.

SPEAKER_03 35:00

We did get catfished.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

We absolutely were hit up for a date by someone who photographed well from certain angles, only to be a completely different human in person.

SPEAKER_03 35:11

Yeah. Dang. And it's tough because yeah, you do get some great visuals of those decomposing bodies, and then there is this slight comedic value. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not. I'm really not sure. But after they clearly say that they found like 40 to 50 bodies, you then at some point cut to these news reporters that are recording for TV saying that they found like 60 to 70 bodies. And I thought if that wasn't intentional, it's still fucking funny. But if it was intentional, it just goes to show you this whole game of telephone that even the news isn't reporting accurately, which I thought was hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

You actually mentioned the reporters of it all. You obviously watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

You caught Stretch's cameo as a reporter.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Like, see, this I want more of. Give me a world in which Stretch comes back at the end and takes up the mantle from this final girl who didn't deserve to be a final girl in a movie because she worked so hard. Now she's living her life. Obviously, a different character.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

And again, I didn't really like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Let me also just remind you of that. But I was longing for Stretch to come back in this movie because of how lackluster our main survivors were outside, again, outside of Benny.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

It's true. What do you feel for these characters? You have to give us someone to root for. I've said this a bunch of times in in various other movies. If you've got no one to root for, it's not going to be successful. And at the very least, you got to do something good with the antagonist because if you aren't rooting for a protagonist, the antagonist has got to be the one you're rooting for. You know, we think of Friday the 13th. You want to see Jason kill a bunch of people. That's the point. It's just dumb killing, things like that. To an extent, depending on the film, I guess, you want Michael Myers to be killing everybody. You want to see those kills. You're you're not always rooting for all of the protagonists in every film, but you gotta have that. You gotta have that. And when you have no characters that you care about, and your antagonist is not up to par, what the fuck are we doing here?

SPEAKER_01 37:32

It's again giving the bland. So we have this whole opening where you realize that these people are on a trip to spend some time together before they break up. Except I don't give a shit about them. I don't give a single fuck.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

Who the fuck does that, first of all? Hey, we're breaking up, so let's have one last summer together and go on this road trip and bond.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Thanks for the memories.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

No way. No one fucking does that. Let's just cut that out of reality right now.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Jeepers Creepers did this years later with her brother and sister, and it was much better.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Okay, yes. This is true.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

And then also just like their acting was absolutely terrible. And I think what kills it for me is the fact that we have Michelle, who's so void of anything, until all of a sudden she's maniacal. She starts fucking yelling back. And I'm going here with this really super on the nose, and I'm thinking about this. You have this moment where they hit the armadillo, and then she's like, Guess we gotta put it down, and then she can't even, right? So we have this moment where obviously she cannot hurt an armadillo because violence is no answer to violence, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

But of course, she'll have to resort to violence later to escape the horrors that she's about to encounter. And and I guess really when you think about what the arc of a good survivor is, the recipe is there, but it was so poorly acted that I cannot stand behind it at all.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Yeah, no, I feel you. That's the that's the biggest problem, is that you just got no one to root for in the film. But what I think is interesting is the dynamic of the family, and even though they didn't explore that dynamic very well, they didn't go really deep with it. I think we we do get to see little pieces of it, and I think if nothing else, that was the most entertaining aspect of these characters.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

Yeah, I also love that Vigo Mortenson secretly played Texas gay. In his mind, that's what he was doing, and I fucking love that.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

But did you pick up on the fact that the little girl is Leatherface's daughter?

SPEAKER_03 39:44

I did not. I'm gonna be honest. I didn't pick up on that during the film. I did read about it afterwards, but I didn't pick up on it during the film at all.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

I mean, it was weird. Her room was filled with skeleton remains and shit. So, from that standpoint, when I was watching that, I was like, what the fuck? Who does this and how does this little girl living in this room and playing in this room? And then I I don't know. I but it didn't cross my mind that she was Leatherface's daughter.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

She sits on his lap.

