“If you don’t poke ‘em, then they don’t leak. And if they don’t leak, we can’t feed grandpa.”

If you’re coming to Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III looking for gore, be sure to savor its opening sequence which depicts the title character (R. A. Mihailoff) sewing himself a new mask out of fresh human faces. It’s the most gruesome thing in the theatrical cut—a ruthless edit forced on the studio in order to achieve an R rating instead of an X.

Seeking to return to the series’ gritty roots after the much-maligned, comedy-tinged follow-up, director Jeff Burr and writer David J. Schow position Leatherface as a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original, although they toss out most of that film’s established story even as they generally rehash its plot. (What I find most compelling about it—and this is a tangent that warrants further analysis as the series goes along—is that it kind of suggests that Leatherface is a sort of bogeyman who naturally accumulates a new cannibal family around him no matter his circumstances, disappearing for decades only to re-materialize in a new context and repeat the same horror à la Pennywise or Michael Myers.)

The story plops us down mid-roadtrip with bickering couple Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler), stuck in traffic due to the discovery of a mass grave full of unidentified bodies in various states of decay. After getting through the roadblock they stop at a dingy gas station where they are waylaid by the newest crop of Sawyer progeny—namely the perverted, peevish Alfredo (Tom Everett), who spies on Michelle through a peephole Psycho-style, and the virile Tex (Viggo Mortensen), who appears trustworthy at first but in time will reveal his true colors. When Michelle rebuffs Alfredo and he starts waving a shotgun around, the startled couple escapes into the afternoon-suddenly-turned-night where their first encounter with Leatherface awaits. They also run into (or almost run into—both parties flip their vehicles trying to avoid a collision) Benny (Ken Foree), a backwoods survivalist who immediately sees in the couple’s frantic story an opportunity to flex his skills (imagine that: a horror movie character who is both competent and capable of correctly assessing the situation in a timely manner). More members of the cannibal clan are added to the mix, including Tinker (Joe Unger) and his hook hand, Mama Anne (Miriam Byrd-Nethery) and her electrolarynx, the little girl (Jennifer Banko) with her, ahem, homemade baby doll, and Grandpa (who I’m pretty sure is just a prop?).

Much of what keeps Leatherface humming along with decent momentum comes from its primary source—the macabre radio chatter, the chance encounter at a gas station, the dinner-with-grandpa sequence. What marginally sets it apart is that, for the first time, our protagonists aren’t just trying to escape the Sawyer family, but are doing so with the aid of a competent hero with a machine gun, allowing for a mildly cathartic, if not exactly happy, ending. That and the heavy metal soundtrack. Though a hodgepodge of recycled ideas might be expected for a series on its third studio in as many films, Leatherface hits enough of the right genre notes to pass muster against most other derivative horror films. It gets unfairly derided because it apes Hooper’s original without approaching its nightmarish greatness, but it is a solid, atmospheric, entertaining, slightly quirky pop horror film in its own right, especially now that an unrated cut is available.