1990
New Line DVD
I can remember seeing the trailers for this film and being very excited for a new TCM film hitting theaters.I went opening night and was slightly disappointed by the film. It felt like it was very edited down for an R rating. Well quickly thanks to various horror fanzines I learned the film had been massively edited. So I was hoping the VHS release would be the uncut version. But it was just the R rated cut. So I hold on to the hope that the Laserdisc release would be uncut. Well the Laserdisc was also R rated. I did see at a few cons people selling a supposedly uncut work print of the film. But they were always wanting $30 or more. And I had read in various fanzines that it looked really bad. So I just skipped getting the work print. Then around 2003 New Line released it to DVD and it has the R rated cut and an unrated version. Now the unrated version is still missing some footage. But some of that is included in the extras.
A brother and sister are driving cross country and run into some car trouble on the back roads of Texas. Where they end up running into Leatherface and the rest of his "family". None of the family members from the first two films come back,which is kind of confusing. One new addition is a young girl who IIRC is referred to as Leatherfaces's daughter. In the extra features we get to see that she is just as sick and twisted as the rest of the family. We get a nice part for genre legend Ken Foree as a gun toting survivalist and Viggo Mortensen makes a very early appearance as one of Leatherface's family. In the uncut version the gore flows and the film actually makes sense. The R rated cut is goreless almost and makes very little sense. The only real shitty part is the ending. Ken Foree obviously dies before the end. But he shows up in the last 5 minutes to save the final girl. I wish they had stuck to the original ending. Which is included on the DVD.
Now there is also a fun adaptation of this film in comic book form. I want to say it is 3 issues long. Northstar comics put it out. It seems to follow an early version of the script and has lots of stuff that didn't make it into the film. The script was written by well known horror author David J Schrow. And it is him and the director Jeff Burr that are on the well done commentary. If you have only seen the R rated version of this film give the DVD's unrated cut a try and see if you enjoy it more. Now as most people reading this know the original TCM is not only my favorite horror film,but in my top 5 best films,so naturally I am biased towards any TCM film.Leatherface the Texas Chainsaw Massacre III gets a B.
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