Rating: Summary: As Bad As You Think It Will Be Review: I thought this movie would be a good ending to this series... i was wrong. This movie left out important facts from all of the other three movies. It was aa embarrassment to Renee and Mathew and must have been a low budjet spoof or something. It isn't worth the money to see it and it shouldn't have been made. I hope they put out another one that makes more since and is more like the first one. If you want a good rental then go rent part one or one of its two better sequels.
Rating: Summary: This is The Best Horror Film Of The Nineties Review: Joe Bob Briggs, The Movie Channel And speaking of great American institutions, it took more than twenty years, but we finally have a decent sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is, of course, the greatest drive-in movie ever made. All along we thought Tobe Hooper, the director of Saw, was a genius. And he is. He really is. But we completely overlooked the writer of Saw, Kim Henkel, who wrote the second greatest movie to come out of Texas in the last twenty years, Last Night at the Alamo. And now Kim has finally done what he probably should have done years ago, and he's become a director himself, and his first effort is The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a flick so terrifying and brilliant that it makes the other two Chainsaw sequels seem like After-School Specials. Kim basically kept three things from the original. He kept the house in the woods. He kept the idea of a mutant cannibal family that lies in wait for anybody lost on the highway. And he kept, of course, Leatherface, the chainsaw-wielding transvestite human-skin masked legend who inspired every great horror villain of the last/*/ three decades, from Jason to Michael Myers to Freddy Krueger to Jame Crumb. Oh yeah. One other thing. He uses that giant meat hook again. Yuk. This time two prom-night couples get lost out on the highway where a creepy redneck named W.E. roams around in a satanic wrecker, collecting bodies and quoting literature and trapping teenage girls in gunny sacks. When you first meet W.E. you think there probably couldn't be a scarier situation than finding this guy staring down over your hood with a flashlight in the middle of the night. Wait till you meet the rest of his family. This one has so many completely unpredictable twists that I don't wanna give it away, but it definitely satisfies the first first rule of great drive-in filmmaking: Anyone can die at any moment. There are a couple of scenes in this baby that were almost too intense for me to watch, and I've seen 47,000 of these things. This is the best horror film of the nineties. Eight dead bodies. Two breasts. Neck-breaking. Sledgehammer to the head. Bimbo on a meat hook. Stufffed state trooper. Woman on fire. Face-licking. Head stomping. Four motor vehicle chases with four crashes. Evil stepfather Fu. Meat Locker Fu. Four stars. Joe Bob says check it out twice.
Rating: Summary: Refreshingly berserk piece of work Review: ou can't begin to take Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation even half seriously--first, because you can't truly take Tobe Hooper's 1974 original seriously, regardless of the theoretical debate about surplus aggression and latent capitalism; and second, because this is the third film in the franchise to have long ago headed straight-to-video. Topping it off, of course, is the fact that this ludicrous three-year-old cheapie would never be seeing the weary glare of a projector bulb if it didn't star Texas natives Renee Zellweger (Jerry Maguire) and Matthew McConaughey (Contact) before they became magazine covers. But, as written and directed by Kim Henkel (the original film's not-so-unjustly overlooked screenwriter), The Next Generation is not just a rote exercise in sequelmania that happens to have a few budding stars in its dime-store cast. In fact, there's not much that's rote about it--it's a refreshingly berserk piece of work, an absurdly nonsensical genre spoof that lampoons its sources more imaginatively than Scream. That's not to say it makes any sense, but that is to say that it may very well be the best performance of McConaughey's career. The Texas film industry is apparently a tight little island--both Zellweger and McConaughey got their breaks in Texan Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. Hilariously, The Next Generation opens at a high school prom, suggesting the thalidomide offspring of Linklater's seminal film. But Henkel's hyper-caffeinated hogwash begins with the usual lumbering exposition and ponderous setup (high schoolers get lost in the woods, find a secluded house . . . ) before exploding into Living Theater absurdity. The "family" of psychopathic miscreants isn't quite as straightforward here as it has been in previous Chainsaw films. You've never seen anything like it. Destined for cult status, TCM:TNG sees no reason to adhere to its predecessors. All it cares about, from start to finish, is letting the riffs fly. As a result, you never know what's going to happen next. The performances are indescribably over-the-top: McConaughey makes Rutger Hauer look like Steven Wright, and the rest of the cast (particularly Perenski) is outrageously silly. I recommend this shrieking monstrosity to those who loved McConaughey in A Time To Kill and Contact--to him, this may seem like a Ghost of Movie Roles Past back to haunt him, but I've never found him so fascinating. --Michael Atkinson
Rating: Summary: This is why horror gets a bad name Review: This movie is complete trash. This is supposed to be funny? It's not one of those "it's so bad it's funny". This is "it's so bad I'm embarrassed that humans made this movie".
