Blood, guts and meathooks

Leatherface is one of those horrible bogeymen who lurches at you out of the blue, a lunatic with massive shoulders - and not much to say for himself.

What made him so frightening in Tobe Hooper's 1974 original version was the way he trudged, in broad daylight, across the fields to grab at a gang of young people then made his way home, absentmindedly bunging them on meathooks.

It was almost as though he were doing it just to pass away the time. This grim remake has a vanful of hippies, on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, waylaid in some nasty Texan backwater town and fighting for their lives in the neverending night.

But this time, Leatherface seems to be collecting bits from his victims with the crazed purpose of that chap in The Silence of the Lambs, or the killer in Seven. His basement is full of fingers and toes, eyeballs and skin.

This is not a movie of implication - everything happens as you would expect, only with buckets more blood. The fear doesn't come from deep down, but it does come. You twitch when you watch it, but rather like a head twitches after it has been cut off, responding, while somehow conscious that something rather substantial has gone missing.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Cert: 18