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Retro Review: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
By The Rev

Sep 21, 2006, 15:06

So, you’ve created what is widely regarded as one of the greatest and flat out scariest films of all time.  People are clamoring for a sequel, and in the day and age when every killer with a gimmick and a mask is getting a franchise all their own, why don’t you jump on the train as well?  Still, the question remains, how are you going to do that when your original work maintains one of the most unique tones set up in horror history?  Well, Tobe Hooper met this conundrum when he was faced with the prospect of making a sequel to his classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  He could have taken the same route, could have made a near identical copy of the original and called it a sequel like many another slasher film of the time, but he chose a different route.  He decided to forgo the moodiness that made the original all its own, instead creating a balls to the wall gore flick that, although heavily flawed in some aspects, maintains the frenetic horror that made the original a modern classic.

It’s the 80’s, and a couple of yahoo city kids with a cellular phone think it’d be a lot of fun to drive through the backwoods of Texas, playing practical jokes and making crank calls to local radio stations.  Disc jockey Vantia “Stretch” Brock (Caroline Williams) is less than amused when they tie up her phone line and refuse to hang up.  The city kids eventually speed up and decide to play a prank on a passing pickup truck, which if movies has taught us anything, is a bad idea.  The truck begins to pursue these kids in their sports car, taking on impossible speeds.  The city folk look on in horror as our old friend Leatherface jumps up from the back of the truck, wielding a chainsaw and cutting into their car.  They are soon dispatched quite gruesomely, while Stretch is left horrified, wondering what the hell just happened.

Enter Lieutenant ‘Lefty’ Enright (THE Dennis Hopper).  His nephew Franklin was killed by our favorite family of cannibalistic Texans in the first movie, and he’s been looking for revenge ever since.  Sensing an opportunity, he approaches Stretch and asks for her to replay the tape of the college kids being massacred in an effort to draw the crazies out into the open.  Though she’s hesitant at first, she complies, and by night’s end… well, the first films tagline sums it up best: Who will survive, and what will be left of them?

Now, this much is fine and dandy, and the film has a lot of aspects to it that work.  However, as a whole, the film itself is one big misfire of pacing problems.  You wouldn’t expect it, but for a film about a family of inbred redneck cannibals with power tools, the film drags.  A LOT.  Yes, there is gore and it is present throughout, but even this is made boring by severe pacing problems and the fact that each scene doesn’t seem to know how to transition to the next.  What easily could have been a great 70 minute movie is stretched out into a solid 90 minutes, and even this feels like a two hour movie.  That much is a pain in the ass.

However, the film does have some fine points that bring it above what it could be.

Like the first film, TCM2 manages to create a unique sense of dread and foreboding through some crazy set pieces.  While the first one had probably the creepiest farmhouse on the planet, this one replaces it with a series of mine shafts underneath an old amusement park filled with Christmas lights and some of the most bizarre artwork made of mannequins and bones you’re liable to find this side of Ed Gein’s house.  This part is awesome.

And of course, who could forget the great work of Tom Savini?  Though the MPAA cut down on a lot of his more graphic gore work, a lot of it remains intact and some of the most unsettling of all his work.  From the sawed-in-half-head to the great Leatherface and Choptop makeup work, Savini is out and in his element with this film.  Particularly disturbing is a scene where Leatherface attempts to romance Stretch by cutting off the face of one of her co-workers and placing it over her own.  Graphic, disgusting, and cool in a really twisted sort of way.

Still, the film truly belongs to the particularly insane performances by Dennis Hopper and Bill Moseley.  Hopper, as always, delivers with a distinct and great level of professionalism and insanity, taking on his role of disgraced sheriff to the hilt.  The madness he conjures up when he straps a chainsaw to each arm and goes on a rampage in the cannibal’s tunnels is nothing short of awesome.  Now, on the other side of the law we have Bill Moseley, who plays Leatherface’s previously unmentioned brother Chop Top.  You see, in the last movie Chop Top was away in Vietnam and since then he hasn’t been quite right.  Well, considering the fact that most of his head is a metal plate, I wouldn’t really blame the guy.  He manages to steal every scene he is in, firing out one-liner after one-liner underneath that tattered Beatle’s wig, alternating between hilarity and a unique brand of insanity that is even more terrifying than anything Leatherface could muster up.  His manic laughter while bashing a mans head in with a ball peen hammer is scary as shit, while surprisingly funny in its own way.

So, in the end, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is an ok film and a decent sequel.  While it’s serious pacing issues take it down as a film overall, a lot of its more redeemable aspects manage to keep it afloat as a fitfully entertaining and consistently scary film.