Rating: Summary: NOT SCARY Review: A bloodless, totally unfrightening sequel. If you want a scary movie, I recomend: Carrie, Last House on the Left, the original Texas chainsaw massacre, Hellraiser, Aliens, or Halloween parts 1 and 4.
Rating: Summary: The lowest moment in cinematic history. Review: It's amazing that anyone involved with such an awful film actually "made it" in Hollywood. This fourth installment in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" series is the worst yet. The first was a classic. The second was a failed attempt at dark comedy. The third was a boring mess. The fourth is COMPLETE TRASH. It is boring, lame, poorly acted, incompetent, and most unforgivenly: NOT SCARY. In fact little blood is even shown on screen. No wonder studios didn't want to release it.
Rating: Summary: Ignore anyone who tells you to rent this. Review: I told my horror movie fanatic friend that I just saw the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and love it. I thought it was incredibly scary and effective. He told me "well then check out the fourth one, it's great" I took his advice. And it was terrible. It had no redeming quality. Usually bad films like this can at least make you uneasy with graphic violence and make you laugh at it's campy humor. But this had bearly one scene of gore and the jokes were wretchidly unfunny and tasteless. As result of watching this movie, I have lost all respect for my friend who actually ENJOYED this.
Rating: Summary: The worst movie I've ever sat through Review: I watched this movie one rainy night, hoping to be scared. I was sorely disapointed. The only reason I watched the whole movie was because I was sure no movie could be this awful. It had to get better. It didn't. This movie- about a group of prom-going teenagers who fall prey to backwoods cannabals- is ludicrous, dull, and completley inane. I find it impossible that anyone could enjoy or support this movie.
Rating: Summary: Fourth "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is an awful embarrassment Review: I was astonished how amazing the first "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was. Director Tobe Hooper, along with writer Kim Henkel, established it as a gripping, shocking, and insanely intense horror film. They created such a brutal atmosphere that you couldn't help but squeeze whatever you could get your hands on as you watched five friends struggle for their lives against a family of cannablistic sadists. After the first film, which became a highly regarded cult classic, director Hooper followed it up in 1986 with a sequel. The film wasn't bad, but came off as more like a parody of the first and concentrated more on morbid humor than scares. Then came "Leatherface" the third sequel, which was a shameless and terrible attempt to cash in. Now, the writer of the original "Massacre"- Kim (billed as Ken in the original's credits)Henkel writes and directs the fourth installment. Henkel has said he did it because he was unhappy with the previous two sequels and thought they were overly violent. So he made his own "Massacre" and he keeps the violence at a minimal (at least considering the title.) There is little violence and even littler scares. The final product turns out to be the worse of all four "Texas Chainsaw Massacres." The characters are so obnoxious and utterly annoying that you really don't care what happens to them. Henkel also gives the chainsaw wielding villian Leatherface a make over. Whereas he used to be a frightening, repulsive, unpredicatable human monster he is now a laughable, whiney man-child. The film's only positive quality is a haunting cameo from one of the original's stars, Marilyn Burns.
Rating: Summary: A SCARY MOVIE, BUT WERE'S THE MASSACRE Review: It was a scary movie about being trapped with Psychos and had a nice menecing tone, but the title sucked. There was no massacre, with or without a chainsaw. A bought this thinking it was going to be a good blood bath movie, but what I got was still interesting.
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