A Mercedes convertible streaks down an almost deserted Texas highway, its yuppie occupants swilling beer, firing pistols at passing road signs, and harrassing a female on-the-air D. J. on the car's cellular phone. In this overly excited state the happen to run a pickup truck off the road, a fact that hardly concerns them at all until they catch a glimpse in the rearview mirror of the truck barreling down the highway towards them doing 90 mph backwards! A huge, dark figure stands silhouetted against the night sky on the truck's bed.
Suddenly, the high-pitched whine of a compact, powerful motor splits the stillness of the night, followed by the glint of a stainless steel blade as the figure begins plunging his chainsaw through the Mercedes' cloth roof, tearing it to shreds, then wielding his tool into the car's fenders, chopping them to pieces.
Within moments, the brutal attack ceases as the pickup truck zooms away. The shaken but relieved passenger turns to his companion, only to see a neat, bloody gash splitting the center of his forehead. The gash widens as the passenger stares in horror, until the white line of the approaching road is clearly visible, framed between the halves of the driver's skull. The car careens madly off the road, crashing into a nearby ditch...
In 1974, Tobe Hooper unleashed a new kind of American family on an unsuspecting public with his blood-spattered black comedy, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a slice of down home Americana chronicling the rip-roaring adventures of a young man and his power tool. Now Hooper picks up the tale in Texas Chainsaw Massacre II over ten years later, as he and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson propel the Chainsaw family into the '80s, providing that the family that slays together, stays together -- only this time around, the carnage will be supplied by gore makeup master, Tom Savini.
For Hooper, 1986 has been a year of "invasions," like the one he recently staged for a little picture called Invaders From Mars. "Saw II" -- as Hooper is fond of calling his latest creation -- also deals with an invasion, this one courtesy of the "Chainsaw" family, who wreak havoc among the youthful citizens of Dallas. Their main target group this time around are the yuppies: young, media conscious, consumer oriented, materialistic, upwardly mobile types whose ranks increase on a daily basis.
To the members of the "Chainsaw" clan, "teen yups" just means prime meat, a valuable commodity for their new mobile catering service, The Last Rolling Roundup Grille. The character known as The Cook, who ran the gas station/roadside barbecue eatery in the original film, is back in Saw II, and his ability to provide his clientele with the finest beef has only improved over the years, as he effortlessly walks off with the first prize award in a chili cook-off at the beginning of the film.
If it seems that Saw II has an even more overtly sardonic tone than its predecessor, it is because Hooper feels that the emotional climate has changed significantly in America since the release of the original film. "At the time when Chainsaw was released," Hooper recalled, "I think it was probably so shocking that for its first four or five years of release, I don't believe everyone saw the humor. Now that audiences have been conditioned over the past decade, they can see Chainsaw and realize that it is a very black comedy. This new film is in that tradition."
After all of the in-fighting and lawsuits that arose due to the mishandling of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you'd think it would be damned nigh impossible to untangle the rights to do a sequel. But according to Cannon films attorney Sam Perlmutter, it was no problem. "We just walked into court and paid a judge for the rights," he said.
But what court, what judge, and how much? These questions went unanswered by Perlmutter or Harry Holmes, the lawyer who supposedly put the deal together and became Saw II's executive producer. "I didn't know there were any legal difficulties in getting the sequel rights," was all Holmes would say.
To insure that his Chainsaw family would be right at home in the eighties, Hooper selected L.M. Kit Carson to write the screenplay, the man who brought Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas so vividly to life. Carson is also the father of Hooper's young Invaders From Mars star, Hunter Carson, and the ex-husband of the film's other star, Karen Black, so in the course of putting that production together, Carson and Hooper had many chances to discuss Saw II.
"Kit totally understood the Chainsaw family and concept," said Hooper. "He was the perfect choice because he's a native Texan. He understands the kind of bizarre madness that happens in Texas."
Carson notes that his inspiration -- the appalling sight of yuppies Christmas shopping in Dallas -- kind of paralleled the impetus that sparked the original film for Hooper. Said Carson, "The legend is that Tobe was stuck in something like a K-Mart at Christmas. Crowds were really jammed up and he couldn't get out. Eventually he got kind of shoved over into the heavy equipment department where he saw this wall of chainsaws, and thought to himself, 'I ought to get one of those things and cut my way out of here! I'm never gonna get home!'"
