My Tobe Hooper Review Thread

A carnival is the place to go it seems. The fourth season of American Horror Story (a show which varied wildly in quality from season to season) - Freak Show - was probably the best. Nightmare Alley has been resurrected by Guillermo del Toro, with the filthy cutthroat carny atmosphere seeping into every frame. Freaks still has it, after nearly 100 years. How ironic that the carnival would be the perfect place for horror to manifest - but that's part of the place's attraction. Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse gets this aspect of his mostly overlooked and forgotten film completely right, and it's a shame he didn't quite manage to bring it off. Nevertheless, it is an awfully good monster movie, and a lot of fun. One of the most surprising things about it is that the slow "nothing is really happening" first half is one of the best things about the film. It manages to soak that dirt-filled scum-ridden world through the screen, and although it's a wonder I never came across it during that special time when videos became a thing (the early 80s), I'm kind of glad I didn't. I wouldn't have had the patience, and I wouldn't have appreciated the various references and callbacks to the monster movies of old.

Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) has a hot date in Buzz Dawson (Cooper Huckabee), and although she's been warned not to go to the carnival by her parents (apparently this particular one has left a trail of bodies in it's wake) she goes anyway - peer pressure is an irresistible force. With them on a double date are Liz (Largo Woodruff) and Richie (Miles Chapin). Unbeknownst to them, Amy's little brother Joey (Shawn Carson) tags along behind. After an enjoyable night gawking at cows with deformities, spying scantily-clad ladies through holes in a sideshow tent and annoying the carnival clairvoyant Madame Zena (the awesome Sylvia Miles) Richie hits upon the great idea of staying the night in the funhouse - and sex-wise, it is a great idea, until all four spy a masked, raspy young carnie, Gunther (Wayne Doba) pay Zena for intercourse. Gunther has an unfortunate premature ejaculation, and when Zena refuses to refund the money he kills her in a fit of rage. Gunther's father, so to speak, Conrad Straker (Kevin Conway) is summoned to help hide the body - and when he discovers our four interlopers, he orders Gunther - revealed to be a horrible monster - to kill them before they can escape.

I think Gunther is meant to be a human oddity - his brother in foetus form sits in a jar in the freak show and is decidedly more recognizable as an actual baby. The great Rick Baker, winner of 7 Oscars, did not hold back when creating something truly monstrous - almost going a little too far with his cleft-head, drooling, albino horror. It provides the film with a great moment, as until the reveal Gunther wears a full Frankenstein monster mask (thanks Universal - it helps to own those rights) which doesn't come off until a particularly dramatic moment. Wayne Doba was a part-time mime, and that was needed because Baker's monster effects didn't go so far as to include moving features - every emotion this monster has must be transmitted through Doba's body, and I have to say he did a particularly good job at that. You see plenty of that monster's face, and although at the time you really want to, when it's all over you take into consideration that perhaps there should have been more shadow and mystery. Not that it was a secret - in fact, Gunther's face graced the front cover of Fangoria magazine not long before the movie came out.

This really is a film of two halves. The first, where our four "teenagers" (Cooper Huckabee was 30-years-old at the time) roam the carnival. They come across what were real mutated cows, spy what were real local strippers and all the while the husky deep voice of Kevin Conway invites them - Conway suggested he play all 3 carnival barkers and Tobe Hooper loved the idea. He plays the Freak Show Barker, the Strip-Show Barker and the Funhouse Barker with that mix of huckster showiness with an undertone of grinding boredom they all can't quite stifle. The barker has used the same lines over and over, night after night, until even the booze doesn't help lift that shroud of monotony. The second half of the film has them trapped in the impossibly large funhouse, various props (a wonderful array of them) always on display. Production Designer Mort Rabinowitz, who had been with Hooper for Salem's Lot worked wonders again, with the funhouse layout and design being a particularly well thought-out vision. The second half of the production was far more rushed, and many scenes had to be cut - and this kind of shows unfortunately. Still, it's a fun ride all the same.

