TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 (1986)

CHAINSAW PART 2' DESERVES AN XXX RATING

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 30, 1986

Author: William Arnold P-I Movie Critic

Tobe Hooper's sequel to his 1974 splatter- horror movie, ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre,'' was supposed to be the summer's big horror movie, and its distributor, Cannon Films, reportedly spent a small fortune on pre-publicity.

But after a brief, spectacularly unsuccessful opening in Los Angeles and New York, the film was suddenly and unceremoniously jerked from the August release schedule, with, Cannon said at the time, ''very little possibility of a future release.''

There are several theories as to exactly what happened (Cannon itself is not talking), but the most likely is that the film was too gross even for the drive-in crowd, and certainly too gross for the motion picture rating board. Had the film been submitted, the board would probably have given it an X rating, meaning that most newspapers would refuse to accept advertising for it. Now that the film has finally made it to town for a three-day curiosity run at the Neptune Theater, this explanation seems even more credible. The film is so stomach-turningly gruesome that it's impossible to imagine what kind of subcretin would sit through it, and an X rating seems positively kind.

Hooper's story line this time out has a demented ex-Texas Ranger (the ubiquitous Dennis Hopper) and a rock 'n' roll disc jockey (Caroline Williams) joining forces to capture a family of serial killers who have been wiping out half of North Texas with chain saws for the past 14 years.

The expositional violence gets out of the way very quickly, and the movie soon settles down to an hour-long climax sequence in an abandoned amusement park that the killers have turned into a death camp so horrific it makes Auschwitz look like Disneyland.

From the very beginning, it is obvious that Hooper and his scriptwriter, L.M. Kit Carson, are trying for a tone somewhere between horror and farce. The film gets more slapstick as it gets more ugly, until it ends with a chain-saw sword fight between hero and villain that burlesques Errol Flynn.

The problem is that the movie is so brutal and realistic that it never plays as farce. It's very hard to laugh at the sight of a man being skinned alive or beaten to death with a hammer. And when the movie shows almost 40 continuous minutes of the heroine being brutalized and tortured, sliced with a straight razor, raped with a chain saw and beaten in the head with a hammer while being held in a kneeling position, it's hard not to feel outraged by the idea that you're supposed to be laughing.

All told, this movie is so irresponsible and morally corrupt that it may be the single best argument for censorship I've seen in years. And the fact that the horror audience rejected it so strongly on their own gives me some slim hope that the end of the world may not be completely upon us.

Cannon Films Dennis Hopper, as one of the good guys, hefts a saw in ''Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.''
Memo: Review (No stars) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, directed by Tobe Hooper, written by L.M. Kit Carson. Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Bill Johnson, Bill Mosley. Cannon Films. Neptune. Unrated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2' SHOULD DIE ITS OWN DEATH

Times Union, The (Albany, NY) - August 31, 1986

Author: Martin Moynihan, Staff writer

No, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2" is not the worst movie ever made, but it certainly does have some of the worst scenes.

They would include:

*Actor Dennis Hopper calling down Biblical wrath ("I am the lord of the harvest!") as he chainsaws through the wooden supports of a human abattoir.

*The ugly "Leatherface" on the verge of indulging his sexual chainsaw fetishes, and a woman cooing encouragement in an effort to escape.

*A character called "Cook" Sawyer lamenting the plight of the small businessman as he supervises cutting up of corpses for meat to sell in his prize-winning Texas chili, along with "eyeball pate" and other menu items.

Yes, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2" is meant as a comedy. If you squint, you can see it as a corpse- strewn satire of some grotesque kind of Americana.

It is unusually bloody and gory, and has not been rated to head off a dreaded X. But what's really disturbing about this movie is that its makers expect an audience of real people to see this as humor or entertainment.

History: Back in 1974 the title "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" probably scared and revolted many more people than ever saw the movie. Such is the power of the imagination. The movie itself also played on that power to frighten through suggestion by presenting a taut horror film, with much shrieking and running but only a relatively small amount of violence. The original "Chainsaw" helped launch a huge collection of movies that generally became gorier and more stupid.

