Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review.

We’re celebrating Halloween this month with the traditional horror movie marathon each Friday. This year, I decided to return to some series that I had covered in the past. Now, with it being Friday the 13th today, you probably expected to see this movie covered for the spooky day in the spooky month. Yeah, Leatherface… He’s the Friday the 13th guy, right?

You know I’m just yanking your crank. Honestly, there’s not another Friday the 13th movie that I really want to cover on the blog. So, instead, I opted to go back to a series I haven’t covered in a long time and discuss Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. The only other time I looked at a movie starring the leatheriest of faces was way back in October 2017 when I reviewed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

This is a weird series. At least for me, it is. I love the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There’s a grittiness to it that makes you feel uncomfortable from the start. It’s grainy. It’s sweaty. It looks and feels like you’re right there with the characters. Then, there’s the scene where Marilyn Burns is captured where she is screaming her head off. It’s a moment that actually affects me on a physical level. I’ve been made queasy by that scene on more than one occasion. It’s effective as hell, and one of the most effective scenes in film history to me.

Now, if you read my review of the sequel, then you know I like that movie too. It’s the one that I have some vague memories of seeing on cable when I was a kid. So there’s some nostalgia there for it too. Yet, beyond the first two films in the series, I have only seen two others – the 2003 remake and the 2022 film that was released to Netflix. The latter of those two was not an enjoyable watch for me. Because it was bad. I hated it.

If I’m being totally honest, before I looked up the date of that remake I mentioned in the previous paragraph, if you had asked me how many Leatherface movies there were, I would probably have said, “I dunno, like 12?” It always seems like someone is farting out a new TCM movie every couple years. The actual number of movies in this franchise is nine, and there are three distinct continuities. I almost couldn’t care less about any of that.

I’m just not that big of a fan of this series. Again, the original is pretty fantastic. It comes off like a snuff film. It’s a peculiar creature all to itself. The second is a wholly different experience and, itself, a creature of its own too. The remake is a product of the 00s and the return of horror exploitation. The 2022 film is just a stinky turd. None of the other movies in the series ever appealed to me to watch. They’re just there. They aren’t begging for my attention. They seem perfectly fine with me not giving them any attention.

But then… There’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. It might not have the trailer that Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III had. It might not have the tongue-in-cheek humor the second movie had. It certainly doesn’t have the grit, grime, and reality the original had. But it does have a pre-Jerry Maguire Renee Zellweger and an absolutely bonkers performance by Matthew McConaughey.

Both McConaughey and Zellweger appeared in 1993’s Dazed and Confused. In fact, there was another 1993 film they nearly both appeared in – My Boyfriend’s Back. It was the first film that McConaughey appeared in. Zellweger would have also made her screen debut in the film, but her scenes were cut. After TCM: TNG, Zellweger would get a juicy role in the cult classic Empire Records. The following year, she would get the part in a movie that would propel her into superstardom as Dorothy Boyd in Jerry Maguire.

McConaughey’s rise to superstardom was basically just as swift. His part as David Wooderson in Dazed and Confused was incredibly memorable and by 1996, he was a household name snagging the lead in the John Grisham courtroom drama A Time to Kill, and really good parts in 1997’s Contact, opposite Jodie Foster, and Amistad from Steven Spielberg. I’m curious if anyone knew at the time of making this incredibly small-budget horror sequel that these two actors would have three Academy Awards for acting between them.

The writer and director of TCM: TNG is Kim Henkel. Henkel was the co-writer of the original with Tobe Hooper. Mostly, Henkel is best known for his connection to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He’s either served as writer, producer, or, as is the case with this movie, director on other Leatherface movies. This is the only film he ever directed. Of his scripts, there are two more that I do feel will ultimately show up here someday. The first is the 1976 killer croc movie Eaten Alive, also directed by Tobe Hooper. The other is the 1983 Danny Steinmann-directed spookfest The Unseen. But, like I said, after 1983, Henkel mostly got to take advantage of sequels made in the TCM series.

I do want to say that according to American legend, Joe Bob Briggs, this film is the best horror film of the 90s. I think it’s high time I judge for myself.

