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(2006) ****

I didn't rate this one as high as some of my colleagues, but I'll certainly attest that it's special. Most of all it gets high marks for successfully completing its mission: the story of the Hewitt clan's transformation into homicidal cannibals. It also boasts some steller scenes of gore.

Our story begins with baby Leatherface's birth on the skanky floor of the slaughterhouse. Due to advanced hideousness he's tossed in the dumpster, where Luda Mae Hewitt finds him cooing peacefully while she's out scavenging for tasty meat scraps. I imagined his first few hours on Earth -- wrapped in butcher paper in the dark, surrounded by the smell of blood and decaying meat -- as a big influence in the events that follow.

The credits provide a montage of young Tommy's childhood, a series of pictures with hands covering his face, first those of others, then his own. We see images of the young lad finding his first dead animal and eviscerating it in a shed -- his portentious first foray into the ruby treasures beneath the skin. When our story opens proper, the meathouse has been condemned by the board of health (several decades too late, by the look of it). By its last day of business, the town itself has dwindled to Leatherface's boss, the Hewitts, and one cop. Forced away from his work table of entrails, Tommy disgruntledly beans his boss with a sledgehammer and so that one cop fetches Tommy's uncle to finesse the situation. If you think that's a bad move, try turning your back on ol' Uncle Charlie while he cools in your police cruiser, staring at the shotgun on the dash. Charlie (so named only once) dons the dispatched lawman's uniform -- gotta love those head shots -- and becomes Sherriff Hoyt, the closest thing to the law in this murderous big country.

These are fairly simple brushstrokes, but they accomplish a lot. Leatherface commands a real presence as big "retarded" Tommy, who just wants to chop and chop meat. "That slaughterhouse meant more to this community than anyone will ever know," says Hoyt, and it did: it kept a huge, strong lover of carcass-hacking away from the nice folk. And it was somehow reassuring to find out that "Sherriff Hoyt" is just a guy in overalls who put on a new personality with the badge, it made his a cozy kind of crazy. For the first time we're coming into the story before the victims do, and I appreciate the priviledge.

Enter the victims, the debuting carload of youngsters. They're appealing enough, but I found the mechanism of character development to be a little forced. The conflict is that little brother Dean isn't really going to boot camp after the trip, he plans to draft dodge in Mexico while his brother Eric returns to Nam. Right before they burst a big cow with their jeep, we discover Eric is only returning to protect Dean anyway. My problem is his deep lovey-dovey girlfriend played by Jordana Brewster: she should know this. As soon as she finds out the Mexico plan, this should have come up, saved us some trouble and maybe even that cow. I know, I know, all that stuff is just meant to show us how much these people care about each other, but it's cheesily done. Eric and Brewster have this annoying routine they do about how many kids they'll have and what their names will be, and I sensed the unsubtle hand of coproducer Michael Bay in the batter. I liked the dynamic of the cast in the remake better.

I liked Eric, though. As soon as they're in the patrol car, and Dean asks what they're going to do, Eric says "I'm going to kill this crazy son of a bitch." Thank you! I said. Way to see the forest for the obnoxious, gun-toting trees. Later he shows more iron when he can't see what ol' Tommy has done to his forearm (he skinned it). He matter-of-factly asks "did he cut it off?"

The development of our killers is the main event, however, and develop they do. With Hoyt steering and Tommy doing the heavy lifting, they christen the Hewitt house with that first hellish chainsaw roar, a bisected biker, and a big, big stain on the upstairs rug. Tommy, fascinated with his first chainsaw kill, thinks "oh yeah, I've got another one of those in the basement." For me, the gore crescendo was poor Jordana hiding under the table as the tip of the chainsaw is waving in her face, spraying the table victim's blood all over her. It was like the drill murder in Body Double but a million times cooler. Gnasty.

Also worth mentioning: They had a dinner scene, which the remake lacked. It's kind of a Chainsaw thing. The camera work had a lot of badly-stylized "shaky cam" going on, not at toxic Blair Witch levels but disappointing after the artful shots of the remake. I might admit both of the women are prettier than Jessica Biel, but they're no Jessica Biel. Diora Baird, who plays Dean's girlfriend, does like to do scenes in her underwear. Here's another one here.

Lastly, it's great that both remake and prequel bring back John Larroquette as the narrator, but the body count he credits to the Hewitts over the following four years seemed too low to me. I did the math: subtracting the deaths from these two bookend movies, that equals one vanload of teens every eight months. I wonder if any of them solved mysteries and had a talking dog.

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