10 Horror Sequels Not Worth Waiting Decades For

In the twelve years between the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre traumatising audiences in 1974 and the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, the series had lost more than just the gap in the middle of the word "chainsaw". There was an equal disappearance of anything resembling tension or any of the very real-feeling rawness of the original.

Director Tobe Hooper returned, but his approach was markedly different. In place of the tense, vérité style, building slowly to explosive bursts of violence, Hooper made a dark comedy centred around a family of murderous cannibals as a satire of the 80s American family.

The first movie did exist to provide subtle commentary on the America of the 1970s, but any subtlety was thrown right out of the window here. Perhaps that's just the nature of bombastic 80s filmmaking.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was produced by the notorious Cannon Films, the studio famed for such anti-classic sequels as Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Unusually for Cannon, though, it was actually a whole lot more expensive than its predecessor.

Costing, at over $4 million, about 500 times the budget of the first movie, Texas Chainsaw 2 ladled on the blood and gore where the first had been required to be restrained, not only becoming far less scary as a result but also suggesting that Hooper's initial success was more an accident of budgetary constraint than talent.