Now, I don’t know if you know this about your humble author of B-Movie Enema, but I do love me some good continuity. TCM: TNG takes place within what I like to call the Prime Texas Chainsaw Massacre timeline. The proof is right here in this opening narration that reads the above words that were on screen. August 18, 1973 was the date of the first film’s happenings. The second film took place in the mid-80s and the third was at the end of the 80s or the very early 90s. TCM: TNG takes place in the mid-90s. Thus, everything in the above text is accurately placing this as the final movie before that shit-for-brains 2022 movie that angered me way more than it should have.

Now, there is one thing of interest. The movie does say that it takes place on May 22, 1996. However, the Wikipedia page for this movie says it’s really 1994. Ultimately, it doesn’t really change what I was talking about above, nor does it affect what the opening narration spelled out for us, but it is one of those funny things that sometimes happen. Honestly, 1994 would make more sense in regards to this movie being released in 1995. How could the movie be talking about something that takes place in the future? Is this science fiction? Is this Leatherface in Space?

Well, there’s an actual easy explanation. Originally, the movie premiered at South By Southwest in 1995. It then did get a limited theatrical release in September 1995. After that, it kind of disappeared until a second limited theatrical run in September 1997 after Zellweger and McConaughey became big stars. So, in that original 1995 version, it was May 22, 1994 when the movie takes place. In this version I have on DVD, it’s the 1997 home video release so it’s been moved to 1996. Movies can sometimes be fun.

The movie opens with a pair of lips getting all dolled up with red lipstick. If we were influenced by most of the promotional materials, we’d expect this to be Leatherface. Most of the posters and the original video store boxes heavily featured a cross-dressing Leatherface. I think the prevailing thought was that this was some sort of extension of how Leatherface was seen in the original movie to have lipstick, eyeshadow, and rouge on his human skin mask. In that, it was like he was playing the role of a housewife or mother figure or something. In this, it seems to more heavily lay into the “Whoa check out how weird Leatherface is! He’s all dressed up like a lady person!” sort of thing.

However, it is, in fact, Renee Zellweger who plays Jenny. It’s prom night and she’s trying to figure out if she wants to go all in with the lipstick or not. She is going with her date Sean, but her friend Heather is trying to find her on again and off again boyfriend Barry. Barry is caught kissing another girl and Heather gets pretty damn mad. Barry, the stand-up fella that he is, says that he had to go make out with another girl because I guess Heather is not putting out. He says that if he doesn’t empty his balls, he’ll get prostate cancer. Jenny explains that is an absolute lie. Barry says retorts that 1) she’s ugly (she is absolutely not – for real, Zellweger with nerdy glasses is cute as a button) and 2) his dad’s a doctor so he’s pretty sure he knows what he’s talking about.

I literally cannot wait for McConaughey to kill this idiot.

Honestly, it’s hard to exactly say how these four people know each other or how they actually like each other. Sean and Jenny are maybe not a couple but maybe they are. Sean and Barry knew each other growing up and were friends, but when Barry became “too cool”, he stopped hanging out with Sean and now calls him a nerd. At best, Jenny and Heather seem to be passing friends, but it’s not exactly sure how close they are.

It’s not even clear exactly why they are all in the same care and whose car it is. It’s implied that it’s Barry’s car, but Heather is driving it. Sean and Jenny were in the backseat when Heather got in and took off in a huff. Why were they in the backseat? It originally seemed like they were making out or fucking or something, but it might be more likely they were getting stoned? All I know is these four characters had to be in the same car at the same time for the movie to do its thing.

Oh, and Barry is a massive douche.

As the two couples drive on, they end up in a foggy and lonely patch of road that seems to run through some trees. Another car shows up out of nowhere and rams into their car. The kid driving the other car collapses and Jenny says they need to get to a phone and call for help. She, Barry, and Heather walk for the phone while Sean stays back with the other driver.

We need to talk about Heather for a minute because she is bonkers. Heather is played by Lisa Marie Newmyer. Like everyone else in this movie, she’s a local Texas girl. She has had the majority of the lines in this movie and they have all been amazing. At first, you just kind of think she’s going to be a normal high school girl, right? She wants to know where her boyfriend is. She’s mad her boyfriend is making out with another girl. You get it. But then…

Once we realize that, for some reason, Jenny and Sean are now in the car with Heather and Barry, she first becomes concerned that Barry might actually get cancer and then she’ll feel bad that she didn’t fuck him before his hair falls out and shit. Then, she wonders what happens if they all get stoned and die in a car accident. Will they write a song about them? Then, after the accident that the kid got hurt in, she worries that she’ll be blamed if he dies and she’ll be called a murderer. THEN, she talks about having these dreams about a crazy person in the woods that kills her, and her naked dead body will be in pictures in newspapers and stuff. It’s an incredible performance.

