Tobe hooPer

Remembering the horror great’s cutting-edge work.

Born and raised in Austin, Texas, a young William Tobe Hooper was scared by his Wisconsin relatives’ tales of skin-flaying serial killer Ed Gein. This, married to ogling a wall of chainsaws in a local hardware shop, fantasising about revving one up to part the crowds, birthed 1974 horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Banned by the BBFC for its “pornography of terror”, this DIY ($60,000, 16mm) tale of Leatherface’s cannibalistic clan offing trespassing teens actually features next to no graphic violence, and instead cuts deep via grainy lensing, discordant sound design and dread-drenched atmosphere.

Hooper, who cut his teeth making documentaries, would never again fashion such a shattering movie, though he made several genre offerings of worth in the ’70s and ’80s – horrors Eaten Alive, The Funhouse and grand guignol sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2; campy sci-fis Lifeforce and Invaders From Mars – along with a creepy miniseries of Stephen King’s vampire novel, Salem’s Lot. His success with 1982’s Poltergeist was sullied when the LA Times suggested that producer Steven Spielberg took over directing duties.

It was a claim that Hooper calmly dismissed when appearing as Total Film’s guest at genre festival FrightFest in 2010.

From the late ’80s, the Austin director worked primarily in TV, including two entries to the Masters Of Horror series. Sporadic features such as Spontaneous Combustion, Crocodile and The Mangler were poorly received, and his final film, 2013’s Djinn, was of note only for being the first horror feature in the United Arab Emirate’s burgeoning film industry. Hooper’s best film in the twilight of his career was 2004’s Toolbox Murders, an effective remake of the infamous 1978 chiller. Trade magazine Variety wrote: “The chills and kills prove Hooper, when armed with the right script, can still tighten the fright screws.”

But it was that other power-tool movie that irrevocably changed the horror genre, tapping into the terror of the times – Vietnam, the oil crisis, civil rights, the Watergate scandal – to become one of the defining films, horror or otherwise, of its era.

Hooper died of natural causes, aged 74. He was married and divorced twice. He is survived by two sons, William and Tony. JG