Following up a film that has gone on to be rightfully recognized as a classic is never easy, and often times completely unnecessary but in 1986 the late, great Cannon Films Company managed to get Tobe Hooper behind the camera for a second shot with Leatherface and company for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. This time around, however, Hooper and his cast and crew did things very, very differently.

The film starts with a pair of rednecks on their way to a party, enjoying a few beers while on the road and firing their guns at whatever signs they happen to pass. They call the radio station that they're listening to and speak to the DJ, a woman named Stretch (Caroline Williams), and harass her while the driver decides to play chicken with an oncoming truck which they run off the road. A little while later, after the party, the two guys are heading home and they decide to call Stretch for another round. Oddly enough, the truck they ran off the road earlier reappears and chases them. Once they catch up to the car, Leatherface (Bill Johnson) and Chop Top (Bill Mosely) hop out of the back and the two men are killed, their phone call to Stretch broadcast over the radio.

The cops show up in the morning and Lt. Lefty Enright (Dennis Hopper) soon clues in to what's happening here. His brother was slaughtered by a cannibal family years back and he's made it his life mission to track these guys down and make them pay. It looks to Lefty like they're still around and up to their old tricks again, so he tracks down Stretch to get a recording of the phone call to use in his investigation. Stretch has an ulterior motive, however, in that she hopes that if she works with Lefty on this case that she'll get the promotion to news reporter that she's been after for some time now.

Lefty convinces Stretch to play the recording on the air one last time in hopes of luring the maniacs out of the woodwork, and sure enough, Leatherface and Chop Top break into the station and just as Chop Top is about to do her in, Leatherface stops him – it seems he's fallen for the foxy disc jockey. The two maniacs leave and Stretch follows them back to their lair, a bizarre underground theme park where she knows Lefty will be waiting for her. Along the way, she falls through a weak spot and plummets down into the heart of the park where the bodies have been piling up for years. As she works her way out of there to try and save her skin, Lefty is trying to work his way in so that he can avenge his brother's death and get on with his life.

Everything in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is completely over the top, from the acting to the set design to the cinematography to the lighting to the dialogue and back again. The realism and bleak atmosphere of the original is thrown right out the window and this one functions more like a black comedy than a true horror film, despite a couple of good jump scares and a couple of genuinely creepy moments. Much of this has to do with Dennis Hopper in the lead. No one does 'bat shit crazy' better than Hopper and this role gives him the opportunity to really run with the material. Caroline Williams is a nice balance in that her more restrained performance contrasts Hopper's maniacal turn quite nicely but once you throw Bill Mosely into the mix, there's no turning back – the movie is nuts.

The special effects provided by Tom Savini are strong and the cinematography does a really good job of capturing the weird colors and unconventional lighting that was used to give the movie its unique look. Most of the film works really well, though there are spots where the dialogue isn't quite so effective and the story feels a little contrived. There are logic gaps to deal with, such as how the family has maintained control over a massive underground lair and gone undetected for so long, but that's not uncommon with horror films and can be easily overlooked when one takes into account the bigger picture here. At it's heart this is really a twisted revenge story as it focuses quite a bit on Lefty's manic obsession with payback for what happened to his brother but it does make for an interesting twist on the Chainsaw mythos, warts and all. It's a truly weird film but it has its charm and it has its place alongside the other sequels – just don't go in expecting a rehash of the more famous first film, because it almost seems like Hooper knew he couldn't out do himself and so instead he opted to go in a completely different direction.

Video:

The 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that MGM has given to this new special edition release is a big improvement over the previous DVD release in pretty much every way, the most notable difference being in how good the colors look here. Approved by the film's cinematographer the image is strong and stable without any mpeg compression artifacts to note. Some really mild edge enhancement shows up here and there but if you're not looking for it you likely won't even pick up on it. There's also a lot more fine detail present in the picture on this new disc, and while there are still some shots that look a little soft, this is a very nice transfer overall.