Frankly, between Renee Zellweger being a cute-as-a-button nerd and Lisa Marie Newmyer’s a little sexier, but completely off-the-wall, Heather, this movie is already proving to be incredibly watchable. But we haven’t even talked about Darla. Not only that, but Vilmer hasn’t arrived yet either.

We’ll start with Darla. Jenny, Heather, and Barry find Darla, an insurance agent, still in her office. She calls her boyfriend, Vilmer, to help with the accident, and so on and so forth. I suppose I should mention that it’s been implied that there’s something about Jenny that others don’t know about, but it’s written all over her (at least according to Barry). When Darla notices Jenny is noticing something about her, she reveals to Jenny that she got fake tits and it drives all the guys wild. Barry talked about how Jenny seems weird around other people and is not exactly interested in sex. I think that’s a reference to either Jenny being weird about going through puberty, but probably more accurately she’s either gay or bi-sexual. There could be a case made for Jenny being asexual in today’s vernacular.

Later, it is kind of explained that Jenny’s mom has married several times over and each one of her stepdads has been pretty awful so it kind of makes her the socially awkward person she is. I still think there’s something to read here about how she reacts to sexuality.

Either which way, we now have Darla in this movie. She is smarmy and bringing serious deranged Jennifer Aniston energy to this movie. A jealous farmer’s wife throws a rock through the window and it leads to Connie flashing her fake tits out the window at them. It’s insane.

And we’ve STILL not met Vilmer yet.

Speak of the Devil! Vilmer shows up to check out the accident and check on the other boy who got into the accident with our main characters. First off, he’s got some sort of hydraulic thing on his leg to help him walk. Okay, that’s kind of cool (maybe this is taking place in the future and is, indeed, science fiction). Second, he goes up to the kid on the ground, listens to his chest, and announces the kid’s dead. When Sean says the kid isn’t dead, he’s just passed out, Vilmer breaks that kid’s neck.

He then runs Sean down with his truck and kills him by knocking him down and then rolls over him several times.

The side of Vilmer’s wrecker says “Illuminati Wrecking”. That was a subplot that Kim Henkel talked about some years later. There was some concept that was intended to be baked into the movie, and eventually a sequel, where the family that Leatherface was a part of was more of a cult. They terrorized people to help them achieve transcendence. In a way, there is something kind of interesting about that. This series has always had a group of people, a family, that were cannibals and had their own way of living and kind of treated meat as a religion. It’s maybe a little headier of a concept than what would really work for a sequel to a movie that kind of shifted into a different realm of self-reference and what have you, but there’s something to it that is kind of interesting. It would later get explored even more in Henkel’s 2012 unofficial sequel to this movie called Butcher Boys. We’ll come back around to this later in the movie too.

On the way back to the car, a truck drives by but won’t stop for the kids. Heather and Barry decide to follow the truck to flag it down, but Jenny doesn’t follow. This causes her to get separated from the other two. She opts to try to continue down the road to the car but thinks that someone is watching her. It only turns out to be a Hefty bag that’s flying around in the wind.

Heather and Barry continue on their own. Heather says that maybe they are making a mistake following the truck. It might lead to serial killers who wanted them to follow and lead them into a trap. Heather reveals that her insane constant commentary and talking about the things she does is an act. Yeah, no shit! They explain why her character is so bonkers. She reveals to Barry that she is the way she is so guys like her. She plays at being an airhead but she’s actually kind of smart. Well, at least she knows how to manipulate. It turns out she’s kind of a bitch. She picked that up from her mother who detests her father but remains with him so she can live a particular kind of life.

This movie might be playing with a deck of cards that is a bit more complicated than it needs to be, but I do appreciate how character motivation and personality is kind of explained.

Barry and Heather find the truck they were following. It’s parked at a somewhat ramshackle farmhouse. They knock at the door to find someone to give them a ride back to where their car is. What’s kind of funny, and where these two really do come off as complete and total morons, they probably walked further to get to the farmhouse than they would have to just keep on the road to the scene of the accident.

Alas, the movie has to happen and it’s not like Heather (a self-proclaimed bitch) and Barry (a total douche) are that redeemable even if Heather gives you every single possible reason to want to watch her with everything she says and in every way she looks.

