The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, later released as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, is a 1995 American black comedy slasher film written, co-produced, and directed by Kim Henkel in his directorial debut, and starring Renée Zellweger, Matthew McConaughey, and Robert Jacks. It is the fourth installment in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre film series. The plot follows four teenagers who encounter Leatherface and his murderous family in backwoods Texas on the night of their prom. It features cameo appearances from Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, and John Dugan, all stars of the original film.
Henkel, who also wrote the screenplay for the 1974 original film, developed The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre with producer Robert Kuhn, intending to create a film closer to the source material, but with exaggerated characters that serve as caricatures of American youth. Henkel's screenplay introduces a subplot involving a secret society that employs Leatherface and his family to torment victims in an effort to invoke a transcendent spiritual experience. Principal photography took place on location in rural areas in Bastrop and Pflugerville, Texas, in 1993, with a largely Austin-based cast and crew.
The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre premiered at South by Southwest on March 12, 1995, and received a limited test market release in the United States by CFP Distribution on September 22. The following year, Columbia TriStar Pictures acquired distribution rights for both theatrical engagements as well as home media. The studio proceeded to re-edit the film and re-title it Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, but its theatrical release remained delayed through early 1997. This resulted in legal disputes between the filmmakers and the studio, with Henkel and Kuhn alleging that Columbia TriStar deliberately withheld the film following the rising successes of its stars, Zellweger and McConaughey.
The revised version of the film was ultimately released (as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation) by CFP Distribution in twenty U.S. cities on August 29, 1997. It was a box-office bomb, grossing $185,898 domestically, and received mixed reviews from critics, with some lauding its dark humor and nightmarish tone, while others criticized the coherence of its screenplay. Columbia TriStar proceeded to handle the film's home video releases in the United States, issuing it on VHS on DVD in 1998 and 1999, respectively. It received a nomination for Best Home Video Release at the 24th Saturn Awards.
Both contemporary and modern critics as well as film scholars have noted the film's prominent elements of parody and recursiveness. In the years since its release, the film has gone on to develop a small cult following. Though a full soundtrack was never released, a companion single featured in the film performed by star Robert Jacks and Debbie Harry was released on compact disc in 1997.
Plot On May 22, 1994, 21 years after Leatherface's killing spree in 1973, four teenagers—Barry, Heather, Jenny, and Sean—attend their school's prom in rural Texas. When Heather discovers Barry cheating on her with another girl, she storms out of the dance, followed by Barry, who tries to explain himself as they drive away in his car. Their argument is interrupted by Jenny and Sean, who are hiding in the backseat. Heather takes a detour off the freeway, and while distracted, collides with another motorist, who passes out in the ensuing confusion. Jenny, Heather, and Barry leave Sean to look after the unconscious motorist while they search for help.
They stop at an office trailer, where they meet Darla, an insurance agent, who promises to call her boyfriend, a tow truck driver named Vilmer Slaughter. They leave the office and begin heading back towards the wreck, only for Heather and Barry to become separated from Jenny in the darkness. Vilmer soon shows up at the scene of the wreck, killing the motorist, before chasing Sean in his truck and fatally backing over him repeatedly.
Meanwhile, Heather and Barry discover an old farmhouse in the woods. As Barry looks around, Heather is attacked by Leatherface on the porch swing and subsequently forced into a meat locker inside the house. One of Vilmer and Leatherface's family members, W. E., finds Barry and holds him at gunpoint before forcing him inside. Barry tricks W. E. and locks him out but while using the bathroom, Barry discovers a corpse in the bathtub. Leatherface kills Barry with a sledgehammer before impaling Heather on a meat hook.
Jenny returns to the scene of the wreck, where she is met by Vilmer, who offers her a ride. She accepts, only for Vilmer to threaten her, before showing her the bodies of Sean and the motorist hanging in the truck bed. Jenny jumps out of the truck and runs into the woods. She is attacked by Leatherface, resulting in a chase through the farmhouse, where she finds several preserved corpses in an upstairs bedroom. After leaping through an upstairs window, Jenny manages to flee the property. She seeks refuge with Darla, who reveals herself to be in league with the killers when W. E. shows up and beats her with an electric cattle prod. The two put Jenny in Darla's trunk and she leaves to pick up dinner.
After being tormented by Vilmer, Jenny escapes the house, attempting to drive off in Darla's car. She is stopped by Vilmer, who knocks her unconscious. Jenny awakens at the dinner table, surrounded by the family, who reveal they are employed by a secret society to terrorize people that may cross their path. A man named Rothman arrives unexpectedly, reprimanding Vilmer for his methods, before revealing an array of scarifications and piercings on his torso and licking Jenny’s face. After Rothman leaves, Vilmer flies into a rage, slashing himself with a razor and killing Heather by crushing her skull under his mechanical leg, before knocking W. E. unconscious with a hammer.
