Certainly, one of the strangest horror sequels of the slasher era was the sequel to 1974’s pioneering shocker The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Director and Producer (and Co-Music scorer) Tobe Hooper waited 12 years before his The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 would hit the theatres. An unlikely antihero was cast in Dennis Hopper, playing the role of an ex-Texas Ranger hellbent on revenge. TCM2 was released a little over a month before Hopper’s seminal performance as the historically psychopathic Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I’m not sure if Hopper was shooting both films at the same time, but if so, he didn’t need to stray too far from either character to get into character for each respective film.
As for Tobe Hooper, he found this as his opportunity to, very bluntly, exploit what he thought he was doing in his original picture: a black comedy slasher film. Most viewers, including this writer, were surprised to hear that Hooper intended for the first to be a black comedy. It’s verité style, building tension, and granular atmosphere during the waning Vietnam War in the sweltering pits of South Texas, and the chaos that ensues, hardly jumped out at one as a black comedy. At the time, Tobe was now four years into the still unsubstantiated claim that Stephen Spielberg, not he, actually directed 1982’s Poltergeist. Therefore, I see it as no surprise that Hooper would be not so tongue-in-cheek about his second installment of TCM. From the parody The Breakfast Club theatrical poster to, shall we say, the “soft side” of Leatherface (who we find out is actually named “Bubba”), Hooper does not hold back on the fact that this film is a parody of itself and the original. This caused critics and audiences alike to be of mixed review. But for fans of the genre, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 turned into a cult favorite. Hooper also enlisted Tom Savini to do the make-up and made the most of his increased budget, going from roughly $250k for the original to over $4 million for this sequel. Quantity doesn’t mean quality, as the original was able to make do with the modest budget and manage to make an incredibly gore-free movie that seemed about 10 times gorier than it was. That is not the case with this episode, though. This more in-your-face, punk rock soundtrack-laden successor could never possibly be better than the first classic. But it is the film that Hooper wanted to make, and during his life, he was unapologetic as to the quality of that quantity. And so am I.
We begin the film with Buzz & Rick (Chris Doiritas & Barry Kinyon), described later by a local cop as “a couple of wild punks out raising hell.” Buzz & Rick, while driving to a local football game, call a local, female DJ, Vanita “Stretch” Brock (Caroline Williams), from their 1986 car phone to harass and pester her. Later, there’s a bizarre chase caught off-air over the phone line, ending Buzz & Rick via the agility of both Chop Top (Bill Moseley) & Leatherface (Bill Johnson) effortlessly making roadside mincemeat of the two, lewd jocks.
It is at about this point that we meet Hopper’s Lt. “Lefty” Enright, out inspecting the crash. It is here that it is revealed that he is out to avenge the murder of his nephew, who you’ll remember as the paraplegic Franklin (Paul A. Partain) in the first film, and his sister, Sally (Marilyn Burns), the final girl who was deemed gone mad after her harrowing experience. After inspecting the claims made by the blood-covered Sally in 1974, no actual evidence was found of any murders. Lefty believes otherwise, though, and shortly thereafter, we go on his trip to the “Cut Rite Chainsaws” store. I always found the whole extension of the chainsaw theme to be overplayed. In many ways, I still do. But I’ll be damned if I said that Dennis Hopper wasn’t able to make it work with the display he put on after finding his weapon at this store. It is not surprising that this Hollywood legend would sign on with Hooper for such a gruesome, spastic horror film, as he was not the type to look down on such films like so many of his contemporaries did and still do. Hopper brings more than just star power; he puts life into the character written for him that I don’t think many other actors would’ve been able to pull off.
One of the fun crochets of the picture is the chili cookoff in which the “Cook” wins for the second consecutive year. The “Cook” is the Chainsaw Massacre patriarch and lead cannibal Drayton Sawyer, played by Jim Siedow, the only returning cast member from the original. When asked what makes his chili so good, Drayton answers, “don’t skimp on the meat” and that he “has an eye for prime meat.” When the trophy presenter spits out a piece of (bone, tooth?), Drayton remarks that it must be a “piece of hard-shell peppercorn.”
Eventually, Lefty and Stretch cross paths and Stretch is encouraged by Lefty to play the tape of the boys being murdered over the radio to get it in the press and alert the citizenry. However, the only citizenry that seems to notice are the Sawyers. Drayton promptly dispatches Chop Top & Leatherface to the radio station to kill Stretch. Thus, we are properly introduced to Chop Top, who we find out is the twin brother of the “Hitchhiker” (Edwin Neal) from the original film. This creature is played to perfection by horror favorite and the Yale-educated Bill Mosely, and this is his breakout role. You could say that Chop Top was very “playful” in getting Stretch’s attention, suggesting that she play “In-a-vida-da-gada” and proclaiming that “music is my life,” all while “scratching” the metal plate on his head with a wire clothes hanger. A plunging Leatherface comes ripping through the wall to chase down Stretch after Chop Top keeps her warm; in that exchange, Leatherface nicks the metal plate and Chop Top loses his “Sonny Bono wig.” When Stretch’s nerd alert radio sidekick LG (Lou Perryman) returns after a coffee run, he is seemingly beaten to death with a hammer by Chop Top and taken back for processing to the now defunct Matterhorn amusement park, where the Sawyers have taken up residence underground.
