Tobe Hooper Movies

A nice young man leaves his conservative hometown of Houston to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars. All of Houston is proud of the youth's great success and so invite him home to crown the homecoming queen. Unfortunately, he roars into town astride an enormous motorcycle. With his grungy clothing and suspicious long-hair he becomes an embarassment to the upstanding citizens who are outraged at how he allowed the glitter of Tinseltown to corrupt him. They are so angry that they boot the obnoxious actor right out of town. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Director Tobe Hooper's follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre presents yet another Southern-fried psycho (this time in Louisiana) in the form of a scripture-mumbling, one-legged cracker named Judd (Neville Brand). The proprietor of a seedy bayou inn, Judd keeps a pet gator in the nearby swamp, to which he frequently tosses the remains of his unfortunate victims -- including anyone who offends his delicate sensibilities. One such casualty is Harvey Wood (Mel Ferrer), arriving at Judd's hotel in search of his missing daughter... who, unbeknownst to her old man, has already met her own doom courtesy of the scythe-wielding madman. Other patrons include one of the most annoying families on record -- with Chainsaw veteran Marilyn Burns as the strangely-bewigged mom, William Finley as the browbeaten husband and future Halloween tyke Kyle Richards as the endlessly-shrieking daughter (whose adorable puppy becomes a light gator-snack). Nightmare on Elm Street fans can spot a young, pre-Freddy Robert Englund in a small role as a lecherous cracker. Originally titled Death Trap and known by many aliases, including Starlight Slaughter, Horror Hotel Massacre and Legend of the Bayou. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This low-budget horror film about teenagers trapped in a carnival funhouse with a freakish monster is pretty standard stuff. Director Tobe Hooper manages a few shocks and includes some typically peculiar supporting characters, but this film is less entertaining than either of his previous excursions into such territory. Not as scary as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) nor as bizarre as Eaten Alive (1976), The Funhouse may as well have been directed by an anonymous hack as one of the foremost names in the genre. The movie tie-in novel, penned by Dean R. Koontz under the pseudonym "Owen West," is actually far more frightening than the film on which it was based. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Director Tobe Hooper adapts Colin Wilson's edgy novel The Space Vampires in this in this horror/sci-fi epic with a cult following. The story concerns a joint British-American space probe of Hailey's Comet. Inside the comet, the astronauts, headed by Carlsen (Steve Railsback), find a spaceship that contains the dead bodies of several aliens, along with the naked bodies of three human-like creatures in suspended animation. They bring the aliens aboard the ship for examination, but the specimens are sloppily guarded and soon the trio spread contagion among the population of the ship. Returning to earth, the beautiful space vampire (Mathilda May) escapes into London and begins to feed of the bodies of the unwary Britons, turning the city into a zombie-populated wasteland. It is now left for Carlsen to stop the vampire invaders. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Over ten years after making the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tobe Hooper returns to his deranged family of reclusive cannibals for another round of chainsaw chases and non-stop screaming. Hooper brings a real budget this time (having recently directed Poltergeist for Steven Spielberg) and the talents of veteran make-up artist Tom Savini. This means he can make things bigger, louder, and gorier than ever before -- and they are. He also brings a wacky, self-deprecating sense of humor, as if deliberately flaunting Texas Chainsaw Massacre's status as one of the first and still greatest "splatter" movies. The result is an impish take-off on the original film (and contemporary horror movies in general) that elevates its own clichés -- buckets of blood and gore, droll dialogue, the screaming female lead -- to the level of high camp. The movie is loosely concerned with a small-town disc jockey named "Stretch" (Caroline Williams, who does most of the screaming) and an embittered Texas Ranger named "Lefty" (Dennis Hopper). They team up and decide to put an end to the murderous activities of the Sawyer family once and for all (that is, of course, until Texas Chainsaw Massacre III). The real highlight of the film is when Stretch and Lefty find their way into the Sawyer family hideout -- a ruinous, winding abattoir underneath an abandoned amusement park -- and engage in a chainsaw-battle-to-the-death with Leatherface (Bill Johnson) and the rest of the clan. Jim Siedow is back from the first film as the acerbic Drayton Sawyer, the family cook and owner of the Last Roundup Rolling Grill. Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) and Leatherface do most of the movie's dirty work. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

