HOOPER, Tobe 1943–

PERSONAL: Born January 25, 1943, in Austin, TX; companion of Marcia Zwilling. Education: Studied film at the University of Texas.

ADDRESSES: Agent—William Morris Agency, 151 El Camino Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

CAREER: Director, producer, and screenwriter. Director of films, including Eggshells, 1970, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974, Eaten Alive, 1976, The Funhouse, 1981, Poltergeist, 1982, Lifeforce, 1985, Invaders from Mars, 1986, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part II, 1986, Spontaneous Combustion, 1989, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, 1990, Tobe Hooper's Night Terrors, 1993, The Mangler, 1995, Crocodile, 2000, and Toolbox Murders, 2003. Producer of films, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part II, 1986. Director of television programs, including 'Salem's Lot, 1979, I'm Dangerous Tonight, 1990, Haunted Lives … True Ghost Stories, 1991, Real Ghosts II, 1996, The Apartment Complex, 1999, and episodes of Amazing Stories, The Equalizer, Freddy's Nightmares, Tales from the Crypt, John Carpenter Presents Body Bags, Dark Skies, Perversions of Science, The Others, Night Visions, and Taken. Also creator of Down Friday Street (film about the conservation of old homes), and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary Peter, Paul, and Mary in Concert, 1971; director of television commercials and of music video for Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself," 1983. Actor in film Sleepwalkers, 1992, and John Carpenter's Bodybags, 1993; University of Texas film program, Austin, former assistant director.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

(With Kim Hendel; and director and producer) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Bryanston, 1974.

(And director, composer, and coproducer) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part II, Cannon, 1986.

(And director) Spontaneous Combustion, Taurus Entertainment, 1989.

(And creator, with Kim Hendel) Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, New Line Cinema, 1990.

(And director) The Mangler, New Line Cinema, 1995.

SIDELIGHTS: Filmmaker Tobe Hooper gained dubious distinction and an immediate cult following with the 1974 release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a notoriously horrific low-budget film about a chainsaw-wielding psychopath. The film's shocking barbarity and emphasis on sensational killing signaled a departure from mainstream Hollywood horror movies, precipitating a boom in so-called slasher films during the 1970s and 1980s. While Hooper's name is inextricably associated with the violent—and, some would argue, debased—genre he helped spawn, he has also earned critical esteem for his contributions to several television series and his work as director of the 1982 film Poltergeist.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was written by Hooper and Kim Henkel; the film's signature villain, Leatherface, was loosely modeled on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man arrested in 1957 for the murder and dismemberment of at least fifteen individuals. It was discovered that Gein had fashioned his victim's skin and bones into clothing, furniture, and household items. Commenting on the film's ad hoc assembly and homemade special effects, Charlie Haas remarked in New Times, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was made in 1974, using six weeks' production time, a cast of unknown Texas-based actors, a budget of about $300,000, and part or all of eight cows, a cat, two deer, three goats, two dogs, two human skeletons, one chicken, and one armadillo."

The plot of the film is simple: a coven of cannibalistic serial killers in rural Texas terrorize a group of hapless young hippies. Stranded at a deserted house, the hippies visit a nearby farmhouse in search of gas for their van. There they encounter Leatherface, who dispatches one youth with a hammer and hangs another on a meat hook. When the murdered teens fail to return to the group, their companions set out to find them. They, too, are confronted by Leatherface, who kills the remaining two males and chases the surviving female into the farmhouse, where she discovers a menagerie of corpses and sadistic equipment. The woman manages to escape to a gas station restaurant, but is brought back to the house by the cook who, she realizes, is in cahoots with Leatherface and a demented hitchhiker whom the hippies had earlier picked up. Rather than kill the women themselves, Leatherface and the hitchhiker turn her over to their bloodthirsty grandfather who, it becomes apparent, is too feeble to kill the young woman with his hammer strikes. Again, the woman breaks free, this time flagging down a passing pickup truck and narrowly escaping Leatherface's flailing chainsaw.

Though many early reviewers of the film objected to its gratuitous violence and sickening scenes of degradation, other critics, notably sophisticates in New York and Hollywood, came to admire its aesthetic originality and emotional power. "For a low-budget horror movie," noted Hass, "it had exceptional visual style, performances, humor and special effects." But even more, Hass added, "it was absolutely terrifying." As many commentators have observed, the film's association with gruesome violence is undeserved, as the film itself contains very few scenes of actual bloodshed. Instead, like the films of Alfred Hitchcock, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre terrifies audiences through the mere suggestion of violence rather than in graphic displays of gore. However, citing significant differences between Hitchcock and Hooper, a Variety reviewer noted that Hitchcock's Psycho "concentrated on the causes for bloodletting, while 'Chainsaw' indulges in the effects."