The present: The wave of "slasher" movies has long passed, lapsed in popularity, and has been superceded by a few wretchedly shopworn movies for a specialized audience. As bizarre as it may seem, "slasher" movies have turned into baroque bloodbaths done as comedy, exploiting the bizarre fame of crazed movie killers to squeeze out a few more bucks. Anthony Perkins (this time the romantic lead) in "Psycho III," masked Jason Voorhees in "Friday the 13th - Part VI" were the stars not the villains.

That continues with this woebegotten movie, directed by Tobe Hooper, who did the original, but seems to have lost all sense of perspective. A hero/ victim of sorts this time is poor, frustrated cannibal-butcher Leatherface, who is told by Sawyer "You got to choose, boy! Sex, or the saw."

The ridiculous premise is that chainsaw murders have continued over the past dozen years, but have been covered up by authoritiies as accidents. In the story, an attractive rock 'n' roll disc jockey (Caroline Williams) becomes involved with the killers through Hopper, who is looking to avenge the death of his family.

She follows the suspects to a a strange underground lair where Sawyer cuts up bodies for his chili stand. In fairness, theaters should offer blindfolds to patrons.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Part 2" is not rated. It goes beyond R- rated movies in violence. It also contains much vulgar language and scenes of sexual fetishism. (0 stars.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"CHAINSAW' IS TEXAS-SIZED STUPIDITY

Patriot-News, The (Harrisburg, PA) - August 29, 1986

Author: SHARON JOHNSON

Good news, fans of gore galore. Those good ol' boys are back.

Yes, the merry crew that captured America's heart and disturbed America's collective digestive system in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has returned in a new dramatic triumph, cleverly titled "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II."

And what jolly family entertainment it is.

Young people can satisfy their natural scientific curiosity to know what happens when the head is sliced apart with a chainsaw. [Hint: It's not a pretty sight.]

Viewers can be edified by the sight of one of the resident cretins crushing a man's skull with repeated blows from a hammer.

While he's pursuing his hobby, his brother is in a nearby room caressing a woman's crotch with his chainsaw.

In fact the movie offered such a wealth of cultural enrichment that, sated, I departed after 47 minutes and several gallons of prop blood.

Not because the movie was grotesquely gross. It was, of course, but what would you expect from a movie called "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II"? Obviously it's not going to be an adaptation of a Tolstoy short story.

What makes this movie so unbearable is that it's so derivative and so DUMB! It borrows less from its predecessor than from the old English horror tale "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." [Todd gave the finishing touch to his customers, who then furnished the meat for his partner's famous meat pies. The chainsaw crew is in search of the secret ingredient for their family's prize-winning chili.]

As for the stupidity factor, consider this basic premise: Dennis Hopper stars as a former Texas Ranger who lost his family to the chainsaw gang 14 years ago. He's been on the killers' trail for all that time. He's become an expert on their brutal crimes, knows every move they've made.

A disc jockey [Caroline Williams] with a call-in show just happened to be talking to the latest victims at the time of their demise. She has the tape, complete with screams, moans and chainsaw buzzing.

Hopper urges her to play the tape on the air. At night. When she's alone and unprotected in her remote studio. Guess who comes to visit? Guess what expert on their crimes never expected they might? Guess what disgusted reviewer couldn't take any more?

Tobe Hooper directed with his usual lack of finesse. L.M. Kit Carson's screenplay is one that even cultists are unlikely to regard as a classic. Most of the performers are heavily disguised. A smart career move. [Hopper tries to hide under a 10-gallon hat but eagle-eyed viewers will spot him easily.]

With their usual sensitivity to cinematic art, movie bookers have scheduled this for indoor theaters. Not a smart move.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" is a drive-in movie if ever there was one. Other considerations aside, while being exposed to this garbage, you'll need all the fresh air you can get.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE' BARELY CUTS IT SECOND GO ROUND

THE ORLANDO SENTINEL - August 28, 1986

Author: By Jay Boyar, Sentinel Movie Critic

On rare occasions a bad movie comes along that's intriguing in ways much better movies are not. This happened in 1974 with a now-legendary horror film called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And, to a lesser extent, it has happened again with the sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.