Having once decided he wasw going to go after the yuppies, Chainsaw II in hand, Carson determined how each of the members of the Chainsaw family developed over the decade that had elapsed since the first film, and decided to humanize the bunch. "In a sense, this film is really about Leatherface in love," said Carson. "It's Leatherface's coming-of-age picture. We wanted him to meet an eighties woman who doesn't scream.
"The Cook's a kind of entrepreneurial guy," continued Carson. "He's gotten into a nice catering business. He's abandoned that roadside barbeque and he's gone upscale. I didn't think of it too much in connection with the first film. I just tried to show that now that you know them, these characters are more human."
Hooper gave Carson's ideas enthusiastic support. Carson came up with the film's opening sequence first, in which Leatherface carves up a Mercedes full of yuppies, then the idea for a scene where Leatherface goes a-courting. The script developed organically from those two points. Leatherface's girlfriend turns out to be a radio personality who becomes an "ear" witness to the Mercedes murder via a car phone.
WHile Carson wrote the script, Hooper began casting the members of the Chainsaw family. According to the production, the demands of the script coupled with conflicting commitments, resulted in the fact that the sequel was able to reclaim only one of its original cast, Jim Siedow, who played The Cook in the first film. "We're very pleased to have Jim back," Hooper said. "He is terrific. The Cook has gotten a little spiffier. He wears designer clothes now."
Two new additions to the Chainsaw repertory are Caroline Williams, a Texas local who plays Stretch, the terrorized D.J. and light of Leatherface's life; and Dennis Hopper, who appears as Lefty Enright, an ex-Texas Ranger obsessed by the incidents portrayed in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Enright is so intense and intent on capturing the killers that his own life has become a mescaline-induced nightmare. In a powerfully surrealistic scene, Enright imagines that his hotel room -- floor, ceiling and walls -- are being hacked through by dozens of chainsaws! Enright cannot forgive himself for what happened to his niece and nephew over a decade ago, victims of the Chainsaw killer.
Unfortunately, the Hitchhiker character, played by Ed Neal, couldn't return for Saw II due to his unfortunate demise at the end of the original film, although his mortal remains are puppeteered by his brother, a new character called Chop Top.
"He was in Vietnam at the time of the original Chainsaw," said Hooper, "where he received some wounds about the head! He got a bit of a pension, and bankrolled the new family business. Chop Top is played by an actor from New York, Bill Moseley. I've been interested in Bill for several years because he made a little spoof called The Texas Chainsaw Manicure! He's just great, just perfect to be a part of the Chainsaw family."
After Saw II's first grisly scene, there will be no doubt in anyone's mind that Leatherface is back with a vengeance. Because of the direction that the new script took, Gunner Hansen, who originally essayed the part, does not appear in Saw II. According to the production, Hansen was offered the role, but due to restrictions in the shooting scehdule, the fact that Hansen now lives in Maine, and the actor's indecisiveness about repeating the part, the production went with a local Texas actor (for Hansen's side of the story, see sidebar, page 45). The new Leatherface is played by William Johnson.
"He's very good," said Hooper of Johnson. "He's going to be a terrific Leatherface. Tom Savini has added a new dimension to the Leatherface character. He has a new mask, constructed out of several face skins."
While this change may seem like sacrilege to some, Savini's decision to give Leatherface a new look was predicated by several factors, not the least of which was the fact that he never fully approved of the original Leatherface mask. "In the first movie, it seemed like Leatherface's mask was just uncolored slip latex," he said. "We're also going to let him wear a kind of necklace, made up of eyes, noses, mouths and things like that!"
Since Texas Chainsaw Massacre II followed so soon after Hooper completed Invaders From Mars, there was almost no time for Savini to prepare any of the effects necessary for the film prior to his arrival at the Texas location. Similarly, L.M. Kit Carson hadn't time to complete the screenplay before shooting began. This situation taxed Savini and his crew to their limits, particularly when concepts for effects were changed only days before they were to be filmed.
"It's exciting, but it's nerve-wracking too," Savini admitted. "Kit Carson is here, writing as we go! It's the first time I've ever been involved with a film where the writer was actually at the hotel writing scenes the night before they shoot them. There's no preproduction time for us, and, I guess, none for anybody else.
"Before I left home, I was rummaging through my house going, 'I'll need that. No, I won't need this.' Then I loaded it in a truck and had a guy drive it down here. I like to have a lot of preproduction time because the more time we have the more we can embellish and enhance things. This proves your ability, though -- you know if you can do it under these conditions, that's why you're in this business and other people aren't!"