SPEAKER_03 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

They kiss each other. It's fucking weird. She kisses a flesh mask.

SPEAKER_03 40:20

Gross.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

The moment there, and then there was the commentary that makes it elude like she is a child of one of their victims. And that's what I'm talking about. It's giving Halloween six Curse of Michael Myers, the producer's cut, when you have the implication of where the little baby came from.

SPEAKER_03 40:36

Whoa. Wow. That could be.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

I fucking hate it. Absolutely hate it.

SPEAKER_03 40:41

Oh no, that is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

In a movie that's already shitty, that is a moment where it gets ick, but then it doesn't even have the Rob Zombie conviction to be so ick it says something.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

Oh no, this is a whole nother level of ick, you know?

SPEAKER_01 40:56

This is just ick and you're bad at it.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

Yeah. No, that's that's not good. I don't like any anything about this, yeah. I don't I I oh no, I don't want to be around whatever that is happening here because yeah, just to think of that concept is is crazy and and it's very it's very plausible for sure. But even just the sibling fights and stuff, and I'm not sure. I'm are are are all the brothers, are they cousins? Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Listen, realistically, we need a family tree.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

Yeah, we do. We need a Sawyer family tree. I gotta break this family down. I I did think the rivalry shit, the brothers or cousins or whatever fighting, it's just the dynamic of of this little family feud where they kind of argue with each other, and you know, they you you have that kind of fight as brothers, right? You you you fight over something and you fuck each other up, you fight whatever, bang each other up. Like that's a brotherly thing that happens. But the whole fact that Tinker gets his hand forced by Leatherface into the fire to grab his whatever Walkman or whatever the hell went in there to grab out of there, I can you even do that? Like he went in there and his hand steadily went into the fire, grabbed the thing, and pulled it out. I don't know if I could do that. There's no way.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

No fucking chance. I'm not fucking around with any of that.

SPEAKER_03 42:18

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't know. But the dynamic of this family was interesting. The mother was interesting. Just, oh, I don't know. How does this help how does this happen? And where where is this? Is this house in relation to the other house? Is it this like where what's happening here? I just want I just I gotta know the family history here and and where they're all at. Because they're coming out of the woodwork.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

There's a really great YouTube channel actually that goes through the history of every single character ever in a movie. I'm pretty sure they've done one on the Sawyer family. So I'm gonna link anything that I can find. I'm also gonna link a Reddit post that I just sent Sean, and it's a handwritten family tree flow chart from great grandma Sawyer down to Leatherface's daughter, baby Sawyer. We'll see if that tracks.

SPEAKER_03 43:09

Okay. We'll have to take a look at that. I I think another thing with this family right that's interesting is and you mentioned it, is the is the grandpa, right? And the grandpa looking fake or whatever, but I I think it is meant to be dead grandpa sitting at the table, rotting away, and they just played this whole like psycho. Yeah, this whole imaginary game of feeding grandpa and all this weird shit. I mean, you're all deranged, it's it is what it is, it adds to it. I I think the original concept, if I'm not mistaken, was to have that grandpa not only survive, but really be talkative. Like they this the he would have a lot of dialogue, which I think would be really interesting, and he was supposed to be rambling about like some weird I don't know, like whatever. Like we remember them good old days or whatever, that kind of thing. And and I don't know. What would be good? Would you want to see this talkative grandpa out of nowhere? Think of grandpa from uh House of a Thousand Corpses, right? Would you want to have that grandpa roaming around talking shit? Or would you want to see them pretend that they still have a grandpa with this corpse sitting at the table? I almost like the corpse idea more.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

