Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s True Horror Isn’t What You Think

On August 22, 1986, Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was launched, 12 years after his authentic. The first movie continues to be considered one of cinema’s most surprising, grotesque classics; whereas its sequel is simply as grisly, TCM 2 has its (severed) tongue firmly in its (rotting) cheek with a joke that begins the moment you have a look at the film’s poster—a macabre cannibal household posing precisely just like the Brat Pack stars on the poster for 1985’s The Breakfast Club.

While TCM 2 is primarily a black comedy, it additionally takes the time to dig into sure themes and story factors that come up solely briefly within the first movie, although they supply vital background and motivation for these characters (and could be additional explored in subsequent Texas Chainsaw movies, particularly 2006’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning). Famously, after all, the household on the middle of the movie—partially two, they’re given a reputation that fits them completely: the Sawyers, yuk yuk—as soon as made a residing working on the native slaughterhouse. While the small print are inconsistent from movie to movie, the lore at all times contains the truth that the household’s livelihood was taken away when the slaughterhouse embraced automation moderately than letting precise people do the soiled work.

In the primary movie, we see how that change brought on the household to isolate themselves, roaring forth with these animal-killing expertise solely when provoked by a gaggle of road-tripping children who blunder onto their property. But in TCM 2—written by L.M. Kit Carson, whose different credit embrace co-writing Wim Wenders’ 1984 Paris, Texas with Sam Shepherd—the Sawyers are far more out within the open. One of them is an precise celeb: Drayton Sawyer (Jim Siedow, in an expanded model of his Texas Chainsaw Massacre position), proprietor of the Last Round-Up Rolling Grill, a prize-winning catering enterprise. Early within the movie, we see a grinning Drayton announce “This town loves prime meat!” whereas accepting first prize (for the second 12 months operating) at a Dallas chili cook-off; later, he hustles his household by means of their very own dinner, as a result of “there’s a lot of hungry football fans to feed!” The implication, after all, is that the Last Round-Up has made unwitting cannibals out of anybody who’s devoured its scrumptious wares.

Though the film is sprinkled with jokes that emphasize the Sawyer household’s distinctive method to Texas barbecue (“Get that eyeball paté working!”), it’s nearly doable to let that surreal nugget sink into the again of your thoughts. At least till the movie’s third act when the Sawyers’ corpse-and-guts strewn base of operations is revealed. No longer are these guys residing in a rural farmhouse; they’ve taken over an deserted roadside attraction—the “Texas Battle Lands Amusement Park,” an appropriately violent monument—with underground caverns that enable Drayton to organize the our bodies that Leatherface (Bill Johnson) and Chop Top (Bill Moseley) search out. It’s a part of the film’s humor that that is how the Last Round-Up harvests its protein, and that regulation enforcement—apart from Lefty, Dennis Hopper’s revenge-minded character, a former Texas Ranger associated to some previous victims of the Sawyer household—simply sorta shrugs off what’s presumably an epidemic of lacking individuals. From what we are able to inform, the Sawyers enjoyment of feeding their clients principally…individuals similar to their clients.

In TCM 2, the primary killed are a pair of tipsy school children who determine to “play chicken” with an incoming pickup truck, not realizing who’s behind the wheel—or moderately, who’s behind the truck carrying a corpse-skin masks and wielding a chainsaw. Once once more, the Sawyers are reacting to being provoked, however you get the sense that whereas they do extra “hunting” to maintain up with Drayton’s provide wants, they’re additionally thrilled to take out obnoxious wealthy bros rushing round in a Mercedes (the license plate reads “FAQ Q”), firing random bullets on the roadside whereas prank-calling the film’s eventual remaining woman, radio DJ Stretch (Caroline Williams). “Coked-up pencil necks,” Drayton calls them, and it’s arduous to disagree, or to regret who’s being made into the thriller meat that’ll fill “a ton of croissant sandwiches.”

But although the Last Round-Up has earned a specific amount of regional fame, there’s a melancholy to Drayton’s operation that echoes again to the explanation he’s driving a meals truck within the first place. This is underlined when Grandpa Sawyer (Ken Evert in majestically decrepit previous age make-up, courtesy of Tom Savini) shuffles into the motion and we get a bit of little bit of exposition. The household was “raised in meat,” however when the slaughterhouse automated its enterprise, it was the start of the tip. “The electrified cages, the cold-steel chutes, the air-powered head hammers…that drove Grandpa crazy,” Drayton explains to a terrified Stretch. “One morning, Grandpa just quit going in. It was the shame.”

Now, there’s satisfaction to what the Sawyers have completed, however they nonetheless lengthy for the glory days of the slaughterhouse. As Drayton emphasizes all through the movie, operating a small enterprise is not any picnic, what with all of the individuals he has to please, the nitwit brothers he has to handle, and the limitless taxes he has to pay: “Small businessman gets it in the ass every time!” When Lefty bursts into the Sawyer lair wielding a chainsaw, Drayton’s first thought just isn’t of the individuals his household has killed over time, it’s that Lefty was despatched by a rival enterprise to sabotage his operation (“Who sent you? Those sissies over at Del-Mar Catering? That chickenshit burrito-man bunch?”). Instead of making ready to struggle again, he digs into his pockets for money to purchase off the intruder.

TCM 2 is delightfully absurd, one thing an informal viewer won’t choose up on initially due to its wealth of quotable traces and scene upon scene of operatic gore—to not point out a couple of real scares. It gives a bizarre (but in addition weirdly poignant) tackle how the thought of the American dream evolves throughout generations, with nostalgia for the previous typically insisting on clinging to the current. And whereas the primary Texas Chainsaw film dangles this risk, its wackier sequel hammers the purpose dwelling: if solely that slaughterhouse had stored issues old-school, the Sawyers might have stored utilizing their abilities and expressing their urges in a approach that wouldn’t contain fairly so many lifeless human our bodies. Probably. Maybe? On the opposite hand, Leatherface certain does love chasing individuals round with that dang chainsaw.

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