Check it out! Leatherface has arrived. So, Barry is checking around the side and back of the house for someone to get a ride back to the car. Heather sits on the porch swing and that’s when a silent Leatherface creeps up and takes note of her looks and her hair. Barry gets held at gunpoint by W.E., another of Leatherface and Vilmer’s family members. Eventually, Leatherface tips off his presence by knocking over a broom on the porch. He grabs Heather and forces her inside the house where he eventually tosses her into a meat locker. While maybe not as well done or as iconic as Leatherface knocking that one dude out and then capturing the girl in the first movie, it was still a pretty good scene. His creeping up behind Heather is actually pretty good and rather eerie.

Meanwhile, Barry seemingly outwits W.E. by slipping into the farmhouse and locking the door keeping W.E. out. He starts looking for Heather but decides to stop off at the bathroom and take a leak. Then, he sees the corpse in the bathtub and the suit of flesh hanging on the back of the door. He’s then attacked by Leatherface who kills him with a sledgehammer. He decides to put Barry in the meat locker which then means he’s gotta put Heather someplace else. So, he goes for his old standby – impaling her on a meathook.

Back on the road, Vilmer’s truck approaches Jenny who flags him down. He offers her a ride. When she asks too many questions about where he’s going, if he was the one who moved the cars, and where did Sean go, he kind of gruffly threatens her to get in the truck. He then talks about stories about girls being picked up on the road by strangers and killing them. He then shows her the bodies of Sean and the other kid from the accident. She jumps out of the truck and escapes into the woods.

How she gets into the woods prevents Vilmer from chasing her with the truck. However, that leaves her to be chased by Leatherface. He chases her to the farmhouse. There, like Barry before her, she gets inside and locks him out. Upstairs, she sees a stuffed corpse of a cop. Being rather smart, she grabs the cop’s gun and threatens to shoot Leatherface, but the gun isn’t loaded. She jumps out of the upstairs window and escapes by jumping onto a line from the roof until Leatherface cuts the line with his chainsaw.

Now, I want to take a moment to say that I’m very disappointed with one thing in this movie. I was promised a woke, cross-dressing, or possibly even trans, Leatherface. Where is this version of Leatherface, goddammit? I’m not so repressed that the cover of that VHS tape that came out in the 90s had me at least a little curious about a femmed-out Leatherface complete with thigh-high red stockings, high heels, and a sexy raven-haired wig. Where’s my lady Leatherface at? So far, he’s not been much more than a mush-mouthed hill jack who is very likely super inbred.

C’mon, movie. I’m hip with the present-day business of sexuality being portrayed on a spectrum. I came into this movie wanting to be equally terrified and titillated by Leatherface and, so far, I’m only finding myself turned on by a dorky Renee Zellweger, a bonkers Lisa Marie Newmyer, and an overly forward Tonie Perensky playing Darla. I mean, sure, McConaughey is always bringing heat, but gimme that sexy Leatherface!

I digress.

We’re at the halfway point of the movie and things are going to get both familiar and utterly insane as we rush headlong into the conclusion of this movie. Let’s start with the familiar. Leatherface chases Jenny back to where Darla’s insurance office, which apparently runs all night long, is. Darla goes out to yell at whoever it is that is terrorizing Jenny. Now, we already know that Darla seems a little too weird to be an obvious good guy and she is, after all, Vilmer’s main squeeze. So, much like with the old man in the first movie, we know this is all part of the little Texas Chainsaw Massacre game.

W.E. arrives and ties up Jenny and tosses her in Darla’s trunk. In a turn of events that kind of propels this movie into TCM 2 levels of comedy self-awareness, Darla goes about the kidnapping of Jenny like business as usual. She stops at a pizza joint to get dinner for her, Vilmer, and the rest of the family. She teases the kid working at the place when Jenny keeps kicking and making noise and flat-out says she’ll show him what she has back there if he wants to see. Her flirtatious way of speaking to anyone and everyone is great. Then, cops pull up to the drive-thru behind her and the guy cop decides instead of seeing what’s going on with this lady and her trunk, he’s going to hit on her. This was such a crazy movie earlier on, but this second half starts nuts with this Darla character and it’s only going to keep pushing the envelope. The whole scene of Darla picking up the pizzas could have been completely cut out, but leaving it in just shows how the movie is not interested in being normal. It wants to be crazy.

And I am here for it.

