Watched: 10/12/2023
Format: Max
Viewing: First
Director: Tobe Hooper
I was in no rush to watch the sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but JAL informed me that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 takes place during Texas/ OU Weekend, and, well, that's a thing around these parts.
When I started college in the 1990's, my family did not pay any attention to UT football or tradition, and so I was unaware of what was then called The Red River Shootout, when the University of Texas and Oklahoma University football teams meet half-way in Dallas for their annual, early October game at the Cotton Bowl. So I was very confused when, half-way through my first semester, campus emptied out as folks went to Dallas or otherwise disappeared during the day on a game day.*
Anyway - none of that is relevant except that the film starts on the Thursday or Friday night prior to the game as two dumb-ass frat guys, headed from Austin to Dallas for a weekend of debauchery, run afoul of Leatherface and family on the road (the scene is filmed in scenic Bastrop, using what is now a pedestrian bridge).
I feel for Tobe Hooper. He was never really wired to work within the studio-system, but that he did in order to get this movie made. A glance at Wikipedia tells me that the studio did the thing of hiring the guy who made Texas Chainsaw Massacre, saw the glossless, raw movie that it was, and said "yes, but what if we didn't do that". Hooper's response seems to have been "well, but what if we did, though?" and he took the dark comedy elements of the first film and made them wackier. I mean, at the end of the day, this is a horror comedy, which was something I didn't really grok a month ago.
Moving from a farm house in the sticks to an abandoned roadside attraction made from dilapidated Quonset huts that's somehow subterranean? and a radio station, this one replays some of the greatest hits and amps things up for comedic effect. We learn that maybe Leatherface is just a lonely heart, and Dennis Hopper is in this movie, but they had to have only had him for about a week. Man, Hopper would sign up for *anything*.
The star of the movie is Caroline Williams, playing Vanita "Stretch" Brock, a radio DJ who takes the call from the two frat-dudes as they get chain-sawed. She gets involved in the investigation, agreeing to play bait as she replays the tape, which draws the family out of hiding.
As I've commented elsewhere, I have come to appreciate that horror fans will embrace an actor and give them a whole career if that person wins them over in a role, and you will not be surprised to learn that Caroline Williams has been working steadily since this film in and out of horror.
Anyway, the shock was not that of the first film, but it's not a throw-away sequel. It's a solid follow-up, even if the tone is wildly different. Who knew you could do that with a movie about a family that has really figured out a solid chili recipe?
*it is a reasonable assumption that Univ. of Texas' main rival is Texas A&M University, but it's arguable that UT thinks of OU as our main rival and Texas A&M as the annoying relation who lives down the road. Texas Tech *thinks* they're UT's rival, but we don't think about them much at all.
Most of the underground stuff was shot in the old Austin American Statesman printing press room (not the recently dumped one, the one before that) and the lighting guys would have to go up to the ceiling to rig power and lights and would get COVERED with ink.
ReplyDeleteI've also been told that this movie had gone horribly over budget and over schedule and eventually there was a day the producers came in and said "today is the last day of this movie, if you haven't shot it and don't shoot it today, you won't shoot it". And they did like 72 hours straight or something crazy like that. Just HUGE overtime checks for everyone.
I completely believe all of this. The movie feels like a free-for-all. I don't know what would have slowed up production, but I can also imagine trying to get all of this in the can was extremely difficult.
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