THE BLOODY END
Horror master Hooper dies at 74
Tobe Hooper, the director who hacked through the horror-flick status quo with “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and brought it to the mainstream with “Poltergeist,” has died at 74.
LA County coroners said he died Saturday of natural causes.
A master of gore, Hooper carved out a place in Hollywood history with 1974’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” — then the highestgrossing indie horror film ever — about a group of friends who encounter a family of flesh-eating, back-country maniacs.
“[It was] a seminal work in horror cinema. He was a kind, decent man and my friend. A sad day,” John Carpenter, director of “Halloween” and “Escape from New York,” tweeted Sunday.
Hooper also directed the 1982 smash “Poltergeist,” written, produced (and allegedly co-directed) by Steven Spielberg, about a family battling demonic spirits inside their home.
Shot with no-name actors for less than $300,000, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” premiered at a small art-house theater in Hooper’s hometown of Austin, Texas.
The brilliantly bloody flick, which falsely claimed to be based on a true story, pushed boundaries with its realistic violence, later said to be a commentary on the horror of the Vietnam War.
The film’s movie-poster villain, Leatherface, was loosely based on the Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein, who would inspire the book- turned-film “The Silence of the Lambs.”
“It’s about the chain of life and killing sentient beings,” Hooper told Slate of “Massacre” in 2013, adding that he gave up eating meat while shooting the movie.
After 1982’s “Poltergeist,” the eighth-highest-grossing film of the year, Hooper experimented with a comedic tone in the 1986 sequel “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.”
Stephen King, whose vampire novel “Salem’s Lot” was adapted by Hooper as a TV movie in 1979, said Sunday that Hooper did “a terrific job . . . He will be missed.”
Hooper continued working in film and TV through the 2000s, directing two episodes of the anthology series “Masters of Horror.” He also co-authored a 2011 horror novel, “Midnight Movie,” which features himself as the main character.
He is survived by two sons.