Horror Film Review: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (dir by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Texas-OU Weekend!

First released in 1986, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 opens with two idiots driving down an isolated highway in Texas. They’re heading down to Dallas for the Red River Showdown, the annual football game between Oklahoma U. and the University of Texas at Austin. They’re drunk, of course. And, being rich kids in the mid-80s, they’ve got a car phone. They place a call to a local radio DJ named Stretch (Caroline Williams, giving a great performance) and they force her to listen as they harass the driver of a passing truck. Of course, when a chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Bill Johnson) emerges from the truck and kills both of them, Stretch hears that as well.

Yes, Leatherface and the entire family are back. When last seen at the end of 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Leatherface was dancing with his chainsaw while the morning sun shined down on the Texas countryside. Now, he and the family have moved to North Texas and the eldest brother, Drayton Sawyer (Jim Siedow), has become a bit of a local celebrity due to his chili. (Everyone loves Drayton’s chili but that’s mostly because they don’t know who the main ingredient is.) Though one of the brothers was killed at the end of the original film, he’s been replaced by the manic Chop-Top (Bill Moseley), who has a metal plate in his head. Of course, Grandpa (Ken Evert) is still alive. He’s well over a hundred years old but he still enjoys trying to wield a hammer.

The family is being pursued by Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper), a crazed Texas ranger who is also the uncle of Sally and Franklin Hardesty, who were both victimized in the first film. (Sally, we’re told, is in a mental institution. As for Franklin, a skeleton in a wheelchair does make an appearance at one point.) Lefty approaches Stretch to get a copy of the tape of the two drunk idiots being killed by Leatherface. Unfortunately, the family also discovers that Stretch has the tape and they soon come after her as well….

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is not as universally beloved as the first film but I like it. It helps, of course, to know something about Texas-OU weekend. Imagine Mardi Gras without the nudity or the beads but with a lot more beer and a lot more frat boys and you have a pretty good idea of what Texas-OU weekend is like in Dallas. The entire city goes crazy as it’s invaded by football fans from Oklahoma and Austin. Why are they playing football in Dallas as opposed to their own cities? Dallas is considered to be neutral ground and the fact that they need neutral ground to play a football game should tell you just how invested people get in that one game. Texas-OU weekend is all about excess and the same could be said about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.

With the original film, Tobe Hooper fooled audiences into thinking that they were seeing more gore than they actually were. The first Texas Chainsaw Massacre is nearly bloodless. Hooper takes the opposite approach to the sequel, filling the screen with blood and viscera. For that reason, Part 2 is still controversial among fans of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre films but I think Hooper made the right decision. Attempting to duplicate the original’s atmosphere would have been impossible. Instead of just remaking the original film, Hooper did something different. As well, as opposed to the more subtle social satire of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the humor in Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is far broader and a bit more hit-and-miss. But again, it all links back to Texas-OU weekend. There may not be much that’s subtle about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 but the same can be said of the Red River showdown and Texas-OU Weekend. For that matter, the same can be said for much of Texas in general and Dallas in specific. Like me, Tobe Hopper was a Texan. True Texans know what makes our state great but we also know what makes our state totally batshit insane. Tobe Hooper got Texas in a way that all the filmmakers from up North never will.

That’s not to say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is a perfect film, of course. The film’s second half, which takes place almost entirely in the underground caverns in which the Sawyers have made their home, is considerably less compelling than the first. The scene where the Sawyers attempt to get Grandpa to bludgeon Stretch with a hammer goes on forever and it’s far less effective than when they tried to get Grandpa to do the same thing to Sally in the first film. As well, it’s hard not to be disappointed with Drayton’s transformation from being ambiguously friendly in the first film to being a flat-out villain in the second. The first film showed that Jim Siedow was a far better actor than one might guess from the sequel.

But here’s what does work. Bill Moseley’s performance as Chop Top is completely manic and over-the-top and, at times, a little bit annoying. But he’s also so completely unhinged and Moseley is so uninhibited in the role that it’s impossible to look away whenever he’s onscreen. Dennis Hopper, who was just starting to make his Hollywood comeback when he appeared in this film, plays Lefty as being so obsessive that sometimes, he seems like he might be just as dangerous as the people that he’s pursuing. Hopper makes the character sympathetic, though. There’s a gleam of madness in his eyes but the viewer never doubts his love for his family. It takes a special actor to pull off the scene where Lefty discovers Franklin’s remains and Hopper was exactly that actor. And finally, there’s Caroline Williams, giving a strong and inspiring performance as Stretch and never allowing the character to become a helpless victim. Stretch may scream (because who wouldn’t in that situation) but she never stop fighting. The scene where she “charms” Leatherface is the epitome of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2. It’s over the top, excessive, borderline offensive, sickly funny, and yet somehow very effective. If nothing else, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is one of the few of the 80 slasher films to acknowledge what’s really going on with those boys and their chainsaws, machetes, and knives.

Though it may not be as good as the original, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 holds up well on its own. It’s an effective mix of satire and horror, featuring a strong heroine and a great performance from Caroline Williams. Hell, I think I’m going to be Stretch for Halloween this year!