Surprisingly, on the way back to the house with Jenny and the pizzas, Darla finds Heather crawling in the road. Somehow, she’s gotten free from being impaled on the meathook. Heather asks for help. Darla says she’s gotta go get a blanket or something. She finds a stick on the side of the road and weakly hits her with it while Heather keeps begging for her to not hit her.

I know I keep saying this movie is crazy. It’s more than that. It’s hilarious. It’s also full of unexpected things that should not exist in a horror movie. There are scenes that shouldn’t have remained in the movie but are here anyway. Going to pick up pizzas, informing characters by talking about their parents and how that makes them weird about sexuality or whatever, and comedically being completely useless in trying to bash someone with a stick while they just kind of whine about not wanting to be hit by the stick.

It’s one thing to have a character like Vilmer who is balls-to-the-wall crazy. It’s one thing to have W.E. who quotes things famous people have said. It’s one thing to have the animalistic Leatherface. It’s one thing to have the seductively calm, cool, and collected Darla who kind of acts as the head of the family. It’s a whole other thing having them all in this movie together and all have something silly about them.

Speaking of balls-to-the-wall crazy, Vilmer gets to shine. First, he asks Jenny if she doesn’t think the FBI is constantly watching the farmhouse. He tells her there are all sorts of things keeping an eye on them. Jenny has no idea how to even respond to it. I do not blame her. It’s crazy talk. They then drag the recaptured Heather in and Jenny begs for her not to be hurt. Vilmer maybe bites out her tongue? It’s not clear. He says he’s in the mood for love and seemingly kisses her or bites her face or something. He’s got blood in and around his mouth afterward.

Darla then reveals to Jenny that Vilmer’s job is basically to kill people, or at least torture them to the point of death. She talks about those stories about people who run everything. It’s like a cabal… or a secret society… or dun dun dunnnn… The DEEP STATE! Just then Vilmer busts in and literally throws Darla out of the room. He threatens Jenny by saying if she doesn’t give him a good reason not to, he’ll slit her throat. Her good reason? He must want her alive for some reason. That… That works.

Fucking chaos breaks out. Leatherface comes in and grabs Jenny and brings her to the kitchen. Vilmer slaps Darla who then starts hitting him with her shoe. While everything is exploding into insanity, Jenny grabs W.E.’s shotgun. She tells everyone to get on the floor and keep their hands out where she can see them. Vilmer does not. Instead, he tests her. He cuts himself on the chest to see if she’ll react to that. Darla does, but he just slaps her around again. He then throws Darla on the floor and steps on her throat with that hydraulic leg of his. Jenny tells Heather to get up because this might be their chance to escape. Heather doesn’t have the strength and lies back down. Jenny pokes Vilmer with the gun and he grabs the end and, I dunno… I think this is basically deep-throating it?

She pulls the trigger revealing it was not loaded, and he snags it out of her hands. He then blows out a window showing that only one of the barrels was unloaded, the other had a shell in it. Jenny takes off running and gets into Darla’s car and tries to drive off, but Vilmer jumps on top of it causing her to crash. Vilmer then captures Jenny again and brings her back inside and knocks her out.

Finally, we get ourselves some sexy Leatherface! Now this is what I signed up for!

It’s dinner time. Vilmer slaps Jenny awake and shows her that the collected others around the table are other corpses and ghastly goobers. Also Heather is at the table. Jenny begs Darla to help her. She tells Darla that there isn’t anything but insanity in Vilmer. He’s not working for anyone. He’s just crazy so Darla can help her. Darla says that she can’t help because there’s something in her head that if she does anything he doesn’t like, he can just press a button and her head will explode.

Soon, a curious person comes to the door. This man, Rothman, is well dressed and is, indeed, the guy who Vilmer works for. He’s not happy with how Vilmer conducts business. But, yeah, he’s a member of this secret society that hires Vilmer and the rest of the Leatherface family to torture people for various reasons. Rothman might be even crazier and scarier than Vilmer and Leatherface. He opens his shirt to show various body modifications and then licks Jenny’s face. He leaves the room and Vilmer gets to work. First, Vilmer crushes Heather’s head with his hydraulic leg. To celebrate he orgasmically cuts himself with his knife.

