~ by kevin maher ~
Occasionally an artist sets out to achieve a specific kind of greatness. A headline in the Miami Herald proclaimed a young Boca Raton resident could be “the next Ariana Grande.” I don’t know if planet Earth has a job opening for another Ariana Grande but we sure could use another Jerry Reed. Another Ida Lupino. Another Timothy Carey.
And now there’s a huge Tobe Hooper-sized hole in this world. Who could fill those boots?
Tobe Hooper was the Orson Welles of horror: he kicked off his filmmaking career with an astounding hit and spent the rest of his career getting undermined, being occasionally discredited or replaced on jobs. And he was often measured against his earlier success. It probably wasn’t an easy job being Tobe Hooper. But he was great at it. And he brought a rebellious spirit to his unique brand of unsettling horror (and gruesome comedy.)
Last year I re-visited his films for a tribute show at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema (called Kevin Geeks Out About Tobe Hooper.) When I looked at his body of work I noticed so much greatness: there were overlooked films, as well as the brilliant moments in movies that have an uneven reputation. And the same way Hooper’s films sometimes include “a house within the house;” there are trapdoors and secret layers in his films.
One hidden level became apparent to me while watching the final scenes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2: The Cook (played by Jim Siedow, the only returning cast member from the first film) becomes a stand-in for Tobe Hooper. The leader of this misfit cannibal family is bleeding out from his chainsaw’d butt, delivering a soliloquy about how the small businessman always “gets it in the ass.” The distraught-but-rebellious Cook seems to sum up Hooper’s feelings about his career in 1986.
In his final scene, the Cook blows himself up, along with everyone around him; echoing another self-destructive Texas psychopath -- Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me:
“And the room exploded with shots and yells, and I
seemed to explode with it,
yelling and laughing and…
and... Because they hadn’t gotten the point.”
Maybe moviegoers in 1986 hadn’t gotten the point. Maybe they still haven’t. Maybe there are more hidden rooms and surprise subtexts in Tobe Hooper’s filmography, just waiting for someone to stumble into them.