Live Tweet Alert: Watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 with #ScarySocial

Posted on August 27, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1986’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2!

That’s right! It’s Tobe Hooper’s classic sequel to his classic horror film! It’s Dennis Hopper vs. Leatherface! It’s Caroline Williams vs Chop Top! It’ll make you laugh. It’ll make you scream. And the ending …. well, the ending always make me cry.

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and a few other streaming sites. I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

This Saturday, at 9 pm et, join @LisaMarieBowman and #ScarySocial for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2! It's on Prime, Tubi, and Pluto! pic.twitter.com/rYQHJ1ZHVk

— Scary Social (@SocialScary) August 23, 2022

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Body Bags (dir by John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper)

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

An odd but mildly likable film, that’s the best description of Body Bags.

Originally, Body Bags wasn’t even meant to be a film. Instead, in 1993, Showtime wanted to do a horror anthology show, one that would mix comedy and chills in the style of HBO’s Tales From The Crypt. Three episodes were filmed. Two were directed by John Carpenter. The other was directed by Tobe Hooper. Robert Carradine, Stacy Keach, and Mark Hamill all agreed to appear on the show. That’s an impressive collection of talent but, for whatever reason, Showtime decided not to pursue Body Bags as a series. So the three episodes were strung together in an anthology film. Linking the stories was a warp-around segment where Carpenter played a coroner and Tobe Hooper and Tom Arnold played morgue attendants!

Now, it must be said that John Carpenter probably made the right decision when he decided to become a director instead of an actor. That said, what Carpenter lacked in acting technique, he made up for with unbridled enthusiasm. Carpenter appears to be having a blast playing an old style horror host. Who can blame him? In fact, I would say one the most appealing things about John Carpenter as a personality is that he always seems to be truly enjoying himself, regardless of all the crap that he’s had to put up with in Hollywood.

As for the segments …. well, they’re uneven. That’s not really a shock. Part of the problem is that, because they weren’t originally envisioned as all airing together, a lot of ideas and story points are repeated from segment to segment. The first segment is about a serial killer. The second segment is about a transplant. The third segment is about both a transplant and a serial killer. It gets a bit repetitive.

Carpenter directed the first two segments, The Gas Station and Hair. The Gas Station is a bit too simple for its own good. Robert Carradine is a serial killer who harasses a woman at a gas station. That’s pretty much it. Carradine gives a good performance ad Halloween fans will get a laugh out of a reference to Haddonfield but there’s not much else going on. Hair is a bit better. Stacy Keach plays a businessman who gets a hair transplant, just to discover that the hair is extraterrestrial in origin. Hair is clever and playful, like an above average episode of The Twilight Zone. Keach plays his role with the right mix of comedic outrage and genuine horror.

The third segment is called Eyes and it was directed by Tobe Hooper. Mark Hamill plays a baseball player who is losing his eyesight as the result of a car accident. He gets an eye transplant. At first, everything seems fine but soon, he’s having visions of himself murdering people! It turns out that the eye once belonged to a serial killer. You can guess where this is going but Mark Hamill really throws himself into the role and Tobe Hooper’s direction is appropriately intense.

Body Bags is a pretty minor entry in the filmographies of two great directors but, at the same time, it’s enjoyable in its own silly way. There’s a likable goofiness to John Carpenter’s wrap-around segment and it lets us know that we shouldn’t take any of this too seriously. Watch it for your own amusement.

Scenes That I Love: The Magician From The Funhouse

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, I shared four scenes from four Tobe Hooper films.

Now that it’s time to share a scene that I love, I figure why not continue to pay tribute to Tobe Hooper? The scene below is from Hooper’s unjustly neglected 1981 film, The Funhouse. It doesn’t really advance the plot in any way but it’s still a scene that I really enjoy. It shows Hooper being a bit more playful than usual and it does introduce one the film’s key themes: not everything at the carnival is what it seems. Later on in the film, the same people who made fun of this magician will discover that the magician is not the only person at the carnival who is more clever than they thought.

From 1981’s The Funhouse:

4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, I am proud to pay homage to a director from my home state, a man who changed the face of horror and the movies but who was treated terribly by a jealous film industry. I am talking, of course, about Texas’s own Tobe Hooper. Hooper redefined horror with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Though his later films were never quite as critically or financially successful as that classic, many of them have since been rediscovered by audiences who now better appreciate Hooper’s quirky sensibility. Hollywood may not have known how to handle Tobe Hooper but horror fans like me will always appreciate him.

It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Daniel Pearl)

Eaten Alive (1976, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Robert Caramico)

Salem’s Lot (1978, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Jules Bremmer)

The Funhouse (1981, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Andrew Laszlo)

4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Salem’s Lot, The Funhouse, Lifeforce

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

This October, we’ve been using 4 Shots From 4 Films to pay tribute to some of our favorite horror directors! Today, we recognize Texas’s own Tobe Hooper!

