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Edwin neal interview6/24/2023 Teasing the inner thigh of Stretch with his chainsaw, Leatherface has decidedly embraced a certain identity, with all the highs and lows accompanying every failed start of his saw becomes a winking nod that this boy is still learning how to get his tool to perform.Īcting opposite to this disturbing behaviour, Caroline Williams gives an impressive performance in both continuous terror with growing confidence in confronting the family’s abusive nature. Sadly, Hansen wouldn’t return, after being offered next to nothing in payment, but replacement Bill Johnson does an admirable job-particularly with Hooper now focusing more on his psychology. Gunnar Hansen portrayed him with a broken psyche in the original, adopting alternate personalities with each face worn, while Hooper never lingered too long for audiences to comprehend a method behind the madness. Finally defined as a human being in his developing, yet stunted, maturity, even if it’s on par with a 14-year-old. Chop Top clinches it with “lick my plate, you dog dick!”, but out of all the characters, the mute, asexual, and feral Leatherface undergoes the most fascinating and bewildering character growth. Much like the first film, these two siblings contest over who has the most memorable dialogue. The Hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) had been thoroughly crushed by a truck so his ‘Nam-obsessed brother with a metal plate in his head, Chop Top, is played by Bill Moseley-who got the role because Hooper loved his impassioned performance in parody short The Texas Chainsaw Manicure! The once isolationist backwoods family have become local celebrities, and not for the murders! Jim Siedow returns as the wonderfully deranged Drayton Sawyer, whose humble gas station barbeque joint is winning the Texas/Oklahoma Chilli Cook-Off, even as the hosts are pulling out what looks to be a human tooth from his awarded meat. More than a narrative change of pace, it seems a conscious reversal that audiences not only survived Massacre but enjoyed their trip now the roadside attractions are invading your reality. The first movie teased a real-world, before stranding us with the cast in the desolate middle of nowhere, whereas we meet our new protagonist Stretch in her element-a late-night D.J calling out into the night. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 offers an entirely different tone, one which should’ve been apparent from the one-sheet poster of the Sawyer family parodying The Breakfast Club (1985). All of this is broadcast live on air, which prompts Stretch to visit Lt ‘Lefty’ Enright (Dennis Hopper), who’s been nursing a grudge ever since his niece Sally survived her ordeal with Leatherface’s family 12 years ago. They call the local disc jockey Stretch (Caroline Williams) just as they piss off the wrong passing truck, which houses a corpse-wearing, chainsaw-wielding maniac who promptly shreds the car and its passengers. then two rowdy teenagers sporting holographic glasses and blasting Oingo Boingo music are firing a gun at ‘Remember the Alamo’ signs. With a narrated opening crawl, echoing the original’s prologue, one might be lulled into a sense of familiarity…. The eventual film they accepted wasn’t far off in absurdity value, however. Despite the studio asking for a follow-up to one of the most unbridled horrors in cinema, they immediately baulked at such a grand concept. Hooper initially reunited with co-writer Kim Henkel for their ambitious pitch of Beyond the Valley of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, featuring an entire town of cannibals alongside Leatherface, and a returning Sally and Hitchhiker. Luckily, the original maestro Tobe Hooper would return, but his audacious one-upmanship against Leatherface’s newfound contemporaries proved to be too crazy for some. It seemed inevitable a return trip to Texas would occur. Only the prototype slasher Norman Bates from Psycho (1960) came before ‘Leatherface’, and the studios were already daring enough to greenlight Psycho II(1983) sans Alfred Hitchcock. Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) had preceded all those properties and stood alone from the other slashers as a truly unique experience in authentic insanity. By 1986, there had been sequels to Friday the 13th(1980), Halloween (1978), and A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984), which were all, for the most part, consistent franchises. It seems to have no end.” You could switch that title for any other slasher and those last words would still hold meaning. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has not stopped.
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