Leatherface III on IFC

When I was applying the finishing touches to the Cutting Class (1989) review for the blog, I had Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) on (it was shown on IFC channel). I felt as I watched it that this sequel felt too “sanitized” and tried to so hard to establish the madness of the Sawyer clan yet seemed to be a pretender—a movie that wanted to be depraved and disturbing but lacked the visual power and inability to hit the raw nerve like the first two films by Hooper—instead of a sequel that belonged next to the first two Chainsaw movies. It came late in the game when the Hollywood Censorship Machine was at full vigor. I have an unrated cut I was planning to review here, sometime, but thought I’d comment on the oft-circulated “cut” version that often turns up on cable from time to time (and did in the 90s). Because I knew the results, I must admit that I enjoyed seeing “the set up performance” of the Sawyer family near the beginning when Viggo [Mortensen] shows up as one of those smooth, charismatic, charming drifter Texan types who seems to be a person to trust and in heroic at protecting the honor of ladies wronged by pervert hillbilly jag-offs, only to later reveal himself to be anything but. His wearing an apron and talking skinning a friend of the final girl heroine (Kate Hodge) while the poor guy was hanging upside down (but still breathing as the Sawyer boys gleefully surmise) had me grinning ear to ear. I can’t imagine Viggo wants this film to come up in conversation anymore than Matthew McConaughey would with Chainsaw--The Next Generation. Tom Everett makes for an amusing skuzzy sleazebag (with an albino eye [natch]) who Viggo’s “Tex” fakes a dispute and violent confrontation with (Everett’s Alfredo Sawyer (Yes, a Sawyer with an Eye-talian name!) owns the same “Last Chance Gas” that Jim Siedow did previously; Kate Hodge and her boyfriend (played by William Butler as a dorky pre-med student) stop off to get gas at the station with Alfredo cutting naked lady pictures from a magazine and making marked lewd comments to his female customer that are absurdly inappropriate, but they are befitting his scummy character) that surprisingly lasts until the end, mainly because he doesn’t really ever join his family when Hodge is kidnapped, bound and gagged in a chair, while her beau was stringed up to be cut for food pieces. I guess Dawn of the Dead and Rob Zombie fans will cheer a bit when Foree shows up as a motorist inadvertently involved in the Hodge-Sawyer chaos. I can’t remember him surviving the film’s cut I watched as a teenager. Maybe it is all such a blur that he might have and my memory is giving me the shaft. I can’t say I’m much of a fan of this one. While the chainsaw is badass (with an insanely long blade), Leatherface has been reduced to a clown, playing a spell-game and lacking any ferocity, his presence not intimidating in the least which, to me, is a major hurdle to overcome. I will watch the uncut version to see if my sentiments towards the film change at all. I did rent the unrated dvd version it seems a few years ago; I can’t recall feeling all that much more impressed from the cut version I watched for years as a kid, though. Joe Unger has a hook for a hand, but this isn’t at all convincing because you can clearly see the bulge of his hand under the shirt sleeve, losing any authenticity of its impact as a potential “cutting accident”. I always felt director Jeff Burr tried all he could to mimic his predecessors, but Leatherface III seemed to lack the “let’s get crazy” insanity of Hooper’s own sequel and the gritty, sweaty “road trip to hell” of the original 74 masterpiece. I guess it just feels like a light-R imitation all the way, lacking the impact it was looking for. I do remember the trailer for the film, way back when [trailer here], and though it is so cheesy now, it left an interest in that teenage Scarecrow in the early 90s. I do think I even actually remember seeing the trailer on television before its release in a neutered form to theaters. Trying to get under our skin, this third film also featured a little girl (warping the symbolic purity of Heater O’Rourke of Poltergeist movie series fame) who sits in the lap of Leatherface and seems comfortably at ease within the symbiosis of the twisted Sawyer family, and the Mother Sawyer (Miriam Byrd-Nethery) has a “speech generating device” on her throat so she can talk in a “throaty” manner to Hodge. While the attempts at “this family is severely fucked up” somewhat work (they do enjoy mocking Hodge while she’s stuck watching them have their way with Butler’s corpse), I just felt they were less organic and more forced for hopeful impact. Maybe it is all in the performances and presentation where those involved seemed desperate to make your skin crawl, but, for whatever reason, they never quite reach such aimed heights. However, returning to an initial thought, I did find the "performance" of  the Sawyer brothers, motivating Hodge and Butler's Ryan to take a short cut after a shotgun is pulled by Alfredo, blowing out their window and then seemingly shooting Tex, entertaining because once you know it is all a ruse--probably used between the two to dupe numerous motorists passing through--I have to appreciate how Viggo works the scene. We who have seen this film in the past know that Hodge and Butler are being played, but they are unaware of Viggo's true intentions for them. So it is a tried and true performance by the brothers that finally is ended thanks to Hodge's recovery once Foree (as much a hero as she is a heroine) disrupts the family's plans to chop up some fresh meat, using a machine gun to mow through members of the Sawyer clan.