Tobe Hooper

Tobe Hooper precisely mentioned George A. Romero and Night of the Living Dead as a decisive incentive for the cinema he wanted to make. Born in Austin, Texas, in 1943, his parents worked in the hotel business, and apparently one way to keep him entertained when he was a kid was to leave him for a few hours in a movie theater and pick him up at the end of the session. Perhaps this mixture of cinema and family profession led him to have a catalyst in Alfred Hitchcock’s terrifying Psychosis , after all this film and the one that brought him fame, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), were partially inspired by an actual psychopathic murderer, the infamous Ed Gein.

Producer of commercial spots and documentaries, he made his debut in the fantastic genre with the little-known Eggshells (1969). But he was destined to become, along with Romero and John Carpenter, in one of the three musketeers of the horror movies of the 70s and 80s. A low-budget film, in which a group of young hiker friends, a family of cannibals, and a guy with a mask made of human skin who he loves to handle the chainsaw for sinister purposes, Leatherface, was destined to become an icon of psychopathic murderers cinema with a dose of gore and a certain documentary realistic air, to which the unknown cast helped. According to Hooper, the idea for the film came to him during a Christmas season with crowds jamming a shopping center, and the vision of a chainsaw on a shelf: what if someone deranged by the situation took to grabbing the tool and causing a carnage? The film would be a success with the public, and it became a cult title of series B,

On how he planned to create terror, Hooper said that “you have to convey a physical sensation and that the viewer does not abandon him. And I like to do it very fast, pump and hit until I get inside.”

There was a sequel in 1986 by Hooper himself, but without the same impact, abundant sequels without him and even a remake. But from the later filmography of the director, two works impacted above all. Poltergeist (1982), with a script by Steven Spielberg , about which there have been all kinds of comments about whether Hooper really directed it, although he always maintained that he did. In any case, he had the Spielbergean stamp plus the terrifying Hooperean ability, when it came to recounting the tribulations of a family that has just moved into a house built on an Indian burial ground, which gives rise to enchantments, and to the abduction of the little daughter. through the television. There would also be a remake, which was practically a carbon copy of the original. In addition, Hooper did for CBS the miniseriesThe Mystery of Salem’s Lot , adaptation of Stephen King ‘s vampire novel , inspired by the myth of Dracula.

His works of the last 20 years are quite forgettable, unimaginative horror without much impact, such as Crocodile (2000), Mortuary (2005) and Djinn (2013), the last thing he shot. Spielberg did not forget him and in 2002 entrusted him with a chapter of the Abducted series .

Hooper was married twice, went through two divorces, and had two children. Carpenter claimed that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was “a seed work for horror movies,” while William Friedkin , director of The Exorcist , described the filmmaker as “a lovely guy who made the most terrible horror movie ever made.”