Ugly, gross, exploitative: All the adjectives used to dismiss the 1974 film also apply to its successor. In fact, so revolting is Chainsaw 2 on a ''gut'' level that to delve into the stupidities and banalities of its narrative almost seems beside the point. But what makes this mostly unwatchable picture worth considering is that it intermittently unearths a vein of madness that good movies generally don't dare to approach.

In Chainsaw 2 we meet Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper), a retired Texas Ranger in a ten-gallon hat, and Stretch Brock (Caroline Williams), a young, female disc jockey in (you should excuse the expression) cutoffs. After some initial friction, they join forces to track down the gang of psychopaths that was featured in the original Chainsaw movie.

What the psychopaths are up to this time is killing innocent people, slicing them up with a chainsaw and using their flesh and blood as ingredients in chili. Horror -movie buffs won't need to be reminded that the gang includes the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (Bill Johnson), the plate-headed Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) and the leader of the group, Drayton ''Cook'' Sawyer (Jim Siedow). These creepy characters are brothers who defer in some matters to the withered lunatic they call Grandpa (Ken Evert).

Tobe Hooper, who directed the first Chainsaw picture, is director once again. As his lackluster work in such recent movies as Invaders From Mars and Lifeforce goes to show, Hooper doesn't have a great deal of what is ordinarily thought of as moviemaking talent. Mainly, he places static characters in static situations.

But in the Chainsaw pictures, bad though they are, Hooper finds that psychic location where insanity, playfulness and familial idiosyncrasy meet. The result is enough to send enormous shivers up your spine.

In Chainsaw 2, his bizarre inspiration is most clearly on display during a scene in which the ghoul brothers and Grandpa terrorize the disc jockey. The games they play with her -- and with each other -- get to you largely because they are nightmare versions of the hideous emotional games in which more normal people engage. But the biggest problem with the film is that, having tapped into the viewer's secret fears, it proceeds to abuse its audience.

This is a movie that deserves to be dismissed, but it's not a movie to dismiss casually. Like the stench of death, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 has a tendency to stay with you.

Memo: Movie review 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2' Cast: Caroline Williams, Dennis Hopper, Bill Johnson, Bill Moseley, Jim Siedow, Ken Evert Director: Tobe Hooper Screenwriter: L.M. Kit Carson Cinematographer: Richard Kooris Music: Tobe Hooper, Jerry Lambert Theaters: Northgate 4, Orange Blossom 2, Fashion Village 8, University 8 Cinema, Prairie Lake Drive-In Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Industry rating: Unrated Reviewer's evaluation: * Reviewing key ***** excellent, **** good, *** average, ** poor, * awful
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Movie Review- `Chainsaw II' doesn't cut the mustard

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - August 26, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR: STAFF

Eleanor Ringel Film Editor

Before Jason was a gleam in the eye of greedy "Friday the 13th" filmmakers, there was Leatherface, the star of Tobe Hooper's 1974 legendary low-budget chiller "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." And Leatherface didn't waste his time on hokey hockey masks; his face-covering was made from human skin.

Fans of the original - a film whose crude sensibilities and slice-and-dice tactics prefigured the entire slasher-movie syndrome - have waited 12 years for a worthy sequel. What they've gotten instead is "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II" - the Howard the Duck of horror flicks.

"Chainsaw II" is the product of the the unholy alliance of Hooper and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, whose previous credits include the useless remake of "Breathless" and half (the unwatchable half) of "Paris, Texas." Together they've created a sequel that's part pointless gross-out, part clumsy spoof.

As the movie opens, the cannibalistically inclined Sawyer family -Leatherface (Bill Johnson), Chop-Top (Bill Mosley) and Cook (Jim Siedow) - have gone the Sweeney Todd route. Their special chili-con-carnage barbecue, with its - ho-ho - secret ingredient - is prize-winning stuff, and the Sawyers are preparing for a big weekend of feeding Dallas football fans.

That's why two obnoxious yuppies who've chosen the wrong pick-up to pick on are soon minced meat. However, the yups' last yelps - along with an ominous buzzing sound - happened to have been recorded by Stretch (Caroline Williams), a local DJ whose request line they were prankishly tying up.

