THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (2003 FILM)

'''The Texas Chainsaw Massacre''' is a 2003 film, a re-imagining of the 1974 film ''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre''. The film was directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay. It was released on October 17, 2003 in North America. The film grossed $107 million worldwide. Daniel Pearl, the cinematographer for the original film, reprised the position for this movie. Also reprising his role from the original film is narrator John Larroquette. The film is currently banned in Ukraine.

Contents

Plot

Cast

Scenes cut for an "R" rating

Deaths

Prequel

Trivia

External links

Plot

The movie starts out with some real police footage of the crime scene where the massacre took place. Then seen are random bits of evidence such as glasses and paper with writing on it. We then see a police evidence tape that has a walkthrough of Leatherface's home. We see the officer guiding through the stairwell to the basement as he points out some scratches on the wall (comes later on in the film). We then see five teens swimming in a river.
On August 18 1973, five college kids, Erin, Kemper, Pepper, Andy, and Morgan, are on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Dallas. The kids are returning from a trip to Mexico, where Kemper, unbeknownst to his girlfriend Erin, bought marijuana.
As they are driving through Travis County, Texas, they see a girl about their age walking nearly in the middle of the road. After nearly hitting her, Erin insists that they pick her up, so they do. She is in some sort of hysterical state and babbles about a "really bad man". The teens take her in their car where she says, "You're all gonna die," before shooting herself in the mouth.
The five teenagers are in shock. They find an old gas station and stop there to call the police and report the suicide. The owner of the station calls the sheriff for them, and she tells them that they need to meet him at an old mill called "the old Crawford mill." They drive to the old mill, but find no sheriff.
While they are looking around, they find a young boy named Jedidiah living inside the mill. He tells them that the sheriff is probably "at home getting drunk." They ask if they can drive there from the mill, but Jedidiah tells them that the road doesn't go there, and "it's a short walk." Erin and Kemper take off through the woods to find the sheriff's house, leaving the other three teenagers at the mill.
Erin and Kemper eventually come to a large gray-brick house in a field. Erin is allowed inside by the owner, an old man in a wheelchair with no legs, but Kemper is told to wait outside. Erin calls the sheriff while Kemper, fed-up with waiting, sneaks inside the house to look for her. While he is snooping around, he gets hit in the back with an axe and dragged into the basement by Leatherface. Erin leaves without Kemper, who she assumes has already left, and heads back to the old mill. Meanwhile, the sheriff is already at the mill with the other three. He wraps up the body of the dead girl with plastic wrap and has the kids put her in the trunk of his car.
Erin eventually makes it back to the mill just as the sheriff is leaving, and discovers that Kemper is not there. She and Andy go back to the house to look for him. Andy sneaks inside while Erin distracts the owner. The old man soon discovers what they are up to, and summons Leatherface, who chases them out of the house with his chainsaw. Erin gets away, but Andy's leg is severed and he is taken inside where he is hung on a meat hook in the basement.
Erin arrives back at the mill in a panic where Morgan and Pepper are waiting inside the van. Erin tries starting the van, but it doesn't work. The sheriff soon shows up again, and spots marijuana inside the van. He orders the three out of the van and forces them to the ground. He makes Morgan re-enact the suicide, and then kidnaps him, leaving the girls alone at the mill with the van.
Soon Leatherface shows up (wearing Kemper's face) and cuts Pepper in half with the chainsaw. Erin is chased through the woods until she arrives at a small trailer. She takes refuge inside the trailer, where a heavyset woman known as "The Tea Lady" (played by Kathy Lamkin) and a pale thin woman reside. The skinny woman, who has apparently stolen a baby from a previous victim, gives Erin some drug-laced tea that knocks her out while the Tea Lady looks on.
Erin wakes up back inside the Hewitt house, suffering abuse from Luda May Hewitt, who apparently hates teenagers with a passion for Leatherface's teenage abuse at school, while 'sheriff' Hoyt is revealed to be part of the Hewitt family and repeatedly pours beer and vodka into Erin's mouth. Shortly after she wakes up, she is thrown into the basement by Leatherface. She finds Andy on the hook, and in act of sympathy, kills him with a large knife. She then finds Morgan still alive and they escape from the basement with the help of Jedidiah, who distracts Leatherface long enough for them to find a cellar door that leads outside.
With Leatherface chasing them, they find an abandoned house and hide inside. Leatherface finds them, however, and kills Morgan by using his chainsaw to split him in two up the middle. Erin runs out of the house and makes it to barbed wire fence. She crawls through, but Leatherface trips and cuts himself with the chainsaw. Erin continues to run.
Erin soon makes it to a large meat factory. She goes inside, grabs a meat cleaver, and hides from Leatherface in a locker. When he comes by the locker she jumps out and severs his arm with the cleaver. She then runs back outside and is picked up by a trucker.
She panics when they pass a familiar sign, so the trucker stops at the gas station to get help. While the trucker goes inside, Erin hops out of the truck and peaks through the gas station window. She sees the sheriff and the skinny woman with the stolen baby. The sheriff walks outside, and Erin runs him over with his own car, and then drives away with the baby. As Erin is comforting the child, Leatherface appears in the middle of the road, brandishing his chainsaw in his other arm. He slices the drivers' side door off the car but Erin is unharmed. Leatherface just breathes heavily from the blood loss and stares as the car drives away. The final scene shows the second half of the police tape. This shows the two officers who were conducting the crime scene walkthrough being attacked by Leatherface in his basement, just as they were going into the furnace room. Barely visible, the video can lightly show an image of Andy hanging on a hook, but then the two officers are attacked by Leatherface. A few fast-paced shots of him fly by the screen, then we cut to the officers' funerals. We then have a look at the only known image of Leatherface and are informed 'The scene was not properly secured by Travis County Police. Two investigating officers were fatally wounded that day. This is the only known footage we have of Thomas Hewitt, the man they call Leatherface. The case remains open.' The credits then roll.

