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57%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #2,780
...out of 20,690 movies
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Radio DJ Vanita 'Stretch' Brock's open request night is plagued by the annoying phone pranking of two road tripping, party-hard, hoodlums, but things take a disturbing turn when the hoodlums meet their demise at the hands of familiar chainsaw wielding maniacs. With the entire gruesome ordeal recorded on tape, Stretch seeks out the help of a former Texas Marshall who's on a personal quest of vengeance against this family of cannibals. While at first he turns her down, he eventually decides to use her tape to his advantage, asking her to air it during her request block- effectively baiting the cannibals to the radio station where he'll personally deal with them.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: May 29, 2005
In 1974, Tobe Hooper created what is (in my opinion) one of the best entries in the horror genre to date with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Twelve years later, Tobe returns to the movie that put his name on the map by creating this sequel. Once again, our storyline revolves around the deranged Sawyer family, with leader Drayton (Jim Siedow) acting as a cook by day and leader of the family by night. Drayton is the talk of the town due to winning a chili-cooking contest thanks to his "secret ingredient"... human flesh. The flesh comes in to his now-underground slaughterhouse courtesy of his boys - the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Bill Johnson) and the plate-in-his-head Vietnam vet Chop-Top (Bill Moseley). All is good with the clan, until they decide to kill off a couple of yuppies driving down a back road. The murders go off without a problem, but what they don't know is that the yuppies were on the phone with female radio DJ "Stretch" (Caroline Williams) just before the murders took place. Thanks to the killers sudden appearance, the yuppies were still on the phone with her while being murdered, leading to the entire event being recorded on the radio stations cassette tape logs. For some reason, Drayton believes that this will give away their identity, so they set out to kill this young lady and get the tape. Meanwhile, Texas Ranger "Lefty" Enright (Dennis Hopper) wants revenge on this clan for the murder of his wheelchair-bound son Franklin in the last movie, and we wind up with a tag-team of Lefty and Stretch versus the serial killing family.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was (again, in my opinion) one of the best horror movies of all time. Take away that statement, and Leatherface would still remain one of the best horror villains of all time. Now, it's common knowledge that sequels rarely live up to the original, but I had high hopes with this one. The same director was behind the camera, (most of) the same characters were present, and the storyline itself really isn't too hard to screw up. Sadly, Tobe completely lost his touch during that twelve-year span between these movies and managed to create one extremely sad sequel. The main problem, by far, is the humor that was injected into this entry. Now, the original did have some black humor sprinkled throughout, but nothing that would distract from the main point of the film; that point being to scare the living hell out of the viewers. With this movie, Tobe decided to basically create a horror-comedy. Sure, the horror does outweigh the comedy, but only by a small percent. So much of the movie is spent giving the heroes time to spout of one-liners, giving the villains time to act downright goofy, and setting up small "joke" backdrops for the scenes to play out in. This is heavily distracting as the movie plods along... but, to be fair, the rest of the film wasn't that good regardless. Go check out my review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre if you haven't already. Go on, this page will be here when you get done. See all of the praise that I heaped on that one and all of the great elements of horror that were present? Everything that I loved about that movie has been stripped out of this one, leaving us with just another tired slasher clone.
The characters found here is the next big gripe from yours truly. Leatherface is reduced to a love-sick pansy, and is also heavily used to pull some laughs from the crowd. A tear of shame nearly escaped my eye as I saw him making goo-goo eyes towards Stretch just before doing pelvic thrusts at her in an attempt to win her love. He does make a comeback in the quality department towards the end during a battle of chainsaws with Lefty, but the damage has been done by this point. Chop-Top (the brother of the hitchhiker from the first movie) is my next complaint. Bill Moseley, the man behind the character, is a great actor. His performance here does nothing to change my mind with regards to that statement, and he really does make the character entertaining. So, why am I griping? Chop-Top is nothing more than an excuse to pull even more laughs from the crowd, as all he does is make silly jokes and do even sillier things. The character is good, and would have worked out much better in another movie... but here, he sticks out considerably. Drayton, the leader of the clan, seems to be more concerned with his BBQ's and the upcoming football game than with, I dunno, taking care of the humans that are infiltrating his underground home. Basically, each of the actors involved with the characters did a great job, but the actual characters and the script itself completely sucked.
Remember the realism factor that I harped on during my review of the original? That's been completely thrown out the window here. A man gets bashed in the head with a hammer no less than ten times, has the flesh removed from his body (including his face and his chest right down to the ribs), and still manages to live. A wall is filled with still-steaming blood and guts. Leatherface has a huge chainsaw shoved completely through his stomach and is no more hurt as a result than if he'd been poked with a stick. These scenes look quite nice thanks to the effects work by Tom Savini, but in terms of storyline and realism, they should have been completely redone.
Let's see here. The gore is good, and... well, that's about all the movie has going for it. Stay away from this one unless you're a die-hard fan of Leatherface, and even then, you'd still probably walk away disappointed. 3/10.
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#1:
Cryptorchild
- added January 23, 2006 at 6:44pm
"Get that bitch Leatherface, get that bitch!" This
movie is sooooo different to the orginal. It just
went in an entirely different dierection. To some,
it's better, to some it's horrible. I love it.
Bill Mosely as Choptop is just so fun to watch.
But make no mistake, if you want something along
the lines of the orginal TCM, then I would skip
this over.
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#2:
Ginose
- added February 2, 2006 at 1:56pm
I don't care what anyone thinks, this was easily
the best TCM movie ever made (especially better
than the 2 that came afterwards). It balances the
sheer grotesqe amount of gore with comedy! This
movie was great, if you don't like it, then I
don't like you. Bill Moseley is easily the most
underrated actor that has ever stared in a
B-Movie... well... next to Bruce Campbell and Phil
Fondacarro. I'll admit, it's nothing like the
original, and you know what? I DIDN'T CARE! 10/10.
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#3:
bluemeanie
- added October 16, 2006 at 4:35pm
This film is proof positive of Tobe Hooper's
wretched directorial talents. He took what was
one of the best horror films ever made and pissed
all over it with this lame, ridiculous, and
inappropriate sequel to the original film. 0/10.
Really, really dreadful.
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#4:
Tristan
- added October 29, 2006 at 10:30am
15 minutes into this movie, I was praying for it
to be over. The original was as good as a horror
movie could get, but this one was just an insult
to the genre, and the original. I really don't
think this movie could have been any worse.
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