I, my friends, am tumbling down a steep incline head first! Because of my love for horror and especially slasher films I have continued down this road of remakes of my favorites of all time. This one, or two in this case are the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 2003 and it's prequel sequel subtitled, The Beginning. The reason I am putting both together is because if you watch them in reverse order it just makes one long movie containing everyone's favorite chainsaw wielding, human face wearing lunatic, Leatherface. And also in reverse order you get to see the newer creation of a classic character and that of some brand new characters to the story. I will not lie, I do like these films! And not because I think they are better then the original of 1974, because they are not by a long shot. I think for once Hollywood has figured out how to do a remake in proper fashion. They did add in the shock value and gruesomeness that would naturally accompany a new horror film because without it new audiences wouldn't watch it.
From this point on I will refer to the prequel as the first half and the remake as the second half. In the first half we have the creation of Sheriff Hoyt, which I think is such a great and sadistic character and played to perfection by a legend, R. Lee Ermey. Yes, the great Gunnery Sergeant Hartman! This role is so good for him or I should say he is so good for the role. Not only does he play this guy to a tea he also ad libbed a lot of his scenes. And that is precisely what a good actor can do, take the lines he was given, change them and make them into his own, but keep the spirit of the original lines. He really is the best reason to watch either one of these films. Now the main character in each is none other than Leatherface, who is played very well by Andrew Bryniarski. He is known for his role in The Program when he played steroid loaded Lattimer. He only has to be menacing in these though and in that he passes with flying colors. He doesn't even once say a line in either half. The first half has Jordana Brewster as the lead and she is believable, kinda. I say kinda because throughout the whole thing when she is supposed to be scared and crying there are never tears coming from her eyes. If she just learned to cry on demand then she would have been better. In the second half we have Jessica Biel, looking all kinds of hot. She does her part really well in looking scared to death of a huge man with a chainsaw and that's all she needs to do. These two films put together as one long one makes you enjoy the both of them better then watching either separately. At least for me anyway. They just seem to work better is all. All the effects are done practically with dummies and prosthetics, or at least that I can tell. As far as these type of effects go and how nasty some of the scenes are they really work well. And the story is a classic slasher tale so I shouldn't have to say anything about them.
I like these films as an extension, of sorts, to one of my favorites. These show Leatherface making his "masks" and other things that the original only hinted at. Different and up to date but good no matter how you look at them. I won't even try to say that they are without flaws because in reality there are no films without them.
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