Tobe Hooper had cinematographer Andrew Laszlo brought on board primarily because of how much he admired his work filming The Warriors - and once again the vibrant colour is alive in every shot for this film. He also got a first try at a magnificent crane which could lift him above ferris-wheel height, and such was Laszlo's delight he maintained that he have use of it for every film he was director of photography on. I think he did a fine job, along with John Beal who scored the movie. The Funhouse soundtrack is now a collector's item, and is a pronounced return to the bombastic, symphonic heightened-suspense music you'd hear coupled with monster movies in the old days. Inserted are many carnival-themed moments, and different sounding interludes to match up with moments of absolute horror. The music is given much more emphasis and care than it would if it were being phoned in, and it probably helped that Beal could be called in now that Hooper was working with Universal Studios and could rely on a larger budget than he had in the past. It's an orchestral carnival ride in itself, and is worth listening to.

Once again, Hooper goes for atmosphere above blood in this horror film, and instead of helping him it hurt him with audiences. I'm on Hooper's side in this - it's a much better film by focusing on suspense, but by 1981 horror audiences had changed dramatically, and this is why The Funhouse never really caught on, and why it's still looked down upon by many today. There's something very terrible in the way these kids (along with Zena) die - whether it be an accidental axe in the head after being hanged, clawed to death by Gunther during a traumatic rape, or caught in the gears of a funhouse mechanism. We don't really need blood spurting everywhere to bring home how horrible these murders are. Others are a little miffed at how long it takes to get to the killing and mayhem, but as I've already said - that scummy carny atmosphere is enough for me. Watching William Finley play Marco the Magnificent during an interlude for the four, and witnessing a particularly brutal blood-filled fake-out is also a lot of fun. I love Finley, and seeing him in something I've never seen before is quite a treat.

If any horror film has gone under the radar all these years, it's The Funhouse, and it deserves rediscovery. It's not without it's flaws, and it's not a masterpiece, but it's a damn fine film - heaps of fun, well made and worthy of being remembered. It overflows with loving references to the likes of Carpenter's Halloween, Hitchcock's Psycho along with the likes of Frankenstein and The Wolfman. Filmmaking wasn't an easy process for Hooper. The fact that the second half of this film had to be so rushed and compromised really ate away at him and caused him distress - but that's only because he was a perfectionist and wanted to create a vision that he had, and had half pulled off to that point. The Funhouse coupled with the success of Salem's Lot and the enduring legend of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were enough for Poltergeist to be offered to him by Spielberg. By that stage he really was an up-and-coming great, albeit a slightly troubled one.

On it's surface, Funhouse looks and feels like a modern slasher movie, especially when confronted with unnecessary nudity in the film's first few moments (an addition brought on by producers who were worried there wasn't enough fun stuff to start the film with) - but it's really different when you take a closer look at it, and isn't the kind of throwaway rubbish most people would have thought it might be. It's a film made with care, and not your typical teen scream murder marathon, which more often than not bore me. Instead it's another journey into the heart of the carnival - a place that has fascinated me more and more as cinema and television have peered into it's dark heart. That's what Tobe Hooper does in this, and it's more than a fleeting glance - from the moment we get there there's a sense of the squalid themes in this film leading us to some sad reflection on the film's monster. Of course it's fun, full of suspense and death - and satisfies our urge for horror, but I find it's stuck with me as a film that the filmmakers actually enjoyed making and had a sense of pride and careful craftsman-like consideration about. There's no amount of money that can buy that. It really was like a visit to a carnival.

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Another aside...



Before making Poltergeist (whatever his contribution, big or small) Tobe Hooper had been directing Venom, but for various reasons (which change depending on the source) he was let go - "It wasn't working". Rumours abound of a breakdown, either Tobe himself or in his family, and various unkind words are spoken by Venom's director Piers Haggard. The only thing I'm sure of is Tobe Hooper was directing Venom and then he wasn't. I've seen the film, and it's an average thriller/horror film - the best feature is to watch Oliver Reed and Klaus Kinski go at each other. Can you even believe they had those two acting in a film together? No wonder. Of course, they were antagonizing each other offscreen - or at least, Reed was testing Kinski. Why would you even try casting those two? It'd be like sabotaging your own film.

