If you’re going to pick a horror movie to pay homage to in your own low-budget chiller, you could do a lot worse than Tobe Hooper’s masterfully constructed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a film so grimy and suspenseful that it managed to earn a reputation for extreme gore despite being almost entirely devoid of blood. But Hooper’s movie works due to a handful of very specific choices that its imitators and even its own sequels routinely misunderstand. Unfortunately, director Marcel Walz and co-writer Joe Knetter’s Brute 1976 does not prove to be an exception.
It’s America in the 1970s (in case you hadn’t guessed), a time of great social change, and a group of young people are heading into the desert for a photo shoot. The images are purportedly intended to celebrate a new era of racial harmony, but in actuality look more like an excuse to get two women into skimpy bikinis. When they finish up, the group decides to investigate a nearby ghost town and quickly discover it isn’t quite as empty as they first thought. Will they be able to stop making terrible decisions long enough to get out alive? You’ll have to see to find out.
Like much of what happens here, the villains are very heavily indebted to Hooper’s disturbing Sawyer family, often dancing up to the line of what might be considered copyright infringement. While none of them look like people you’d want to encounter in real life, they don’t elicit nearly the same level of fear as Chain Saw‘s clan did and even veer towards unintentional comedy at times. When the opening sequence features one of a pair of stranded women excitedly remarking, “Look! A car!” while being almost close enough to touch one of the many rusted out vehicles surrounding them one could be forgiven for thinking they’ve stumbled upon a campy treasure, but alas what follows is (mostly) too self-serious to allow for that kind of enjoyment either.
The cast is blameless here, all putting in decent to good performances, they just have nothing to really work with. The plot feels more like a collection of scenes from other, better movies, barely strung together. Walz does appear to at least be competent behind the camera—as one would hope given his prolific filmography—and does occasionally prove that he is capable of generating suspense, though many times it is ruined by a baffling and occasionally physically impossible development.
A few late‑film developments genuinely surprise, and the actual close is unexpectedly effective, but this is mostly a middling watch, just a few steps above the sort of cheap slop The Asylum churns out. It isn’t ever boring, but it isn’t scary either. One extremely graphic and wince-inducing kill indicates that perhaps they were hoping to have a surprise success akin to Terrifier on their hands, but the practical effects work involved is nowhere near the level of what those movies achieve and with it being the only moment of its kind in the nearly two-hour runtime, that franchise’s gore-obsessed fans are likely to be disappointed. The director already has a sequel in post-production (along with 5 other films), so here’s hoping they are able to live up to some of the more promising elements of the world they set up in this one. ★★
not rated. contains graphic violence, gore, nudity, sexual content, strong language, and drug use.
★★★★★ = Excellent | ★★★★ = Very Good | ★★★ = Good | ★★ = Fair | ★ = Poor
-
-
-
-
-