The Sawyer Family Killed the Radio Star

 

Hooper's return to the Sawyer family with his Cannon Group produced The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) didn't quite set the world on fire the year of its release but once it hit the rental store shelf plenty of horror fans (and fans of the original masterpiece in 1974) scanned the aisles looking for it. It certainly gained a reputation for being an outrageous alternative to the dark original that Hooper insisted had some type of humor to it so many of us obviously missed. Well, Hooper wasn't about to let us off the hook this time, dialing up the graphic violence, abandoning the dirty rural sweltering squalor of the Sawyer home for a cheap radio station in North Texas (because Drayton Sawyer popularized a "special chili" (it's the "prime meat", his insists is his secret ingredient!), features an off-the-wall Moseley as the infamous Chop Top (with a metal plate on his head, rotted teeth, lighting the tip of a coat hanger to peel a bit of his head skin for little snacks!), offers a typically hardly-restrained Hopper as an ex-Marshall out for revenge after the murder of a relative thanks to the Sawyers, plenty of chainsaw carnage (the radio station doesn't fair well, nor does a car or its owner), and a heroine (Williams, with that delicious Texan drawl and daisy dukes) who doesn't expect Leatherface to be smitten with her but certainly takes advantage of his affections (and attraction) by leading him on. It was survival in that moment. I have to admit that the scene where Leatherface buries his running chainsaw (very long blade, too) into a bucket of ice with soft drinks between Williams' legs was unexpectedly phallic and perhaps offered as even erotic! Leatherface gradually moving his blade across the damp legs of Williams, Hooper wasn't about to subtly imply anything...that blade was Leatherface's member. Williams' Stretch is indeed a brave woman, all credit to her, but many will probably feel that "doing the right thing" was the wrong thing for her. Hopper's Lefty never quite seems to save the day as he intends while Stretch is always right in the thick of things. 

Leatherface, as the film surprisingly turns, seems willing to keep Stretch safe and even dances with her (after placing the skinned face of co-worker, LG (Perryman) as a mask to conceal herself!) when he could have killed her at the radio station and later after finding her in their lair (they "cut their meat" and do their "cooking" at an old amusement park) still fails to execute her. That is something Hooper is always pointing out throughout the film: Leatherface is "coming of age" and has a sexual awakening while Stretch just tries to keep him from hacking her up with his chainsaw. Leatherface in this film isn't an absolute terror, a nightmare that emerges and penetrates the psyche. He's more or less "misunderstood", a product of a deranged family, including a cook father (Siedow), irked by competing rivals and totally a-okay with chopping up folks and using their meat for his popular chili, and a bizarre raving lunatic (often speaking through a rotted corpse as if the body were a ventriloquist dummy!), the aforementioned brother Chop-Top. The grandpa returns but he's a bit more "lively", still dropping the hammer but a bit more animated in his face (Hooper, for kicks, puts the camera right into his face as he grins while Williams is full-blown hysterical) at least. The Sawyers keep their grandma way up a mountain (the amusement park/makeshift underground abode is kind of symbiotic with its "environment"), within her own natural "mausoleum", sort of on a "throne" as a ceremonial tribute. The underground is quite elaborate, with tunnels decorated by multi-colored lights and human skeletons and bones, held up by wood as underpinning and support beams. When Lefty arrives, he takes his long chainsaw (purchased at a ramshackle Texas shop, celebrated gleefully by the store owner) and starts to cut away at the stronghold, with the Sawyers deeper inside eventually realizing that their home is not only invaded but under attack.

Yes, Hooper returns us to the dinner table of his first film, with Williams pretty much screaming and trapped in mortal terror while the Sawyers get caught up in the exhilaration of the moment. It's the kind of delirious, descent into madness one might expect. Rob Zombie must have been taking mental notes whenever he watched this. I think this film's influence is all over "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003). Williams does seem to find herself voluntarily inviting the madness, violence, and terror by going to where the Sawyers are, even after they leave the radio station. There is a morality there that is admirable even as it might seem a bit foolhardy. Lefty finding the wheelchair skeletal remains of Franklin is an actual poignant, rather tragic scene where Hopper could have camped it up but actually handles the dramatic moment with care. Afterward, though, his Lefty throws caution to the wind and goes right into the devil's lair to chainsaw battle Leatherface. Siedow gets it right in the ass! Lefty and Leatherface compare their chainsaw length and the ensuing battle is about who can sling it at the right time towards victory. That Lefty's chainsaw goes right into Siedow's Drayton Sawyer's ass is just pure Hooper. His warped sense of humor is all over this film.

I love that Williams fights all the way. Yes, she does get a couple hammers to the head by grandpa and Drayton, not to mention, razor cuts to the back by Chop Top, but by the end it is her slinging the chainsaw. She's the ultimate victor. Unfortunately for Lefty, he knew going into the devil's playground would probably cost him his life and with Drayton fatally wounded with a grenade found on a corpse at the dinner table, that was a certainty. 

Tom Savini gets to go nuts again as Leatherface is penetrated all the way through with the chainsaw and the Chop Top makeup (with the head plate) is quite grotesque. The split head towards the beginning of the film after Leatherface saws through the car of a couple of high school douchebags calling in to harass Stretch's radio station with squirting blood is rather hilarious. The use of skeletal corpses as "decorum" and the design of the Sawyer home is right out of a mad dream. There is actually one scene where Lefty cracks open a wall and a huge puddle of entrails and discarded bloody organs spill out. This is very much Hooper dialing up the wickedness. There's no wonder this film is admired by a certain section of Chainsaw fans. I'm not surprised others think its right the opposite of the original classic. Hooper doesn't try to match or best his most heralded film. Instead, Hooper just goes berserk. 3.5/5