It's OK to Forget About This Movie

I expected much more from Tobe Hooper’s 1986 film, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.” It starts out well with the always cool Cannon Films logo of the 1980's. Things pretty much go downhill from there.
Many of the horror film sequels released in the early 1980’s have the reputation of being very bad films, however, my opinion of most that I have seen is quite different. I remember Siskel and Ebert telling me that “Amityville 3-D” is horrible, in fact one of the worst films of 1983. I purchased the wonderful British import dvd of “Amityville 3-D” which features a very good commentary track by British horror film expert, Kim Newman. The film is not bad at all and watching the 3-D effects in 2-D is kind of fun. I also enjoyed “Halloween 2” and especially “Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.”
My dislike of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” lies in the decision to abandon any and all character development after the first 30 minutes of the film. We meet a very likable radio dj named Stretch Brock. Stretch is played by Caroline Williams. Williams’ performance is very good and she gives her character a very cool personality. She also has a very sexy Texas accent.  Her board operator is a fairly likable guy named L.G. (Lou Perryman). He has a crush on Stretch and who can blame him?

The opening scene of the film features two very annoying college guys driving from Austin to Dallas for Texas/OU weekend. As they are driving along, they are apprehended by a vehicle from which Leatherface emerges and proceeds to kill the two annoying college guys. After this mayhem is over, we meet Lieutenant Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper). Lefty appears to be a no-nonsense lawman who has a keen interest in the chainsaw murders that have continued to occur for the last ten years. The character of Lefty is an interesting one for the first 30 minutes of the film as well. I thought the film would explore the background of the family of chainsaw-wielding killers and we might learn some new things about them and Lefty’s connection to them…………no. After the first 30 minutes, the film makes no effort to continue to be interesting or entertaining, even in a silly 1980’s low-budget horror film kind of way. The largest problem is the introduction of the chainsaw family, characters which, as written in this film, are beyond bad and are completely uninspired by any kind of desire to be entertaining. We first meet the father, Drayton Sawyer (Jim Siedow), the father of the chainsaw family as he is winning a chili cook-off. This is one of the very few gags in the film that work. More silly or sick jokes like that would have been nice. A few scenes later, Stretch is chased around the radio station by Chop Top Sawyer, one of Drayton’s sons, and Leather face. This scene is endless as Caroline Williams’ role is diminished to one of simply screaming and running around. It gets much worse. After this scene, we do not get to see any of her charm as the script just places her in a new location in which to scream endlessly and be chased around by idiot characters. What was Tobe Hooper thinking? Did he care about making an interesting movie? Ok, so none of the early 80’s horror/slasher movies I mentioned earlier are ever going to be confused with works of Henrik Ibsen or Tennessee Williams, however, some of them do have enough interesting elements to make them worth watching. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” has very few interesting elements, and what interesting elements it does possess, it throws in the garbage after the first two reels. It was a true struggle to finish watching this movie. The last 45 minutes are quite painful and repetitive. Even Dennis Hopper’s character turns into an automaton, not literally—that would have been a welcome addition, quite honestly. The film devolves into people chasing people chasing people in an underground chainsaw family lair of stupidity.
“Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” attempts to add itself to the list of comedy-horror films of the mid-80’s, a genre that includes the far superior films, “Return of the Living Dead (1985) and House (1986). The poster of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” is funny as it mimics the poster for “The Breakfast Club.” This is where any progression of the making of this film should have ended. “It’s a good poster. Let’s just stop there while we are ahead.” So, I guess I did not really care for this film. Let me think about it a bit longer.  (1 second passes)  Yep, it was awful.