Cast

Actor	Role
Jessica Biel	Erin Hardesty
Jonathan Tucker	Morgan
Erica Leerhsen	Pepper Harrington
Mike Vogel	Andy
Eric Balfour	Kemper
R. Lee Ermey	Sheriff Hoyt
Andrew Bryniarski	Thomas Hewitt / Leatherface
David Dorfman	Jedidiah
Lauren German	Teenage girl
Kathy Lamkin	Tea Lady
Terrence Evans	Old Monty
Heather Kafka	Henrietta
Marietta Marich	Luda May Hewitt

Scenes cut for an "R" rating

Four scenes had to be edited to avoid an "NC-17" rating:

★ More graphic shots of Morgan's death, featuring the chainsaw slicing into his crotch, and having blood and guts falling from him.

★ The hitchhiker's suicide having her ear flying off of her head and blood, and brain matter being more dark in color and more in amount flying out of her head.

★ A slightly more graphic death of Kemper: after getting hit with a sledgehammer, he drops to the floor gasping and convulsing with blood pouring out of his head.

★ Pepper's death originally showed the chainsaw cutting into her stomach.
The first two death scenes were present on the DVD release as extras, the latter two were not.

Deaths

The Hitchhiker - After they pick her up she begins to act delusional when she sees the signs for the town rather than go back to the horror she uses the gun she stole from Hoyt and kills herself but not before warning them of "the very bad man".
Kemper - While investigating the house Leatherface appears behind him and hits him in the head with a sledgehammer killing him instantly. Leatherface later goes and cuts his face off to wear as a mask.
Pepper - While in the van with Erin, Leatherface attacks sawing through the van. In a fit of panic and desperation she runs out of the van. Leatherface pursues her and saws through her coat into her back, spraying feathers from her coat into the air.
Andy - After getting his leg cut off and hung on a hook by Leatherface, Erin finds Andy dying and, in an act of mercy, stabs him with a large knife in the stomach.
Morgan - After jumping out at Leatherface to keep him from attacking Erin, Leatherface picks up Morgan and hangs him from his hancuffed hands to a light chandelier. Then take the chainsaw and slices up his crotch.
Hoyt - While investigating the semi truckers semi Hoyt is ran over by Erin who then backs it up to run over him again in reverse and then guns it to run over him again at full speed.
A total of seven people die in the movie, eight counting the one investigating officer at the movie's opening and closing scenes in which he is "fatally wounded" by Leatherface.

Prequel

A prequel to the remake was announced in 2004, titled as ''. The plot takes place four years before the events of this film. The film is directed by Jonathan Liebesman and was released in cinemas on October 6, 2006.

Trivia

★ A deleted subplot detailed Erin being pregnant, explaining why she didn't "drink the water" or "smoke the weed" in Mexico. According to DVD commentary, an earlier idea for the film involved Erin being in the advanced stages of her pregnancy throughout the film. At the climax, she hides in the slaughterhouse when she suddenly goes into labor. The sound of the baby crying alerts Leatherface to her presence, and the film would have ended on a much more downbeat note. Ultimately, this idea was rejected, partly because the producers didn't want Jessica Biel to spend most of the film in a pregnant suit.

★ Katie Holmes was considered for the part of Erin.

★ Tobe Hooper was involved in making the film and was very enthusiastic with the remake.[1]

★ The song "Sweet Home Alabama" is played during the opening as the characters are going to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. The film takes place in 1973. The song "Sweet Home Alabama" appeared on Skynyrd's second album, ''Second Helping'', released in 1974. They also discussed "Free Bird", which was originally released in 1973, when the film took place. This goes to show viewers that the song did not come off of Second Helping, because some thought it did.

★ Henrietta and the Tea Lady were originally the same character. According to the DVD, there were arguments as to how the character would be presented in the finished film: thin and wraith-like, or grossly obese. As a compromise, it was decided that they would be split into two separate characters.

★ Although the film never gives Erin a last name, the novelization states that it is 'Hardesty', the surname of Sally Hardesty, the heroine from the original film.

★ The Wildstorm comics works as a sequel to the film, picking up a year after it ended, with Leatherface having one arm and the Hewitts on the run from the law.

★ As an in-joke, internet movie critic Harry Knowles has an uncredited cameo as a severed head on a silver platter.

★ In the novelization, Leatherface kills Jedidiah after Morgan and Erin escape. However, the filmmakers thought this was too harsh and scrapped it.

External links

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