Returning more than a decade after the horror of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper’s sequel to his own iconic film is one of the great left turns in horror history, resulting in one of the genre’s brashest, most surprising sequels.
Here, the gruesome cannibal clan known as the Sawyers have relocated to a labyrinthine series of caves located under an abandoned amusement park. A local DJ, Vanita ‘Stretch’ Brock (Caroline Williams) becomes their latest target. But they haven’t bet on Stretch fighting back, or Lieutenant ‘Lefty’ Enright (a truly wild Dennis Hopper), who is out for revenge against the Sawyers for murdering his nephew, who was one of he victims in the first film.
In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, Tobe Hooper turns the dial up to 11, turning in a work of true grand guignol that both celebrates and sends up the excess of his Texan chop shop aesthetic. Leatherface (played here by Bill Johnson) is out in full force, although even he is upstaged by an unhinged Dennis Hopper, and particularly the great Bill Moseley, who plays the unforgettable Chop-Top.
Full of gorgeously gruesome aesthetics, lavish set design, leftfield Texan humour and a torrent of gore, there is nothing quite like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II: the buzzz is well and truly back.