Nothing in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is quite as good as its teaser trailer, depicting a not-in-the-movie goof on 1981’s Excalibur. It does try a little.

An opening title scrawl informs us that only one member of the cannibalistic Sawyer family lived to see trial from the crime spree depicted in 1974’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and that the jury reasoned Leatherface was merely an “alternate personality” rather than an actual person. Therefore, he’s still out there, and well, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

This time, the human-skin masked killer is played by R.A. Mihailoff (Trancers III) and has been gifted a new, pimped-out, gold-plated tool of terror emblazoned with the saying “The Saw is Family.” It’s a present from brother Tex (Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises), and Leatherface aims to christen it on the young couple (Rapid Fire’s Kate Hodge and Ghoulies II’s William Butler) traveling from California to Florida who unfortunately stopped for fuel at the clan’s Last Chance Gas station, run by milky-eyed, porn-obsessed Alfredo (Tom Everett, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown).

Initial scenes of the saw-and-mouse chase take place outdoors at night, and are both hard to see and clumsily assembled by Stepfather II director Jeff Burr. Much better is the second act, taking place in the surprisingly clean Sawyer kitchen; here, the movie reaches an apex with black humor and bloodletting. When you introduce a brother with a hook for a hand, a matriarch with a throat harmonica and a malevolent little girl who quotes The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak,” that tends to happen.

As an ally to our unappealing vacationers, Dawn of the Dead’s Ken Foree livens things up as much as he can. It’s not enough to be great. —Rod Lott

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Ad copy for Jess Franco’s twisted little horror film promises, “Nothing ever stripped your nerves screamingly raw like The Diabolical Dr. Z!” And that’s true, but mostly because my nerves have never been stripped before, screamingly raw, pan-fried or otherwise.

Presumably “Z” only to his pals, Dr. Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano, Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror) bides his time wearing Coke-bottle glasses and sticking syringes full of ungodly fluids into kitty cats. Some poor schmo stumbles to their door, so naturally Dr. Z takes him into the lab, shoves a needle through his head and makes the guy his slave.

Then, with his daughter, Irma (Mabel Karr, The Colossus of Rhodes), pushing his wheelchair, he crashes some sort of international cerebral summit, where Dr. Z tells his peers about his research. They don’t exactly scream “Diabolical!,” but they sure don’t cotton to it, either, enraging the good — I mean, diabolical — doctor to the point of a fatal heart attack.

Destined to carry on her father’s work, Irma goes to catch some dinner theater. She sees the brief show of Miss Death (Estella Blain), a young blonde in a see-through black leotard who performs a bizarre interpretive dance number on a floor painted to resemble a spider’s web. (Okay, so it’s not really a “dance” number, as she mostly shimmies across the floor on her tum-tum at a snail’s pace until she reaches Mortimer Snerd’s transvestite cousin. But this display of talent is met with voluminous, approving applause all the same.)

Irma, needless to say, is inspired, so she decides to fake her own death. What Miss Death’s performance had to do with this epiphany was lost on me, but face it: She’s creepy anyway. To me, the smile-free Irma looks like the lead singer of The Cardigans after being locked inside the freezer at KFC for a week.

To fake said death, Irma picks up a hitchhiker that resembles Irma only in that she is female. After stopping for a swim, Irma runs the girl over with the car. As she’s dousing the vehicle with gasoline from her neighborhood Mobil (who knew Franco was into product placement?), she gets burned herself, which causes her to acquire what looks like a guacamole beard. No problem — with the help of a mirror, she simply numbs her face and carves a scalpel into it.

With her death now faked, she poses as a Hollywood big shot to lure Miss Death into her clutches. The ruse works, as Miss Death is as dumb as rocks, and Irma uses her to do her dirty work, murdering the doctors who laughed at her father.

With lots of needle-stickin’ action, Dr. Z is a first-rate flick from Franco (Vampyros Lesbos), who has an eye for shot composition and a feel for ambience, yet rarely had good material. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.