Jenny is next to be killed. She tries to escape by busting out one of the boarded-up windows but Vilmer grabs her and takes her back to the dining room to get chopped up by Leatherface’s chainsaw. She grabs a remote control that we’ve seen earlier that can control the hydraulic thing on his leg. With him flailing around, Jenny escapes. She tries flagging down an older couple driving a camper van. At first, the old lady tells her husband to not stop for her. But when they realize she’s being chased by “a monster” they do let her in. Vilmer and Leatherface then force the camper to tip over. Now on foot, Vilmer and Leatherface chase Jenny again but a crop-dusting plane swoops down and kills Vilmer. Leatherface, distraught over his (her?) brother’s death, is unable to continue chasing. A limo with Rothman inside honks at Jenny and she gets in. He tells her that he’s sorry for what she’s had to deal with because it was supposed to be a spiritual experience. He then offers to take her to the hospital.

Jenny, in shock over what she’s experienced, is told by a cop that they will get to the bottom of this and this is not the first time something like this has happened. Just then, a woman on a gurney is rolled by. This woman is supposed to be Sally Hardesty from the original film. I mean, it really is Marilyn Burns and it is meant to be implied that it is Sally. The catatonic Sally locks eyes with Jenny as she passes by. Back at the roadside, the distraught Leatherface is still flailing around in circles with his chainsaw.

Guys… Have I yet mentioned how insane this movie is? I have? Oh. Well, it bears repeating. Seriously, I kind of struggle to say this is truly a mainstream movie as it was so low budget basically people were all staying in Kim Henkel’s Winnebago. Zellweger looks back on the experience with a little bit of awe. She has no idea how they pulled off making the movie without anyone getting hurt or killed in the process. She called it kamikaze filmmaking.

And that’s exactly how it plays out. There’s a point in this movie where I wondered if some stuff was truly baked into the original idea Henkel had for the movie or if it got to a point where he and the actors got together before shooting and started coming up with stuff on the fly. I can’t believe that everything McConaughey says or does in the movie was scripted. Most of that felt really improvised. Maybe there was something in the script that he then made his own or maybe it was all drawn up on the spot. I don’t know.

I kind of love this movie for what it is and how audacious it is. It’s so very much a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie while also delving into these other wild concepts like secret societies and spiritual experiences that deal with outright torture and terror. While some of that might touch upon one thing that I always get frustrated with once horror franchises seem to run out of steam, that is the inexplicable need to try to explain why the horror monsters do what they do, it also comes off as almost meta in its portrayal here.

I knew the reputation this movie had before watching it. Yes, this was my very first time watching this movie. I knew McConaughey was insane in this. I knew it was a weird movie and maybe the most unique of all the sequels. However, I am still almost speechless over how to explain what this movie really is. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to my computer screen or written in this article that it is insane or crazy or bonkers. It really is. There are pieces of dialog that are either masterclasses in characterization or actor improvisation. There are concepts in this movie that shouldn’t make any sense but do. The performances are all stellar. My god, you can see more than glimpses, more like blinding signals, that McConaughey and Zellweger were the real deals in terms of talent.

The whole family is nothing like they were in the original film. That’s one of the things that still terrifies you but also, when thought about for more than two seconds, makes you realize how absolutely ineffective and inefficient they are as a terror unit. Leatherface in the original is child-like, but also brutal and will kill you. The only reason why Sally gets away is because he cuts himself. Here, he obeys like a dog when Jenny yells at him to shut up and sit down. When he’s not doing that, he’s mostly carrying on like a child who really needs a nap. It’s a really smart movie in perhaps the most unlikely of ways.

Joe Bob was right… This might be one of the best horror films of the 90s. It certainly is one of the most interesting. I only watched the 1997 version which is 15 minutes shorter than the original 1995 version. I want, no, I NEED to see that original cut. Scream Factory released a version that includes this cut and the 94-minute version that was listed as the “Director’s Cut” but I really do want to see that original South By Southwest version that Joe Bob Briggs saw. By the way, I do think that original, original version is actually titled The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Still… I don’t care. I need to see that version.

I need to wrap things up here. I could go on for hours longer and many more paragraphs about how this movie is just what I needed when I needed it. But if I do keep going, I know I’ll call it crazy/insane/bonkers more than one more time. So, let’s catch the first killer crop-dusting plane out of town, but before I do, I’ve got another slasher villain I need to check in on after just as many years as I went without talking about Leatherface. Next time, we need to put ol’ Freddy into his grave. Join me for my review of the pile of dogshit that is known as Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.