4 Shots From 4 Films

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir by Tobe Hooper)

Salem’s Lot (1979, dir by Tobe Hooper)

The Funhouse (1981, dir by Tobe Hooper)

Lifeforce (1985, dir by Tobe Hooper)

4 Shots From 4 James Karen Horror Films: Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster, Poltergeist, Return of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead Part II

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, we lost one of the great character actors, James Karen. Over the course of his long career, Karen appeared work in almost genre imaginable, including horror. Today, we pay tribute to him with….

4 Shots From 4 James Karen Horror Films

Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster (1965, dir by Robert Gaffney)

Poltergeist (1982, dir by Tobe Hooper)

Return of the Living Dead (1985, dir by Dan O’Bannon)

Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988, dir by Ken Wiederhorn)

Horror Film Review: Poltergeist (dir by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1982 film Poltergeist tells the story of the Freeling family.

There’s Steven the father (Craig T. Nelson) and Diana the mother (JoBeth Williams). There’s the snarky teenager daughter, Dana (Dominique Dunne), who has a surprisingly good knowledge of the local motel scene. There’s the son, Robbie (Oliver Robins), who is scared of not only a big ugly tree but also a big ugly clown doll that, for some reason, sits in his bedroom. And then there’s the youngest daughter, Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke).

They live in a planned community in Orange County, sitting just a few miles away from the cemetery. (Or so they think….) They’ve got a nice house. They’ve got nice neighbors. They’ve got a nice dog. They’re getting a pool in the backyard. There are hints that Steven and Diana may have once done the whole rebellion thing. They still occasionally get high, though they do it with a smugness that somehow manages to make marijuana seem less appealing. But, for the most part, Steven and Diana are happy members of the establishment. Steven sells real estate and is a favorite of his boss, Mr. Teague (James Karen). Diana is a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t get upset when some unseen spirit rearranges all the furniture in the kitchen (seriously, that would drive me crazy). They’re the type of family that falls asleep in front of the TV at night, which is a bit of a mistake as Carol Ann has started talking to the “TV people.”

Strange things start to happen. As mentioned earlier, furniture starts to rearrange itself. Whenever Carol Ann sits down in the kitchen, an unseen force moves her across the floor. Diana, for whatever reason, thinks this is the greatest thing ever. Then, on the night of a big storm, the big ugly tree tries to eat Robbie and Carol Ann goes into a closet and doesn’t come out. Though Carol Ann has vanished, the Freelings can still hear her voice. Apparently, she’s been sucked into another dimension and she’s being encouraged to go into the light.

Of course, this leads to the usual collection of paranormal researchers moving in. The house decides to pick on one unfortunate guy and he ends up not only eating maggot-filled meat but also imagining his face falling apart over a sink. A medium named Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein) comes by and reprimands Steven and Diana for not doing exactly what she says. Of course, it turns out that Tangina isn’t quite as infallible as she claims to be….

To me, Poltergeist is the epitome of a “Why didn’t they just leave the house” type of film. Don’t get me wrong. I understand that once Carol Ann vanished, Diana and Steven had to stay in the house to rescue their daughter. I’m talking about all the stuff that went on before the big storm. Seriously, if a ghost started moving furniture around in the kitchen, I’m leaving the house. At the very least, I’m not going to take my youngest daughter and invite the ghost to push her around the kitchen. Even stranger is that, at the end of the film, the Freelings still don’t leave the house even though the situation with Carol Ann has been resolved. They hire a moving truck and make plans to leave but, instead of spending a night in a hotel, they instead decide to spend one more night in a house that’s apparently possessed by Satan.

Poltergeist is famous for bringing together two filmmakers who really seem like they should exist in different universes. Steven Spielberg produced while Tobe Hooper directed. It seems like it’s impossible to read a review of Poltergeist without coming across speculation as to how much of the film should be credited to Spielberg and how much should be credited to Hooper. It must be said that the film does occasionally feel like it’s at war with itself, as if it can’t decide whether to embrace Spielberg’s middle class sensibilities or Hooper’s counter-culture subversiveness. On the one hand, the emphasis on special effects and the early scenes where the Freelings watch TV and Steven gets into a remote control fight with his neighbor all feel like something Steven Spielberg would have come up with. On the other hand, the obvious joy that the film takes in tormenting the Freelings feels more like Tobe Hooper than Steven Spielberg. Or take the film’s finale, where the special effects are pure Spielberg but the scene of Diana getting assaulted in bed and then thrown around her bedroom feels like pure Hooper. Really, it’s the mix of two sensibilities that make the film compelling. Poltergeist’s planned community is appealing but it’ll still kill you.

Anyway, I like Poltergeist. I certainly prefer the original to the remake. It’s a silly film in many ways but it’s still effective. Once you get over how stupid Diana acts during the first part of the film, JoBeth Williams gives a strong performance as a mother determined to protect her children. And Craig T. Nelson gives a classic over the top performance, especially towards the end of the film. Just listen as he screams, “Don’t look back!” That said, my favorite performance comes from James Karen, who is perfectly sleazy as the outwardly friendly, cost-cutting land developer.

Poltergeist is still a good, scary film. And, if anyone wants to play a lengendary prank this Halloween, show it to someone who has a fear of clowns.