One of the greatest and most influential horror filmmakers has passed into the great beyond. Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, has died at the age of 74.
Tobe Hooper was a native of Austin, Texas who taught college and directed the “hippie” movie Eggshells and the documentary The Song is Love – about the popular band Peter, Paul and Mary – before changing the horror landscape with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974. Inspired by the serial killer Ed Gein, it told the story of a group of young people who run afoul of a family of cannibals. Made on a shoestring budget, the independent feature distinctive, realistic aesthetic and impressive ability to imply more graphic violence than what is actually visible on camera inspired a series of imitators who persist to this day.
His career after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was mostly filled with odd motion pictures that inspire cult-like fervor in some horror lovers while turning others off completely. (He also directed the post-apocalyptic kink music video for Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”.) But Hooper was able to produce two more universally beloved horror classics in the years that followed: the TV mini-series Salem’s Lost, based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King, and the Steven Spielberg-produced and PG-rated Poltergeist, which brought haunted houses into suburbia and was so unbelievably scary that it forced the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to invent a whole new rating, the now-ubiquitous PG-13.
For the last few decades of his career, Tobe Hooper struggled to find quality projects, and directed many films which are unlikely to be remembered fondly in decades to come, like the unfortunate Stephen King adaptation The Mangler (about a killer laundry machine) and the 2004 remake of The Toolbox Murders.
Despite some stumbles, Tobe Hooper’s legacy as a bona fide “Master of Horror” is secure. His finest films are among the best in the whole genre, and his weirdest films are the stuff fever dreams are made of. With The Texas Chain Saw Massacre he inspired a new legion of independent horror filmmakers to stretch the boundaries of the medium, and break their way onto the forefront of the art form with their unbridled talent, enthusiasm, and sheer force of will.
Tobe Hooper leaves behind a history of classic and memorable horror. We leave you with a look back at the eight Tobe Hooper films (okay, technically one of them’s a mini-series) and the one fantastic TV episode that we’ll never forget.
8 Films (and One TV Episode) That Made Tobe Hooper a Master of Horror:
Top Photos: Albert L. Ortega/WireImage & Bryanston Pictures
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on Canceled Too Soon and watch him on the weekly YouTube series What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
8 Films (and One TV Episode) That Made Tobe Hooper a Master of Horror
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The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
One of the scariest movies ever made was produced so cheaply that they had to use real human bones for the gruesome killers' lair (it was cheaper). This unseemly descent into homicidal madness, about a group of not-very-likable young people who walk up to the wrong house one day, inspired a series of imitators and helped launch a new wave of independent horror classics.
Photo: Bryanston Pictures
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Eaten Alive (1977)
Tobe Hooper's weird, long-awaited follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre stars Neville Brand as a motel owner who has a nasty tendency to kill his tenants and feed them to his pet alligator. Once again, Hooper brings us to the brink of insanity, with sharp and uncomfortable colors and truly demented performances.
Photo: Mars Productions Corporation
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Salem's Lot (1979)
Stephen King's classic vampire novel became a terrifying television event, as the petty dramas of a small town gradually whittle themselves down to a supernatural nightmare. Salem's Lot is slow to get started, but the way it devolves into unforgettable horror is remarkable.
Photo: CBS
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Funhouse (1981)
A group of teenagers witness a murder behind the scenes at a carnival, and wind up hunted by homicidal carnies in a cavernous, spooky Funhouse. Once again, Tobe Hooper takes his time so that the horror eventually makes a maximum impact.
Photo: Universal Pictures
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Poltergeist (1982)
Tobe Hooper collaborated with Stephen Spielberg for a horror film that brought ghosts to suburbia, and superbly blended family drama, supernatural wonder, and some of the scariest scenes ever committed to celluloid.
Photo: MGM
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Lifeforce (1985)
Tobe Hooper's wild, sexy, elaborate and utterly weird adaptation of Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires gives you all the nudity and soul-sucking insanity you could possibly ever want. Dismissed in its time, Lifeforce has gone on to become a bona fide cult classic.
Photo: TriStar Pictures
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Invaders from Mars (1986)
Tobe Hooper remade one of the weirdest and most hallucinatory sci-fi horror films the 1950s and brought it into the gross and goopy 1980s, with monster effects that are as imaginative as they are stomach-churning. Though not as good as the original, Hooper's version is still worth watching.
Photo: Cannon Pictures
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
Tobe Hooper waited 12 years to make a sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and it was worth the wait. The sequel is one of the wildest, most violent, and most disturbingly funny horror sequels ever produced. It would be worth the price of admission just to watch Dennis Hopper in the epic chainsaw duel, and that's just one of many unforgettable moments.
Photo: The Cannon Group
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Perversions of Science, 'Panic'
HBO's short-lived, largely forgotten Tales from the Crypt spin-off featured several classic episodes, but Tobe Hooper's is easily the best. The year is 1938, Orson Welles gives his notoriously realistic War of the Worlds radio performance, and that makes two alien spies (Jason Lee and Jamie Kennedy) think they missed their cue, so they start killing everyone they know. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en), "Panic" is a twisted, funny, violent and fiendishly clever episode of Halloween-themed television.
Photo: HBO
