Over a decade after the iconic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Tobe Hooper brought his second skin wearing hero (?) to the screen for another outing. Intending to lean into the humour he believed was apparent in the first film, and removing the gap between ‘Chain' and ‘Saw', The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 quickly became a cult classic despite mixed critical reviews.

Vanita ‘Stretch' Brock (Caroline Williams) is a late-night host at a local radio station. During one of her shows, two men phone in and are then set upon by attackers in a truck wielding a chainsaw. Stretch records the whole thing, and is later encouraged by renegade cop Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) to replay the tape on a subsequent night. Lefty claims this is to hopefully force the authorities to take a series of disappearances seriously, but it also acts to use Stretch as bait. Soon after this, the studio is attacked by Leatherface (Bill Johnson) and Chop-top (Bill Moseley) and Stretch is chased back to the Sawyer family's bizarre cave-like home. 

Once there, Stretch attempts to negotiate her way to freedom, with Leatherface's confusing and inconsistent sympathy being combatted by his family and their extended psychopathy. 

While its predecessor was lauded as a taut and surprisingly subtle criticism of the Vietnam war – its victims becoming young people forced through a metaphorical meat grinder instead of a real one – TCM 2 has little similar to say. A tonally uneven exploration of what happens if you make a slasher movie on the set of The Goonies; the extreme gore against what looks like a papier-mache backdrop feels mismatched and distracting. Chop-top's head injury is explained as being a result of his time in Vietnam, but is mostly used to ridicule and attempt at humour. Unfortunately very little of TCM 2 is funny. 

Stretch spends a lot of the runtime screaming, running, and being the victim of implied sexual attacks by a cast which is, apart from her, entirely male. One particular moment has Leatherface pressing his (turned off) chainsaw against the crotch of her tiny denim shorts. Despite some suggestion that they are attempting an empowered and ironic ending for her, it is lost in the mess of the preceding 99 minutes. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 obviously has its fans, but is unlikely to find a new audience. It is dated, tacky and chauvinistic. Thankfully Leatherface has seen better movies since, because putting these two films together makes for an awkward and confusing transition. 

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