The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part 2,” released in 1986, has the powerful title in the accounts of exploitation, but what it really wants is to outgross the first film, which it fails at.

The first film was admittedly frightening and evil, but it also had an unmatched originality, and it was one of the scariest movies ever made. The sequel has this nuisance look to it, and picks laughs over screams. Roger Ebert said it best when he said, “at the end, we haven't seen a nightmare - we've just seen a lot of latex face masks and red dye.”

What do we see in this movie? Ebert said, “I thought perhaps Tobe Hooper - who directed the first film and is back again this time - would use his larger budget and his greater freedom to make a horror movie that would go through the roof, that would define in some sort of crazy way how nauseating a movie could possibly be.”

Deciding that path wouldn’t make it perfect but, with what it would have done, could have accomplished something. Ebert mentioned, “Now that bloody special effects have turned horror movies into studies in clinical pathology, maybe it was time for Hooper, the master, to come back and show the kids how it's really done.”

Hooper’s first installment in this franchise shocked viewers when he casted unknown actors, made the movie feel like a low-budget true story, and guessing that it “was” actually true (I had found out from James Rolfe when he reviewed the first movie that it was inspired by Ed Gein, as was “Psycho”).

The movie had this powerful, scary feel, since it told the story of this crazy family of Texas’s cannibals, trapping whoever came on their property with death.

After the first “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was released, it was the inspiration for many slasher films, including the ones where teenagers get killed in and every special effects performances with limbs being torn off and the sight of corpses.

The sequel had a lot of blood and severing, which is what you would expect, but it lacks the scary feeling of the first one, where you expected it to be taken seriously. This is a spoof.

Ebert speculated, “Maybe Tobe Hooper - who went on to make "Poltergeist"' for Steven Spielberg - has grown mainstream, less concerned to shock, more eager to show us it's all a joke.”

The movie focuses on the chainsaw family from the first movie. Grandpa Sawyer, played by Ken Evert, is now on a wheelchair, which you would expect since he’s 137 years old. The father, nicknamed Cook, reprised by Jim Siedow, is the reigning champion of the Texas-Oklahoma Chili Contest for two years, despite the fact that judges sometimes see human teeth in his chili. His sons, Leatherface (Bill Johnson) and Chop-Top (Bill Moseley), live in an underground morgue below an abandoned theme park, where the severed limbs of their victims are decorated on their ceiling.

The protagonists this time around include Lieutenant “Lefty” Enright (the late Dennis Hopper), who wants to kill Leatherface for killing “Lefty’s” brother, and DJ Vanita “Stretch” Brock (Caroline Williams) who takes up her screen time screaming while the Sawyers threaten her with chainsaws.

Ebert is right when he said, “The chase leads to the underground caverns, which stretch endlessly in every direction and are lit like Christmas trees. In the original movie, the stark hillbilly poverty of the family supplied part of the drama; here, they're living in Felliniesque splendor.”

Then we see the most disturbing part the special effects people did for the film: A part where Stretch’s boyfriend gets his face skinned off, and Leatherface puts that on Stretch as a mask.

Another flaw is where they try to think screaming and chaos is on the same level as suspense.

This movie goes from one comedic spoof to another, doesn’t do anything for the pacing, the timing, the patience that is wearing thin for the horror. It doesn’t even stop to tell us about the characters. Dennis Hopper had the most psychotic role, playing a Lieutenant who spends the first half of the movie looking distracted and unclear, and the second half shouting while he cuts through wood with his chainsaw and fighting Leatherface with a chainsaw.

One technical flaw: The chainsaws are not started during most of the parts they are in. And how can they? You clearly see they’re not started, even though you can hear them during the film.

Ebert mentioned, “Russ Meyer once filmed a chainsaw scene in three hours, out in his garage, that looked twice as bloody and convincing as anything in this movie.”

Ebert went on to say, “I asked him about his special effects, and he explained that he didn't bring in high-priced experts. For his closeup, he just dressed up a big watermelon in a cowboy shirt, and used a real chainsaw.”

Now for those who enjoyed this film for how funny it was, by all means you can. Personally, I feel this one ruined the franchise with how much it spoofed the first one. I feel like everything they did right to scare audiences watching it, they didn’t try to do that again with the sequel. Instead, they made a film that looked like people in an asylum would enjoy. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Show this to a bunch of criminal or mentally unstable patients in an asylum and see what they say.

You want my advice: avoid this movie! If you liked the first one, then you will absolutely loathe this one entirely. That is my guarantee. Unlike the first one where I was constantly checking how much time was left in the movie because I was scared by it, this one I was constantly seeing how much time was left because I was that furious at how bad it was.

Well, it’s a good thing I’m done with that one now. Check in tomorrow in my marathon on “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise” to see how the third one turned out in “Halloween Month.”