Enter Dennis Hopper in a 10-gallon hat (arguably the most frightening sight in the movie). He's retired Texas Ranger Lefty Enright, the uncle of some of the kids the Sawyers buzz-sawed back in '74.

Lefty's been riding the vengeance trail ever since, and now he and Stretch join forces to track the Sawyers down, even if it means entering their charnel-house chamber of horrors where sides of human beef hang from the rafters and skel etons lounge in chairs.

Hooper's original film was a primitive artifact a la "Night of the Living Dead." The shoestring budget only added to its shock-appeal. The sequel is in color and has all the entrails that money can buy. But it has absolutely none of its predecessor's nightmarish residue. Poor Tobe Hooper has literally fouled his own nest, making a mockery of the one movie for which he may be remembered, while Carson seems to have envisioned the film as a dumping ground for the Texas jokes he couldn't cr am into "Paris, Texas."

Granted, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is hardly an inviolate classic. But turning the soul-less Sawyers into fun-loving cutups is the sort of thing one expects from a college comedy troupe, not from the man who first made these monsters come alive.

On its own unpolished terms, the original made an impact - even on those who knew it only by reputation. The sequel is a smirking travesty whose heroine delivers the movie's own best one-line review. Confronted with a slavering Leatherface, whose phallic connection to his chainsaw is made clunkily obvious (more Carson "humor"), Stretch screams over and over, "No good! No good!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOO BAD IT'S NOT THE SAME OLD GRIND

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - August 25, 1986

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

HAIL, hail, the gang's all here.

It's just like homecoming week down at the local grind house. There, big as you please -- in murky, underlit color -- is Holly-weird's most infamous family, the Sawyers of just outside of Austin, Texas.

We met the Sawyers in Tobe Hooper's 1974 fright classic, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." That's the one about five dumb hippie types being terrorized by Pa Sawyer and his hard- workin' boys.

You remember the boys. One was crazy as a coot. Jabbered a lot about slaughterhouses and head cheese. The other, Leatherface, wore a mask of human flesh and liked to chase pretty young things with a humongous chain saw.

Well, not much has changed since the Sawyers first consented to a group portrait. They're still sawin' up unlucky wayfarers in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" and turning the cured parts into the best gol'darn barbecue west of the Pecos.

Actually, a few things have changed: The Sawyers now run the Last Roundup Rolling Grill, known for its award-winning chili (The secret? "It's the meat -- don't skimp on the meat," grins Daddy Sawyer). And Hooper has risen to superstar status with the let-'er-rip drive-in crowd. His post-" Chainsaw" attractions have included "Poltergeist," the unwatchable "Lifeforce," and this year's good-natured "Invaders from Mars" remake.

Though none of these films has come close to the grisly genius of "Saw 1," Hooper is something of a folk hero on the horror circuit. Which is why it's not enough for him to just make scary, entertaining movies anymore. He now has to make horror satires, just to prove he's a whole lot smarter than the run-of-the-mill slasher director.

Bring on the footnotes

''Saw 2," scripted by L.M. Kit Carson ("Paris, Texas"), is so self-analytical it ought to come with footnotes, or at least a special glossary to explain the political allusions and references to "Saw 1." It's a cold-blooded, pretentious, uninspired exercise -- inspired more by Beckett, Stanley Kubrick and "Sweeney Todd" than the genuinely horrific first installment.

The press kit thoughtfully labels it "Grand Guignol with a social conscience . . . the first Chainsaw comedy . . . the 'Duck Soup' of slasher films." (Hey, the press kit could stand some footnotes.)

Veteran nut case Dennis Hopper rambles on as a chainsaw- packin,' Scripture-quoting ex-Texas Ranger obsessed with meting out poetic justice to the "blood crazy" family that messed with his niece and nephew 12 years back. Caroline Williams plays a foxy deejay who throws in with Hopper, and soon finds herself being wooed, Black & Decker style, by the love-smitten Leatherface.

Rubbery-faced Jim Siedow is back as the eternally fretting Daddy Sawyer, and Bill Mosely plays the Vietnam-vet son with Creature Feature makeup and a Sonny Bono wig (to hide the metal plate in his head). Both are hilariously demented, and then some.

