The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow, Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson Movie Review

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Caroline Williams in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

Massacred

Radio DJ Vanita 'Stretch' Brock's (Caroline Williams) is getting frustrated by a couple of trouble rousing kids who are tying up the phone line in to her radio show when she hears what sounds like them being attacked by a chainsaw. When Lieutenant 'Lefty' Enright (Dennis Hopper) puts an advert in a local paper looking for anyone who witnessed the murder of two teenagers in a chainsaw attack she comes forwards as she has the recording of the phone call. Lefty, having lead a mission to find those behind a historic chainsaw massacre gets Stretch to broadcast the recording to try and lure the killers out but it leads to Stretch ending up in danger.

On one hand I can see what writer and director Tobe Hooper was trying to do with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2", which is clearly to make a satire of the original horror movie, upping the comedy and the horror to make it an all out horror comedy bloodbath. But I can also understand why Dennis Hopper was reportedly to have thought this was the worst movie which he had appeared in. So basically what I am saying is that the idea behind "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is good but the execution was bad, and rather than laughing when I saw Leatherface pelvic thrusting his giant chainsaw it made me groan that it was that bad.

Bill Moseley in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

The thing is that "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is not a complicated movie as you have DJ stretch ending up in danger when she ends up in the underground home of the Sawyer family where they now use chopped up bodies to make award winning chilli. And to try and survive Stretch manages to get Leatherface to fall for her whilst all the time Lefty has armed himself with an arsenal of chainsaws as he is hell bent on revenge when it comes to the Sawyers. The thing is from Dennis Hopper wielding chainsaws to Caroline Williams running around in denim shorts and screaming a lot little in this movie actually entertains be it the jokes or the horror.

But "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" does have one positive and that is Bill Moseley as 'Chop-Top' Sawyer as his performance almost saves the movie. You can literally ignore everything else in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" and just watch Moseley's creepily eccentric performance as Chop-Top as it is in your face, amusing but also unsettling. Let me put it this way, if you thought scary clowns walking down the street are frightening then meeting Chop-Top would make you run faster than those fleeing from the clowns.

What this all boils down to is that "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" didn't do it for me and it is a case than whilst the idea was good the movie wasn't. But it does have Bill Moseley who even though the movie is poor his performance is fantastic.


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