Evil Dead remake director Fede Álvarez to produce Halloween-style Texas Chain Saw Massacre revival
Aux Features Film
Forget remakes and reboots: The hot thing in Hollywood now is apparently direct sequels that go back to what people like about older movies without literally retelling the exact same story—just the same basic story. Halloween was big and the new Terminator looks promising, and they both jettisoned the bad sequels in their respective series to go back and focus on what made the first few entries so good, so now Legendary Entertainment has apparently gotten jealous enough to start developing one of these “forget the other sequels!” sequels of its own. According to Bloody Disgusting, the studio has enlisted Don’t Breathe and Evil Dead remake director Fede Álvarez to put together a new Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie that will be a sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original movie from 1974—and not the 30 other Texas Chain Saw movies that have come out in the decades since.
Bloody Disgusting also says that original Texas Chain Saw screenwriter and producer Kim Henkel now controls the rights to that movie, so this—much like Halloween and Terminator: Dark Fate—is at least being made with some involvement from the original creators, even if Hooper, original Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansen, and original “final girl” Marilyn Burns have all died in the last few years. Álvarez will not be directing this sequel himself, with Bloody Disgusting saying he’s currently looking for a filmmaker to take over the actual filmmaking.
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Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was the perfect sequel. It’s so different and so weird. It’s the cathartic release you don’t get at the end of the first film. And Dennis Hopper!Honestly, I love the first film, but I can’t imagine wanting to spend much more time in that world.
Why not
Because nothing is free, kid
As long as it’s not Rob Zombie
Ah, a sequel ignoring everything except the original? I’d be more up for it had they not already done this in the franchise with Texas Chainsaw 3D just six years ago.Also, as the person ostensibly responsible for Texas Chainsaw The Next Generation, Henkel participating is hardly a positive.
Sure go for it. If they wanted to do a new spin on it remake the Matthew McConaughey Renée Zellweger one. Couldn’t be any worse.
It could be so much worse
Didn’t the last one (simply titled Texas Chainsaw) already do the “only the first movie is canon” thing?
Sure, I never saw it, but let’s say it did
Yes, this is exactly what they did with Texas Chainsaw (aka Texas Chainsaw 3D) in 2013 (even though the timeline made no sense with the main character of that movie’s age). So now there will be 3 supposed “direct sequels” to the first film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (aka the good one with Dennis Hopper), Texas Chainsaw (3D) from 2013, and whatever confusing title they give this one. Then you still have the actual sequels Leatherface: TCM 3 and TCM: The Next Generation/4 that were the sequels to TCM 2 during the 90s. There has also been one full re-boot (2003 edition), a prequel to that re-boot (TCM: The Beginning), and then the most recent movie was ANOTHER prequel ALSO called Leatherface, though presumably this was supposed to be a prequel to the original movie and not the re-boot because Leatherface came after 3D was supposedly a sequel to the original. They are doing an admirable job of turning this into one of the most stupid and confusing franchises of all time.
The Halloween franchise has 3 different timelines, plus the Robert Zombert remake, and it’s still much less complicated than the TCM canon.
I don’t know if it was your auto-correct or what, but I love the idea that Rob Zombie is actually a Frenchman named Robert Zombert.
I love the idea that the man on duty at Ellis Island that day wasn’t having any of that Zombert shit.
Ro-bear Zom-bear
Exactly!, and then as Jeff said below, the guy at Ellis Island was all, “Nah, yur Rob Zombie now, bucko!” He didn’t want to get into shock-metal and horror movies, but with a name like that who else would hire him?
Zombert would be one hell of an autocorrect
Leatherface (2017) was so fucking stupid. The original and 2 are really the only good ones.
Yeah, I didn’t even bother with that one. I have never seen Leatherface: TCM 3 either, that’s the only one I still want to watch at some point because I think it finally had an unrated release in recent years (I had always avoided watching it because I had read it was censored to hell before release and ended up muddled and boring as a result).
The one from 2003 with Jessica Biel is probably the “best” sequel outside of 2 but it’s still pretty terrible.
I would agree the 2003 re-boot is probably more watchable than a lot of other latter day entries because it is more slickly produced and just tries to hit the beats of the original. However, that same slick production quality also completely removes the grimey home-murder-video vibe that made the first one so memorable. It does have Jessica Biel running around in a frequently wet tank top for the last 20 minutes or so, though, which is more than a lot of the entries have going for them.
