The Horror Sequel That Made All of Texas Out to Be Insane
Tobe Hooper’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’ satirizes yuppie greed by painting the entire state with a broad and bloody brush.
Sean O’Neal has been a contributor to Texas Monthly since 2019, covering film, music, and Texas culture, with the occasional foray into politics. Sean grew up in Arlington before moving to Austin to attend UT. After graduating, he became comfortably ensconced within the city’s fabled “velvet rut” while vaguely pursuing a music career. Those dreams never quite panned out, although Sean soon forged another path in the equally lucrative and stable field of journalism. Prior to joining Texas Monthly, Sean spent twelve years at the A.V. Club, where he also served as its editor in chief. His writing has appeared in various publications, such as GQ, Vulture, and Men’s Health, although Texas Monthly is far and away the only one that his in-laws have ever mentioned.
Tobe Hooper’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’ satirizes yuppie greed by painting the entire state with a broad and bloody brush.
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Paul Newman plays a brutish, morally repugnant monster in the classic anti-western. So why do Texans admire him anyway?
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Forty years ago, a crop of films led by ‘Terms of Endearment’ and ‘Tender Mercies’ reimagined the way we see Texas.
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Jonathan Majors and Tommy Lee Jones don’t just have their home state in common.
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Texas’s elite police force has long played the hero in film and television, although the reality is far more complex.
David Gordon Green’s rebooted horror trilogy concludes with another search for meaning, yet again, in senseless murder.
The CW drama is set in nineteenth-century Texas but strives for twenty-first-century relevance.
The Austin-based film festival returned for another round of horror and fantasy, now tinged with some distinctly real-world anxieties.
A Larry McMurtry adaptation directed by Sidney Lumet and filmed entirely in Bastrop—what could go wrong? For ‘Lovin’ Molly,’ it began with the boots.
Fantastic Fest returns with another selection of out-there curios, but with some familiar local faces to keep you grounded.
Martha Kelly, the former “Funniest Person in Austin,” is nominated for her deadly serious role in HBO’s ‘Euphoria.’
The Austin-based nonprofit has become a social media star with clips of vintage local newscasts, bizarre industrial films, and one-of-a-kind celebrity encounters.
Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head return for a new movie and series that find them older but far from wiser. Is Texas finally ready to claim them as our own?
Tom Cruise returns, with Austin’s Glen Powell in tow, for a crowd-pleasing sequel that just may pull embattled theaters out of the danger zone.
The pistol-packing cartoon villain represents every ugly stereotype about our state, but there’s a strange power in embracing him.
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For every toddler who loved Barney, there was an adult who wanted to punch him. Now the purple dinosaur is back to torment a new generation.
Eagle Pennell’s ‘The Whole Shootin’ Match’ sets the standard for showing Texans who they are instead of who they’re supposed to be.
Trail of Dead was “the band that trashes everything.” But on its eleventh album, ‘XI: Bleed Here Now,’ it’s finally grown into the classic rock group it always wanted to be.
The sequel to Tobe Hooper’s slasher sucks all the fun out of psychotic cannibal killers—but it does have a message for Californians headed to Texas.
Richard Linklater’s ‘SubUrbia’ is ‘The Last Picture Show’ of the nineties.
The Austin-set firefighter show devotes four episodes to the 2021 freeze while ignoring all of the real-life drama.
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How a simple, two-chord song written by an Iowan became (clap clap clap clap) our unofficial state anthem.
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Texas actor Tye Sheridan stars alongside Ben Affleck in the sentimental yet skippable story of an aspiring writer, directed by George Clooney.
The unnerving feature debut from Red Oak native Lauren Hadaway plumbs the gloomy depths beneath a college rower’s quest for greatness.
Twenty-five years later, Mike Judge’s ‘King of the Hill’ still captures something essential about Texans and Texas life. But are there any Hank Hills left?
The streaming phenomenon, produced just outside of Dallas, is winning converts with its ‘Friday Night Lights’ spin on faith.
Fort Worth writer-director Derek Presley overcame unprecedented odds to make his otherwise unremarkable thriller about a tormented hit man.
The latest from the director of ‘The Florida Project’ sees a scheming former porn star wash up along Texas’s Gulf Coast.
A new book tells the sweeping tale of the Alamo’s Weird Wednesday series, the American Genre Film Archive, and Austin’s custodians of cult.
The rising Grapevine star brings fresh spirit to a movie that’s fatally preoccupied with reviving the dead.
How an Amarillo oilman stole the mask right off the Lone Ranger’s face, and made one of film’s most infamous failures in the process.