For those who like to intellectualize about this kind of thing, Hooper has designed "Saw 2" as a pitch-black commentary on the pitfalls of private enterprise in corporate America. Cornered in his subterranean charnel house, Daddy Sawyer sees the writing on the wall. "The small businessman always gets it in the a--," he laments as Hopper closes in.

Hooper and script writer Carson are themselves off-the-wall mavericks who have had similar bad luck with the big boys. Is "Saw 2" their elaborate way of getting even? If so, they've failed. Few horror fans will want to waste money on a scare show this convoluted and confused.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2. Unrated (many graphic disembowelings). (star) 1/2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A FILM FIT FOR THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

The Record (New Jersey) - August 25, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW @ TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2: Directed by Tobe Hooper. Written by L. M. Kit Carson. Music, Tobe Hooper and Jerry Lambert. With Dennis Hopper (Lt. Lefty Enright), Caroline Williams (Stretch Brock), Bill Johnson (Leatherface), Jim Siedow (Drayton "Cook" Sawyer), Bill Moseley (Chop-Top), and others. Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Released by Cannon. Opened Friday locally. Running time: 95 minutes. Unrated: crude language, excessive violence, and gore.

Let's face it, slasher-flick aficionados aren't going to tune in here for the word on "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2." So this one's going out to other poor souls who believe they've reason to subject themselves to the blood and body-parting.

To all you art-film fans who thought "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was a camp classic that transcended its genre into the sphere of worthwhile culture:

True, Tobe Hooper's 1974 movie about the slaughter of a group of Texas hippies was inventive. Its low-budget, documentarylike trappings gave the horror a disconcerting immediacy, an extra dimension that could easily be labeled ironic. It poked shrewd, if deranged, fun at the Age of Aquarius.

Hooper who went on to direct big-money successes such as "Poltergeist" (under the supervision of Steven Spielberg) has tried to give the sequel the same more-than-it-seems aura.

The script, written by the talented L. M. Kit Carson ("Paris, Texas"), brings back the saw-wielding psychopath Leatherface (Bill Johnson), his brother, the demented Vietnam veteran Chop-Top (Bill Moseley), and their elder relative Drayton "Cook" Sawyer (Jim Siedow). But it also pretends to have a 1980's social conscience.

These days, the odd family's victims aren't hippies, but rich yuppies from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The human flesh is used in an award-winning chili that's peddled from the Last Roundup Rolling Grill. The peddler, Cook, regularly rants about the near-extinction of the small businessman in the shadow of Sun Belt corporatism.

(Hooper and Carson are native Texans, and there's also some authentic Lone Star State self-mockery. The story, for instance, takes place on the weekend of the Texas-Oklahoma football game and chili cook-off.)

Most important, the legendary Dennis Hopper was cast as Lt. Lefty Enright, a retired Texas Ranger who has been tracking the murderers for 12 years. (One of the original victims was his nephew.)

Hopper, who has been in several great films ("Easy Rider," "Apocalypse Now," "The American Friend"), is always mesmerizing, no matter what else is happening on the screen. Here he's not only a lawman with a long-overdue score to settle, but a religious fanatic to boot. He has some good surrealistic moments, babbling about Hell, fear, and the Devil, and singing the hymn "Bringing in the Sheaves. "

Enright and his accomplice, a pretty rock-and-roll deejay named Stretch (played in a bright, high-pitched, B-movie way by Caroline Williams), discover the ghoulish trio's kitchen in the bowels of an abandoned amusement park. The set for this final buzz-down is an operatic and macabre complex of tunnels, filled with skeletons and cobwebs and a wide selection of lamps.

But none of this is enough to make up for the gratuitous, truly gruesome head-hammering, skin-slicing, and entrail-spilling. The social satire isn't pointed enough. The humor isn't funny enough. The staging isn't imaginative enough.

For all its hip subtext, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2" is no more responsibly made than the worst slice-and-dice drive-in shocker. The pretense to a larger meaning is just a cynical rationalization.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FILM: GRAPHIC GORE SPLATTERS 'CHAINSAW'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - August 23, 1986

Author: Carrie Rickey, Inquirer Movie Critic

I'm not averse to splatter movies. This is a fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre talking. But the sequel to the 1974 classic is as unoriginal as sin and as unappetizing as chili con carnage. I say this realizing that to slam The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 is as pointless as debating just how many devils can dance on the blade of a buzzsaw.