Despite the mass appeal of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre among younger audiences, Hooper continued to work on low-budget films for the next several years. He directed Eaten Alive, a movie about a psychotic, Norman Bates-like motel owner who feeds a wayward prostitute and several guests to a crocodile, and The Funhouse, in which a group of teens spend an illadvised night in a carnival funhouse where they are successively killed off by a hideous masked freak. Though The Funhouse was judged more impressive than Eaten Alive, both films helped solidify Hooper's reputation as an innovator in the horror genre. Between these two films, Hooper also directed the 1979 television miniseries Salem's Lot, an adaptation of Stephen King's best-selling horror novel.

Hooper's work on The Funhouse attracted the attention of filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who recruited Hooper to direct Poltergeist, a film produced by Spielberg. The movie, about the paranormal haunting of a suburban family whose home is built on the site of an old cemetery, was a box office hit. Commenting on the film in Horror Film Directors, 1931–1990, Dennis Fischer wrote, "Poltergeist proved an effective combining of two talents, but the end product looked more like a Spielberg movie than a Hooper movie, with the result that stories circulated that Spielberg had 'ghost'-directed the film, though Spielberg himself took an ad out in the trades to compliment Hooper on his fine direction." As Fischer added, "There is no question that producer and coscripter Spielberg had a profound effect on the overall film and that he took an active role in its complicated production, but it would also be unfair not to give Hooper any credit."

After the failure of his next two films, Lifeforce and Invaders from Mars, a remake of William Cameron Menzies's 1950 science-fiction classic, Hooper worked on a sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film was harried from the start by impossible expectations and a tight production schedule that resulted in awkward editing. The sequel reprises three key members of the original "Chainsaw" family—Leatherface, the grandfather, and the gas station cook—and introduces a new figure, Chop Top, a deranged Vietnam veteran. Instead of living in a farmhouse and preying upon hippies, as in the original, the 1980s-era sequel finds them living beneath an abandoned amusement park and brutalizing yuppies, a far less sympathetic social group.

"Unlike the first film," wrote Fischer, "Chainsaw 2 encourages its audiences to be on the side of the maniacs by making the first victims, a pair of obnoxious yuppies in a Mercedes, so unlikable." In a Chicago Sun-Times review, Roger Ebert panned the sequel as crass mockery of the original. Contrasting the "raw, naked force" of the first Chainsaw movie with the sequel, Ebert wrote, "'Part 2' has a lot of blood and disembowelment, to be sure, but it doesn't have the terror of the original, the desire to be taken seriously. It's a geek show." As Fischer concluded, "While its sick humour is outrageous, Chainsaw 2 in no way matches the mood of the original film to which it is supposed to be a companion piece." Hooper collaborated with Henkel on the creation of a third Chainsaw film, released in 1990 as Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, but declined to direct it.

During the 1990s Hooper directed three additional films: Spontaneous Combustion, Night Terrors, and The Mangler all failed to impress critics or audiences. Commenting on Spontaneous Combustion, Fischer wrote that the film is "a mess." Critics of The Mangler, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, found the film's premise—a cruel Laundromat owner runs an industrial ironing machine that preys upon humans—unbelievable and silly. Assessing the film in Entertainment Weekly, Glenn Kenny wrote that, "When The Mangler works, which is only about half the time, it's an irreverent goof." Geoffrey Cheshire, writing in Variety, was somewhat less charitable, concluding that The Mangler suffers from a "clunky narrative and lack of solid scares" that, in the end, offers "little to excite fans of 'Elm Street'-style shockers or Hooper's own 'Poltergeist.'"

While Hooper has struggled to recapture the success of his early horror films, notably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he has directed a number of less-prominent but entertaining television programs and worked on episodes for several popular television series, including Amazing Stories, Tales from the Crypt, and John Carpenter's Showtime series Body Bags.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Fischer, Dennis, Horror Film Directors, 1931–1990, McFarland (Jefferson, NC), 1991.

PERIODICALS

Chicago Sun-Times, August 25, 1986, Roger Ebert, review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part II; October 17, 2003, Roger Ebert, "'Massacre' Is Murder to Sit Through," p. 40.

Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), October 17, 2003, Dann Gire, "'Massacre' Fails to Capture the Terror, Thrills of Original," p. 51.

Entertainment Weekly, December 24, 1993, Glenn Kenny, review of "Eye," pp. 66-67; August 18, 1995, Glenn Kenny, pp. 62-63; August 25-September 1, 1995, review of Nowhere Man, p. 98; October 17, 2003, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, review of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, p. 67.

Journal Star, October 23, 2003, Brad Burke, "'Massacre' Sick and Slick but Doesn't Stick," section C, p. 3.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, October 17, 2003, Glenn Lovell, section K, p. 325.

New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1982, Vincent Canby, review of Poltergeist.

People, August 9, 1993, David Hiltbrand, review of "Eye."

Variety, November 6, 1974, review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, p. 20; April 21, 1976, Vernee Watson, review of Death Trap, p. 30; March 6-12, 1995, Godfrey Cheshire, review of The Mangler, p. 66; September 23-29, 1996, Ray Richmond, review of Dark Skies, p. 51.