movie reviews - Horrorphile

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‘Tis peculiar the way one’s appreciation for art changes as you get older. Some things you liked immensely when you were younger you can no longer tolerate, while other things you didn’t have time for when you were young, as an older person you now see great merit in.

When director Tobe Hooper brought the buzz back it went down like a ton of bricks. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) polarised audiences and critics, split them down the middle like Leatherface and his trusty chainsaw. Over the years the movie garnered a cult following, partially due to the fact that the movie had been butchered both by the censors, but also by Hooper himself, having to comply to the executive producers who weren’t happy with shooting script, and also that Hooper felt the movie was uneven in its pacing, so certain scenes had to jettisoned.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Caroline Williams

Caroline Williams as DJ Stretch

I remember first seeing the movie as a bootleg VHS copy, an acquaintance of mine had brought back from the States. At the time the movie was banned in Australasia. The same acquaintance had also given me a bootleg copy of George Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985) which never received a theatrical release down under. These two movies become like gold to me, and I would relish screening them to mates, partly because they felt so subversive, but also because the NTSC-to-PAL conversion gave them an “underground” quality (read: lo-fi).

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper as Lefty

I had a copy of Fangoria magazine with a feature on special effects make-up maestro Tom Savini’s work on Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (he also created the astonishing work on Day of the Dead), and there were a couple of stills depicting elaborate gore effects which weren’t in the version I had on VHS). As it turned out, they’d been cut even before the movie was released. Now, finally with the release of the Gruesome Edition DVD I’ve been able to see the deleted scenes; it’s a real shame they’re of such poor quality, fifth or sixth generation dubs by the look of it … not happy Jan!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Bill Johnson

Bill Johnson as Leatherface

I hadn’t watched the movie in several years or more, but I’d championed the movie ever since owning that prized VHS copy, despite reading critics’ reviews damning the movie and considering it to be trash. Watching it again I have to admit it doesn’t hold up nearly as well as I remember. In a curious switch of appreciation I now have more respect for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and am less fond of the sequel. Hmmm. Not that the sequel doesn’t have its merits. But it’s more a case of the sum of parts are better than the whole.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Bill Moseley

Bill Moseley as Chop-Top

Stretch (Caroline Williams) is a radio disc jockey on K-OKLA, Austin, Texas. Lt. “Lefty” Enright (Dennis Hopper) is on a mission. His brother’s son, Franklin, was one of the four victims from the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Lefty is out for serious bloody revenge. He even purchases three chainsaws to do battle with the Sawyer family, as they say, “When in Rome …”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 Jim Siedow, Bill Moseley and Bill Johnson

Cook (Jim Siedow) with his mischievous sons

Two obnoxious yuppies coked-up and causing trouble along a lonely stretch of blacktop are listening to Stretch’s show on the radio. They call her on the Merc’s car phone and then refuse to hang up, which rather oddly, means Stretch is forced to listen to them hootin’n’yellin’. The yuppies come to a bridge and are confronted by a pickup which reverses alongside them. The country bridge (in what I can only interpret as a directorial touch of ill-conceived surrealism) seems to be as long as the Golden Gate. With Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) driving, Leatherface (Bill Johnson), holding up the petrified corpse of Nubbins (the hitchhiker from the original movie), attacks the yuppie car with his lengthy saw and, as Stretch listens in, slaughters the pair.

Stretch gets Leatherface gets a little hot and bothered

So now Stretch has the Sawyer family murdering on record. She plays it over the air, and cook (Jim Siedow) hears it coming home from winning the Chili Cook Off (“It’s all in the meat!”). He’s not happy with his boys. So he sends them out to the radio station to deal with the issue.

L.G. (Lou Perry) after Leatherface's handiwork

The majority of the movie subsequently takes place in the underground lair of the Sawyer family which is below a disused Alamo theme park called Texas Battle Land. After Chop-Top and Leatherface take L.G. (Lou Perry), Stretch’s techie, with them, Stretch follows. Lefty also arrives at the subterranean homestead, the hellbent Lord of the Harvest.

Leatherface makes Stretch wear L.G.'s face!

Stretch becomes a dinner guest just as Sally had in the first movie. Grandpa (Ken Evert), 137-years old, and with a salacious glint in his eye swings with the hammer, while Lefty charges through the massive underground den sawing through the support beams and grinning maniacally.

Stretch at the head of the Sawyer dinner table

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is severed-tongue-in-cheek and over-the-top, that’s easy to see. It's curious and odd that Hooper and co-screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson (who penned Paris, Texas!) decided to infuse such absurdity, but more unsettling is the sexual shenanigans that Leatherface’s behaviour exudes. As Cook remarks to his son, “You got one choice boy; sex or the saw … But the saw is family.”

Grandpa (Ken Evert) has a lick of Chop-Top's coathanger

Perhaps the perverse sexual subtext is one of the primary reasons the movie was banned for so long (not only down under, but also in many parts of Europe). Certainly the blood and gore, although intense in places, isn’t nearly as graphic as, say, Day of the Dead. While we’re on the blood and gore, the stand-out effect has to be the skinned face, arm, torso and leg of L.G. The stand-out horror moment has to be Leatherface forcing Stretch to wear L.G.’s skinned face while her arms are tied.

Lefty, armed and dangerous

It’s a shame the movie isn’t the one Hooper wanted to make, due to budget limitations. Still, for the modest budget Hooper and his production design team achieved amazing work. The set for the Sawyer’s lair is extraordinary. Fellini meets Grand Guignol. Combined with the lighting and art direction it’s something to behold: a horror museum piece!

On top of the Matterhorn, our final girl

But the look aside, there is something fundamentally wrong with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; there is no consistency in tone. It shifts unevenly between shock factor and schlock humour. It is nowhere near as frightening as the original nightmare. The simple fact is: if Dennis Hopper wasn’t in the movie, if Tom Savini hadn’t done the special effects make-up, if Tobe Hooper hasn’t at the helm, it wouldn’t have the cult following that it does. Caroline Williams certainly adds spunk, and the creepily absurd character performance of Bill Moseley (who’d enjoy a cult renaissance as Otis Driftwood in Rob Zombie’s movies) is noteworthy.

I still have a soft fleshy spot for this flick, forget about the two or three other sequels that followed, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is where the story should end. It’s very much a flawed horror movie, but it scratches an itch you probably weren’t aware you had, just like Chop-Top absent-mindedly picking away at the scabby edges of his steel-plated skull. Yum, yum!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 movie poster

Here's the original teaser trailer:

Here's the slaughter of the yuppie scum surreal bridge scene (warning! not work safe):