Texas Chainsaw 3D

hi there

well, i was at something rather close to a loose end earlier today. i decided, then, to do what any normal person would do, which is to go and watch Texas Chainsaw 3D at 9am. it is almost as if a Thursday morning was conjured up with doing such a thing very much in mind.

why go and see that film? i take it as a given if you are asking that it's the case that you don't know me. to clarify, then - despite a wide range of films to chose from, as you can see in the picture below, only one had someone in a mask made of human skin waving a chainsaw on the poster. my general rule is that if a film has a chainsaw in it then it gets watched.

not really particularly clear on the picture above was the fact that the cinema was not accepting complimentary or discount tickets for this film. nice one! that surely meant that they only wanted customers who were prepared to put their money where their mouth is watching this film. i was delighted to learn that i would not be watching the film with any freeloaders. actually, as it turned out, i did not watch the film with anyone else at all, but more on that later.

the next picture misses out the warning about no free tickets accepted but does have quite a class flash reflection on it, censoring some of the detail of the human skin mask for the more sensitive reader.

how bad, exactly, could a film with a class poster like that be, exactly?

if the above poster has upset you somewhat, here you go, cast it from your mind with a look at the minions from Despicable Me 2, which they had a rather large display for.

on the subject of promoting other films, all i had before the film started was trailers - no adverts for Coke or anything. that was nice! i appreciated the trailers for The Wolverine, Star Trek Into Darkness and, in particular, Man Of Steel,  but readily admit to being baffled as to why on the front of a film called Texas Chainsaw they would feel the need to show adverts for Epic and Monsters Inc 2, both being animated films for the whole family but children specifically. 

i was quite excited, to speak the truth, about the idea of finding out who else would think it a very class idea indeed to watch Texas Chainsaw 3D at 9am on a Thursday morning. as it turned out, i was the only person, apparently, who thought this was a class idea, as i had the cinema to myself! this has happened to me a fair few times over the years - i recall watching Patriot Games and Apt Pupil on my own, off the top of my head. 

i used the solitude as an excuse to get some pictures for you, dear reader. although it's pretty pointless taking pictures of a 3D film on a blueberry phone thing in general. in particular, i suppose, when i believe this film is already out on blu ray in the rest of the world. 

although, now that i think and look at these pictures, as you can possibly see and make out for yourself it was one of those 3D films that not a very great deal of was in 3D. a number of these films that they make you pay more to watch because they are in 3D tend not to make much use of the technology at all. i didn't see them at the cinema, but i am assured that things like Thor and Captain America had so few sequences in 3D that you could sit and watch it without the glasses in comfort.

regular readers (bless you) will recall that i do not particularly care for this whole 3D trend anyway. it's a silly gimmick, and needs to go away soon. why then did i go and see a 3D film? did you see the word chainsaw in the title, yeah?

i suppose i should give a review of the film too, but not before another picture. this i believe is Leatherface, or who we used to call Leatherface, preparing a recently severed hand in a sink.

i am inclined not to put any sort of spoiler warning here. if you're going to go and watch a film like Texas Chainsaw 3D then you know what you are going for and it isn't plot twists. this does have something of a twisty, strange plot though. if you want to know nothing, skip this section and keep reading after the next picture!

the film starts straight off after the events of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with a bunch of vigilantes, somewhat Nightmare On Elm Street style, burning down the house of Leatherface's family and apparently killing all the people associated with it. except a baby, which a couple from the vigilante gang decides to keep.

skip forward 25 years and we find the baby has grown up to be a girl working in a supermarket. another member of the house, her paternal grandmother, survived the attack it seems, but is now dead and has left her luxurious house to her. the slight problem is that who we knew as Leatherface, but is now called Jed or Jeb or something like that, lives in the basement. i think you can guess what happens next.

here's an almost halfway decent screen shot of Leatherface / Jeb / Jed getting ready to do his thing with a chainsaw!

i would have to be honest and say that the film is rubbish. absolute crap, really. it only runs for 80 minutes but it drags out some sort of notion of a brilliant plot, limiting the amount of time that we get to see the kind of thing people who go and watch a film with the word chainsaw right there in the title wish to see.

there are a couple of decent chainsaw moments in 3D - the bit where Leatherface (or whatever) decides to throw his chainsaw at a member of the constabulary is rather class, as is the bit where he's cutting in to a box (of sorts) where someone is hiding. oh, and the bit where he gives an illustration of what an Achilles heel is exactly, and why it can be problematic if it gets sawn into. overall, though, there were just too many non-chainsaw bits for my liking. i don't want to see Leatherface messing about with axes and hammers, he should be tackling everything with a saw!

one last picture from the screen, then. i think this is the bit where he puts someone on a meat hook. not bad, but not as impressive as either of the similar scenes in the original film or the remake from 10 or so years ago.

i am in the peculiar position of not really being able to advise my fellow chainsaw enthusiasts to bother going to see this one. the moments i mentioned above are rather impressive (in the realm of damage done with chainsaws), but there's what, only 3 or 4 of those moments? i am almost certain that this film will play just fine in standard 2D, so if you see the DVD or blu ray disc going cheap go for it, but do not go out of your way for it.

9am on a Thursday may well be my new time for the cinema, to be honest. it didn't look like there were too many people in any of the other screens, and to tell the truth the staff looked a bit puzzled that anyone at all was there at that time of day!

yep, that's my ticket above, which translates as about US$7 or £4.50 for a 3D movie, which i believe is rather good going. i think it was twice as much for Spiderman in the UK last year.

not quite the awesome chainsaw festival for breakfast that i had hoped for, but a rather good morning out and about anyway!! nice one if this has been of interest to anyone!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!