Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
★★ — Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise has always been a peculiar beast. Tobe Hooper's 1974 original remains one of the most viscerally unsettling horror films ever made, a grimy, low-budget production that felt genuinely dangerous in a way that polished studio horror rarely does. Its 1986 sequel leaned into black comedy, dividing fans but at least offering something with a personality of its own. By the time Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III arrived in 1990, the series was running on franchise momentum rather than creative energy, and the results speak for themselves.
Directed by Jeff Burr, whose career across the late 1980s and 1990s kept him busy within low-budget horror productions, the film was produced by Nicolas Entertainment and distributed by New Line Cinema. It had a troubled road to release: the MPAA demanded substantial cuts to secure an R rating in the United States, trimming much of the gore that the production had been built around. What reached cinemas was reportedly a compromised version of an already modest vision, which may explain some of the curious flatness that tends to characterise discussions of the finished product. The premise itself is familiar territory: two young travellers, Melody and Ryan, find themselves stranded on a remote Texas road and drawn into the orbit of Leatherface and his extended, extremely dysfunctional family. It is essentially the same skeleton as the 1974 film, reanimated with a new cast and a bigger, if not particularly wiser, approach to its violence.
The cast is a mixed affair. Kate Hodge and William Butler play the two leads, doing their best with material that offers them little to work with beyond running, screaming, and looking frightened. Ken Foree, a genre favourite best known from another horror film reviewed here, appears in a supporting role that promises more than it delivers. R.A. Mihailoff takes on the chainsaw and the mask, stepping into the enormous and arguably thankless role of Leatherface himself. And then there is Viggo Mortensen, years before his profile would rise dramatically in the following decade, turning up in a supporting role as a volatile member of the cannibal family. It is the kind of early-career appearance that becomes interesting almost entirely in hindsight. For fans of 1990s horror and thriller cinema, the period also produced rather more satisfying efforts, as seen in this review of another 1990s genre picture and in this look at a more recent horror effort that grapples with similar questions of legacy and reinvention. Whether Leatherface III adds anything worthwhile to that conversation is, well, the question.
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990), the one with a pre-Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen as an unhinged hitchhiker, is a grimy, ugly mess of a film, and not in the good, gritty way. It’s just… bad. Bad lighting (everything’s either pitch black or washed out), bad cinematography, wooden acting (even from Viggo, who tries way too hard with wild eyes and spit-flecked rants), and a plot so thin it snaps under the weight of its own clichés. The dialogue is cringe-worthy. The kills are repetitive and oddly dull for a franchise built on shock. It’s got the gore, plenty of it, but without tension, character, or even a decent build-up, it all feels pointless. The leads are forgettable, the pacing lurches between nothing happening and someone getting chainsawed, and the infamous “dinner table” scene tries to be iconic but just comes off as silly. Even R.A. Mihailoff under the mask doesn’t bring anything new to Leatherface, he’s lumbering, loud, and lacks the eerie stillness of the original. At least it’s short (just 81 minutes) so the pain doesn’t last long. You can almost admire its commitment to sleaze, but admiration doesn’t make it good. It’s a low point in the franchise: style-free, soulless, and instantly forgettable. A chainsaw through the heart of what made the series scary.
I keep coming back to that point about the cuts, because part of me wonders whether a restored version would change my opinion much. Honestly, I doubt it. The problems here run deeper than missing footage: the bones of the thing are weak, and no amount of additional gore would give it a spine. For me, it is the kind of film that is more interesting as a footnote in someone else's career, a curiosity you watch once out of franchise loyalty or morbid fascination, then quietly shelve. Horror does not need a big budget or a polished look to work, as plenty of low-cost films prove time and again, but it does need something to say, or at least something to make you feel. This one left me with neither. Some chainsaws just should not be started.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 1990 | Watched: 2025-09-21
Trailer
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