Author Scout Tafoya Talks Poltergeist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre And More In New Book About Tobe Hooper
“We Need to Talk About Tobe Hooper: Scout Tafoya on his new book about the Master of Horror.”
In 1982, Tobe Hooper directed the horror classic “Poltergeist.” Probably, according to some. To this day, the legend persists that Producer Steven Spielberg hired Hooper to direct the film, then subverted him and took over production. Hooper previously made “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” an indisputable indie masterpiece, but audiences still question if he helmed a mainstream, Amblin rollercoaster. Why is it so hard for people to believe Tobe Hooper struck gold again? Sure, stylistically “Poltergeist” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” are miles apart, but nobody questions the talent and versatility of Hooper’s peers like John Carpenter or Wes Craven. Maybe it’s because there are precious few writings about the works of Tobe Hooper. That changes now.
Writer/Director/Video Essayist Scout Tafoya has written “Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper” which explores and breaks down Hooper’s directorial efforts, chapter by chapter. In 227 pages, Tafoya will convince you that Tobe Hooper was more than just a flash-in-the-pan maverick, but rather a deeply political, psychedelic maestro who knew exactly what he was doing.
What inspired you to write this book?
I've written a little about this for a couple of different places, but it was watching “The Mangler” several years ago and wanting scholarship on it the way that you do when you see a movie that's fascinating, but imperfect. I just loved the way the camera moved. Very old-school. The way that he [Tobe] made this movie is not like any other 90’s horror movie. Even at that point, John Carpenter had kind of curbed his impulses a little bit with “Village of the Damned” and "Escape From LA.” He's kind of getting away with it and doing what he can but I still love those movies and I have much affection for them, but at the same time, seeing “The Mangler” and asking “what's the connective tissue here between this and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” other than that great camera shot? I knew that he loved the set because the “TCM” house was one of the great feats of low-budget set design. Just a marvel of production design and art direction for no money.
With “The Mangler,” I saw he got a little bit of money and it shows he put it all into the look of the film. He creates the world of the film with every inch of movement along the dolly track. I was just kind of transfixed. I had heard of that movie at the bottom of a bunch of like 10 worst movies of all time lists.
“Bad movies from good directors,” that kind of thing?
Not even that, in some cases. They wouldn’t even concede that he was a good director. I saw so little evidence of what you might call “Tone Hooper auteur-ism.” When I would read reviews of “Lifeforce,” they barely mentioned it was from the guy who made “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Nobody was treating him like somebody who made conscious decisions. People thought he just “happened” into every single movie in his career. There were movies that I saw as part of my research process that I didn't know existed, like “I’m Dangerous Tonight” and “Night Terrors.” Not to mention all the TV work he did in the ‘90s which is some of his best work. Absolutely, part of it was trying to bring the spotlight that gets thrown on your Carpenters and Cravens and Romeros to somebody who, to me, was pretty neglected by the culture at large, especially when “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is one of the most talked-about films of all time.
I knew that Kiyoshi Kurosawa was a fan of his neglected ‘90s stuff. I think he liked “Spontaneous Combustion,” which would make perfect sense because they are thematically similarly obsessed. But that was about it. I wanted the book to be something that you can pick up to be like “OK, how do these relate and what am I looking at? Where is the rest of his career?” It’s the book-length version of the stuff that I do for RogerEbert.com where I'm talking about movies that were maligned, unfairly or not, when they first came out. A lot of Hooper’s stuff just completely vanished from the culture in the conversation and from really everywhere reputable. I got rejection after rejection from university, horror, and non-fiction presses. I literally had to know the publisher because everybody else turned it down, which again speaks to something of his complete lack of regard in the mainstream.
Everyone and their mother has written about “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Did you discover any new observations about it that might not otherwise show up elsewhere?
I wrote this book as if this is going to be the first thing that anybody has read about it, so I purposely didn't go looking for a lot of scholarship. I know that like a lot of writers, I have a tendency when I read something that really strikes me, I want to tell people about it. So, first I had to remove the temptation and just kind of write things as they come to me. I also wanted it all to feel like a piece of intuitive thinking throughout. I wanted to approach every movie in exactly the same fashion. Obviously, all through my life I've read a million things about “TCM.” I touch on Flannery O’Connor in the chapter, which came to me without having read it somewhere, but like, I know somebody's had to have written about it somewhere.
What Tobe Hooper film would you recommend to someone like me, who loves “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but is hesitant about the rest of his filmography?
Probably something from the Cannon years because the craft is so outlandish. It’s nationalist and wonderful and huge. It’s hard not to have fun when you're watching something like “Invaders from Mars” or “Lifeforce,” which is another one that gets called terrible all the time.
It’s fun. Like a Hammer movie.
