Boys, boys, boys–

These last couple weeks have been tough on my mental facilities. I reviewed that great new “ULTIMATE” edition of the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, I also revisited parts 3 and 4 in that original series, then on Thursday I reviewed the new prequel to the remake. So by that point I’d studied and written about pretty much every angle to the whole Texas Chainsaw deal. You’d think I’d be done with it by now, but there is one final chapter: the one spinoff of the original movie that achieves its own level of True Greatness. I am talking about Tobe Hooper’s 1986 sequel, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. It’s been available on DVD for a couple years in a bare bones edition (get it, that is a pun because of all the skeletons they have) but Tuesday it comes out in a much deserved special edition with new commentaries, featurettes and deleted scenes.

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE is my all time best buds forever horror movie, so it’s lucky for me that part 2 happens to be one of my all time favorite sequels. Mostly hated in its time, it has developed a little bit better of a reputation over the years and if it’s not at bona fide classic status by now I think it will be after this DVD gets around and more people give it serious consideration. Like Mr. Romero’s DEAD pictures Mr. Hooper here made a chainsaw movie to represent the time it was made, an excessive, over-the-top ’80s take on TCSM. While it’s about as unrelenting and in-your-face-crazy as slasher movies come, it’s also way more of a comedy than the original, so I can understand why some people didn’t cotton to it right away. But I think most horror fans who gave it half a chance would fall in love with its deranged brilliance.

A warning: it starts out iffy. The first thing you hear after the credits is the dated 1980s drum machine of a Timbuk3 song. And the first scene is about some obnoxious high school yuppie football fans driving down a Texas highway firing guns and calling the K-OKLA request line, announcing themselves as “Buzz” and “Rick the Prick.” Like in many bad horror movies (especially of that era) these are characters that you will probaly want to see get killed. If so you will get your wish when the two assholes get stalked by an American flag-decked pickup truck that they played chicken with earlier. Leatherface makes his entrance hidden behind “Nubbins,” the new name for the hitchhiker’s rotted corpse, which he uses as a puppet while sawing their Mercedes. (more…)

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