Home Entertainment TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE returns to Leatherface's teen years

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE returns to Leatherface's teen years

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When it comes to horror remakes, there are great movies and truly awful ones. The Hills Have Eyes is arguably the most shining example of how to revisit a terror classic, followed closely by the new Evil Dead. But on the other side of the yard we have a series of Michael Bay-produced disasters such as Friday The 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street and Amityville. Frankly I wish he never got the idea for those in the first place, which is ironic as just yesterday I was defending his contribution to pop culture blockbusters in the comments. But you can argue that Bay’s Transformers had a positive effect on the market. His horror remakes have given us little more than a mound of retreaded garbage.

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Fortunately every one of his produced remakes have crashed and burned, with no sequels in the near future. The exception is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which has had a contrived remake and a pointless prequel (though neither were as bad as the earlier sequels in the franchise, like The Next Generation, starring a pre-fame Matthew McConaughey). Now the series is getting a pre-prequel, though Bay’s name doesn’t appear to be attached to it. In fact, this looks to be an entirely new reboot of the franchise. The Wrap reports that the new script was written as a prequel to Tobe Hooper’s 1974 original, following Leatherface when he was a teenager:

Up-and-coming genre scribe Seth M. Sherwood has been hired to write a prequel to the original 1974 horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” titled simply “Leatherface,” an individual familiar with the Millennium Films project has told The Wrap.

Official plot details are being kept under wraps, though the new film is expected to serve as an origin story that follows Leatherface’s early years in the 1970s.

If one thought crosses my mind, it would be “why”? Granted, I’m not a big Texas Chainsaw fan. But the stories have largely been woven around hapless strangers caught in the snare of a relentless cannibal family. While Leatherface – so-called because he wears human faces as a mask – is certainly the iconic figure of the family, it was never about him and he has never enjoyed the same ‘lone stalker’ cachet as Freddy, Jason, Mike or Pinhead do. A study of his teen years seems pointless and to my memory the only horror that gave a decent and worthwhile back story to a icon killer was Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake.

Still, if you are a Texas Chainsaw fan, rejoice that it will be back again. And it may surprise us. The one problem the franchise has is it never crossed the line too much. If you compare the original to one of its peers, The Hills Have Eyes, the latter was far more terrifying. Can the franchise step up and match the top new horror remakes? If so that would be awesome. But I doubt it will be through a movie about a teenage serial killer…

Last Updated: August 14, 2014

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