It is. It’s a Hammer movie by way of Mario Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires” and a little bit of Ken Russell. It’s everything I love about movies. Tobe Hooper wanted you to have a very old-fashioned cinematic experience. He grew up watching Hammer movies and the Corman “Poe" movies. Even classic melodrama. It's all over his work. He had a very omnivorous cinematic diet, which is why it took him almost 15 years into his filmmaking career to even approach a horror film. He made experimental films and something like “The Heisters,” which is a beautiful pastiche of Hammer films vis a vis Chuck Jones’ “Looney Tunes” cartoons. He wasn’t just a horror filmmaker, but when you do something as meteoric as “TCM,” everyone wants “TCM 2” or whatever the form is. He made “Eaten Alive,” which is set-bound and crazier, and filled with all these ancient character actors, but that's why I would go for “Lifeforce,” because it's the first thing he does after “Poltergeist.” He had his brush with Hollywood, which chewed him up and spat him out, but he rebounded with his beautiful, deranged fantasy. All the money’s up on the screen, every cent of it. If you needed proof that this guy knows what he’s doing and “Poltergeist” wasn’t some hatchet job where Spielberg ran him over on set, “Lifeforce.” is it. This is what he can do with Golan and Globus’s money.
Otherwise, I’d go with “I'm Dangerous Tonight,” which is just a great little movie with really solid craft. That was the movie that made me realize how much he was indebted to Maya Deren, the experimental filmmaker. I'm looking at Mädchen Amick in the haunted dress and all I can see is Maya Deren in “At Land” and to a lesser extent, “Meshes of the Afternoon.” It made me realize how much he was talking to people about himself and what he valued in art through his movies. It broke my heart to see how little anyone had answered him. He’d thrown down the gauntlet of these beautifully expressive personal works. He kind of got treated like a maniac.
That’s why he worked so much in TV during that period. He could show up and shoot TV pilots and squeeze in his expressionistic touches. The pilot for "Nowhere Man” at times looks a little like a remake of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” You can do that on television, but nobody talked about it. Nobody minded because people are more interested in the story and character on TV than they were with filmmaking.
“Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” always struck me as a film fueled by resentment. He didn’t want to make it, but since he did, it’s a giant middle finger to everyone whether they wanted it or not.
But the film is still very much him. It’s got those beautiful camera movements. My favorite shot in the whole movie is when Caroline Williams wakes up tied to the table and he zooms in, then zooms out, and in again to show off the set and production design.
That set is a character in that movie.
It's so good. But the film still got the shit kicked out of it, critically. One of the nice things about [Cinemaphagy] is that a reader in Australia contacted me to say that my comparison of it to “Grey Gardens” was the thing that opened it up for them. I hope that more people have that realization because it is an absurd piece of sociology, rather than a horror movie. It’s not scary, it’s just grotesque. People look at “TCM 2” and think “oh, he’s lost it.” No, he’s not trying to do the things you think he is because that doesn’t interest him. You look at all the rest of his movies and they’re so much louder and there's so much of what “TCM” is. He didn’t want to get pigeon-holed the rest of his life. Having Spielberg beside him allowed him to exercise a lot of muscles he didn’t get to do elsewhere. He got to do a subtler form of suburban comedy. The starry-eyed suburban sci-fi thing that was the Amblin stock and trade. He’s really good at it and you see it pop up again and again. People forget he worked for Spielberg twice more!
They also forget that aside from the 3D boom of the early 2010’s, the ‘80s were the most financially-obsessed decade of film writing. Critics loved talking about financial failures like “Heaven’s Gate.” People had their knives out. They loved the idea of a critic being able to close a movie. It was the era of Pauline Kael getting mean and people asking “what does this guy think he’s doing?” Tobe Hooper was making these insane movies and people assumed it was an accident they were like that. You don’t spend that much money on these decisions for it to be an accident. It’s too specific.
With “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2,” it’s almost like he went “you want a sequel? Here’s your sequel…”
It's like he's reaching into the ‘80s by the tongue, like a cartoon, and yanking it inside out. He’s killing yuppies right out of John Hughes films. It’s about a guy who looks like a decaying Richard Nixon [Jim Siedow reprising his role as the Cook] in charge of these maniacs. It just kind of broke my heart to see how much good faith effort was put into these things, for them to be completely ignored by everybody because it was more fun to write the story about the guy who made “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and lost his touch. I completely get it that people see blood in the water and are gonna join the feeding frenzy because you get easy points that way, but the work still survives. Even now, people still want to jump out of the woodwork to say “it’s very bad.” Has it crossed your mind the reason I thought the need to make it in the first place because that's the only opinion that there is out there? I know you hate it, that's why I made it. It’s really hard to change people's minds and it's even harder to change the culture’s mind.
We’re doing a little better now about being kinder to things through the lens of our history. For example, in my lifetime, Elaine May went from punchline, to somebody everybody loves and respects.
Touching on “Poltergeist,” you make it clear Tobe Hooper was in the director’s chair, but personally I’m concerned I’ll re-watch it and see Spielberg micromanaging him. I wonder what the film would look like if he didn’t.