You want complicated? Look up the La Casa films in Italy. Sam Raimi’s original The Evil Dead was entitled La Casa (The House) in Italy, with Evil Dead II being La Casa 2. Easy, then a number of other horror pics started to be retitled to cash-in, such as Umberto Lenzi’s La Casa 3, Ghosthouse in other countries, Fabrizio Laurenti’s Witchcraft being called La Casa 4 and Fragasso’s Beyond Darkness emerging as La Casa 5. Add to this video distributors retitling some older horror pics seemingly randomly, with at least two other 5s and 6s on the shelves. And just to make life utterly confusing, distributors just started using La Casa…. as a prefix, such as Pete Walker’s The Comeback coming out as La Casa…. Chi Vivre In Quella Casa? (The House… Who Lives In That House?)Pick up a film in Italy with La Casa in the title and it could be almost anything.
Did the Japanese oddity Hausu/House ever get released in Italy as La Casa also I wonder? But yeah, at least with the Italian stuff its intentionally confusing because people are just blatantly riding the coattails of more popular, unrelated movies and trying to trick audiences.
Good question. I’ll e-mail an Italian friend about Hansu. For completists, the Steve Miner / William Katt pic House was Chi É Sepolto In Quella Casa? / Who Is Buried In That House?Actually Ghosthouse, Witchcraft and Beyond Darkness are really good examples of that sort of low-budget Italian horror which was being produced towards the end of the Eighties but were actually very entertaining.
Don’t
Breathe?
Well, that’s disappointing. Don’t Breathe was awesome and original, but I guess this director is doomed to re-boot/sequel franchise hell now. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed his Evil Dead remake, but the TCM series is up to 8 movies now and the only good ones were the first two by the original director. No one else has captured the gritty nastiness that made the first one so memorable, and no one (other than maybe The Next Generation) has even tried the balls-out black comedy style of TCM 2. I would say there is zero chance of this being good, but with Alvarez at the helm I will give it a 1% chance that we get the first decent TCM movie in 30+ years.Also, I know pointing out inaccuracies and missed opportunities in newswires is a fool’s errand these days, but the TCM franchise arguably started this whole recent “sequel ignoring the rest of the franchise” trend before Halloween and Terminator because that’s exactly what the 2013 Texas Chainsaw 3D was.
I also enjoyed his Evil Dead more than I expected. I actually don’t like the original Evil Dead that much, preferring the sequels even if I’m normally not that into horror comedies. So even though he’s already done a good job with someone else’s franchise, I don’t have high hopes for this. When he last made a sequel to someone else’s franchise, we got The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo showed they could make a standout horror film with Inside, but by all accounts that didn’t translate to a good version of Leatherface. The Spierig brothers had something similar happen with Jigsaw. David Gordon Green’s Halloween is an unusual case that really depended on Jamie Lee Curtis returning to the role of Laurie.
I know this is an observation on par with The-Simpsons-shouldn’t-have-gone-on-this-long in its obviousness, but sometimes I wish they’d just leave well enough alone. And there’s really something about the TCM franchise specifically that makes me feel that way. Like, this franchise should’ve ended after the second one (which it only took a few decades for people to realize was worthwhile). The 1974 original is my favorite horror movie, and anyone who feels that way will tell you that the power of that movie is that so little is ever explained, the viewer is truly put in the place of the victims i.e., not knowing why any of the events are happening. And that’s what’s so bad about the continuing franchise: it has piled explanation on explanation to fill in all the questions raised by the original, [umm, SPOILERS], oh it’s a Hatfields/McCoys-type feud, oh they secretly took over the town, oh Leatherface was in a youth institution, oh it’s actually all an Illuminati experiment, fucking etc.
Yeah, it’s a general truism that horror works better the less the audience understands the source of said horror. Shining more light on something demystifies it. I think that’s why the form works well for short stories and segments of anthology films. Dragging something out for a long time will diminish the scares. A horror sequel that’s actually good seems to me to be the exception rather than the norm.
It’s not 𝘮𝘺 favorite horror movie (Carpenter’s The Thing) but it’s definitely in the top 5 of greatest horror movies ever.
Lick my plate!
This series has always been continuity casual. What we’re supposing is that maybe this time…it isn’t
wildcat….wild…cat….im gonna go.
Evil Dead remake diector Fede Alvarez…ok cool…to produce…oh, nevermind.
COUNTERPOINT: Maybe please don’t?
he fucking suuuuuucks.
he’ll make leatherface a woman and think he’s made some groundbreaking idea that no one’s ever done before because he’s a fucking hackfraud.