Tobe Hooper: Rest in Pieces

The title of this piece is not a typo, nor is the joke in poor taste -- or, at least, Tobe Hooper wouldn't think it is.

Only one month after the death of horror film icon George Romero, an equally but very different giant of the genre has passed away. Tobe Hooper was 74. He was still making movies right up until 2013 (Djinn), but for better or for worse, he will always be associated with one film in particular: the ground-breaking The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and like Romero's Night of the Living Dead, it simply can't be over-stated how massively it changed the history of horror movies. Slasher films -- not many, but a few -- pre-dated Massacre, but this was a far cry from the artistry and style of Psycho. Viewers will forever disagree over whether Massacre is art, but watching the film, you can't help but feel that Hooper wasn't aiming for art. He was aiming for shock, nothing more, nothing less, and this, the movie delivers in spades. The movie (no plot description necessary, the title says it all) is so gruesome, so unrelenting, so visceral, that love it or hate it, you can't help but always remember its images. I would argue -- and I probably wouldn't be the first -- that the very unfortunate horror subgenre of "torture porn" (horror movies with no artistic intent other than to depict gruesome physical or harrowing psychological torture) started with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

In the ongoing argument of whether Massacre counts as art, many critics, both amateur and professional, have zeroed in on one particular moment: the very end of the film, when one of the characters manages to escape and Leatherface the killer does his little dance. Many people have posited different reasons for the character's dance -- is it a dance of frustration, triumph, or something else entirely? -- and argued that it is that very ambiguity that elevates the film to the level of art. I don't know about that. It's either art or it isn't, and I don't know if one moment can change that. I'd say that the movie is indeed art, and our own subjective levels of admiration or disgust have nothing to do with it. Art is art, and whether it's "good" art is strictly a matter of opinion.

But look where all of this took us: a movie so often derided as trash leading to a discussion on the very nature of art. That in itself is a significant contribution. Hooper's other major contribution to cinema would -- inadvertently -- lead to equally passionate arguments over who is the primary artist in a cinematic work.

In this world of cinema, where even countless critics who should know better routinely associate a film's failure or success almost solely with directors and rarely even mention the writers, it's odd that  Poltergeist (the 1982 haunted house movie that famously, creepily used the warning , in the little girl's voice, "they're heeeeere!") is so often thought of as a Steven Spielberg film. Spielberg helped produce and write the movie, but almost nobody ever, ever considers Poltergeist a Tobe Hooper film, even though he is the credited director. Indeed, Poltergeist feels so much like a Spielberg movie, that the Directors' Guild launched an investigation to make sure that the right man was being credited as director of the film. Conflicting accounts, confusing photographic evidence, and a very ambiguous "let's clear this thing up" open letter from Spielberg -- a letter that could very easily be interpreted either way -- only muddied the waters further. Did Hooper direct Poltergeist? Did Spielberg? Did they do it together and reach some odd deal that gave only Hooper credit? And if Spielberg directed or helped direct it, why did Hooper end up the only one credited?

The truth is, you could know about none of this behind-the-scenes mystery and still enjoy the movie. Although they're both horror movies, Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are light years apart in terms of style and tone, and Poltergeist still holds up very well today, mostly by taking such care in presenting the main characters as such a believable family, and thus giving the audience emotional investment in the characters when scary things start to occur.

Hooper made many other films, but before I go, there is one I want to discuss in particular: 1986's Invaders From Mars, in which young boy David Gardner has to fight aliens who are slowly taking over the bodies of both the citizens of his small town, and the nearby military base.

It's sci-fi horror, yes, and B-grade sci-fi horror at that, but it's also something more, an examination of childhood itself: By making a child the hero, Invaders effectively swings back and forth between nightmarish scenarios (a child is, by his very nature, both physically and socially much more vulnerable than an adult, and Invaders explores the social vulnerability very well) and wish-fulfillment for younger audiences (the adults were all clueless, but the boy saved the world!).

Hooper and his actors and writers all do an excellent job of inserting a surprising amount of pure eeriness to the proceedings. Even now, decades later, I remember the moment young David realizes that something is suddenly very wrong, when his possessed parents, trying to pass as humans, tell David, "we made breakfast!" and present him with an enormous heap of burnt-to-a-blackened-crisp bacon and eat it as if it's normal. It may sound mundane or even funny-stupid (if made today, the scene would almost certainly be played for laughs), but I remember it as creepy as hell. Making moments into memories -- What more can you ask from a filmmaker?