In this horror outing, a secret government experiment produces a man capable of using his mental powers to start fires. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Horror virtuoso John Carpenter hosts this goofy horror anthology, originally produced for Showtime as a gory stepchild of HBO's Tales from the Crypt series. Playing an emaciated, eye-rolling "coroner," John introduces the audience to a triptych of creepy vignettes in the EC horror-comics mode while paddling about in the guts of assorted cadavers and cracking jokes more gag-inducing than anything oozing on the slab. Two of the stories are directed by Carpenter himself: "The Gas Station" is a retread (pun intended) of Halloween-style scare tactics as a pretty gas-station attendant watches various oddballs pass by her window after hearing that an escaped killer is on the loose; "Hair" is a morbid, hilarious look at man's obsession with his own virility in which Stacy Keach turns to a bizarre hair-growth clinic (run by David Warner & Debbie Harry) which promises instant results, but at a horrific price. The third segment, directed by Tobe Hooper, involves a baseball player (Mark Hamill) who receives an eye transplant after a car accident and soon begins having optical flashbacks revealing (you guessed it) the identity and tendencies of the eye's former owner -- a serial killer. The second segment is by far the most entertaining, featuring a wonderfully neurotic performance by Keach, but the first and last chapters are too derivative to offer much for the discriminating horror buff, although the same fans will enjoy several cute cameos from other genre directors, including Wes Craven, Sam Raimi and Roger Corman. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

A hellish piece of professional laundry equipment wreaks havoc in a tiny New England town in this horror film. It all begins in The Blue Ribbon Laundry, a place run by the ruthless, crippled old Bill Gartley. With no feelings at all for his employees, he demands absolute obedience and unrelenting hard work. One day an old speed iron goes crazy, sucks in and permanently presses a hapless worker. The rest of the crew is frightened and in shock, but this does not stop old Gartley from cruelly ordering them back to work. A police officer investigates the case and begins suspecting that the sinister owner is concealing something. When a boy suffocates in an abandoned refrigerator that had somehow come in contact with the speed iron, the cop calls in his friend the theoretical parapsychologist who deduces that there is a "transference of evil" going on. Meanwhile, Gartley is putting the moves on comely Lin Sue; he also is interested in messing with his own niece. Both girls have been harmed by the evil iron and have contributed some of their precious blood to it. It is the cop who discovers that in order for Gartley to remain successful, he must see that the demonic machine periodically receives such sacrificial donations. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In the late '60s, the tone of American horror films began to shift in the wake of the startling success of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead -- horror films became gorier, bleaker, and began to subtly reflect the political and social upheaval gripping the country. Through the '70s and '80s, films like Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween held a distorted mirror up to American culture, reflecting its fear and chaos in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate. The American Nightmare is a documentary that looks at the transgressive horror films of the '60s and '70s and the people who made them. Directors Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, and David Cronenberg, special effects man Tom Savini, and film critics Tom Gunning and Adam Lowenstein are among those interviewed by director Adam Simon. The American Nightmare was produced for the premium cable outlet The Independent Film Channel. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Tobe Hooper, who directed one of the truly iconic American horror films of the 1970s, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, offers his take on another well-remembered scare-fest of the era with this remake. Steve (Brent Roam) and Nell (Angela Bettis) are a young couple living in Los Angeles who are short on money -- she's just started work as a teacher, while he's a medical student doing his internship. They rent a flat in the Lusman Arms, a once beautiful but now decaying (and therefore affordable) apartment building managed by the sleazy Byron McLieb (Greg Travis), who tries to pass off the ramshackle accommodations as "charming" and "historic." Watching over the Lusman Arms beside Byron is Ned (Adam Gierasch), a greasy simpleton who serves as the building's handyman. Steve and Nell haven't been living at the Lusman especially long when she notices that a growing number of young women living in the building have been meeting a violent death, and with some help from good-hearted part-time actor "Jazz" Rooker (Rance Howard), she begins looking into the murders and makes some disturbing discoveries about both the building management and her fellow tenants. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide