Tobe Hooper
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Tobe Hooper (born Tobias Paul Hooper on January 25, 1943) is an American television and film director best known for his work in the horror film genre. His movies include Lifeforce, Poltergeist, Toolbox Murders and the watershed exploitation classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).
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[edit] Biography
Tobe Hooper (b. Austin, Texas) spent the 1960s as a college professor and documentary cameraman. In 1974, he organized a small cast that was made up of college teachers and students, and then he and Kim Henkel made the underground classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). This film changed the horror film industry, becoming one of the most successful of the genre. Hooper's success with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" landed him in Hollywood and it remains a horror-film classic. Hooper rejoined Henkel and the cast of "TCM" for Eaten Alive (1977), a gory horror film with Mel Ferrer, Carolyn Jones, William Finley, and Marilyn Burns (who played the lead role in "TCM"). From there onwards Hooper's films were mostly box office flops and were panned by critics.
In 1982, Hooper found greater success when Steven Spielberg hired him to direct his production of Poltergeist (1982) for MGM. It quickly became a top-ranking major motion picture. Hooper was asked to write a script for Michael Bay's remake of Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was released in 2003, and became a huge box office success.
[edit] Trivia
- Hooper, a native of Austin, Texas, first used his father's 8 mm camera at age 9.
- Father of William Hooper.
- Hooper wanted a MPAA PG rating for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (there was no PG-13 at the time).
- Hooper claims to have got the idea for the Texas Chain Saw Massacre while standing in the hardware section of a crowded store. While thinking of a way to get out through the crowd, he spotted the chainsaws.
- Of the modern masters of the horror genre, Hooper is the only one to have directed the characters of both Leatherface (in Texas Chain Saw Massacre) and Freddy Krueger (on an episode of Freddy's Nightmares).
- Featured in a song by the band Showbread, "Welcome To Plainfield Tobe Hooper"
[edit] Filmography
- Eggshells (1969)
- The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
- Eaten Alive (1977)
- Salem's Lot (1979)
- The Funhouse (1981)
- Poltergeist (1982)
- Lifeforce (1985)
- Invaders from Mars (1986)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
- Freddy's Nightmares episode No More Mr. Nice Guy (1988)
- Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
- I'm Dangerous Tonight (1990)
- The Nightmare Begins Again (1991)
- Night Terrors (1993)
- The Mangler (1995)
- The Apartment Complex (1999)
- Toolbox Murders (2005)
- Dance of the Dead (2005)
- Mortuary (2006)
- The Damned Thing (2006)
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 {2009} [rumored]
