Why So Blu?

Brandon’s Blu-ray Wishlist – October 24, 2014

The month-long horror wishlist continues with the Sawyers!

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Leatherface:  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

Only two Leatherface scarefests remain to be seen for a Blu-ray release, and the other one is best left not discussed.  Yeah, that Matthew McConaughey/Renee Zellweger one.  This film is basically a more modernized and bigger budgeted retelling of the original.  And oddly enough, I feel as if the Platinum Dunes remake from 2003 was more a remake of this film than it was the original.  This film gives us a bigger more colorful new family of Sawyers for Leatherface as we learn that Jim Siedow’s character wound up getting caught and put to death for being both himself and getting credited as being Leatherface.  We deal with a couple driving cross country that getting pointed in the wrong direction by a hitchhiker (who is one of the Sawyers) and wind up being captured by Leatherface and co in hopes they’ll make a sweet feast.  Its the basic premise of the original film, just some more characters and the action and gore is more ramped up.

One of the best things about this movie is that hitchhiker.  He’s played by Viggo Mortensen and he’s a joy to watch.  He’s got that “gotta trust him cuz he’s handsome” thing going on in the beginning, which leads to what a devious villain he truly is.  The quote I put up top of the article is one of my favorite lines from the entire series and Viggo delivers it with such sinful glee.  Genre vet Ken Foree is also here and the character was so likeable the test audiences were mad that he was killed.  In response, they went and filmed a new ending.  Now, stupidly, you get to see his head go right into a chainsaw only for him to show up and have just pretty much a scratch from it at the end.  Another creepy character that works is Anne Sawyer who talks through the little speaker box.  Its all so much weird and downright creepy (even scary ass little girl who apparently is Leatherface’s daughter shows up “yackity yack don’t talk back!”).  This film may be kind of a mess or littered with production issues, but it still manages to work from A to B and is still provides discomfort and scares.  It does help that the whole thing takes place at night in the hopeless desert.

We have had an unrated cut of the film since it hit the local video stores on VHS.  However, there’s an even more uncut version lying somewhere (or maybe only present on VHS quality dailies).  The MPAA hacked this one pretty bad.  I’ve actually never watched the Rated R cut of the film, but I’ve heard its incredibly weak and downright confusing in some instances.  There are many places you can tell in the unrated were compromised as well.  For instance, when the boyfriend gets the sledgehammer to the head, it cuts away right before it connects.  And in the next couple shots in the background, you can see there’s a prosthetic head sitting there that HAD to have been used to be creamed with the hammer.  I’d love to see an even more uncut version of these things cleaned up and released, but I’m willing to bet the original footage for all this shares the same fate as Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood in that somebody never thought it’d be worth anything and threw it away.  Shame shame, but that’s how it is.

Its crazy that last year when the 3D movie came out that this one didn’t get the Blu-ray bump.  And then again this year when the original turned 40, you’d think “Oh hey, we’ve got a sequel here lying around that’s never been on Blu-ray before, let’s cash in!”.  Nada.  Why’s that?  Who owns this one?  Its New Line.  Oh, okay.  Wait, pull off that trick or treat mask, Shaggy!  Zoinks!  It’s Warner Bros!  And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for us meddling Why So Blu kids!  I’m fine with The Next Generation never seeing the light of day on Blu-ray…UNLESS it gets some collector’s edition that has a retro doc with everybody letting loose and going no holds barred about it.   Now that would be awesome.  But really, this is a pretty solid horror movie and much better than what Michael, Freddy and Jason were doing at the time.  Oh…and to end it, this movie has one of the best trailers you’ll EVER see!