Tobe Hooper's original (and influentially amoral) Chainsaw Massacre was a compelling, if primitive, artifact. This movie about a crazed South Texas cannibal family of butchers had a crude documentary style and cruder humor. For all its gory reputation, it relied mostly on the sound of a chainsaw and the images of cobwebbed skeletons to induce its horror , which was as economical as its budget. Wryly, it warned pleasure-loving hippies that work- ethic wahoos were out to punish them.

In the unredeemably disgusting sequel, nothing is left to the imagination. A deranged Dennis Hopper stars as Lefty, a vigilante sheriff out to destroy the bloodthirsty Sawyer family because they drove his niece mad and killed his wheelchair-bound nephew. Giving aid and comfort to the sheriff is Stretch (Caroline Williams), a pretty DJ terrorized by call-ins from the Sawyers.

For most of the movie, Lefty and Stretch are hostages in the Sawyer butcher caverns - a cluttered inferno of entrails located somewhere in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. The Sawyers' idea of a good time is to skin humans alive and to sharpen their chainsaws on trembling female flesh. Their specialty is eyeball pate. You don't want the recipe.

If this cluttered, ugly movie is good for anything, it must be for making omnivores into strict vegetarians. But the ugliest feature of Part 2 is not its explicitness, but its moral: that you have to become a bloodthirsty psychopath to kill a bloodthirsty psychopath. Part 2 is the Rambo of splatter.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 was not submitted to the MPAA for a rating. But if this rotten carcass of a movie were submitted to the FDA, it would be rated unfit for human consumption.

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 *

Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, directed by Tobe Hooper, written by L.M. Kit Carson, distributed by Cannon Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 mins.

Stretch - Caroline Williams

Lefty - Dennis Hopper

Leatherface - Bill Johnson

Choptop - Bill Moseley

Cook - Jim Siedow

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (extreme violence, sexual violence, blood, obscenity).

Showing: At area theaters.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LEATHERFACE RETURNS WITH HIS CHAIN SAW

Richmond Times-Dispatch - August 23, 1986

Author: Carole Kass ; Times-Dispatch staff writer

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" is a sick joke. A very sick joke. A terminally ill movie. Though it won't kill you with its frequent bloodletting (right after the opening the top of someone's head is sliced off and the blood drips out of the remaining "bowl") or drop you with laughter for its juvenile dialogue, it could easily make your last meal insecure.

Somehow its tawdry, schlocky predecessor became a cult film: It was the first slice-and-dice slasher movie. As such, it was considered a comic horror film. Indeed, a copy resides in the archives of the Modern Museum of Art in New York. That one was so horrible, you laughed in self-defense.

Tobe Hooper, who made his name and found fame with that original, has made the not-so-eagerly-awaited sequel. Macerated Leatherface is back, waving his chain saw, using it as a sexual extension as well as a deadly weapon slicing through groins and gizzards. And so is Chop-Top, his brother with the rotting teeth and the itchy metal plate in his head. He uses a sharpened coat hanger to scratch his head and dig out dead eyes. He is handy with the dipper when it looks like some blood might spill.

The bossy chief cook of the Last Roundup Rolling Grill is back too. Barbecue has been replaced by chili. It looks like bloody entrails anyway, and this chili wins contests because of the prime meat it contains.

The story has something to do with Dennis Hopper -- who started the new wave of films in the 1960s -- sinking to this appearance as a Texas Ranger obsessed to the point of possession with finding the chain-saw gang. Then there is Stretch (Caroline Williams) who starts out as a fearless disc jockey. But when she finds herself straddling an ice cooler with Leatherface pointing the chain saw at her shorts, she starts to scream and she never stops. She becomes a blithering scream machine.

She is led to the underground slaughterhouse-kitchen decorated with skeletons, Christmas lights, human haunches hanging on hooks and such. She makes her exit climbing a ladder with the knife-wielding Chop-Top slicing at her calves with a deer knife. What a bloody mess.

Unrated, it is playing at the West Tower and Chesterfield theaters