Leatherface III (Cut Version on Syfy)

I am grading this experience loosely because I watched it off of Syfy, but this revisit of Leatherface III wasn’t particularly eventful. Loved Foree as a motorist whose jeep careens thanks to Leatherface and family’s shenanigans as they pursue Kate Hodge and boyfriend, William Butler, a couple passing through Texas on their way to Florida. Leatherface isn’t the least bit scary, his family is made up of crackpots that don’t have that same level of skin-crawling creep factor we often attach to the Sawyer clan (even the mother with the voicebox and decaying pops who is basically a crispy critter, including a little blonde girl with a doll who is right out of the Bad Seed catalogue of wayward juveniles, all just can’t quite measure up despite efforts to give them this crazed nightmare fuel for out-of-towners on the road in parts unknown) although a gas station attendant (Everett, with thick drawl and speedy delivery) and supposed hitchhiking cowboy (Viggo Mortensen), not to mention the dastardly crude Joe Unger, give it their best shot, and Hodge, nailed to a chair with mouth taped shut, can’t quite duplicate the same kind of hysterical terror as Burns from the original (or Cindy from the sequel). Burr, I felt, just isn’t quite as off-the-wall as Hooper was, more or less, attempting to mimic what made the previous films so popular but perhaps just not quite up to the task. And it didn’t help that his film was made at a time when the movie industry was cracking down on violence in film, using the weapon of the Rated-X to force the company to take the necessary measures to neuter the sequel so it would pass inspection. And what was left is a shell of what Burr perhaps wanted it to be. Still, Leatherface trying to get a spelling machine to accept Food for an answer containing seven letters and not being able to really use his Saw Is Family chainsaw (this was quite impressive) all that much to any serious effect don’t help matters. 1.5/5

I will more than likely give the unrated version a go eventually but admittedly I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to return any time soon.