{"id":6601,"date":"2024-10-25T11:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6601"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:00:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:00:16","slug":"leatherface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/leatherface\/","title":{"rendered":"Leatherface"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Leatherface <\/strong>(2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, disturbing images, language, some sexuality and nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Seth M. Sherwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Frizzell\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Antoine Sanier\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 21, 2017 (Direct TV)\/October 20, 2017 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Sam Strike, Sam Coleman, Jessica Madsen, James Bloor, Lili Taylor, Finn Jones, Chris Adamson, Boris Kabakchiev, Dejan Angelov, Julian Kostov, Lorina Kamburova, Nicole Andrews, Ian Fisher.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.4M (US, limited)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like superheroes, horror movie boogeymen have origin stories. Jason Voorhees was a mongoloid kid who drowned at summer camp and witnessed his mother\u2019s beheading several years later. Michael Myers was a sociopathic kid who stabbed his older sister to death at age 6. Freddy Krueger was a deranged child killer burned to death by a mob of angry parents only to be resurrected in their children\u2019s nightmares. Any horror movie fan worth his weight in stage blood knows how these infamous movie slashers became who they are. But what about Leatherface, the hulking star of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies? What made him Leatherface? His backstory is finally told in Leatherface<\/strong>, a direct prequel to the original 1974 hillbilly horror classic. It\u2019s about damn time!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Forget Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, it has NOTHING to do with the TCM series proper. It\u2019s a needless prequel to the needless 2003 remake. Neither of them count. Leatherface<\/strong>, on the other hand, is a decent entry in the series. Directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (the 2007 French horror Inside), it\u2019s violent, gross, nasty and very gory. It plays more like a down and dirty killers-on-the-road action flick a la The Devil\u2019s Rejects or Natural Born Killers than a horror movie. It doesn\u2019t go as full-blown bat-crap crazy as TCM2, but Stephen Dorff (Blade) camps it up nicely as the unhinged lawman looking to avenge the death of his only child at the hands of the \u201chillbilly trash\u201d Sawyer clan.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Leatherface\u2019s story begins in 1955 at his birthday party where young Jed Sawyer (Kabakchiev) receives a chainsaw as his big gift. He\u2019s expected to use it to kill the suspected pig thief they have tied to a chair. He can\u2019t bring himself to kill so Grandpa (with his trusty hammer) does the deed for him. A little later, Jed lures a teenage girl (Kamburova) to an abandoned barn where his family is waiting to kill her. She\u2019s the local sheriff\u2019s daughter, his only child. Hartman can\u2019t prove they killed her but he can still screw them over by placing Jed in a state-run mental institution \u201cfor his protection\u201d. Ten years go by and he\u2019s still a patient there. His name has been changed, again for his own protection, and the head psychiatrist refuses to allow Verna Sawyer (Taylor, The Conjuring) to visit her son despite the court order her lawyer hands him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Meanwhile, it\u2019s Nurse Lizzy\u2019s (Grasse, the TV movie Roboshark) first day at Gorman House. She couldn\u2019t have picked a better day to start. It\u2019s the same day Mama Sawyer comes a-calling. In searching for her son, she agitates the other patients which causes a riot in which many die including the doctor (Adamson, the POTC movies) who, it turns out, is conducting sadistic experiments involving electroshock on his young patients. In the chaos, four of the kids escape and take Lizzy along as a hostage. They are Bud (Coleman), a hulking mute with bipolar; the seemingly-nice Jackson (Strike) and crazed couple Ike (Bloor) and Clarice (Madsen). Hartman leads the pursuit to either kill or recapture the young escapees who leave a bloody trail across the state of Bulgaria (standing in for Texas).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Leatherface<\/strong> has cannibalism, necrophilia, rotting animal carcasses and mass murder. There\u2019s this one cool scene in a roadside BBQ restaurant where a meal break turns into a blood-drenched massacre. One victim literally has her head blown off by a shotgun. There\u2019s another scene when Ike and Clarice do a three-way with a rotting corpse they find in an old trailer. There\u2019s plenty of sick, crazy stuff like this in Leatherface<\/strong> and I welcome it. How long has it been since we\u2019ve had a full-tilt-boogie gory horror flick like this? The closest we\u2019ve come is last spring\u2019s The Belko Experiment. Man, was that one every bloody! While the body count in Leatherface<\/strong> isn\u2019t as high, it certainly exceeds it in terms of gore. We even get to see a chainsaw murder close-up. YES!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dorff plays Hartman as a vengeful dad gone balls-out insane. He has a thing for bad kids which is why he has no problem killing them in cold blood. Taylor is also good as the Sawyer family matriarch who believes a family that slays together, stays together. HA! She may be right! You no doubt notice that I haven\u2019t identified grown-up Jed. Neither does Leatherface<\/strong>. The mystery is figuring out which of the escapees is Jed. It\u2019s not like they can tell you; all those years of the doctor messing with their brains did damage. They don\u2019t remember much (if anything) before coming to Gorman House.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Leatherface<\/strong> is a cool throwback to the grindhouse movies of the 70s. The only difference is that it\u2019s a more polished production. It doesn\u2019t have the same grimy, grungy look or feel, but it more than delivers on the unease factor. At times, it makes your skin crawl. It also delivers lots of gore, but I already said that. This is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel\/prequel fans have been waiting for.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leatherface (2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, disturbing images, language, some sexuality and nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Seth M. Sherwood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Frizzell\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Antoine Sanier\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 21, 2017 (Direct TV)\/October 20, 2017 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Stephen Dorff, Vanessa Grasse, Sam Strike, Sam Coleman, Jessica Madsen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-sequels-remakes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Leatherface-2017-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6601"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7161,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6601\/revisions\/7161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}