5 Best Tobe Hooper Movies
When you hear his name, chances are likely you connect director Tobe Hooper with his horror film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). But Hooper made other movies during his career, with a continued interest in exploring broken families and a bonkers, go-for-broke energy to the horror or action scenes. When the filmmaker passed away in 2017, he left behind more monsters in his movies than just Le
When you hear his name, chances are likely you connect director Tobe Hooper with his horror film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). But Hooper made other movies during his career, with a continued interest in exploring broken families and a bonkers, go-for-broke energy to the horror or action scenes.
When the filmmaker passed away in 2017, he left behind more monsters in his movies than just Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), with the 1980s being a strong decade for him to thrill audiences with ghosts, carny killers, and one alien invasion.
What are the best Tobe Hooper movies? Let’s get into it.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Sally (Marilyn Burns), her brother, and her friends travel into rural Texas, where their road trip goes to hell as they become prey to the Sawyer family.
‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’Credit: Bryanston Distributing Company
The Sawyers’ home is a foul place with bone-made furniture and the disturbing normalcy of the cannibal appetite within the family. A twisted sense of humor underneath the screams and chainsaw revving hardly gives levity to the movie; it just makes everything feel even more depraved. The intensity of the scares makes sure you never feel safe.
The dread starts in the opening minutes and lasts until the finale abruptly closes on a delirious Sally and the temper-tantrum dance of Leatherface. Feral and nail-biting, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is Hooper’s best-known film and the best in his career.
The Funhouse (1981)
‘The Funhouse’Credit. Universal Pictures
A double date at a traveling carnival leads a group of friends into seeing something they shouldn’t, and they become trapped with killers.
The Funhouse isn’t as relentless as Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but the slower plot takes the time to show the strangeness of the carnival that the friends wander through, and the time spent with the four leads makes the deaths that come feel more effective in this underrated slasher.
When the friends get locked inside the titular funhouse, the animatronics, the mechanical gears, and shadowy vents turn the attraction into a creepy labyrinth as they get hunted by the abusive Conrad (Kevin Conway) and his deformed son Gunther (Wayne Doba). Hooper sure did love rotten family relationships.
Poltergeist (1982)
‘Poltergeist’Credit: MGM/UA Entertainment Co.
In this haunted house classic, the Freeling family has their young daughter abducted by ghosts that communicate through the TV, and they will do whatever it takes to get her back.
The parents (played by JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson) are hilarious and heartbreaking. Beatrice Straight brings such a grounded performance to her role of parapsychologist Dr. Lesh that one of the best scenes has no ghosts when Lesh whispers a monologue about the afterlife.
Even with a cast and supernatural frights that are enduring in the genre, the rumors about whether Hooper or producer Steven Spielberg directed the movie still persist. But Hooper’s name is the one credited as director. There are scares and satire that resemble what is seen elsewhere in Hooper’s filmography.
Rewatch Poltergeist and see what you can pick up on.
Lifeforce (1985)
‘Lifeforce’Credit: Cannon Film Distributors
The crew of a space shuttle investigates an object that is hidden within Halley’s Comet. What they find threatens all of humanity.
Lifeforce is based on Colin Wilson’s novel, The Space Vampires, and it’s a sci-fi thriller where energy vampires from the cosmos invade Earth, starting off bizarre and erotic, and not letting up.
The alien-vampire appears as a young woman, played by Mathilda May, who kills the men trying to apprehend her while she walks through the scenes completely nude. A possessed Patrick Stewart has a kiss with a man that deepens the theme of unbridled sexuality. Unlucky victims are left as living corpses, with practical effects capturing their hideous fate. The erratic plot never lets you guess where it will go next as the invasion becomes truly apocalyptic.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)
‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2’Credit: Cannon Releasing
“I got a real good eye for prime meat. Runs in the family.” After an attack by Leatherface (Bill Johnson) is overheard on the radio, DJ Stretch (Caroline Williams) and ex-Texas Ranger Lefty (Dennis Hopper) join forces to find the Sawyers, who have become an urban legend.
Twice the dark comedy and twice the amount of chainsaws, this is nothing like the original movie. That may disappoint certain audiences, but if you give it a try, you might enjoy the chaos on-screen, with the garish colors in the carnivalesque set for the Sawyers’ subterranean refuge and Dennis Hopper readying himself for a chainsaw fight.
Hooper purposely included more comedy, explaining in an interview that he felt, “very few people saw the ironic humor in the original Texas Chain Saw.” He wanted to correct that, and the sharp change in tone in Part 2 raises the perversity to absurd levels.
Do you have a favorite Tobe Hooper movie that’s not on this list?