Tobe Hooper Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Well, it's just about 'All Hallows Eve' and if you're anything like me, then you have already depleted your candy supply and you've been watching as many horror movies as you can get your hands on. And as I've watched everything from The Wolf Man to 13 Ghosts I've been thinking how few movies actually scare me -- the rise of torture porn was nauseating, sure, but scary? Not really. Over at Den of Geek they've compiled a list of movies that scare them and it has inspired me to think about what flicks have given me the honest to goodness heebie-jeebies over the years.

Usually when I watch horror, it's with an eye for comedy and usually the lamer the film, the better. But occasionally there's a film that actually does what it's supposed to: scare the crap out of me. But as much as I tried to find a common denominator for what scares me on the big screen, I came up empty. In fact, there's never really any way to tell just what is going to hit the right buttons when it comes to horror, but I guess that's what makes it so much fun.

After the jump: 5 movies that guarantee me a 'bad night's sleep'...

By Brad McHargue

Remakes of classic horror films are a divisive subject among horror fans. While some consider them nothing more than a harmless nuisance, others are far more passionate in their vitriol for what some claim to be the desecration of classic films. While I personally don't like the idea of a remakes -- only because the time and money could be better spent making original films -- their existence is merely a blip on my radar.

Those with the opposing viewpoint, however, might be happy to learn that Arrow in the Head reported that MGM has delayed the remake of the classic Tobe Hooper-directed Poltergeist until the less-than-specific date of 2011. This changes the original November 24th, 2010 date reported in August. The cause for the delay is unknown.

Read more at Horror Squad!

While many SXSW Film Festival attendees were at the Paramount last night watching The Hurt Locker, I decided to try a more Austin-ish event at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. Tobe Hooper's first feature was screening -- no, not The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but earlier than that. Eggshells was shot in Austin in 1968 and had a limited release the following year. And that's pretty much the last anyone saw of it on a big screen until now -- even Hooper, who was at last night's screening. Hooper says he had a DVD made from a VHS copy, but for the rest of us, Eggshells has been a "lost" film.

The film focuses on a big rambling house full of college-age people who hang out, throw parties, get married ... and discuss the "ghost" in the house, an odd energy field that lives in the basement. But as Hooper told us before the film started, this isn't a horror film. It's very much a film of the late 1960s, with some eye-popping psychedelic sequences -- the sex scene is especially groovy -- and characters acting symbolically rather than realistically. I especially liked seeing the shots of Austin, mostly The University of Texas, at the beginning and end of the film, and would love to watch this movie on DVD with freeze-frame to get a closer look at my town 40 years ago.

Seems like everyone wants to take a stab at filming a Stephen King adaptation lately. Although my guess is that the smart money is still on Frank Darabont's The Mist. But that doesn't mean that any other King project is doomed to end up on one of James' lists. Variety reports that Tobe Hooper has been hired to direct the big-screen version of From a Buick 8. This is King's second 'killer car' story, the first being Christine back in 1983. Buick centers on the recollections of the members of Troop D, a police barracks in western Pennsylvania. After *a young boy is is killed, his father becomes obsessed with the origins of a mysterious Buick 8 left in the town one night by a mysterious man in black (is there any other kind?).

But for those of you out there who can't get the ridiculous image of Keith Gordon being chased down the street by a 1958 Plymouth Fury out of your heads, there is no danger of this film going off the rails into camp territory. Hooper tells Variety, "From a Buick 8" will not be "your stock horror film by any means. There's a really cool, layered quality to the story." Hooper is best known for directing the Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in 1974, but this will be a far cry from the blood and gore of leather-face. Actor-writer Johnathon Schaech and Richard Chizmar were in charge of adapting Buick for the screen and the flick will be produced by Chesapeake Films along with long-time King collaborator Mick Garris.

Correction: It is the son who goes looking for his father's murderer, not the other way around.

Don't look directly into its eyes!

