Review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) by Hellholehorror — 16 Jan 2023

I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). I found it interesting and memorable but far better films had come after it. I also found it a little slow and tonally inconsistent which made it less entertaining than the concept implied.

The sequel does something really different with the franchise. It is hard to put it strictly into a genre, it has shades of horror, action and comedy. Some might argue that it doesn’t have a high enough body count to be a slasher, not enough tension to be a suspense, too silly to be a scary film, not enough action to be thrilling and nott funny enough for a comedy.

So you could argue that you are left with a pretty pointless sequel. I would argue that with such a mixture of styles it is actually more entertaining as it’s hard to anticipate what’s going on! It has some really cool bits.

Sadly though one of the coolest looking practical effects of a chainsaw cutting through someone’s head isn’t actually in the film, numerous stories surround its exorcism from the movie which I will leave you to read about at your leisure.

Apart from this infamous deleted scene I would argue that the violence is a little light and too sporadic, it could do with an all-out massacre to live up to the title. There are no major jump scares.

The comedy is odd, making the characters very memorable. Not a good film as such, it is entertaining though.