A Hooper Horror: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

At this late date, it’s difficult to differentiate adept film making from intentional camp. Removed from its release by over two decades in 1986, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 certainly isn’t a masterful piece of work, although the film does maintain a specific tone and visual bent throughout the entirety of its one hundred minute run time.

The beginnings of Massacre, though, date back to the ‘70s. After working in and around Austin, Texas – the city of his childhood – Tobe Hooper worked on a film called Eggshells. Using the backdrop of a hippie commune, the 1969 supernatural feature didn’t see an actual release, but still set up Hooper to work in the feature medium again a few years on.

In 1974, after inspiration struck during a trip to a hardware store, Hooper wrote and set up the production for what would become The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Despite its meager budget, the film managed to attract a rather broad audience and went on to influence a new generation of slasher flicks – for good or bad.

More than a decade later, with Dennis Hopper in tow, Hooper set about filming the follow up to his successful 1974 work. Using a script from L.M. Kit Carson, Hooper worked out a sequel using the same murderous family, but needed to figure a way to visually explicate the group’s mentality.

Utilizing an abandoned carnival, Drayton Sawyer and his family live in a bizarre network of caverns that centers upon a sprawling dining room. It’s a far cry from the bucolic farm house that served as the family’s home in the first film. But here Hooper renders the shadowy network of winding paths into a dystopian funhouse ride. It’s all brown tones and shadow, but Massacre works well visually.

A radio disc jockey named Stretch is kidnapped – or just dumb enough to follow the murderous family back to its lair – and Lt. "Lefty" Enright, played by Hopper, is charged with her savior. There’s a good deal of running around and screaming, which is what most of the film is comprised of. Plots in films like these, though, are mostly bogus anyway, so in some ways it’s a plus that Carson discarded a substantial storyline.

Stretch doesn’t have too much to do apart from wear a pair of revealing shorts, but her constant running and screaming was probably tiresome to the actor and only occasionally to the viewer. She’s almost done in a few times by Leatherface and then eventually his grandfather, but makes it out just fine. The last few sections of the film are all cut ‘em up gore and guts. But what saves the film from being a total waste is that it’s completely aware of itself.

The final scene in this second installment of the Massacre sees Stretch dancing manically atop of some carnival landscape in an echo of the first film’s conclusion. There isn’t any grandiose figuring or conclusions here, just an intoxicating image. Hooper’s original story isn’t wrapped up in any manner, but maybe that’s where Rob Zombie comes in.