Brute 1976 2025 Movie Review
You know what, it’s been absolutely ages since we last had a good Texas Chainsaw Massacre homage. I mean, not even some of the actual official sequels even manages to hold a candle to Tobe Hooper’s ferocious original that still remains one of the finest examples of cinematic alchemy that’s ever been made. Anyone foolish enough to try and emulate it is basically doomed to fail as no attempt invoke it can ever hope to match the raw, realness of the infamous tragedy that befell a group of five youths back in 1974. However, no one ever listens to advice anymore, so here comes Brutal 1976, a sun drenched, dusty attempt from prolific indie director, Marcel Walz, to not only ape the grungy authenticity of Hooper’s classic, but to also throw in bits from Wes Craven’s similarly brutal The Hills Have Eyes. The good news? There are official sequels to both movies that aren’t as good as this, and yet Walz seemingly has no idea how to distinguish between loving homage and cynical ripoff.
We focus on two groups of young, virile people as they both drive into the desert in order to meet up for a magazine photoshoot. In one corner, we’re introduced to Raquel and her girlfriend June, who soon run into car trouble and look for help at a local, rundown, mineshaft where they soon decide to get amorous (don’t ask). However, after they’re attacked by numerous hulking men in masks, we suddenly shift our attention to the second group, who have arrived at their destination and are openly wondering why Raquel hasn’t shown up yet. Of course, we know that she’s now chained up in the home of a makeshift family of lunatics, but as the others are blissfully unaware of this, once the photoshoot is done, they swing by a local ghost town ominously named “Savage” to take in the rusty sights.
It’s here that they meet Mama Bird, the reclusive owner of the town who once had dreams of turning it into a roadside attraction, but now she just lives in this rusting shithole with her “family” who reside on the other side of town. As the group split up to explore, take more photos, or just maybe get laid, one by one they soon meet the masked members of Mama Bird’s flock who all seem to be a couple of teeth short of a chainsaw and who all have murder and mutilation on their minds. Some are mute bezerkers, some are cruel sadists and some just want to be accepted as the brutal monsters that they are, but as the group find their number rapidly shrinking thanks to various run-ins with chainsaws, knives and a devastating use of a power drill – it seems that Mama Bird has something a little more going on that just mindless murder and mayhem. It seems that the matriarch of Savage is on a recruitment drive to amass a group to face the rapidly changing times and only a particular type of person is welcome to join…
Marcel Walz’s love for the early, smash mouth movies of Hooper and Craven can not be disputed. It’s blatently obvious from the very first frame of Brute 1976 that he worships at the alter of both Texas Chainsaw and Hills as he casts the frame in both blistering heat and course sand. As the title suggests, the movie is also set during the titular year (actually two months before I was born), and so the period setting allows him to ape the style even closer, throwing in afros, sideburns and the fact that he can throw in the odd spot of social commentary to go along with the throwback clothes and welcome lack of smartphones. However, loving a movie with everything you possess doesn’t necessarily mean you can match it and while Walz has some good ideas and a genuinely world class, show stopping gore gag, he unfortunately just manages to turn in just another pale imitation.
All the parts are there. He has a bunch of younger folk in a van and they’re even there to shoot a magazine spread, making things also vaguely reminiscent of Ti West’s X; he has a dilapidated town in the middle of the dessert full of rusting hulks and tetanus riddled garbage; and most importantly of all, he has a group of hulking maniacs armed with masks, power tools and the eagerness to put them to use. However, there’s a sense of stiltedness about some modern, low budget movies that kind of exposes them as nothing more than copy that lacks real conviction. Having no cash back in the 70s meant that the likes of Craven and Hooper stopped at nothing to put across the horror, resulting in iconic moments that felt uncomfortably real because they almost was. While I would never urge a filmmaker to brutalise their actors in order to make it feel real, you can’t deny the results and while Rob Zombie also understood while making his trilogy of firefly movies, Walz and his cast are only here to emulate, not emasculate. I can’t fault them I suppose, but too many times the little things let the side down. Be it a brutal, masked murderer clad in an inexplicably clean jumpsuit, or the ropes binding a woman to a chair looking oddly loose, at frequent times Brutal 1976 simply just isn’t brutal enough and it shows.
That’s not to say the movie is wearing kids gloves. If nothing else, a sequence featuring a poor sap getting a urethral swab with the business end of a power drill will no doubt get the gorehound plaudits it’s so desperately shooting for. However, while this wince-worthy moment of genital mutilation genuinely deserves to be counted proudly within the pantheons of cinematic penis pulping, no other death in the movie even remotely comes close to it which is strange considering how specifically graphic that kill is. Also falling into the forgettable category is the majority of the cast, and that includes the family of freaks that cause the carnage. If we once again take a glance at the various Texas Chainsaw and Hills clans over the years, they’re nothing if not distinctive. Leatherface, Pluto, the Hitchhiker, Papa Jupiter, Choptop, Mars, you knew their names and they were all kinds of threatening. However, the likes of Brutus, Zeus and Phoenix are just generic mask wearers who have no real character to speak of and while the character of Daisy brings some classic cross dressing to the genre, their constant looming and leering feel less the actions of cold blooded, bezerkers and more like the performers at mid-budgeted Halloween experience. The attempts to squeeze in some issues concerining race and social issues are a little clumsy, but well meaning; but a final act full of twists and counter twists aims for rug pulls, but just ends up just being increasingly annoying as people suddenly reveal themselves as evil with no real set up or pay off which only separates Brutal 1976 further from the no-bullshit attitudes of the movies it worships.
Undemanding gorehounds and Chainsaw enthusiasts will no doubt find some sort of gold here and I’ll freely throw my hands up and announce that dick mauling as world class (put that on a poster); but while the filmmakers hearts are in the right place, Brutal 1976 just misses the killer instinct that makes its influences so timeless. If you’re a fan of Texas Chainsaw or Hill Have Eyes, maybe just watch one of those instead.
