The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), directed by Tobe Hooper, Vinegar Syndrome 4k remaster, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including original theatrical stereo, four commentary tracks, and English SDH subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092076/

Video encoded in two-pass 14.5 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image. Audio encoded separately with Apple AAC for the highest-quality AAC sound available.

Subtitles converted to VobSub and repositioned.

Note : If you had made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, one of the most grueling, nightmarish, and seminal movies of the 70s, which forever changed horror, kicked off the slasher subgenre, and was also wildly financially successful, and then, more than ten years later, Cannon Films offered you a bigger budget to make a sequel, what would you do? Well, if you're Tobe Hooper, you make a goofy-as-fuck splatter comedy that's only a plucky group of kids away from being the Goonies of gore, and market it with a poster that's a parody of the one for The Breakfast Club. In short, you don't give a single shit, and that's what we're here for, honestly. Dennis Hopper plays a former Texas (de)ranger, Caroline Williams is cute as a radio DJ/scream queen, the Sawyer family is back with some new additions, the are chainsaws and gore galore, Leatherface almost finds love, and the finale is explosive. Get it, watch it, just don't expect anything like the first film.

Two joyriding teens are killed by a chainsaw wielding maniac while on the phone with Stretch, a local radio DJ, and former Texas ranger and uncle of Franklin and Sally from the first film, Lefty Enright, is on the case, having traced a series of chainsaw murders across Texas. Stretch gives him a copy of the tape, and then heads off with her coworker LG to cover a chili cookoff, which is won by Drayton Sawyer, who claims to have "an eye for prime meat", which "runs in the family". Lefty shops for and violently tests chainsaws for his upcoming battle, and members of the Sawyer family, including Leatherface, arrive at the radio station and attack Stretch and LG. Stretch charms Leatherface into sparing her, and the Sawyers leave with LG's unconscious body, with Stretch giving chase, and Lefty on her trail in turn. They all end up in the Sawyers' underground lair, in tunnels underneath an abandoned theme park, and this time there's no escape.

This remaster is pretty good, contrasty and saturated, maybe a bit crushed in the blacks, but the combination of grain and almost constant fog and colored lights in the last third make it a very challenging encode. I've applied some degrain, but even so, this required a very high bitrate. I think the result turned out quite well, with decent grain retention. The stereo track is fine, and there's more commentary than I've got the patience for.

Hot tip Quote: