Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE may or may not be the scariest horror movie ever made (I think it is) but it’s certainly one of the most referenced, imitated, ripped off, and influential. Hooper claims the film was his reaction to Vietnam and Watergate and he shot it in grainy 16mm which gives the film its gritty in-your-face realism. For a first-timer, Hooper directed with a solid sense of composition and attention to detail and forced some amazing performances from his cast. Audiences and critics at the time responded to it’s high level of gore, but they were wrong. It’s actually a masterpiece of restraint that Hooper made and much of its magic lies in the fact that the audience thinks they saw a no-holds-barred gorefest when they didn’t (the scene of the Hitchhiker (Ed Neal) slicing his own hand with a knife is the only actual bloodletting in the entire film).
What happened to Tobe Hooper? His follow-up, EATEN ALIVE, was a decent horror films but one no one would talk about if another director had made it. POLTERGEIST was a hit but legend has it that it was mostly directed by Steven Spielberg and it certainly plays that way. The less about SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, INVADERS FROM MARS and MORTUARY the better. Though FUNHOUSE, LIFEFORCE and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 have their followings, it’s safe to say that Hooper never again captured the magic that was THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and many rightfully view him as a one-hit wonder. The iconic concluding shot of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE lingers on the wounded and frustrated Leatherface, spinning in the sunlight as his chainsaw roars and his terrified prey eludes him. It’s one of the most famous final images in cinema and could be seen as a metaphor for Tobe Hooper’s career.
From Variety:
Tobe Hooper, the horror director best known for helming “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Poltergeist,” died Saturday in Sherman Oaks, Calif., according to the Los Angeles County Coroner. He was 74. The circumstances of his death were not known. The 1974 “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” became one of the most influential horror films of all time for its realistic approach and deranged vision. Shot for less than $300,000, it tells the story of a group of unfortunate friends who encounter a group of cannibals on their way to visit an old homestead. Though it was banned in several countries for violence, it was one of the most profitable independent films of the 1970s in the U.S. The character of Leatherface was loosely based on serial killer Ed Gein……(read the rest of the article HERE)
