When it comes to horror franchises, New Line Cinema has a lock on almost all the major "icons" in the genre. They're the father to Freddy Krueger, they adopted Jason Vorhees and they also brought back our skin mask, chainsaw wielding pal Leatherface with 2003's remake of the 1974 Tobe Hooper classic. So it's not that surprising that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning was made - good box office on the re-do and New Line's desire to run most major series into the ground are good enough reasons for the company.

But, really, do we need a prequel? As the first of three planned "early" stories for our beloved horror villains coming from Hollywood (they are apparently working on prequels to Friday The 13th and Halloween - the latter with musician-turned-director Rob Zombie attached), TCM: The Beginning doesn't do enough to flesh-out the deformed Leatherface and it offers even less motivation/development for the rest of the deranged Hewitt clan.

In fact, all this movie is is another excuse for an attractive young actress (in this case Jordana Brewster who had a role in 1998's The Faculty) to run away really fast from a psychopathic killer as her boyfriend and friends are tortured and murdered by a pack of cannibalistic murderers.

The movie kicks off in 1939 as a pregnant worker at a grimy, oh so seedy, Texas slaughterhouse gives birth to a deformed baby on the work floor. Unable to stand the sight of her child, and with a boss who won't stop production for anything, the newborn is tossed into a dumpster outside where he's picked-up by an apparent homeless woman who's picking for scraps. Hence, we've witnessed the birth of "Leatherface".

Dubbed Thomas by his adopting family, the creepy little kid soon grows into a hulking bulk of a man who derives great joy out of beating the living shit out of various animals after getting a job at the same slaughterhouse where he was born. But this is soon to come to an end as his workplace is being shutdown by the health department - therefore literally killing the small town he lives in.

With little to no options (and little to no explanation), his adopted father decides to kill off the sheriff and take his identity - hence, Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Ermey, doing his typical hard-ass performance) is born. And soon enough the Hewitt family is murdering and eating unlucky passers-by.

That's when Chrissie (Brewster) and her fellow travelers come into play. On a final road trip before her boyfriend and his brother ship off to Vietnam, they have a car accident on a lonely stretch of Texas road - and stumble into the grasps of the good sheriff and his clan.

It's about this time that TCM: The Beginning spends the rest of its fairly slender running time trying to pile on as much gory effects and unsettling imagery rather than give us any real sort of story. I think there's an interesting story behind the Leatherface character, but this isn't the movie to give it to us, as it's just another excuse to trot out the graphic violence so prevalent in modern horror flicks.

In the hands of director Jonathan Liebesman (who did Darkness Falls) and scripter Sheldon Turner (who's been attached to plenty upcoming movies including the X-Men spin-off Magneto), TCM: The Beginning stumbles before it can really take off - it's disappointing, not very entertaining and (in the end) rather dull and pointless. (Chris Hartley, 10/21/06)

Directed By: Jonathan Liebesman.
Written By: Sheldon Turner.

Starring: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Diora Baird, Matthew Bomer.