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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 might as well be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1. There is nothing stopping it from being that except the fact that a movie featuring the same evil characters -- Leatherface and his brothers and his grandpa -- had already been created 12-13 years prior. This sequel continues the story of those very same characters -- except now there’s a different brother, who was absent during the original film -- but the movie itself is something totally different from 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That movie was a dark, twisted, totally horrific nightmare about a group of 1970’s young adults who found themselves at the wrong place and the wrong time. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a ridiculous farce and a biting social commentary dealing with the adjustments that the cannibal family from the first film have gone through. This is a horror film about the 1980’s itself.
Part 2 opens on a road somewhere near Dallas, Texas. Rich, snotty college aged Texas boys out to have a good time are cruising down the road, calling up the DJ on the radio station they’re listening to on their car phone and harassing her simply because they can -- the DJ is a young woman who is also quite fresh and happenin’ herself. Her name is Stretch (Caroline Williams) and she is the protagonist of this film. Stretch and her radio engineer, L.G., who happens to have a crush on Stretch, become witnesses to a horrific massacre -- Leatherface, the cannibalistic chainsaw killer who wears his victims’ faces, attacks the college boys in his truck with a chainsaw while on the road. The accident brings a badass cowboy lieutenant (Dennis Hopper) named Lefty to the scene of the crime -- relatives of his were victims in the original Texas Chainsaw movie but nobody believes a cannibalistic family of chainsaw killers even exists, except his surviving niece. They got away scott free, hiding their trail. But now Stretch has evidence of their existence on a cassette from when she recorded her radio show’s phone calls. Lefty has Stretch play the cassette tape on the air again as a request, hoping it’ll get more attention from people and maybe this old case will finally be taken seriously again. The only attention it gets is attention from the cannibal family itself -- for Leatherface’s brother is also a young, wild punk who loves music and listens to Stretch’s radio show.
From there we finally meet the rest of the cannibal family -- we’ve already seen The Cook, the oldest brother who also appeared in the first film. He’s now a champion Chili Cook Off winner (yes, he makes his chili from humans.) Chop-Top, the young punk of the family, is a Vietnam veteran with a plate in his head. He speaks a lot of insane, crazy dialogue and runs around with the corpse of his younger brother (who died in the first film) whom he treats as like a ventriloquist’s dummy that he makes talk. The family has grown obsessed with money and capitalism. While in the original film, they ran a gas station and sold Bar-B-Que there, now their Bar-B-Que business has grown considerably to where selling various forms of meat is all they do. Wait till you see their headquarters!
What’s changed more than anything, though, is Leatherface. He’s some kind of mentally retarded man, probably in his early 30’s, who just does what he’s told to do -- and that’s kill people so that the family can make food out of them. He is told to dispatch Stretch -- they’ve gotta get rid of the trail of people who know about them. The thing is… he can’t. Standing up in a back room at the radio station, screaming her guts out, Stretch is also proudly displaying a hot pair of legs underneath a little pair of jean shorts. It becomes apparent that Leatherface is now thinking of his chainsaw as a source of pride for his manhood -- despite what his brothers want him to do, Leatherface’s natural instincts now just want him to hump Stretch, not kill her. Just as the 70’s have now turned into the 80’s, Leatherface is also going through a big change in his own world -- the passionate killer now wants to be a passionate lover. He is frustrated by what his family wants him to do. His freedom has been taken away from him. The years of killing women on automatic are over -- now he responds to their cries for help with serious consideration. As he licks his lips over looking at Stretch’s body, it’s clear that he’d now rather eat p**sy than eat intestines.
Stretch herself is tired of what she is. She doesn’t want to be a dumb bimbo DJ that plays music all day -- she’s got reporter instincts in her. She, as she puts it herself, “wants to do something real.” The story of the chainsaw killers that fell in her lap has given her that chance. And her encounter with Leatherface and his family is finally the right moment to do something about it -- to change her life.
What follows is Stretch’s adventure as she chases after them, especially after they came after her but Leatherface let her go -- secretively. At one point, we see Stretch wearing the skinned face of a man, perhaps to symbolize 80’s feminism and women acting like men to get further in life. Her relationship with Leatherface continues while she loses other facets of her life in the process. By the end of this movie, Stretch has become an even wilder animal, a woman who has literally made it to the top.
Problems with Chainsaw 2 occur mainly in its final act. The film hits a note and stays on it for a very long time. The ending drags and doesn’t feel as compelling or clever as the movie was earlier. The chainsaw family, especially The Cook and Chop-Top, become extremely yappy and talkative, and unfortunately the movie focuses on this banter way too much. The ending plays out very much like the ending in the first movie, but with a different atmosphere. Ridiculous dialogue abounds and inventive scenes come to a standstill. But overall, there’s many memorable moments, lots of splatter gore, lots of disturbing imagery and a definite feel of unreality in a world that actually appears very real and recognizable, although it’s Texas in the 1980’s. Many people loathe this film, citing that it just didn’t take itself as seriously as its predecessor. The thing is… how could it? How could it top the original? Especially in a new decade. Every Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel - and remake - that has come out since Part 2 has taken itself seriously and in my strong opinion, they’ve sucked massively, as well. But The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 might even be better than the original. It’s understandable that people might look at it and say, no way. It’s quite a “stretch.” So, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, like certain characters in this movie, wants to be something different than how it was before. It wants to be bigger and stronger than ever. And even though this film was blasted and ripped apart and ignored, the series has grown considerably since then and more and more people are also taking The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 more seriously than ever today. This is one of the most unique horror films of not just the 1980’s but of all time.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2
(directed by Tobe Hooper, 1986)The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 might as well be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1. There is nothing stopping it from being that except the fact that a movie featuring the same evil characters -- Leatherface and his brothers and his grandpa -- had already been created 12-13 years prior. This sequel continues the story of those very same characters -- except now there’s a different brother, who was absent during the original film -- but the movie itself is something totally different from 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That movie was a dark, twisted, totally horrific nightmare about a group of 1970’s young adults who found themselves at the wrong place and the wrong time. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a ridiculous farce and a biting social commentary dealing with the adjustments that the cannibal family from the first film have gone through. This is a horror film about the 1980’s itself.