In addition to refurbishing Leatherface, Savini and crew also created Chop Top's ghastly appearance, as well as stitching together the mortal remains of his brother, the Hitchhiker. "The character they call Chop Top we call "Platehead" because he has a sterling silver plate embedded in his skull, which is visible," Savini explained.
"He carries his dead brother's body around and makes him talk and move -- he's sewn him back together. We brought in the actor who's playing "Platehead" and did a body, head and hand cast, and that's how we made the dead hitchhiker muppet -- we've been calling him the muppet -- so they look somewhat alike."
Grandpa is also back and is played by another newcomer. "in part one, it looked like Grandpa was wearing a cheap Don Post mask," said Savini. "This time John Vulich sculpted a wonderful breakdown old age makeup a la Dick Smith."
Savini's most elaborate effect was the first one filmed, a shot of the driver in the Mercedes who gets his hair parted by Leatherface's chainsaw. "You don't actually see the chainsaw go through the guy's head," Savini said. "We're being very careful to make sure we get an 'R' rating. If not, at least the Japanese will see it!"
For the effect Savini cast the actor and built a false head. "We like to use the actors as much as possible," he said. "In this case, we're going to put an appliance on him with a bladder behind it and a fiberglass plate so that we can see his hands moving and his eyes rolling as his head starts to split. Then we'll cut to the back of the fake head as it splits open."
Savini also designed what may well be his most disturbing effect yet for a sequence wherein the Chainsaw family raids the radio station where Stretch works, and gets their bloody hands on the station manager. "That's the character who's skinned, even though he's still alive," Savini explained.
"He starts walking around, looking for his face, and he eventually finds it. Leatherface has fallen in love with this D.J., and as a gift, he takes this guy's face and sticks it on her! As she tries to knock it off, the guy who's skinned finds it, grabs it and tries to put it back on himself. His hands are falling apart because they've been skinned. It's really weird and comic. We cast the actor's body, and we're doing the makeup with separate appliances. Gino Grognale, who's worked with Stan Winston and John Buechler, is handling the skinning effect."
It wouldn't be a real massacre unless many of the good citizens of Dallas became part of the Chainsaw family's catering empire, so to that end, Savini and his crew have crafted dozens of heads, arms, legs and various other and sundry body parts for the film.
"The script calls for rubbing out a lot of yuppies," Savini admitted. "After the initial Mercedes driver killing, Leatherface and the Cook go riding around in their van looking for victims, and they corner these yuppies in a parking lot. So far, this shot is designed so that the van traps these people against a wall, and the camera is shooting from under the van. All the chainsaws are going. We see feet and hands falling to the ground, and we see a guy beheaded in silhouette. Somewhere in that same scene, the chainsaw is going to lop the top of one guy's head with no cut-aways. That's going to have to be a quickie so we can get it through the ratings!"
The strict "R" rating is hardly an imposition for Tobe Hooper, who is delighted with the opportunity to make Texas Chainsaw II a film of both mood and implied horror. "Saw II won't have that documentary rough look of the first one," he said. "It's going to be done in warm, earthy tones, and a lot of it will take place in the shadows, and much of it will take place in the imagination of the viewer. Since the film has to have an "R" rating, a lot of the graphic material will be handled in a way that will be heightened by imagination, because actually, you can conjure up a lot more terrible imagery that way than you could ever show. It's be great Savini work mixed with great filmic style, which I think will really pay off."
Though expectations were high that cinematographer Daniel Pearl -- who had just completed Hooper's Invaders From Mars and who had shot the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- would return to photograph Saw II, sadly, other commitments prevented him from joining the production. Pearl is instead serving as director of photography on Island Of The Alive, the third segment of Larry Cohen's It's Alive series.
When Texas Chainsaw Massacre II opens this August, it will be interesting to observe the type of crowd it attracts. Certainly the die-hard horror fans will come for Tobe Hooper, and the gore fans will put in an appearance because of Tom Savini, but just who might show up because of L.M. Kit Carson? "Tobe and I were talking about that the other day," Carson said. "I think it fits in perfectly with my other work. You can call it Paris, Texas Chainsaw Massacre II!
"It's not a splatter movie exactly," continued Carson. "It's a splatter satire, and it might become culturally approved because it's a classy piece of work. I hope what'll happen is that the people who like to go to see scary movies will go to see it, and then other people will hear that there's more to it than that, because there's a story here and it's interesting. It threads into the case of Leatherface in love, and what you've got is The Bride Of Frankenstein or Vertigo or many contemporary relationships where the man tries to make the woman into somebody she's not."
~Cinefantastique, Vol 16 No 4/Vol 16 No 5, October 1986~
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