FRIDAY NIGHT FRIGHTS: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986) “I’m the Nerd of the Harvest!”
As a kid the VHS box cover for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 scared the everloving bejesus outta me. I grew up on a steady diet of scary movies and trips to The Video Park in my hometown were a regular occurrence, specifically the haunted castle themed horror section. Apart from staying up past my bedtime on Saturdays to catch the Whitey Gleason hosted "Fright Night Theater" (of which I'll go into further detail someday, I'm sure) a great way to score a quick creepy fix was by staring at those great VHS covers and reading the summaries on the back. This is how I first came across many movies that would eventually become all time personal favorites (Your Creepshows, Your The Gates, Your Phantasms and Pet Sematarys, etc.)
But there was something that felt so…off about this particular box which really got under my skin. So much so that I couldn't even bring myself to read the back of it.
I didn't finally get a chance to check it out until maybe a decade or so later and by that time I had become a pretty hardcore fan of the original. Going in with my arms firmly folded, it was only the fact that Tobe Hooper was returning to the director's chair that provided any kind of hope that it might be at the very least a decent follow up. Well boy howdy, I came out the other side of that viewing bewildered and borderline amazed. Hooper had decided to zig where any other director hired to make a sequel to the greatest horror movie ever made would have zagged:
The dude made a comedy.
It’s all right there from the opening chase sequence across a seemingly never-ending bridge to Dennis Hopper’s (delirious and beautifully deranged) over the top performance as a sheriff with a thirst for vengeance.
Toss in any scene involving Bill Moseley as Chop Top and you’ve got yourself quite a stew. Which makes that box art finally make sense to me as the intentions regarding the tone of this movie are right there as well.
Look closely for a second, does it ring any bells? If not, go ahead and click here.
Pretty great! Personally I love it but much like that visual gag, the movie itself took a while for me to figure out. Now that I've seen it a few times it's easy for me to not even try to draw any comparisons to the flawless horror experience of the first movie and appreciate this sequel for what it is:
Tobe Hooper followed the stone cold classic Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a full on anti-sequel much in the same vein as Joe Dante’s criminally underrated Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
What a wonderful world we live in.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is available to stream now on The Roku Channel, Max, Spectrum TV or Apple TV on your Roku device.