Vilmer and Leatherface prepare to kill Jenny, who breaks free and, using a remote control to manipulate Vilmer's leg, escapes. Jenny reaches a dirt road, where she is rescued by an elderly couple in an RV. However, Leatherface and Vilmer run them off the road, resulting in the RV falling on its side. Jenny emerges from the vehicle unscathed and continues running, with Leatherface and Vilmer in hot pursuit. A cropduster appears and swoops down on Vilmer, killing him when one of the wheels grazes his skull. Leatherface screams in anguish, while Jenny looks on. A limousine arrives and Jenny jumps in the backseat, where she is met by Rothman, who explains her experience was supposed to be spiritual and Vilmer had to be stopped. He offers to take her to safety before dropping her off at a hospital, where she speaks to an officer. A blonde woman, being pushed by on a gurney, meets Jenny's gaze. Back on the dirt road, Leatherface continues to flail his chainsaw in despair.
Cast
Production Development Henkel and producer Robert Kuhn optioned the project through Chuck Grigson, a trustee for the copyright owners of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and established their own independent production companies, Ultra Muchos and River City Films, to produce it. Henkel was initially reluctant to direct the film, commenting that, despite being comfortable working with the cast, "all the action and that stuff was something I didn't feel particularly good about... Bob Kuhn bullied me into doing it, to tell you the truth—particularly the directing." On developing the film, Kuhn stated:
In a 1996 documentary on the making of the film, Henkel stated that he wrote the characters as exaggerated "cartoonish" caricatures of quintessential American youth. Henkel cited the murder cases of serial killers Ed Gein and Elmer Wayne Henley as influences on his involvement in both The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Henkel also deliberately wrote themes of female empowerment into the script, specifically in the Jenny character, whose narrative arc begins with her turbulent home life and, through her endurance of further abuse at the hands of Leatherface and his family, emerges in the end as a "self-realized" individual. "It's her story. It's about her transformation, her refusal to shut up, to be silenced, to be victimized," said Henkel. "And by extension her refusal to be oppressed. Even by culture... Bringing Jenny into a world in which the culture was grotesquely exaggerated was a way of bringing her to see her own world more clearly—that is to say, my intent was to present a nightmarish version of Jenny's world in the form of the Chainsaw family in order to enlarge her view of her own world."
The character of Darla was loosely based on Karla Faye Tucker, a woman sentenced to death for murdering two people with a pickaxe during a 1983 burglary in Houston.
Casting
Renée Zellweger, a then-unknown Austin-based actress and recent college graduate, was cast in the lead role of Jenny. According to Henkel, Zellweger was the first choice for the role: "From the moment she read for the part, I didn't even consider anyone else." Commenting on the part, Zellweger said, "It's kind of a dark film. You have to take yourself to places you wouldn't like emotionally." Jody Haselbarth served as Zellweger's stunt double in the film, and performed several stunt sequences, including one in which her character leaps through a second-story window and climbs atop a roof antenna.
Henkel cast Matthew McConaughey, another then-unknown Austin actor, as Vilmer. At the time of auditioning for the film, McConaughey had recently completed filming Richard Linklater's film Dazed and Confused (1993). McConaughey initially auditioned for a minor role in the film before deciding to re-audition for the role of Vilmer. Henkel's production casting secretary read lines with McConaughey during his audition, and was so frightened by him that Henkel felt compelled to cast him. "I ran to the kitchen... grabbed a big tablespoon, came back in and just pinned her in a corner and acted like it was a weapon,” McConaughey recounted. "I did it until she cried. And Kim was like, ‘That was good,’ and she was like, ‘Yeah, that was really good. You really scared me.'" Henkel recalled having a "visceral sense of danger in the room" during McConaughey's audition.
Robert Jacks, a local radio host and singer, was cast in the role of Leatherface. Tyler Cone was cast in the role of Barry at the recommendation of special effects designer J. M. Logan, of whom Cone was a close friend, while Lisa Marie Newmyer was cast in the supporting role of Heather. Tonie Perenski was cast by Henkel as Darla; Perensky had been a local stage actress and acting teacher in the Austin area. The majority of the supporting cast and crew were locals from the Austin area, aside from James Gale, a British stage actor hired out of Houston to portray Rothman. Prior to Gale's casting, Lou Perryman had been cast in the role, but had to drop out due to his membership in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), as the film was a non-SAG production.
The film features cameo appearances from three actors who starred in the original film: Marilyn Burns, who portrayed Sally Hardesty, appears as a patient on a gurney in the film's final sequence, though she receives an anonymous credit; Paul A. Partain, who portrayed Franklin Hardesty, appears as a hospital orderly; and John Dugan, who portrayed Grandpa, plays a police officer interviewing Jenny. Henkel invited the three actors to appear in the film, though Burns was credited as "anonymous" due to her membership with SAG.
Filming