Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!
The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a singular film experience. It’s one of the scariest and most upsetting horror movies ever made, and shows a depth of directorial skill that Tobe Hooper didn’t show very often afterwards. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that for a terrifying film about a family of cannibals who hack people up with chainsaws, the movie is almost entirely bloodless. Twelve years after the original film, Tobe Hooper directed the sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and he took this film in a very different direction, both in terms of tone and in terms of blood content.
Where the first film has plenty of violence, both on screen and implied but almost no blood, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 opts for full gore and guts. We’ll see heads split open, piles of intestines, and more. It’s also a film that is fully intended to be comic in a lot of places. There are clearly comedic elements attempted—very dark ones, to be sure—but comic nonetheless. It also features the talents of Dennis Hopper, who, until he was in the Super Mario movie, said that this was the worst film he ever made.
We’re going to start with a voiceover that explains (kind of) the gap between the movies, or at least acknowledges it. We then need to get our initial scare, which involves a couple of drunken students driving to Dallas for a football game, acting like assholes on the way, and harassing a north Texas DJ named Stretch Brock (Caroline Williams). During one of their harassing phone calls to her, they are attacked by Leatherface (Bill Johnson), who kills both of them and presumably drags them home to be turned into vittles.
This attracts the attention of Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper), a former Texas ranger and the uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty. If you don’t remember them, Sally is the lone survivor from the first film and Franklin is the guy in the wheelchair—the one victim everyone cheers when he’s killed. Enright has been on a personal vendetta to find out about the chainsaw murders, and any rumor he hears, he follows up on. Stretch hears about him and contacts him; she has a tape of the call where the two guys are killed and wants to give it to him.
The two meet, and Lefty asks her to play the tape on the air as a request. She does, and this attracts the attention of our cannibal family, who go hunting for her. This is our first introduction to a new character—Chop Top (Bill Moseley). Stretch makes it out of the encounter alive, in part by praising Leatherface and his skill with the chainsaw, but her producer L.G. (Lou Perry) is taken by Leatherface and Chop Top. When they drive away, Stretch follows them, and is in turn followed by Lefty, who essentially used her as bait.
You can see what’s going to happen, right? Stretch is going to infiltrate the house, get caught, and be put in some terrible situations. Lefty, once he discovers the carnage around him, goes crazy with a pair of chainsaws he’s bought for this occasion, tearing through the structural supports of the ramshackle building the family lives in. Eventually, it’s all going to come down to a confrontation or two, a chase, and a chainsaw battle between Lefty and Leatherface.
There’s a lot here that is definitely intended to be funny. Chop Top is an over-the-top character who is very much intended to bring a manic comic energy to the film. A sequence near the end involves the family grandfather (Ken Evert), a truly horrifying creature creation, attempting to bludgeon Stretch as a sort of “last kill” moment and continuing to fail. It goes on a bit long, although it has its moments at first. There’s also a long sequence with Leatherface trying to decide if he wants to eat Stretch or make her his girlfriend. These ideas are interesting, but they don’t work as well as they should or could.
The comedy isn’t the biggest change, though. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is awash in blood and gore. Some of this is ridiculous and almost comes across as parody—at one point, Leatherface is still fighting while he literally has a chainsaw not merely lodged in his stomach, but lodged through his stomach and out the back, evidently with no ill effects. I get the idea of the unstoppable killer, but Leatherface has always been human, not supernatural.
Is this a good movie? Not really. It’s not terrible, though, and for genre fans, there’s a lot here to enjoy, even if it’s a huge drop in terror quality from the first film.
Why to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: Dennis Hopper has a chainsaw fight with Leatherface.
Why not to watch: If you’re not ready for farce, it’s going to be a strange experience.
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