I wasn't a kid who grew up watching Freddy and Jason. I was a huge comedy nerd, and was never a big fan of being terrified. I saw Poltergeist around age 10, and it was one of my very first horror films. I was scared just putting the VHS tape in the machine, but its rating calmed me down considerably. After all, how scary could a PG-rated movie be?

The answer? Extremely.

To me, Poltergeist is the perfect horror movie. It is genuinely scary, it is genuinely funny, and you genuinely care what happens to the characters. It's even got some dynamite commentary going on -- the television is full of evil! The genius of Poltergeist is that it takes the haunted house and plops it smack dab in the middle of suburbia. It's not a creepy Transylvanian mansion, it looks a lot like where most people grow up. The Freeling family looked a lot like my family, and that made it all the scarier. Like many Steven Spielberg films, Poltergeist juxtaposes the fantastical with the real in a way that the viewer doesn't doubt for a second.

So I guess now vampire flicks are the new Western. No sooner did we get news on two new vamp flicks in development and now there is already another one to add to the pile. Shock Till You Drop is reporting that Mick Garris (creator of the Masters of Horror and Fear Itself series) will be at the helm for a remake of the obscure 1979 Australian vampire flick, Thirst. The story centers on two women who are decedents of the infamous Elizabeth Bathory and are caught up in a plot for a 'blood-harvesting' facility -- for the Buffy fans out there, just think back to the episode The Wish. Garris tells Shock, "Not many people know the film (Thirst). I love the take on it - the blood farm of acolytes, the sycophants who are willing to give blood to the regal, but setting it in something contemporary and American". Thirst was directed by Rob Hardy, who fans of the new Battle Star Galactica might recognize as director of a few episodes.

Thirst would be Garris' second attempt at directing a feature film; back in 2004 he had written and directed an adaptation of Stephen King's Riding the Bullet. Garris also told Shock that he still has designs on adapting another King title, Bag of Bones. Garris will also produce Tobe Hooper's adaptation of From a Buick 8 (another King story). Garris was keeping most of the details about Thirst to himself, telling Shock, "I'm not going to give anything away about it, but it's a really different take". Luckily, the original is not that well known, so most of us won't even know the difference. Well, those of us who don't have a thirst for blood, that is.

Although we've heard very little that could be deemed "official," it seems to be a pretty foregone conclusion that a shiny new Special Edition of Steven Spielberg's Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist is poised to hit DVD shelves within the next several months. Yes, there's been vague talks of remakes and/or sequels, but if you're looking for a modern-day ghost story that's as slyly amusing as it is hellaciously creepy -- you're going to want to see Poltergeist again soon.

According to this Poltergeist fan site, a group of professional Ghost Trackers were recently interviewed and filmed on their rounds. Who was doing the filming? The folks putting together the supplemental material for the new Poltergeist DVD, that's who. And hooray, says me. It's been too many years since I've sat down with Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams and the rest of the ill-fated Freeling family. (And yet despite all that horror, can anyone tell me the actual body count in Poltergeist? I'll give you a hint: It rhymes with "hero.")

One of the very few movies out there on which Steven Spielberg receives a screenplay credit, Poltergeist has become a favorite chiller of kids and grown-ups alike since 1982. I think it's one of the best 'haunted house' movies ever made, to be honest. There's no set date for the inevitably doubled-disced Poltergeist re-issue, but according to those Ghost Tracker guys, both Mr. Nelson and Ms. Williams have already been interviewed for the package. Now throw on a few audio commentaries, an FX breakdown and a full-bore 'making of' documentary, and you'll have I DVD I need to own. I'm betting this one hits the shelves well before Christmas.

So tell me: Which of these is scariest? The clown, the tree or the swimming pool? (Trick question: It's the steak!)

