The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

(1986) ***

Well, now they've done it. It's 12 years later and the psycho family from the original have become total caricatures of themselves. By this point the Friday the 13th saga is up to number six, and there's nowhere for this franchise to be but in parody-land. It's around now that Mad Hillbillies start being considered sooooo funny and your uncle Octopunk rolls his eyes all the way into the back of his head. I've been griping up a storm about the chatty hillbillies, and this movie contains some of the worst of it. When scenes drag, they drag. The scene from the original in which Grampa is invited to whack the girl with the hammer is repeated, but this time goes on for so long I wanted to take a hammer to my own head to get it over with.

The creepy family have been repackaged for the late 80's in a lurid, overdone fashion. The Hitchhiker's been replaced by Chop Top, a foul-toothed hippie with a plate in his head. I don't think you ever hear the words Leatherface in the first movie, but Chop Top says it over and over again ("it's brand recognition!" I suddenly realized). There's also LF's cuter nickname:Bubba. It's just so crazy!

BUT, this movie totally saves itself. It's over the top in some bad ways, but in other ways that same quality makes for good horror. For instance, the family farmhouse has been swapped for a secret hideout beneath an abandoned Texas Battles them park. It sounds like the hq for the silliest of Batman villains, but the interior is so decked out with corpses and bones and hanging body parts it actually makes the place genuinely horrible, a real charnel pit. The gore and violence throughout are admirably nasty, especially the fate of poor old L.G. (several hammer blows to the head, partially skinned...still wakes up later. Oooh.)

Not only that, Dennis Fucking Hopper. He's the uncle of Franklin from the first movie, and here he plays the Cop Who Won't Quit. He tracks the bad guys to their lair and actually does something very sensible: he starts taking a chainsaw to the whole place.

I've completely blown off the plot here. Two asking-for-it punks are attacked on the road by Leatherface while they're on the phone to a local Martha Quinn-like DJ. At the behest of Dennis Hopper, she plays the tape on the air and attracts unwelcome attention, of the power-sawed variety. The characters are so-so, and will make a great many decisions that you, the viewer, will disagree with. It's okay, you can go ahead and yell at them.