I like the corpse more, but I want to know that they know. And they're just being delusional. You know what I mean? The problem is that the corpse looks fake, that they keep treating it real, but also it doesn't look quite correct in its decomposition or mummification. Like psycho, it's fucking obvious that it's a dead woman who's been dead for decades. And this is it's still like a crusty doll. It it just is not compelling enough, I think is what my issue is. I'm okay with grandpa not talking. I'm okay with it being like old decrepit needs the blood of the victims to even just keep some level of sustenance alive. I'm okay with him not doing anything as long as I can understand that. And I know that okay, am I asking for the movie to dumb it down for me? No, but I'm asking for its effects to be better, is what I'm asking for. Don't shoot grandpa in the face and as a dusty clay doll if you want me to believe that it's real. Because now I'm not convinced that you know. Because then it's just a doll. It's not even just like a dead person, it's just a doll.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Oh no, it looked terrible. Like it wasn't, you could tell. Yeah, I'm with you. Could they have gotten more realistic? It would have been better for sure. But listen, we're talking about a film that ha doesn't have too many wins as it is, so I don't know. At this point, what do you expect, you know?

SPEAKER_01 45:36

I don't expect shit. Much like I didn't expect Ken Foray, Vigo Mortensen, or Carolyn Williams to be in this movie. And you know what? Even for as brief as stretch as cameo was, all three of them, best part of the fucking movie for me.

SPEAKER_03 45:52

The best part of the movie is tough. It's tough because I really don't know what to say. Like, I I think the best part of the movie probably was all the stuff that they edited out of the movie. Like, I'm really trying to piece it together, but I think that everything that I can keep hearing about what they took out of the movie and what was supposed to be in the original and all these different things, and the people that I've heard talk about how their experience was with the unrated version, it just makes me feel like the best part of this movie isn't even in this movie. You know, like that's crazy to think about, but it's not here. It's not here, it's on the cutting room floor. It's out, it's out. They they snipped it out. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

You got nothing to give this movie. You have to go to the negatives, you have to go to what never saw the light of public day.

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Oh no, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

You're not wrong, Sean. That is the problem with this movie. Because when you have a cast like you have, when you have the financial backing that you have, you cannot squander this opportunity, and yet it was squandered. You dropped the ball. I don't disagree that the best part of the movie isn't even in the movie. It feels like a wasted opportunity, a wasted chance to make something good. And you know, for as crazy as an I know the next movie gets, at least I respect it for having a personality because this one is is bland and I will never rewatch it. Absolutely never.

SPEAKER_03 47:24

Well, I feel you because there is no way I'm watching this one again, but I'm gonna go and take your word for it on the next one because I will watch the rest of the franchise at some point so I can close out this franchise, but I am honestly upset right now, folks, that I spent three dollars on this rental because I genuinely feel robbed. I genuinely feel robbed. I didn't even get audio that matched the timing of this movie, and I paid the three dollars, okay?

SPEAKER_01 47:56

If you did have the correct audio, do you think it would have been better?

SPEAKER_03 48:01

It would have been no, it wouldn't have been better, but it would have been it would have been worth at least 50 cents.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Yeah. Can I just read with your consent, Sean, the text message that you sent me Tuesday at 11 15 PM?

SPEAKER_03 48:15

Yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

Let the record show that Sean said that should have been free on Tubi for sure. To which I replied, right? And he said, geez. And I said, I didn't have a great time. He said, somehow I feel worse off for having watched that.

SPEAKER_03 48:33

It's true.

SPEAKER_01 48:34

I replied, dude, honestly, I almost hated it, but hating implies a level of passion I just can't muster. And there you have it. Leatherface, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, 1990, is a universal hack that neither of us will be revisiting. Now, we've certainly had a robust discussion here, but it doesn't end here by any means. We want to know what you think. Do you also think this movie was bland? Let us know. You can join in on the conversation by hanging out with us for free over in our Discord and click the link in our show notes to sign up.

SPEAKER_03 49:03

And if you've enjoyed listening to us literally rip through this episode with a chainsaw, consider becoming one of our patrons. Visit patreon.com slash hackerslash to enjoy more of the show with early access, extended episodes, bonus content, and live shows.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

We'll see you next time, folks. And remember, there's roadkill all over Texas.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

Please spare me the postmortems.