Robert Patrick is one of those actors who, for better or worse, I always associate with one role. Maybe it's due to the impressionable age at which I saw Terminator 2, but every time I see Patrick onscreen I react the same way. When I saw Walk the Line, I thought "Why is T-1000 being so mean to Johnny Cash?" When I saw him on greatest-TV-show-ever The Sopranos, I thought "Man, T-1000 needs to stop gambling so much!" And if I see him in the upcoming horror film Autopsy, I'm sure I will say "Why is T-1000 hanging out in that spooky hospital?"

Autopsy, in pre-production now for a scheduled 2008 release, is said to be about "a young woman who tries to find her injured boyfriend in a bizarre and dangerous hospital." It will be directed by first-timer Adam Gierasch, who co-wrote the screenplays for Tobe Hooper's Toolbox Murders, Dario Argento's upcoming The Third Mother, and something called Crocodile 2: Death Swamp! Gierasch is scripting with Jace Anderson and E.L. Katz, and the cast includes Jessica Lowndes and Tarantino favorite Michael Bowen. Patrick is currently on the big screen in Bridge to Terabithia ("What's T-1000 doing on that bridge?"), which I imagine would not make a good double feature with Autopsy.

OK, here's the portion of your day in which I mention that someone's about to get working on a Poltergeist remake and you get all annoyed and frustrated and decide to write a strongly-worded rant in the comments section, only you forget to approve your comment via email, which means nobody will ever know your opinion that A) Poltergeist is a classic, B) classics shouldn't be remade, and C) "screenwriter" Steven Spielberg really ghost-directed the movie for Tobe Hooper.

But we already know all of these things, and apparently that knowledge is not going to stop a remake from getting made. According to BD.com, the original plan was to take a work-in-progress called Poltergeist: Kayeri and retrofit the thing into some sort of "re-imagining" of 1982's second-best horror movie. But now it looks like the Poltergeist remake will be starting entirely from scratch ... and the more time they need the better, if it's me you're asking. (Well, I know these remakes are inevitable, but I'm certainly not in a huge hurry to see what some first-time rock-video director and a guy who once wrote three episodes of The X-Files would do with one of modern cinema's very finest ghost stories.)

And I'll use this scant piece of semi-news to remind you how pretty darn awesome Poltergeist actually is. Smart, spooky, playfully dark, just gory enough to please the geeks and just mild enough to warrant a Friday night family movie night. If you haven't seen the flick in a long time, I highly recommend you give Poltergeist a second visit. But dear sweet jeebus, please stop after the first one. The sequels are house-devouringly bad.

And while we're on the subject, doesn't Poltergeist seem like a movie that's just screaming for a swanky new 2-disc Special Edition DVD? Frankly the current DVD kinda sucks.

UPDATE: The illustrious SpielbergFilms.com, which I DO consider a reliable source tyvm, is reporting that this project is (as of this moment) not happening. Stay tuned for additional news -- if there is any.

The Texas Chainsaw franchise has either roared through the box office or limped along, by turns, since 1974. I'm sure Tobe Hooper, Kim Henkel and other cast and crew involved with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had no idea it would spawn three sequels, a remake, and now a prequel: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. (Hooper and Henkel are listed as executive producers on this latest film, but seem to have little to do anymore with the series.)

I'd heard that Beginning would recount the story of Leatherface and his family (the Hewitts) before those days when the young people in the van picked up a hitchhiker and ended up in a world of trouble ... and chainsaws. I imagined the prequel would recount the story of young Tommy "Leatherface" Hewitt growing up -- would it be an idyllic childhood, spoiled by some traumatic event or would he have a miserable youth, taunted and mocked endlessly until he had an epiphany, perhaps while sawing firewood? Perhaps he was a child genius who suffered some tragic accident. The imagination presents so many possibilities.

However, in Beginning, Tommy Hewitt's birth and childhood are disposed of quickly during the opening credits. In fact, the opening credit sequence was one of my favorite parts of the film -- a smooth, intriguing montage hinting that Tommy was considered a disturbed child by teachers and doctors, practically from birth. His birth, in the teaser before the credits, is also a fascinating little story.