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#693 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
Tobe Hooper, 1986
A vengeful sheriff joins forces with a radio DJ to track down the family of cannibals who once killed his nephew and traumatised his niece.
I noted before how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in a class of its own compared to other well-known "slasher" movies, so it stands to reason that any attempt to spin a franchise out of the film would likewise stand out from the pack. While your typical slasher franchise tends to spawn several sequels of incredibly debatable quality that all featured the central villain going after interchangeable groups of victims, the first sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre goes in a direction that's as left-field as one would expect. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 isn't just content to replicate the same plot by having a whole new collection of youths be killed off by the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface; instead, it constructs a whole new tale based on a sheriff (Dennis Hopper) who is the uncle of the brother and sister who were terrorised during the events of the first film. To this end, he has spent over a decade scouring the state of Texas for the cannibalistic family, who have gone under the radar (with the exception of the family's oldest brother becoming a prize-winning chili cook). Hopper then crosses paths with a radio DJ (Caroline Williams) whose drive to do something more than just play music is cruelly rewarded when a prank call to her station serves as evidence for the killers' presence, which ends up making her their target.
Given how much of what made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre such a distinctive film in the first place is the way in which it compensated for being made on a shoestring budget, one wonders how well the same sensibility would translate to a more expensive production. Hooper at least attempts to offer a variation of the same sort of visual creativity to this film that made the original so great, here substituting '70s grain for '80s flash. There is the odd bit of visual flair, with the most notable example being the scene that introduces the deranged "Chop Top" (Bill Moseley, who is surprisingly tolerable here) and is soaked in giallo-like red and green lighting. The lurid approach extends to the violence on offer; while the original film traded on implication and sparse but effective use of actual gore, the sequel is pretty unapologetic in terms of offering the kind of splatter that one would expect from a movie with the phrase "chainsaw massacre" in its title. The fact that the effects are being provided by the one and only Tom Savini is also a point in the film's favour as scenes like people getting skinned alive or getting their heads sawed in half pepper the film. Throughout it all, the film is anchored by not only Hopper's revenge plot (as he plans on fighting fire with fire by equipping himself with multiple chainsaws) but also Williams as the Southern-fried victim who has to try to survive the ordeal by any means necessary, even when it comes to trying to befriend Leatherface.
The fact that this was produced by the notorious schlock factory that is the Cannon Group is pretty evident as the film is filled with '80s cheese for better or (more frequently) worse. While the film is definitely silly enough that you know not to take it seriously (it's a movie where Dennis Hopper wears a ten-gallon hat and carries a chainsaw in each hand), that's not enough to stop it feeling awfully tedious for the most part. The angle involving Williams is promising enough at first since it gives the character more of an arc than your typical final girl and she's at least got enough personality so as not to prove irritating. However, the film does get hung up on finding new ways to torture her (eventually resorting to replicating the original's climax where the family's elderly patriarch repeatedly tries and fails to kill the heroine with a hammer) and never quite matches the initial radio-station confrontation. There's not much in the way of black comedy either save for the family's dysfunctional squabbling and the ways in which it exaggerates the original's subtext for comic effect (such as Leatherface going so far as to make humping motions while directing his chainsaw at Williams - real subtle, fellas). As such, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is too goofy to really work as a horror and its goofiness isn't enough to prevent it from being a serious slog at times. It's not without its charm or merit, but instances of both are few and far between.
Tobe Hooper, 1986
A vengeful sheriff joins forces with a radio DJ to track down the family of cannibals who once killed his nephew and traumatised his niece.
I noted before how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in a class of its own compared to other well-known "slasher" movies, so it stands to reason that any attempt to spin a franchise out of the film would likewise stand out from the pack. While your typical slasher franchise tends to spawn several sequels of incredibly debatable quality that all featured the central villain going after interchangeable groups of victims, the first sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre goes in a direction that's as left-field as one would expect. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 isn't just content to replicate the same plot by having a whole new collection of youths be killed off by the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface; instead, it constructs a whole new tale based on a sheriff (Dennis Hopper) who is the uncle of the brother and sister who were terrorised during the events of the first film. To this end, he has spent over a decade scouring the state of Texas for the cannibalistic family, who have gone under the radar (with the exception of the family's oldest brother becoming a prize-winning chili cook). Hopper then crosses paths with a radio DJ (Caroline Williams) whose drive to do something more than just play music is cruelly rewarded when a prank call to her station serves as evidence for the killers' presence, which ends up making her their target.
Given how much of what made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre such a distinctive film in the first place is the way in which it compensated for being made on a shoestring budget, one wonders how well the same sensibility would translate to a more expensive production. Hooper at least attempts to offer a variation of the same sort of visual creativity to this film that made the original so great, here substituting '70s grain for '80s flash. There is the odd bit of visual flair, with the most notable example being the scene that introduces the deranged "Chop Top" (Bill Moseley, who is surprisingly tolerable here) and is soaked in giallo-like red and green lighting. The lurid approach extends to the violence on offer; while the original film traded on implication and sparse but effective use of actual gore, the sequel is pretty unapologetic in terms of offering the kind of splatter that one would expect from a movie with the phrase "chainsaw massacre" in its title. The fact that the effects are being provided by the one and only Tom Savini is also a point in the film's favour as scenes like people getting skinned alive or getting their heads sawed in half pepper the film. Throughout it all, the film is anchored by not only Hopper's revenge plot (as he plans on fighting fire with fire by equipping himself with multiple chainsaws) but also Williams as the Southern-fried victim who has to try to survive the ordeal by any means necessary, even when it comes to trying to befriend Leatherface.
The fact that this was produced by the notorious schlock factory that is the Cannon Group is pretty evident as the film is filled with '80s cheese for better or (more frequently) worse. While the film is definitely silly enough that you know not to take it seriously (it's a movie where Dennis Hopper wears a ten-gallon hat and carries a chainsaw in each hand), that's not enough to stop it feeling awfully tedious for the most part. The angle involving Williams is promising enough at first since it gives the character more of an arc than your typical final girl and she's at least got enough personality so as not to prove irritating. However, the film does get hung up on finding new ways to torture her (eventually resorting to replicating the original's climax where the family's elderly patriarch repeatedly tries and fails to kill the heroine with a hammer) and never quite matches the initial radio-station confrontation. There's not much in the way of black comedy either save for the family's dysfunctional squabbling and the ways in which it exaggerates the original's subtext for comic effect (such as Leatherface going so far as to make humping motions while directing his chainsaw at Williams - real subtle, fellas). As such, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is too goofy to really work as a horror and its goofiness isn't enough to prevent it from being a serious slog at times. It's not without its charm or merit, but instances of both are few and far between.