In 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released. The film became known for sparking a myriad of "slasher" films and cheese/camp horror, which is actually rather sad, since the films TCM often gets credit/blamed for are not all that relatable to Tobe Hooper's masterpiece. The comparisons are a mere symptom of the fact the film is misunderstood by so many. TCM was a daring sociopolitical commentary on American youth and the situation in Vietnam. Its shattering of long periods of silence with disturbing noise, its grainy film quality, documentary feel, and the Leatherface character's desparate insanity and animalistic behavior caused this film to be truly terrifying. Building on that, the film also contained a sense of humor far ahead of its time, its subtle humor and irony were hardly noticed until years after the film's release. Basically, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a brilliant film in almost all aspects, a true piece of art.
That being said, nobody with a firm grasp on the artistry of the original could have been excited to hear that Michael Bay was remaking TCM and with good reason. Bay, a former music video director, has no qualms about making his former profession known, seeing as how all of his films come out looking and feeling like the clip for the new Limp Bizkit track. The same can be said for TCM. Throwing out the intelligent commentary of the first film, Bay strips this baby down into a generic piece of post-Scream garbage (Not to say Scream was bad. It, like TCM, was a horribly misinterpreted black comedy and numerous deficient clones spawned from the misinterpretation). Everything great about the original is gone, only to be replaced with some shoddy filmmaking, some cliche celluloid melodrama, and a semi-admirable performance from R. Lee Ermey, the only decent thing about the movie. The storyline is bent and broken for failed dramatic effect, and the Leatherface character loses everything that made him terrifying in the original. Leatherface is turned into a sad mixture of Michael Myers and Quasimodo, sacrificing any realism to turn him into any other horror movie killer. People involved with the film, at times, like to clarify and state that this isn't necessarily a remake, but instead, a "reimagining". Perhaps the dark sense of irony from Hooper's original hasn't completely escaped the makers of TCM 2003, considering the film has no imagination at all.
What is with Hollywood remaking everything anyways? Michael Bay has already announced he is going to be releasing a remake of The Amityville Horror and a Dawn of the Dead remake is already getting a trailer dropped in theaters everywhere. Has Hollywood run out of ideas? Is it really too much to ask of our society's youth to seek out the classics? Or do we have to dumb everything down into a piece of generic, easy to swallow trash?
If you want to see a great film, go rent, Hell, even buy the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you'd like to see the cinematic equivalent of the Starting Line releasing their own version of Pink Floyd's The Wall (which may or may not be interesting in a grisly car accident footage kind of way), go check out the 2003 remake.
By the way, if you're actually that stupid, there was no real Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
1.2/10
Sean