That’s sort of the most popular question that comes out of writing about this. Here’s my thing: I think they both had a great time making it. I think they were of the same mind about how cool it was, and you can tell because they're shooting every angle of that set and really loving the practical effects. I think Tobe Hooper loved being a part of that team. Chris O'Neill is writing a book about Tobe, which discusses his temperament more than mine. I’m excited to read it, where he says Tobe was a soft-spoken guy who had his Texas crew around him, like Lou Perryman, who was helping him with stuff. It feels like a bunch of kids got together to make a science project.
Since it’s early Spielberg, maybe after this he learned to be more of a producer when he’s not directing.
I think the experience of making “Poltergeist” made him that way. He stops being so much a presence on set. You don't hear any stories about him on the set of “The Goonies” or “Gremlins” or “Back to the Future.” He’s a behind-the-scenes ideas guy and that was what he learned from that experience. Again, it was a terrible time for art. So much was bottom line-driven and the worst people are writing about it. I’ve come to love “Poltergeist” for that reason.
Once I was able to get over that kind of heartbreak that one of my favorite filmmakers finally getting his big break, and it just doesn't work at all for him and the way that I wanted it to. I think the movie is just like a beautiful piece of creative mojo. They really liked working together, which they did again later on crazier things. The “Amazing Stories” episode is a fucking riot! And his “Taken” episode is a lot of fun.
Did you discover anything on your re-watches?
I definitely came to see him more in line with filmmakers from the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. The stuff he would’ve watched as a kid. I love that story of his mother’s water breaking in the movie theater. It’s such a beautiful story. Also, I started seeing him as somebody like an Edgar Ulmer figure or like a post-Archers Michael Powell. That made so much more sense to me. He had specific stylistic ideas and he really had a way with the camera. He spoke it’s language fluently. It was really cool to see that if anything, I liked the “misfit” films as much or more than the big Hollywood ones. I loved “Night Terrors,” “The Mangler, and “I’m Dangerous Tonight” as much as I like “TCM.” Or even [his early short film] “Down Friday Street.” To see the experimental stuff when he was a tinkerer was a window into his mind. The step processing and clicking the shutters one second at a time to do stop motion animation. It was really cool to see his enthusiasm before “the machinery” found its way to him. That’s why I think “The Mangler” is such a personal film, because it’s about “ the machine” stopping you, impeding your progress as a person, and turning you into an earner.
I also think there is kind of a darker side of that, because as cruel as the system was to him, he couldn’t stop making movies. He couldn't do anything else, nor did he want to. He wrote a novel later in life but I don't think it was going to replace filmmaking for him. It was a shame to see the gaps in his filmography. He makes the wonderful “Masters of Horror” episodes, but then he doesn’t make anything until 2013, where he has to fly to Dubai to do it!
And it never comes out.
Netflix released it years afterwards; they didn't even release the director's cut, but the version they wanted with the more conventional structure. It’s a bummer, but it was cool to see that in these works that didn’t have much of a reputation that his craft had been undiminished, at least to me from a stylistic standpoint. Even with “Crocodile,” which I don’t think is very good, it’s still “him.” He’s still operating the camera beautifully.
What do you think is the trademark Tobe Hooper film? The film that checks off all of his boxes.
It’s a tossup between “TCM,” “The Mangler” and maybe “Mortuary.”
I thought you were going to say “Lifeforce.”
Well “Lifeforce” is Hooper unleashed. There's a lot of him in it, but I think he's having so much fun with the cinema of it, that a lot of his thematic hobbyhorses don't get quite the exercise they do on some of his other works. “Toolbox Murders” is specifically about Hollywood in the form of an apartment building literally eating people. That's something that shows up over and over again. “Eggshells,” which is the first feature he had full control over, has this malevolent eye in the basement that consumes “dreamers” who come downstairs. There’s a heaven and hell dynamic, which is also in “Invaders From Mars,” where people are sucked into the sand. He likes carnivorous buildings.
“Mortuary” is also important. It has sort of a “well to hell” and the diner owner is very much a “Chop Top” figure from “TCM 2.” It's a curdled ‘50s suburbia thing. like “Poltergeist” but more drained of color, excitement and atmosphere. By this time, you’re in the Bush years and there’s even less to be optimistic about. People move to a haunted patch of land much like “Poltergeist” and they're consumed by improperly buried and cared-for bodies. The mother is a mortician surrounded by corpses. I think that very much symbolizes his attitude about where America was heading. You also see that in “The Damned Thing,” which to me, is like one of the most defining Bush-era movies. Literally haunted oil under the earth is making people crazy in a small American town. The sheriff who’s supposed to save people is going nuts. All of the traditional authority completely breaks down. You can’t trust your mother in “Mortuary.” You can't trust where you sleep in “Toolbox Murders,” and you can't trust God and country, and the sheriff and all that in “The Damned Thing.” As he got on, all movies really more reflected his political point of view.
Interview edited for clarity.
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