TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION

A disgusting, perverted, degraded, defiled mess, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION is so defective as a movie that even horror fans hooted it off the stage at the 1997 Horror Film Festival. It is so pathetic that it is not even good horror. Only occasionally are movies so bad that it elicits disgust and indifference from viewers at the same time. Morally vile and aesthetically bad, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION hardly deserves being called a movie. It is more like a random collection of repulsive film footage with little discernible story or plot, and no beginning, middle or ending.

Apparently trying to capitalize on the surprising, frightening and disappointing artistic success of his 1974 cult classic film, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, writer-director Kim Henkel, (who co-wrote the original movie with writer-director Tobe Hooper) disgorged a foul, vile and atrociously directed sequel, called TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION on an apparently uninterested public. Ticket sales have been abysmal. Based on a sickening 1957 police discovery of mass murderer, Ed Gein, in Wisconsin, this movie showcases a murderous family whose members inflict torture and murder on every unsuspecting passersby. Robert Bloch based his novel PSYCHO, and Alfred Hitchcock his popular horror film PSYCHO on the same incident, demonstrating that a competent director can make a movie with high production values from the same story.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION starts with the repulsive premise that a group of innocent high schoolers encounter a psychotic, murderous low class family in the Texas backwoods who terrorize them and get away with multiple murders without being detected by the police. The movie lacks story, character motivation and cohesion. It may be the worst film ever produced both aesthetically and morally.

On the night of her senior prom, Jenny (Renee Zellweger), her date Sean (John Harrison) and Barry (Tyler Cone) and Heather (Lisa Newmyer) another couple, take the wrong turn down a dark Texas country road. A car hits theirs, and the teenage driver falls out onto the dirt, unconscious. Jenny and the other couple go to find help, leaving Sean by the wrecked car. In the vein of the stereotypical movie hooligan tow truck driver, Vilmer (Matthew McConaughey), arrives, breaks the neck of the teenage unconscious driver and runs over Sean’s body with gleeful sadism.

Jenny and the other couple follow a pickup truck to an isolated farmhouse. There, they are attacked by W.E. (Jon Stevens) and by Leatherface (Robert Jacks), a huge, masked, transvestite chainsaw-wielding monster, who supposedly wears the skins of women he has murdered. Jacks as Leatherface couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. His bizarre screaming, and chainsaw-wielding antics scare no one because he never actually cuts or connects with anyone in his rage. Jenny escapes this murderous farmhouse to seek refuge with Darla (Tonie Perenski), a smartly dressed woman of peculiar habits. For no discernible reason, Darla exposes her breasts to the office window after someone hurls a rock though it. Seating Jenny on a chair, she makes a phone call and curses out the neighbor across the street.

Enter W.E., who wraps Jenny in a sack and stuffs her in the trunk of his car, torturing her with an electric cattle pod. In turn, Darla kidnaps her. In another meaningless, ill-conceived scene, Darla drives up to a hamburger joint, orders a burger and coke, as two police officers drive up behind her in their patrol car. The trunk opens, and Jenny whimpers, but Darla sashays sexily back to the car, distracting the officers, who let her get away with cavalier unprofessionalism.

When Darla lets her out of the trunk, Jenny finds her high school classmates, Barry and Heather, entrapped in the same horrible predicament, but Barry’s fate is uncertain. The movie loses track of Barry.

Vilmer drives up, and proceeds to begin torturing Jenny and Heather. During an ensuing fight scene, Vilmer hits Heather, who bleeds from the nose. Jenny tries to encourage Heather to get up and save herself, but for no apparent reason, Heather lolls in her blood on the floor. Vilmer then attacks Darla in an unmotivated assault, and they violently embrace one another. Jenny becomes hysterical, runs away to the dirt road and jumps on a passing motor home, whose elderly driver doesn’t want to let her on his RV. She gets on anyway, and the sight of Leatherface wielding his chainsaw in impotent pursuit so disturbs the driver that he swerves, hits an embankment and turns over the motor home.

A limousine drives by the scene, and Rothman, an effeminate man with an unconvincing French accent who reads Le Figaro French newspaper is sitting in the back. Rothman lets her get in his car, but drives back to the farmhouse, where he berates Vilmer for failing to horrify his captives sufficiently. Is he supposed to be a Satanist? He remarks that the captures and tortures of the high-schoolers were supposed to be “spiritually thrilling.” So the mastermind admits that the horrorfest was a failure.

In spite of his implied satanic character, Rothman takes Jenny to the hospital, where the police inform her that this is not the first time something like this has happened. Huh? Even moderately competent cops would at least begin an investigation, but not in this unbelievable excuse for a movie.

With abysmal production values, self-conscious acting, poor directing, bad cinematography, and a perverted storyline, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE NEXT GENERATION is a disgrace. It is absolutely not appropriate for moral Americans, or for anyone else. Please pray that it doesn’t develop a cult following like it s predecessor.