Eaten Alive (1977)

Dir: TOBE HOOPER
Country: USA

AKA:
Brutes and Savages
Death Trap
Horror Hotel
Horror Hotel Massacre
Legend of the Bayou
Murder on the Bayou
Slaughter Hotel
Starlight Slaughter

Few filmmakers are burdened with the kind of expectation that Tobe Hooper endured when he came to make his second feature film. His first just happened to be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), a film that to this day has a visceral impact that remains undiminished. I’m happy to go on record in stating that I think it to be the greatest American horror film of the last forty years, and it is the sole entry in Hooper’s filmography that enables me to forgive him the celluloid offal that he has since produced. Hooper’s career has been a lamentable, pitiful, and at times desperate, search to recapture the waking nightmare of his first film. It is in itself a noble aim, but his debut picture was made without consideration of its commercial prospects, and Hooper has since worked largely as a director-for-hire; a position which immediately undermines and weakens a filmmakers attempts to develop his/her thematic passions. Of course many of the projects directors-for-hire work on are tailored to what the producers believe are the strengths of the filmmaker. The Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike for example, has over eighty credits to his name, but not a single one of them originated from his own mind. Yet Miike has been offered films which have enabled him to build a distinctive thematic universe which seems uniquely his. Hooper has been less fortunate, and one need look no further than his second film Eaten Alive (one of numerous titles the film was marketed under) to see how everything went wrong for the man that just a few years before created a horror masterpiece.

Masters of Horror: Dance of the Dead (2005)

Dir: TOBE HOOPER
Country: USA

First Transmitted - 11/11/2005

One has to admire the bravery (or possibly outright gall) of series creator Mick Garris in inviting several washed up has-beens to contribute direction to the first season of Masters of Horror. There is a certain amount of back slapping and arse kissing endemic in a project like this, because if one were to be entirely objective it about there is no way that in 2005 Tobe Hooper would qualify as a ‘Master of Horror’. Hooper has made lots of horror films yes, but he hasn’t made a single good one in my lifetime. In fact I would argue that Hooper has only made one creatively successful horror film and that was his astonishing debut picture The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Unlike his contemporaries in the 1970’s Hooper peaked instantly. His career since has been a pallid and depressingly dreary attempt to recapture the ferocity and creativity of his first film. In this respect Hooper’s later career must surely rank as the most disappointing in horror history. The promise of his first film was destroyed almost immediately with his lacklustre thematic follow up Eaten Alive (1977). Somewhat surprisingly though he did manage to direct an excellent television mini-series adaptation of Salem’s Lot (1979), proving that he could adapt to the strictures of television with aplomb. Unfortunately Salem’s Lot has proven an exception in Hooper’s career, and though some horror fanatics might cite The Funhouse (1981) (I’d prefer to watch the grass grow) and Poltergeist (1982) (Hooper pimping himself out to Spielberg whose themes dominate the film) the reality is that these films are largely inconsequential and bereft of ideas and intelligence. But based on thirty years of shocking mediocrity Mick Garris invited Hooper to take part in Masters of Horror. So we have thirty years of cinematic garbage from Hooper, what would his episode Dance of the Dead be like?…believe it or not its utter garbage!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Dir: TOBE HOOPER
Country: USA

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a ferociously effective film with a power to disturb that remains undiluted after thirty six years circulating in the social consciousness of humanity. It is tempting to view the film as an exceptional and isolated event, certainly there is no other American horror film of the 1970’s to match its all pervasive atmosphere of charnel house terror. However, in retrospect Chainsaw was clearly a part of a strain of American cinema in the 1970’s that explored the dichotomy between the urbanity of city or suburban life and the simpler climes of the countryside. These clashes between modernity and rural existence were witnessed in varying degrees of success in Deliverance (1972), The Last House on the Left (1972), Badlands (1973), and one of my personal favourites Race with the Devil (1975). In his book Nightmare Movies Kim Newman terms these films ‘Rural horrors’, and their rich thematic territory explores issues of environment and ecology, the nightmarish inversion of American landscape and pioneer spirit, alienated and disenfranchised populations, and the sour decaying underbelly of ’American dream’ capitalist endeavour. They are also united by a belief in the backwardness of rural communities, with intimations of in breeding and aberrant behaviour or rituals adding a layer of hysteria to the horror. Of all of these films perhaps it is Chainsaw which succeeds best in creating the requisite tone and atmosphere to match these thematic concerns, and quite rightly emerged as one of the most radical horror films ever produced in America.