This certainly is not the worst of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies, but it's probably the hardest to sit through, despite also being 75 minutes without credits. The fourth Massacre movie is much easier to sit through, even though it's one of the strangest, dumbest, worst movies of all time. As with most bad movies, the weakest link in this one was the story and pacing. It's not exciting when a movie is in a constant climax. You begin to lose interest, and that's where this movie suffers most.

Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her boyfriend Ryan (William Butler) are bringing her father's car from Florida to California. Along the way, they stop for gas in Texas, and meet Tex (Viggo Mortenson), a man claiming to be lost. Ryan refuses him a ride, they drive off, and are attacked by a giant monster truck. And, you'll never guess it...Leatherface and his family are at it again. Thrills, chills and spills are nowhere to be found.

These Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies are too similar to each other. Sure, they have original characters in each one, but they all end up with the family scaring the protagonist(s), and they're too much alike almost to call sequels. Even Nightmare on Elm Street brought some element of freshness or originality to each film. These are just rehashed over and over again, minus the fourth film, which is in a bizarre league of it's own.

The acting wasn't too bad. The lead actors gave okay performances, including an early performance by Viggo Mortenson. It's not as over the top as any of the other movies, and because of that grows boring very fast. The direction was pretty good for what the script allowed. All the action scenes were well shot, though nothing spectacular. The dialogue is okay, meaning there's no lines that stood out as absolutely awful.

The story and pacing makes this very hard to watch. The story is the same as the other movies. The pacing consists of a 5 minute opening, a 20 minute introduction to the characters, then a 50 minute climax. It's not exciting to have constant climaxes in movies, it's tiresome, and this movie is nothing but that.

My rating: * 1/2 out of ****. 80 mins. Rated R for violence and language.