The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 didn’t need no stinking film festivals. The producers released it the old-fashioned way on 22 August 1986.
I love this film for a lot of reasons. But one of the biggest is that, like the original, it showed film “critics” to be idiotic pretenders. One of the biggest complaints about the first film was that it was excessively bloody and gory. Roger Ebert wrote that it “is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises.” It’s almost as though he didn’t watch the film and instead wrote his review based entirely on the press kit.
And twelve years later, the “critics” were unhappy that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 didn’t take itself seriously like the first film. Ebert was again wrong while implying that he thought well of the original. “[It] has a lot of blood and disembowelment, to be sure, but it doesn’t have the terror of the original, the desire to be taken seriously.”
But did the first film take itself seriously? Yes, it’s an intense film. But it’s also a comedy.
I’ve seen many interviews with Tobe Hooper over the years. He often repeated his surprise that audiences took so long to see the humor in the original film. And he made the sequel so no one would miss it.
As with most of his films, Tobe Hooper made exactly the film he wanted with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. In this way, he was kind of a snot. People usually think of directors like Kubrick as having a grand vision. If so, their grand visions are all kind of the same. (If you are Kubrick fan about to write an angry comment, watch Barry Lyndon twice and come back tomorrow. However, if you have an erection lasting more than 4 hours, contact your doctor. And get a life!)
Hooper’s films are very different — amazing considering he made almost exclusively horror films. But he seemed to understand Orson Welles’ prophetic comment, “They’ll love me when I’m dead.”
Let’s watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 for free without commercials, thanks to Archive:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.
