Movie Review: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

As weird and strange as the second movie was, it’s a bit surprising that this sequel is so conventional. It’s basically just the first movie with a budget, and it eschews all of the weird and zainy humor of the second one. There is still some dark humor, and I’d argue it’s out of place, but it’s a lot more subtle.

The movie follows a couple of characters — Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler [not Yeats]) — as they drive from Los Angeles to Florida. They have to drive through Texas, of course, and everything starts getting creepy when they stop at a gas station run by a weirdo who turns out to be a member of the Sawyer family — Alfredo (Tom Everett).

Michelle gets saved from the perverted Alfredo by a handsome stranger, Tex (Viggo Mortensen, The Lord of the Rings).

When Alfredo gets a gun, Michelle and Ryan take off, thinking that Tex was shot and killed. They take the road that Tex had suggested, thinking that they’ll find some police officers to tell about what happened.

They get lost, of course, and a truck that had left the gas station chases them down at night. Eventually they’re attacked by Leatherface (R.A. Mihailoff), who makes some damage on their car but is unable to get them.

We are then introduced to Ken Foree driving his truck the other way on the road. The two cars have to swerve to avoid hitting each other, and also Michelle saw Tex in the road, I guess. It’s bizarrely edited.

Anyways, Ken Foree plays Benny, and he’s the best part of this movie.

It’s not that it’s a great performance; in many ways, it’s absolutely not. But Foree has a natural charm and charisma, and I like his character here, who’s a survivalist that goes camping on weekends preparing for the apocalypse or whatever.

Benny tries to help the two of them and doesn’t believe anything Ryan says about a chainsaw wielding killer until Michelle comes to and says the same thing.

When Benny goes back up to his truck, he finds that there’s another truck there, being driven by the one-armed Tink Sawyer (Joe Unger), who acts very suspicious from the start. When Benny sees a chainsaw in his truck bed, he goes to load up his assault rifle, but is nearly run over by Tink.

Leatherface gets in a fight with Benny, and Ryan and Michelle run into the woods. A random girl shows up and saves Benny by getting Leatherface’s attention on her. After she loses Leatherface, she goes back to Benny and explains that she was kidnapped along with others who were killed, and she was the only one that got away. She gives Benny a lighter before he goes to help Michelle and Ryan, and almost immediately once he’s left her, Leatherface kills her.

Even in the first kill of the movie it’s obvious how the censors went after this movie. This was apparently originally rated X, until they trimmed some of it down. As a result, you don’t see anything. There’s some blood but little onscreen violence, if that makes any sense.

Ryan gets caught in a trap and is killed by Leatherface, leaving Michelle to arrive at a house. She goes inside and finds a little girl (Jennifer Banko, who played the young version of Tina in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood), who stabs her. Tex comes in and reveals himself as behind all this.

The Sawyers are all just kind of hanging out as Michelle gets her hands nailed to a chair. There’s “Mama” Sawyer (Miriam Byrd Nethery), the little girl who goes unnamed and might be Leatherface’s daughter, Tink, Tex, and Leatherface (known as “Junior”). Alfredo is wandering around in the woods, cleaning up spare body parts that Leatherface left behind.

Tink gives Leatherface a brand new chainsaw which he seems to love.

Benny, meanwhile, sort of figures out what’s going on when he comes across Alfredo, who he throws into the pond in which he had been depositing heads and limbs.

He then shows up at the Sawyer house and starts shooting, killing Mama, shooting off Tink’s fingers and ear, and hitting Tex. He saves Michelle and lets her escape, and he ends up getting run over in a van by Leatherface, who then goes to chase after Michelle on foot.

Tex squares off against Benny, and Benny kills him by lighting him on fire with the lighter that the random woman gave him and some gas leaking from the van. He then goes to save Michelle, and has a pretty unexciting fight with Leatherface in which he supposedly gets killed.

Michelle then kills Leatherface in a way that had been set up earlier in the film, which is nice. In the morning, she makes it to the main road and starts to freak out when the truck from the gas station pulls up, but it turns out Benny’s driving it. Supposedly, Benny was supposed to die, but audiences in early screenings loved Ken Foree so much that the filmmakers decided to let him live. This last scene does seem tacked on, because we also get Alfredo back, who attacks Michelle in a scene lacking any kind of suspense. He’s eventually rather easily taken care of, and you’re just left wondering what was the point of that? Not just that particular scene, but sort of the movie in general.

There were times and moments where I liked this movie. Viggo Mortensen is pretty good as Tex Sawyer. Ken Foree is a lot of fun. Some of the stuff at the Sawyer house is interesting. But that’s about it. There’s no real suspense, and it all feels so been-there-done-that, given that it’s so similar in its plot to the original film.

Rating: 3/10