Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Texas Chainsaw-Begin (2003)

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: Inspired by a true story and the classic 1974 film. A group of teenagers take a detour from a road trip and what happens next is beyond anyone's darkest fears and raw nightmares.

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE - THE BEGINNING: The only thing more shocking than how it ended is how it all began! Born under unspeakable circumstances, a young orphan is taken in by the sick and demented Hewitt family and soon the seeds of a deranged murderer are planted. When two brothers and their girlfriends stumble across the house of horrors, Leatherface reveals his ravenous appetite for chainsaws and torture as the teens fight to survive.
 
"[Texas] Prepare for a big gulp of excrutiating horror..."  Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle
"[Texas] The Scariest Film in Years!"  Jeff Craig, Sixty Second Preview
"[Texas] It's an instant horror classic! You want scary? THIS is scary!"  Marcus Osborne, UPN-TV
"[Beginning] ...appropriately creepy, right down to aping the look of the 1974 original."  Pete Vonder Haar, Film Threat
"[Beginning] ...a genuine attempt to strip the coating from the audience's nerves...nasty and brutish..."  Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times
"[Beginning] ...the measured, Georgia O'Keefe-on-acid sensibility that guided Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel's much-cannibalized original."  Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly
 


Editor's Note

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE appeared like a nightmare in 1974, establishing a whole new genre of horror film. Thirty years later, the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is back. Directed by well-known commercial and video director Marcus Nispel, and produced by Michael Bay (ARMAGEDDON, PEARL HARBOR), this remake begins in the same place as the original. Five friends are driving through Texas on their way to a concert in Dallas. But when they stop to pick up a hitchhiker, their trip takes a turn for the worse. The friends--Erin (Jessica Biel), Kemper (Eric Balfour), Morgan (Jonathan Tucker), Pepper (Erica Leerhsen), and Andy (Mike Vogel)--have no idea what they're in for when they ask the local sheriff (R. Lee Ermey) for help. It isn't long before the blood begins to pour and the notorious chainsaw of the maniacal, murderous Leatherface starts to roar.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING: Though it's spawned a handful of sequels, it took more than 30 years for Tobe Hooper's ever-potent horror classic to get an "origin" story. Why is Leatherface so angry? Whose face does he wear as a mask? How did his family get their taste for human flesh? A 2003 remake revisited the original film, painted with a post-millennium gloss by former music-video director Marcus Nispel. For his second feature, director Jonathan Liebesman (DARKNESS FALLS) follows suit, though wisely eliminating the heavy rock soundtrack of the remake.

The film opens with the 1949 birth of the child who will become Leatherface--to an obese slaughterhouse worker. She dies during childbirth, and the deformed baby is later found in a dumpster by his adoptive mother. Twenty years later, Chrissy (Jordana Brewster), Dean (Taylor Handley), Bailey (Doira Bird), and Eric (Matthew Bomer) are driving cross-country before Dean leaves for his second tour of duty in Vietnam. A run-in with some bikers leads to an intervention by crazed cannibal clan leader Hoyt (R.Lee Ermey), who has just killed the sheriff of the dwindling Texas town and taken on the mantle himself. The chainsawing begins soon after.