{"id":6583,"date":"2024-10-25T12:12:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T16:12:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6583"},"modified":"2024-10-25T12:12:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T16:12:35","slug":"the-texas-chainsaw-massacre-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/the-texas-chainsaw-massacre-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 <\/strong>(1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (graphic bloody violence and gore, disturbing gruesome images, intense scenes of terror, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tobe Hooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: L.M. Kit Carson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tobe Hooper and Jerry Lambert and Tobe Hooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Richard Kooris\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 22, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow, Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson, Ken Evert, Lou Perry.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The tagline on the poster for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2<\/strong> reads, \u201cAfter a decade of silence \u2026. The Buzzz is back!\u201d The Sawyer family motto is \u201cThe saw is family.\u201d This is no tea party, fellow gorehounds. It\u2019s more like an undiscovered circle of Hell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2<\/strong> is the last mainstream movie I can recall being released with a \u201cNo One Under 17 Admitted\u201d policy instead of an official MPAA rating. By this time, I was old enough to see such films without grief from the parental units or theater staff. The only problem is it didn\u2019t open in any theaters in my neck of the woods. It would have taken at least 45 minutes to get to the closest theater showing it which would have entailed trying to get a ride from my father who obviously wasn\u2019t a member of the target audience. Since I didn\u2019t want to make him sit through it with me, I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to wait until the home video release to feast my eyes on Leatherface\u2019s latest murder spree.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It finally came out the following February and I can\u2019t say that it had me jumping out of my seat. It\u2019s a crazy ass movie, no doubt, with its fair share of weirdness and depraved behavior. It\u2019s also gorier than its 1974 predecessor, but like the original it isn\u2019t as bloody as the title would seem to suggest. I was hoping for more of a bloodbath, especially with the super-restrictive age policy. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2<\/strong> doesn\u2019t quite qualify for that distinction. I own the \u201cGruesome Edition\u201d DVD which features a few deleted scenes including one in which the Sawyer clan makes quick work of a rowdy group of rioting sports fans. Even though the picture quality is poor, I can still tell that it would have been the movie\u2019s coolest scene. I cannot understand why it wasn\u2019t left in. It\u2019s an excellent display of the masterful work of makeup artist extraordinaire Tom Savini. That, my friend, is one of the greatest cinematic crimes of the 20th<\/sup> century. I say this while remembering first degree felonies like Ishtar and Yentl.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2<\/strong> opens with a bang as Leatherface dispatches two annoying yuppie d-bags who make the mistake of crossing his family\u2019s path on a deserted stretch of Texas highway. They\u2019ve just graduated from high school and look like they stepped right off the set of the latest John Hughes comedy. Perhaps the studio should have considered subtitling this movie \u201cPretty in Puke\u201d? On the DVD commentary, writer Carson says he was poking fun at Hughes\u2019 films with these two victims and with the poster art which looks eerily similar to The Breakfast Club.<\/p>\n

\u00a0With the absence of the sports fans scene, this opening sequence becomes the best part of the movie as Leatherface saws the driver\u2019s head in half. The incident is caught on audio tape by local radio DJ Stretch Brock (Williams, Stepfather II). The boys were harassing her on the phone right before the attack. Former Texas Ranger Lefty Enright (Hopper, Blue Velvet) arrives on the scene and immediately proves to the local police it wasn\u2019t a car accident. He\u2019s spent the last 13 years attempting to track down the people responsible for the disappearances of his niece Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother Franklin (remember them from the first movie?). He convinces the local paper to print a short piece about his investigation. It catches the attention of Stretch who brings him the tape. He initially dismisses her, but shows up at the radio station later asking her to play the tape every hour during one of her nightly broadcasts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It catches the attention of Drayton Sawyer (Siedow), now a successful businessman with an award-winning secret chili recipe. When asked about it, he replies, \u201cNo secret, it\u2019s the meat. Don\u2019t skimp on the meat. I\u2019ve got a real good eye for prime meat. Runs in the family.\u201d Upon concluding her show, Stretch encounters Chop Top (Moseley) waiting for her in the lobby. Remember the hitchhiker from the first movie? This is his twin brother. He wears a Sonny Bono toupee to conceal the metal plate in his head (an injury from the Vietnam War). He also does something with a wire hanger that makes Joan Crawford\u2019s use appear perfectly normal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Needless to say, he scares the hell out of Stretch. She tries to make him leave. It turns out he didn\u2019t come alone. Leatherface (Johnson) emerges from the darkness and the chase is on. Stretch manages to avoid being killed, but her sound engineer L.G. (Perry, The Blues Brothers) isn\u2019t as lucky. Chop Top beats him to a bloody pulp with a hammer and the boys take him with them when they finally leave. How sweet, fresh meat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Long story short, Stretch follows them to their home situated under an abandoned carnival ground. Lefty follows her to the Sawyer home. He used her as bait to bring the killers out into the open. Armed with three chainsaws, Lefty sets out to obtain justice for his missing loved ones. This is when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 <\/strong>takes a wrong turn. It becomes redundant as Stretch finds herself trapped in this place looking for a way out before somebody discovers her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0On the upside, Hopper delivers a great hammy performance. He gets to deliver lines like, \u201cIt\u2019s the devil\u2019s playground!\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m the Lord of the Harvest!\u201d The scene where he goes shopping for chainsaws is the kind of thing you\u2019ll only see in a cannibalistic redneck horror flick like this. I kept thinking of the \u201cMy Schwartz is bigger than yours!\u201d scene from Spaceballs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll say this much for Hooper (director of the original movie), he has a wickedly warped sense of humor. At times, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2<\/strong> plays like a dark comedy of manners and errors. It doesn\u2019t have the same claustrophobic atmosphere that defined The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; hence, it\u2019s not as effective horror movie. It\u2019s really more like a funhouse owned and operated by the escaped inmates of an insane asylum. The only problem is it gets redundant in the second half. It\u2019s especially disappointing considering the awesome set-up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Still, the actors appear to be having a great time with the movie. Siedow also gets some choice dialogue like. \u201cIt\u2019s a dog eat dog world and from where I sit there just ain\u2019t enough damn dogs.\u201d and, after getting cut with the chainsaw in a certain part of the body, \u201cThe small businessman \u2026. always, always, always gets it in the ass.\u201d Grandpa makes another appearance in the sequel, looking only slightly closer to death than he did thirteen years earlier. Williams makes a great Scream Queen here. She\u2019s feisty, but also knows how to act suitably terrified as she realizes she\u2019s more than just a mere guest at the family dinner.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wish the filmmakers had done more with the chili subplot. The very idea of people enjoying cannibalistic cuisine makes for great dark comedy. I wish there was more blood, guts and gore. A movie like this requires something on the scale of Grand Guignol. \u00a0I like that the Sawyers\u2019 sense of interior d\u00e9cor hasn\u2019t changed over the years. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2<\/strong> is a pretty good movie that could have been great. It excels in the weirdness department, but falls short in a few other crucial areas. I wouldn\u2019t call it a complete failure though. It\u2019s more of an underachiever.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (graphic bloody violence and gore, disturbing gruesome images, intense scenes of terror, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tobe Hooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: L.M. Kit Carson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tobe Hooper and Jerry Lambert and Tobe Hooper\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Richard Kooris\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 22, 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-sequels-remakes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/TheTexasChainsaw-Massacre-2.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7435,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions\/7435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}