Independent Films, Film Profiles

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is the second sequel to the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film was released by New Line Cinema on January 12, 1990.It stars Kate Hodge, Ken Foree, William Butler, and a then-unknown Viggo Mortensen. Jeff Burr directed.At the time New line intended to produce this film as the first of several sequels in the series. However, the film did not prove a success.The film begins with Leatherface (R.A. Mihailoff) bludgeoning a young woman to death with a sledgehammer before beginning the process of cutting off her face so as to make it into a mask. Another girl (Toni Hudson) watches from a nearby window. Hearing the girl outside, Leatherface, after the girl flees, briefly checks outside before going back to work. Elsewhere and sometime time later, Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her boyfriend Ryan (William Butler), both traveling through Texas to deliver a car to Michelle's father in Florida, pass through a security checkpoint near the excavation of a large number of butchered bodies and reach the Last Chance Gas Station. Here they meet a hitchhiking cowboy named Tex (Viggo Mortensen) and the station's perverted owner Alfredo (Tom Everett). A fight soon breaks out between Tex and Alfredo when the former finds the latter spying on Michelle while she uses the station washroom. As Michelle and Ryan flee from the station in their car, they witness Alfredo seemingly killing Tex with a shotgun.As night falls, Ryan and Michelle, having taken a route Tex recommended, become lost. As Ryan and Michelle begin to bicker, a large truck attacks them. Ryan pulls over when the vehicle's unseen driver throws a dead coyote at their windshield. As he changes the car's flat tire, Michelle, hearing a noise, urges him to hurry. Just then Leatherface ambushes the two of them. Getting into the car as Leatherface begins hacking at it with his chainsaw, Michelle and Ryan bump Leatherface with the vehicle before driving off.After their escape from Leatherface, Michelle and Ryan, as well as another driver, a survivalist named Benny (Ken Foree), crash when a bloodied Tex leaps in front of them. As Benny tends to the unconscious Michelle, Ryan begins to explain the situation to him, showing him the damage caused to their car by Leatherface. Then Michelle awakens. Deciding to go off and find Tex, Benny discovers a hook-handed man named Tinker (Joe Unger), who offers his assistance, setting down road flares. Benny soon realizes Tinker's true intentions after finding a damaged chainsaw in the back of his truck. Benny grabs an automatic rifle from his overturned jeep, retreats, and encounters Leatherface when Tinker attempts to ram him with his truck.As Benny fights Leatherface, the girl who had earlier escaped Leatherface saves him (Benny) from death by luring the killer away before joining Benny. Questioning the injured and traumatized girl, Benny learns from her that her entire family has been killed. She states that she has failed to escape due to Leatherface and his family — who hunt people for food and sport — watching the roads. Hearing Michelle and Ryan calling for him, Benny leaves the girl; she dies a short time later when Leatherface pins her to a tree with his chainsaw. After killing the girl, Leatherface stalks Ryan and Michelle, mutilating and capturing the former when he gets caught in a bear trap.Finding a house after being told to run by Ryan, Michelle enters it seeking aid, and finds a little girl (Jennifer Banko) whose room is filled with the remains of various animals. The girl stabs Michelle with a knife she had had concealed in her skeletal doll. Then Tex restrains Michelle, brings her to the kitchen and nails her to a chair, introducing her to Grandpa, a withered corpse to whom the family feeds blood. After Mama (Miriam Byrd-Nethery) appears, Tinker drags in the barely living Ryan, whom he and Tex proceed to suspend upside-down with a pair of meat-hooks. Michelle, horrified by the sight of her boyfriend's nearly dead body, begins screaming uncontrollably. As a result Tex gags Michelle with a long strip of gaffer tape, wrapping it around her head so she cannot attract attention. (Notably, unlike most tape gags where the mouth is taped shut, here Tex pries her mouth open — although the gagging remains effective.) When Leatherface returns home, Tex gives him a large golden chainsaw with the phrase "The Saw Is Family" engraved on it — a present made by Tinker, who expresses dissatisfaction with Leatherface's failure to kill Benny. Outside the family home, Benny finds and attempts to interrogate Alfredo as he disposes of bodies in a bog, eventually knocking the man into the bog with his rifle and leaving him to drown after Alfredo proves uncooperative.Leatherface, who had gone off to practice his vocabulary with a computer, rejoins his family as they prepare for dinner in the kitchen, where the little girl kills Ryan with a sledgehammer swinging device. With Ryan dead, Leatherface prepares to kill Michelle with his chainsaw. The noise attracts Benny, who opens fire on the house with rifle, killing Mama and Tinker and partially destroying Grandpa's body. With Leatherface incapacitated after Benny's gunfire knocks him to the floor, Michelle tears herself from the chair she is nailed to, stabs Tex while escaping and meets Benny outside.When Leatherface begins heading towards them with Tinker's truck, Benny tells Michelle to run to the woods as he tries to shoot Leatherface. But the truck hits him after he realizes he has run out of ammo. With Benny stunned, Leatherface exits the truck and grabs his chainsaw before going after Michelle. As Leatherface stalks Michelle, Tex and a recovered Benny begin fighting, a battle which ends with Benny soaking Tex in fuel and burning him with a lighter the girl from earlier had given him. Rushing to Michelle's aid, Benny stops Leatherface from murdering her, knocking the killer into the bog. Fighting Leatherface in the water, Benny appears to die when Leatherface forces his head into blade of the floating and still running chainsaw. Turning his sights on Michelle, Leatherface begins dragging her underwater. But Michelle, grabbing a rock, bashes Leatherface over the head with it again and again, knocking him out and underwater.As dawn breaks, Michelle reaches the main road and rests on an abandoned tire, when Alfredo's pickup truck, driven by Benny, stops in front of her. As Benny helps Michelle into the truck, a sledgehammer-wielding Alfredo attacks him from behind. Avoiding Alfredo's attacks, Michelle shoots him in the chest with a shotgun, dumping his body in the middle of the road before driving away with Benny, not noticing Leatherface revving his chainsaw some distance away.