![]() An entirely different cast and crew were brought on board by the new producers, and the simplistic story followed the modern slasher template with a priority being placed on violence and gore. Though a direct sequel in title, "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" was pretty much a hard reset for the series. Leatherface was upgraded from one amongst a collection of antagonists to the titular role and the be-all-end-all villain of the series in an attempt to make him the next Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, or Jason Vorhees. Without Tobe Hooper involved in the franchise, a new director took over and the franchise was sent in a new direction. The rights to the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" property passed on from The Cannon Group to New Line Cinema. It was The Cannon Group, known for their over-the-top excess style, who eventually wound up with the rights to the property and produced the film with a relatively small but astronomically higher $4.7 million budget compared to the $60,000 bare-bones budget of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Despite what some of the other movies claim, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is the only truly 100% direct sequel to the original and arguably the only sequel that could be called anywhere in the ballpark of being a good movie. Briggs was a personal friend of Hooper and had a cameo role in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" that ended up getting cut from the final edit. As an indie fundraising measure, Hooper sold percentages of the film (totaling 140%, oops) to the likes of Texas politicians, a local drug dealer, and the New York mafia. ![]() As explained by horror host Joe Bob Briggs, the prolonged wait between movies was due to the rights to the first film being in litigation for several years. The overwhelming financial success and high-profile reputation garnered by the original 1974 classic makes it surprising that the first sequel wasn't made until 12 years later in 1986. This softening character choice was smartly ignored elsewhere in the franchise. Lore-wise, this entry also makes the miscalculated decision to attempt to redeem Leatherface and frame him as a heroic protector-type by the end of the movie. Since only the film's opening directly follows the original chronologically and the rest of the movie is set long after the next few sequels, "Texas Chainsaw 3D" jamming itself into this spot in the series is mostly just an unnecessary way to muddy up the timeline. ![]() The idea of being a direct sequel to the original is dropped pretty quickly, as the film then jumps to the modern day and unfolds like any other slasher sequel. A large police force has materialized, which was not a part of the first film, and the Sawyer family has drastically grown in size for the sake of having a big shootout to open the movie. The film picks up in the immediate aftermath of the events of the 1974 original, except the supposed continuity between the two films is almost non-existent. However, if you are truly determined to watch the entire franchise from top to bottom, this is the correct order to do it. If you only aim to see the out-and-out good "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movies, then you are probably best off sticking to the original 1974 film and leaving the rest of the series by the wayside. The franchise never had the type of singular guiding voice behind the scenes that could have ensured a solid continuity from movie to movie, so the series instead wound up as a confusing jumble instead. The brand wound up in the hands of such wildly different parties as The Cannon Group in the '80s and Michael Bay in the 2000s. The intellectual property ownership of the series changed hands almost every time a new movie was made. Not all films in the overall franchise are considered canonical in the worlds of other entries in the series, meaning some films ignore others and erase the backstories established in earlier movies. With that messiness comes quite a lot of inconsistency as well.
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