Part 2 opens on a road somewhere near Dallas, Texas. Rich, snotty college aged Texas boys out to have a good time are cruising down the road, calling up the DJ on the radio station they’re listening to on their car phone and harassing her simply because they can -- the DJ is a young woman who is also quite fresh and happenin’ herself. Her name is Stretch (Caroline Williams) and she is the protagonist of this film. Stretch and her radio engineer, L.G., who happens to have a crush on Stretch, become witnesses to a horrific massacre -- Leatherface, the cannibalistic chainsaw killer who wears his victims’ faces, attacks the college boys in his truck with a chainsaw while on the road. The accident brings a badass cowboy lieutenant (Dennis Hopper) named Lefty to the scene of the crime -- relatives of his were victims in the original Texas Chainsaw movie but nobody believes a cannibalistic family of chainsaw killers even exists, except his surviving niece. They got away scott free, hiding their trail. But now Stretch has evidence of their existence on a cassette from when she recorded her radio show’s phone calls. Lefty has Stretch play the cassette tape on the air again as a request, hoping it’ll get more attention from people and maybe this old case will finally be taken seriously again. The only attention it gets is attention from the cannibal family itself -- for Leatherface’s brother is also a young, wild punk who loves music and listens to Stretch’s radio show.
From there we finally meet the rest of the cannibal family -- we’ve already seen The Cook, the oldest brother who also appeared in the first film. He’s now a champion Chili Cook Off winner (yes, he makes his chili from humans.) Chop-Top, the young punk of the family, is a Vietnam veteran with a plate in his head. He speaks a lot of insane, crazy dialogue and runs around with the corpse of his younger brother (who died in the first film) whom he treats as like a ventriloquist’s dummy that he makes talk. The family has grown obsessed with money and capitalism. While in the original film, they ran a gas station and sold Bar-B-Que there, now their Bar-B-Que business has grown considerably to where selling various forms of meat is all they do. Wait till you see their headquarters!
What’s changed more than anything, though, is Leatherface. He’s some kind of mentally retarded man, probably in his early 30’s, who just does what he’s told to do -- and that’s kill people so that the family can make food out of them. He is told to dispatch Stretch -- they’ve gotta get rid of the trail of people who know about them. The thing is… he can’t. Standing up in a back room at the radio station, screaming her guts out, Stretch is also proudly displaying a hot pair of legs underneath a little pair of jean shorts. It becomes apparent that Leatherface is now thinking of his chainsaw as a source of pride for his manhood -- despite what his brothers want him to do, Leatherface’s natural instincts now just want him to hump Stretch, not kill her. Just as the 70’s have now turned into the 80’s, Leatherface is also going through a big change in his own world -- the passionate killer now wants to be a passionate lover. He is frustrated by what his family wants him to do. His freedom has been taken away from him. The years of killing women on automatic are over -- now he responds to their cries for help with serious consideration. As he licks his lips over looking at Stretch’s body, it’s clear that he’d now rather eat p**sy than eat intestines.
Stretch herself is tired of what she is. She doesn’t want to be a dumb bimbo DJ that plays music all day -- she’s got reporter instincts in her. She, as she puts it herself, “wants to do something real.” The story of the chainsaw killers that fell in her lap has given her that chance. And her encounter with Leatherface and his family is finally the right moment to do something about it -- to change her life.
What follows is Stretch’s adventure as she chases after them, especially after they came after her but Leatherface let her go -- secretively. At one point, we see Stretch wearing the skinned face of a man, perhaps to symbolize 80’s feminism and women acting like men to get further in life. Her relationship with Leatherface continues while she loses other facets of her life in the process. By the end of this movie, Stretch has become an even wilder animal, a woman who has literally made it to the top.
Problems with Chainsaw 2 occur mainly in its final act. The film hits a note and stays on it for a very long time. The ending drags and doesn’t feel as compelling or clever as the movie was earlier. The chainsaw family, especially The Cook and Chop-Top, become extremely yappy and talkative, and unfortunately the movie focuses on this banter way too much. The ending plays out very much like the ending in the first movie, but with a different atmosphere. Ridiculous dialogue abounds and inventive scenes come to a standstill. But overall, there’s many memorable moments, lots of splatter gore, lots of disturbing imagery and a definite feel of unreality in a world that actually appears very real and recognizable, although it’s Texas in the 1980’s. Many people loathe this film, citing that it just didn’t take itself as seriously as its predecessor. The thing is… how could it? How could it top the original? Especially in a new decade. Every Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel - and remake - that has come out since Part 2 has taken itself seriously and in my strong opinion, they’ve sucked massively, as well. But The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 might even be better than the original. It’s understandable that people might look at it and say, no way. It’s quite a “stretch.” So, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, like certain characters in this movie, wants to be something different than how it was before. It wants to be bigger and stronger than ever. And even though this film was blasted and ripped apart and ignored, the series has grown considerably since then and more and more people are also taking The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 more seriously than ever today. This is one of the most unique horror films of not just the 1980’s but of all time.