“You’ve got to send a physical sensation through and not let them off the hook. I like to make it faster and faster and faster and pumping and banging until I get into you.” – Tobe Hooper.
Director Tobe Hooper forever changed not only the horror genre with his release of seminal classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974, but he also paved the way for independent filmmaking with his do-it-yourself approach. A true pioneer that often flew under the radar, Hooper was never afraid to try new things or push his cast and crew to their limits to achieve his vision. Though he didn’t shy away from graphic violence in his films, he believed more so in the power of suggestion to build up terror in the minds of the viewer.
Looking back through his catalog of films, his ability to hone in on dread, atmosphere, and even twisted humor becomes apparent. When given complete creative control, Hooper would take his films beyond expectation to deliver some of the most chilling, most shocking, and the most bonkers scenes in cinema. Here are five of Tobe Hooper’s most memorable movie moments:
5) Blood Transfer – Lifeforce
Based on the 1976 novel The Space Vampires, Lifeforce was a critical and commercial dud. It’s also likely what was responsible for tampering Hooper’s mainstream career and the serious angle when marketing the film may have contributed to its failure. It’s an absolutely bonkers film, and that’s all Hooper’s doing. It’s a crazy movie with a very nice budget, and audiences are only just now starting to get embrace how full on crazy it is. This scene is a perfect summation of that, with Matilda May’s Space Girl hitching a ride in a heavily sedated Dr. Armstrong (Patrick Stewart). Fantastic special effects, copious amounts of blood, and a blood soaked naked space vampire screaming. Yup. That’s Lifeforce in a nutshell.
4) Road to Nowhere – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
This sequel’s first reintroduction to Leatherface set the tone straight away; Hooper would be going full black comedy with the highly anticipated sequel. While there are a lot of memorable, over the top moments throughout, it’s this amazing sequence just five minutes into the running time that sets the bar high. Leatherface, sporting puppet Nubbins Sawyer, takes a dance under the moonlight on the back of a pickup before ruthlessly dispatching a pair of frat bros at the wrong place and the wrong time. It’s the best.
3) Face Peeling – Poltergeist
Debate over true directorial credits aside, I’d like to think Hooper had a lot to do with a lot of the movie’s scares. While there’s no denying the clown scene is one of the creepiest, the most memorable scare, however, is the gruesome face peeling scene that nearly earned Poltergeist an R-rating. In it, poor parapsychologist Marty hallucinates peeling his own face off in the bathroom mirror. The hands ripping at Marty’s face belongs to none other than Steven Spielberg. It turns out; it was a one-time shot to nail the sequence as production only had one bust of Marty to rip apart. With the pressure on, Spielberg was asked to step in and rip Marty to bits.
2) Let Me In- Salem’s Lot
What this made-for-television adaptation lacked in blood more than made up for in chills and atmosphere. The slow motion scene that sees freshly turned vamp Ralphie Glick outside his brother’s window, scratching and grinning to be let in, seared itself into memory. The horror of the scene was dialed up to eleven with the realization that his brother’s bedroom is on the second floor. Children are creepy. But floating vampire children? Even creepier. Decades later, it’s this scene above all others that still induces nightmares. It also influenced many vampire films that followed.
1) Sledgehammer – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
There are a lot of iconic moments in this classic, making this one tough. From Leatherface’s crazed twirling of the chainsaw at the end or the worst dinner party ever, Hooper’s debut film an unnerving ride beginning to end. The most shocking moment, though, goes to the film’s brutal introduction to the iconic Leatherface. Poor Kirk had no idea what he was getting into when he stepped into the Sawyer residence, and neither did the unsuspecting audience. The quick succession of Leatherface emerging from the back room, bringing down his sledgehammer upon Kirk’s skull, dragging his body into the back, and then slamming the door shut left audiences shook. Nobody knows how to make introductions like Hooper.