The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Texas Chainsaw Massacre | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Marcus Nispel |
| Produced by | Michael Bay Mike Fleiss |
| Written by | Scott Kosar |
| Starring | Jessica Biel Jonathan Tucker Erica Leerhsen Mike Vogel Eric Balfour R. Lee Ermey Andrew Bryniarski |
| Music by | Steve Jablonsky |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | October 17, 2003 |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $9,200,000 |
| Followed by | The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a 2003 film, a remake of the 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The film was directed by Marcus Nispel and produced by Michael Bay. Released on October 17, 2003 in North America, the film grossed $107,071,655 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 |
[edit] Plot
 |
Please help improve this article by expanding this section with: more plot-specific information from the film. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. Please remove this message once the section has been expanded. |
On August 18, 1973, five college kids are on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Dallas. They are Erin, Kemper, Pepper, Andy, and Morgan. 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 down the side of the road. Erin insists that they pick her up, so they do. She babbles about a "really bad man" before pulling a gun out from underneath her dress and shooting herself through 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 the he tells her that they need to meet him at an old mill called "the old Crawfard mill." They drive to the old mill, but find no sheriff. While they are looking around, they find a young boy named Jebidiah 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 Jebidiah 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 a sledgehammer 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. Her 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 murders Pepper with the chainsaw. Erin is chased through the woods until she arrives at a small trailer. She takes refuge inside the trailer, where a morbidly obese woman and a pale skinny woman reside. The skinny woman, who has aparently stolen a baby from a previous victum, gives Erin some drug-laced tea that knocks her out. Erin wakes up back inside the Hewitt house. Immediately 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 and 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.
[edit] 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 | Leatherface / Thomas Hewitt |
| David Dorfman | Jedidiah |
| Kathy Lamkin | Tea Lady |
| Terrence Evans | Old Monty |
| Heather Kafka | Henrietta |
| Marietta Marich | Luda May Hewitt |
[edit] 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 scenes were present on the DVD release, the latter two were not.
[edit] Prequel
A prequel to the remake was announced in 2004 titled as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. The plot takes place 4 years before the events of this film. The film is directed by Jonathan Liebesman and was released in cinemas on October 6, 2006.
[edit] 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 sophomore album, Second Helping, released in 1974.
- 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 decapitated head on a silver platter.
[edit] External links
| Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series |
|---|
| Original series |
|
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 • Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III • Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation |
| Remake series |
|
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning |
| Characters |
|
Leatherface • Sally Hardesty • Drayton Sawyer • Edward Sawyer • Chop Top • Sheriff Hoyt • Luda May Hewitt • Old Monty |
| Other |
