Director Hooper's mainstream follow-up to his seminal THE Texas CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) doesn't live up to its predecessor – or its own middling reputation as a blackly comedic macabre venture whose plot, basically, involves a crazy hotel owner deep in bayou country who feeds his customers to a crocodile living in the swamp adjoining his place!<br /><br />The film, in fact, is a bit of a mess – generally heavy-handed and peopled by obnoxious characters (especially Neville Brand as the grizzled psycho, William Finley – the titular figure of Brian De Palma's PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE [1974] himself – as a weirdo staying at the hotel with his family, and a young Robert Englund as a yokel who deems himself the self-appointed local stud). Besides, it manages to embarrass a handful of Hollywood veterans (Brand, Mel Ferrer as the dying father of one of the latter's victims – incidentally, he'd be featured in another genre offering by this title, Umberto Lenzi's Italian zombie flick, which I had intended to acquire for this challenge but its late-night screening began much later than advertised and my VHS tape ran out[!], Stuart Whitman as the local cop and Carolyn Jones as the wizened Madam of the local bordello). Marilyn Burns, heroine of Texas CHAIN SAW, appears as Finley's wife and is once again degraded by spending most of the running-time strapped to a bed and, obviously, giving her vocal chords another workout whenever possible!<br /><br />Though, as expected, the film incorporates gratuitous nudity by a variety of girls into its narrative, the best scenes involve Finley and Burns' little daughter being pursued within an inch of her life by Brand – who then unleashes the crocodile (which doesn't look that good, or even that much) on her! The abrupt high-pitched finale recalls both Hooper's own earlier film and Wes Craven's THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) which, coincidentally, I watched the very same day as this one; as far as I'm aware, Michael Reeves' WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968) was the first to use this highly effective practice – concluding events on a downbeat tone despite the inherent happy ending…