This movie is exactly as bloody as many people erroneously think the first one is and there’s a seemingly never-ending buffet of grotesque set-pieces. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a pitch-black comedy that’s drenched in blood and gore. Even Tobe Hooper seemed to understand that he didn’t have another Texas Chainsaw Massacre in him, so he took the characters in a wildly different direction. Stretch is attacked but Leatherface takes a shine to her and doesn’t kill her, so she follows the brothers back to their hide-out in a massive underground tunnel system where she becomes trapped and Lefty, toting a trio of chainsaws goes in after her, singing church hymns and sawing the place down rafter by rafter. Lefty convinces Stretch to play the tape of the murder again, which draws in Leatherface and his brother Chop-Top (Bill Moseley). The murder attracts the attention of Texas Ranger Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper), uncle of the first film’s lone survivor, who has been chasing chainsaw murders all across the state of Texas looking for the murderous cannibal family who killed his nephew.

Radio DJ Stretch (Caroline Williams) hears the death of two college kids on air as they’re killed by Leatherface (Bill Johnson).

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre picks up several years later in North Texas, the DFW Metroplex to be specific. And though none of the “heroes” are anything worth mentioning, the villains played by Jim Siedow, Edwin Neal, and Gunnar Hansen were all instant genre icons.

Arguably most of the most masterful stuff about the movie was simply the result of having to work around a very minuscule budget rather than any actual talent (the rest of Tobe Hooper’s career seems to point in this direction) but it’s a terrifying, grotesque, wonderful piece of work. It’s an exercise in dread that is just as effective today as it was four decades ago. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the greatest indie-horror efforts ever made.

Edwin neal bill moseley