Dennis Hopper saves this one. For the ninety-seventh time in his career, he plays a total wackjob. He’s a maverick Texas ranger, a few steers short of a herd, completely obsessed with finally catching the chainsaw-wielding cannibals who terrorize the countryside. It’s twelve years after the first movie and Leatherface and his screwball family are still chainsawing people for meat rather than just going to Safeway like everyone else. Dennis Hopper finally gets a lead when a short shorts-wearing lady radio DJ (Caroline Williams) happens to record audio of Leatherface carving up a couple of frat boys on their way to Dallas for Texas/OU weekend.
In this sequel to the classic, director Tobe Hopper ratchets up the gory gross-outs—gore master Tom Savini does the skin-flaying, brain-sawing make-up—and the comedy, but doesn’t do so well with the actual horror. Or with making any sense. But it’s entertaining enough and I enjoy the cartoonishly Texan settings and atmosphere. Popular among some horror fans here is the character Chop Top (Bill Moseley, doing a near impression of Edwin Neal’s hitchhiker from the first film, though playing a different character), an acid casualty type who sometimes wears a Sonny Bono wig and scratches at a metal plate in his head with a wire hanger while saying things like “Music is my life”, when he’s not beating someone to death with a hammer or dancing with a rotted corpse.
The only actor here from the original film is Jim Siedow, as the cannibal family’s father figure. The screenplay is by L.M. “Kit” Carson who also worked on Paris, Texas and the 1983 Breathless remake.