Tobe Hooper

Director best known for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

young age Hooper fell in love with movies. He began by shooting documentaries, and made his first feature, Eggshells, in 1969. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was then made for less than $300,000 in his native Texas, and yet it became one the most influential films in horror: a slasher film landmark.

Marketed as based on a true story, Texas Chain Saw Massacre is about a group of friends who encounter a family of cannibals in Texas. The central villain, Leatherface (played by Gunnar Hansen) was loosely based on serial killer Ed Gein, but the tale was otherwise fiction. Hooper, whose inspiration struck while looking at chain saws in a department store, considered the film a political one – a kind of shock to 70s malaise. The film’s cannibals are out of work, their slaughterhouse jobs having been replaced by technology.

“I had never seen anything like it and I wanted to see it myself,” said Hooper in 2014. “That was a driving force.”

The film was controversial. Several countries banned it, although the independent film, helped by its gory reputation, grossed $30.8 million. However, as movie-goers found out, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was not as explicitly grisly as it was reputed to be.

Carpenter, the Halloween director, called the film a seminal work in horror cinema, but it was not received too kindly by critics, one review calling it “a vile little piece of sick crap”. Roger Ebert said it was “without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose”. But its renown steadily grew, and many appreciated its harrowing craft, comparing it to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (which also took inspiration from Ed Gein). The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was selected to the Director’s Fortnight of the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. Later, it would become part of the permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

After his success, Hooper went on to direct Poltergeist (1982), from a story about a suburban dream house that is haunted by the graveyard it was built on. It was written by Steven Spielberg who also co-produced. Hooper also directed the 1979 mini-series Salem’s Lot, from Stephen King’s novel and starring David Soul and James Mason.

Later, the director shot 1985’s sci-fi horror Lifeforce, about alien vampires terrorising London, in the UK.

He also directed a more comic sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1986. A poorly received but profitable remake then followed in 2003. Numerous spin-offs have also been produced, most recently a prequel titled Leatherface, which is due to be released in September.

Hooper’s last film as director was 2013’s Djinn, a supernatural thriller set in the United Arab Emirates.

He died of natural causes in Los Angeles and is survived by his two sons.