Hilarity ensues until the incredibly uncomfortable scene in which Leatherface tracks down Stretch and develops that “soft spot” for her by using the chainsaw to “gently” copulate with her, morphing into the strangest orgasm you’ll ever see onscreen. Leatherface is so smitten with Stretch that he leaves her alive. When Chop Top asks him if he “got that bitch,” he affirms. Throughout the film, Leatherface covers for Stretch until he can’t anymore. And so, begins this macabre, one-sided love story.
Stretch and Lefty collide at the Sawyer residence, but, after failing to grip the outstretched skeleton arm that Lefty holds out for her while she’s about to drop into a kind of earth-based trap door, they are split up again. Stretch is found again by Leatherface, who promptly ties her up and keeps her to himself, doing more outlandish sex type things. It just so happens this is the same room where her bf extracted the face and half the torso of her old co-worker LG; and to her surprise, LG is still alive! He manages to get up and cut Stretch loose. But poor old LG falls over and that’s the end of him. Stretch gets free and eludes the Sawyers for a while, until she is found by the whole family. Leatherface is mocked by Chop Top, but all is forgiven between the loving brothers.
This brings us to the pretty-much-the-same reenactment of Sally’s “dinner” scene from the first film. Caroline Williams’s Stretch pays homage to Marilyn Burns’s Sally by screaming her head off and being terrified. This time around, Grandpa (Ken Evert, taking the place of John Dugan from the first) still has his dexterity issues, but does manage to put Stretch in a kind of twilight consciousness on about the tenth try. At this point, after finding his nephew Franklin (now played by a prop skeleton), an invigorated, adrenaline-driven Lefty bursts onto the scene, proclaiming himself as “the Lord of the Harvest.” This outburst springs Stretch loose, with Chop Top taking it upon himself to chase after her. At the same time, the chainsaw duel that the world of cinema waited its whole existence for happens, with Dennis Hopper’s Lefty taking over vs. the lovesick Leatherface. Old Drayton goes into their favorite corpse and Chop Top’s best friend Nubbins’s coat pocket to pull out a grenade and all of them – Lefty, Drayton, and Leatherface, are exploded.
Meanwhile, Chop Top is no match for Stretch, and he is dropped off the side of the fake Matterhorn after Stretch steals Chop Top’s beloved, corpse Grandmother’s own chainsaw. Simultaneously, both victors do the “chainsaw dance” that Gunner Hanson gyrates about to after Sally gets away in TCM, the difference being that Lefty is exploded and Stretch lives.
The original TCM is surely a consensus selection to an all-time horror movie Mount Rushmore by any, serious horror fan. It had the social consciousness of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, transcending Romero’s Civil Rights-era tensions with Hooper’s mid-1970’s metaphor for the Nixon era, the unrest of the ongoing Vietnam War, and the parody of tightknit cannibals in juxtaposition of “family values.” Hooper patents the gonzo filmmaking technique of TCM and translates it into the 1980’s notorious “decade of excess” with TCM2. While many film critics and some genre fans found the “excess” of TCM2 unbecoming of Hooper’s original vision, I think it fits right into what America was like in the mid-1980’s. At this point, Reaganism was in full force, paving the way for the Religious Right, “Just Say No,” and trickle-down economics that only seemed to trickle up. Hooper seems to have put up a big middle finger to what this movie was “supposed” to be and instead focused on what the year 1986 seemed to represent: greed, hypocrisy, and hysterical outrage over anything “they” perceived as immoral.
I’ve only watched TCM2 a handful of times in my adult life, as opposed to the original, which I’ve seen countless times. In essence, TCM2 is just as depraved and disturbing as its predecessor, and I’m just as anxious watching this as I am the original. The thought of a cannibalistic family in my own small town simmered above the festering racism and inequality and ignorance of rural America. Hooper simply substitutes the bedlam and graininess of his first film and stands it up against the “me” decade of superfluousness and glut of the time. There’s a certain kind of uneasiness for me personally while viewing this film (and writing this breakdown). It’s as if I’m stuck in that pit with Stretch, far removed from being force-fed the traditional, American family mantra. There are times in the film where Writer L.M. Kit Carson’s writing makes you cringe and blush, but most of the time, you’re just left cringing, whether it be Leatherface’s budding romanticism, Chop Top’s childlike malfeasance, or the casual disembowelment.
Roger Ebert’s take on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: 1 Star (Thumbs Down)
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2 carries a proud old name in the annals of exploitation, but its only ambition is to outgross the original film. It fails.”
Horrormetrics 