‘Chainsaw’ Slashes Out the Camp--and Fun

It’s prom night, naturally, and the kids have taken a wrong turn down a malevolent-looking country road, and someone has roared out of the darkness and plowed into Barry’s father’s car. “I’m dead,” says Barry (Tyler Cone). “Somebody please kill me.”

No problem.

Barry, you see, has already been caught cheating by his whiny, conniving girlfriend Heather (Lisa Newmyer), and he’s told the movie’s shrinking-violet heroine Jenny (yes, that’s Renee Zellweger of “Jerry Maguire”) that she’s too ugly to ever get a date. And he’s besmirched the integrity of the local road department. So he may as well have a little electronic news zipper scrolling around his forehead reading “Marked for Death.”

But that’s the way it goes through most of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation,” which is just the kind of film that Wes Craven’s “Scream” has now rendered virtually defunct. In that recent hit, Mr. Nightmare on Elm Street exploded all the teen-horror conventions, produced a thoroughly entertaining and often very scary movie and made the watching of by-the-numbers chop-’em-ups like “TCM” if not impossible, then at least an exercise in futility.

Inspired by the landmark 1974 film about a family of chainsaw-wielding Lone Star lunatics, the new “TCM” is neither innovative enough nor scary enough nor funny enough to sustain itself. It predates “Scream,” of course, regardless of the bogus “May 22, 1996” that opens the film. If it didn’t, “TCM,” which seems to have been made for about 14 bucks not including the gas for the chainsaws, could never have afforded either Zellweger or Matthew McConaughey--both Texans, by the way, and in McConaughey’s case on the road to big-time movies by May of ’96.

McConaughey (“A Time to Kill,” “Contact”), who provides the only substantial terror and unpredictability, is the head of the world’s most dysfunctional family, wearing a remote-controlled mechanical leg (which itself provides a few choice moments) and dictating to the Emerson-quoting W.E. (Joe Stevens), his exhibitionist girlfriend Darla (a weirdly funny Tonie Perenski) and, of course, the raving maniac Leatherface (Robert Jacks).

Leatherface, whose chainsaw ballet should have been a highlight of the movie, is now a sensitive cross-dresser who turns homicidal only when Heather won’t stop screaming. We know how he feels.

Zellweger is actually quite all right as the spunky Jenny; she certainly never loses her dignity, even when she’s cruelly abused. And she knows, as so few teenagers do in these films, to run off the road and into the woods when there’s a crazy person in a pickup trying to run you down. Ah, these kids, they never learn. Not even in sequels.

“TCM” was written and directed by Kim Henkel, who wrote the screenplay for the 1974 Tobe Hooper film (and yes, despite the cutlery reference, Henkel seems to be his real name). He was apparently dissatisfied with sequels II and III, which depended too much on gore than did the largely non-bloody but frenetic original.

He avoids unnecessary bloodshed here, even flirting with some pertinent socio-sexual issues. Heather, for instance, admits that she acts the way she does because she’s too shallow to get what she wants any other way. She admires Jenny, whose wallflower act turns out to be a reaction to a family situation. Barry, while he’s still around, exhibits all the feminist sympathies of Cro-Magnon man.

But you can get all this stuff, quite frankly, on any afternoon soap. What we want from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation” is a giddy mix of gruesome horror and campy humor. What we get is less massacre than mess.

* MPAA rating: R for demented mayhem and torture, and strong language. Times guidelines: violence, vulgarity, adult situations.

‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation’

Renee Zellweger: Jenny

Matthew McConaughey: Vilmer

Robert Jacks: Leatherface

Tonie Perenski: Darla

Joe Stevens: W.E.

An Ultra Muchos Inc./River City Films Inc. production, released by Cinepix Film Properties. Director Kim Henkel. Producers Robert J. Kuhn, Kim Henkel. Screenplay by Kim Henkel. Cinematographer Levie Isaacks. Editor Sandra Adair. Costumes Kari Perkings. Music Wayne Bell. Production design Deborah Pastror. Art director Ann Yzuel. Set dresser Julia Kirt. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

* In limited release.