Couple of yuppie douchebags are out for a joy ride through Texas…
What could possibly go wrong?
Well…I suppose a redneck with a chainsaw could hack up your Mercedes…
Oooh…Looks like he nicked you…Probably just a scratch, though…
Whoops…Maybe not.
Well…It’s Thursday, and you know what that means…
For some of you, it will be a thirsty one…
For others, it’s not a time to throw back a cold one…
But instead, a time to dust off an old copy of a forgotten film…
So bust out the ol’ top-loading VHS player, the LaserVision, or the Betamax and watch yourself…
A Throwback Thursday Classic.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) – Okay…The other day when I recommended a bunch of Horror Sequels That Don’t Suck, I was reminded of this film…And I decided that it deserved a bit more attention…
Let’s start with the movie poster…
Look familiar?
No?
How ’bout now?
Tobe Hooper, the man who wrote and directed the original film could never understand when he attended screenings for his 1974 cult classic…Why no one was laughing…His original intention, especially for the scenes with the Sawyer family, was to fill the audiences with uproarious laughter…Instead…Those creepy rednecks only filled the audiences with blood-curdling fear…
So…
More than a decade later…
He decided to try again…
And this time…
He wasn’t fucking around.
Right off the bat…Let’s start with the comical poster that spoofed the insanely popular John Hughes movie of the previous year…Then, with an opening scene like the one depicted above…The tone of this film became quite evident…Saying it played like a cartoon…Well, that’s not nearly good enough…The tone of this film was straight-up Looney Tunes…Actually…Looney Tunes isn’t nearly bizarre enough…This time Hooper made his band of greasy rednecks so outlandish that they seemed to be animated by John Kricfalusi…
So here’s the story…
The two yuppie scum that were dispatched by Leatherface and the rest of the Sawyer clan…Just so happened to be on the request line of a local rock station….
Meet Stretch…
She’s the DJ who recorded the chainsaw attack…She’s also right off the bat…A tough as nails serious bad-ass…And no doubt this film’s Final Girl.
Stretch reaches out to the only member of law enforcement who believes that the chainsaw family is back at it again after more than a decade of silence…
Meet Lefty…
The uncle of Sally…The Final Girl from the first film…And the one lawman taking this case both seriously and personally.
The two start working together…Lefty asks Stretch to play the audio of the attack on the airwaves in order to get more people believing…That’s when some of the Sawyers pay a little visit to their local radio station.
Meet Chop-Top…
Well…Sort of…Right now he’s pretending to be a long time listener…
He soon reveals himself…
As a long time lunatic…With a steel plate in his head.
Just when Stretch thought she had seen it all…She got to meet another member of the Sawyer family…Perhaps the most famous of them all…
Meet Leatherface…
Ewww…What could be worse than watching him dry-hump his chainsaw?
Shit…I had to ask…Didn’t I?
In this scene…We really get to see what makes Stretch a Ripley-esque Final Girl…She actually holds her shit together when faced with greasy sister-humpers on a rampage…She surprisingly uses her charm to disarm and delay the rampaging monster named Leatherface…Who lets her live.
In the meantime…Chop-Top has tenderized the head of Stretch’s co-worker with a tack hammer…And he and brother Leatherface haul him back to their lair…And then…The ballsiest Final Girl on the planet…Follows them home…Man, this chick rocks.
For those of us…Curious about how the Sawyer family survive as members of our “normal” society…We get to find out about the family business…Gulp…Catering.
Meet Drayton…
Head Chef and CEO of The Last Round Up Rolling Grill…Home of the Award Winning Five Arm…Ahem…Alarm Chili.
With the legitimized Sawyers winning chili cook-offs and sawing up victims to provide the secret ingredient of prime meat for their chili…They are caught off guard by our two heroes…Both of whom are willing to do anything to stop these freaks.
Even fight fire with fire.
The two are locked into a deadly battle with the entire Sawyer family in their stately home constructed of human bones…dessicated corpses…And abandoned carnival remnants…They cause some serious damage to the family…Their home…And their ability to make another piping hot pot of people chili anytime soon…
And this time…It’s the Final Girl…
Who does the chainsaw dance at the end of the film.
This film was a great sequel, made by the original director and captured his original intent…
This film was darkly comic, cartoonish, and carnivorously crazy…
This film had way more gory gross-outs than its predecessor…
This film had one of the ass-kickingest, bad-ass bitches as its Final Girl…
This film is not to be forgotten, and is without question…
A Throwback Thursday Classic.
The Video Store Clerk 