On an alter in St Paul's Cathedral in London, Col. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) and an alien entity in human form (played by Mathilda May) copulate as paroxysms of blue-lighted energy - the "lifeforce" of many people, are beamed up into an ancient spacecraft. We're deep into Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, and by this time "crazy" has been the key word to describe what we've seen. I don't think you'd find a review of the film that doesn't use the word at least once. It was always destined to be a cult classic - there's no suspension of disbelief possible, but by lord there is much nudity, and all kinds of varied make-up effects and destruction. The theme is clearly sexual, and Hooper's decision to make his own version of a Hammer Horror production (he once mentioned Quatermass and the Pit, which has many parallels with this film) gave this production it's own distinct feel, not quite on par with your average 80s horror/sci-fi film. He now commanded a motion picture nearly three times the budget of Poltergeist - and had no Steven Spielberg to guide him. The results were spectacular, but did not lead to box office success.

Col. Tom Carlsen is commander on a space shuttle mission to Halley's Comet when an alien spacecraft is detected hidden in the comet's coma. They explore the interior, and amongst a number of desiccated alien corpses find three intact bodies - humanoid in physical appearance - encased in transparent containers. It's decided to take them on board the shuttle for examination. Some time later, the shuttle (named Churchill) is discovered by Earth-bound ground control - it has been abandoned. The three bodies are the only survivors of what appears to have been a fire - and they are brought to Earth. Once here, the female awakens, and begins draining the elemental "lifeforce" from people, who in turn need to drain that same lifeforce from others to survive. Carlsen is later found alive in an escape pod, and when the alien vampire escapes he teams up with Col. Colin Caine (Peter Firth), Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay) and Dr. Leonard Bukovsky (Michael Gothard) to hunt her down. Is this where the legend of vampires originated? If the intrepid group don't succeed, that won't matter, and it will mean the end of humanity as we know it.

Lifeforce is one of the four films that decided the fate of Cannon Films - owned by the infamous pair Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. The norm for Cannon was B-films, but Golan and Globus were anticipating stepping up into blockbuster territory and competition with all the larger studios in Hollywood. Along with Masters of the Universe, Over the Top, and especially Superman IV : The Quest For Peace, Lifeforce was budgeted accordingly, and in the end all of them failed to even meet their production costs at the box office. Tobe Hooper, after his string of successes which included The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, was signed by Cannon to direct three films for them - all of his choosing, and all with creative freedom. When coupled with the fact that he'd be working with budgets he never would have dreamed of before this moment, Hooper must have been well pleased with this turn of events. Golan and Globus thought Lifeforce would compete with the big blockbusters of 1985 (the likes of Back to the Future, Rambo : First Blood Part II and Cocoon) so when the production fell behind they kept pouring more and more money into it.

No expense was spared, and thankfully that shows on the screen. John Dykstra, one of the wizards behind the groundbreaking special effects of the original Star Wars headed up an impressive effects team. He'd already won an Oscar for his Star Wars work, along with a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy. He'd been nominated for Star Trek : The Motion Picture, and in later years Stuart Little and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and win his second Oscar for Spider-Man 2. He made use of up-to-date laser technology and the various laser effects look fantastic, even today. Nick Maley created various animatronic puppets and prosthetic devices which depicted those who had their lifeforce sucked out of them, and all of these are also wonderful to watch and very well designed and operated. Maley created the animatronic creature you see at the end of the film - an alien vampire in true form which howls when stabbed below the heart. All in all, the effects side of Lifeforce were a huge success and have stood the test of time, being one of Lifeforce's big plusses. The fact that this and female nudity didn't turn into box office success illustrates to cynics that more is needed to make the general public happy.

The effects team paid tribute to veteran cinematographer Alan Hume, fresh from filming Return of the Jedi which must have made him stand out to the producers at Cannon. There's much complexity to his work lighting-wise, and spatially this is pretty much what you'd expect from the director of photography. It seems Hume had signed some kind of deal also, for he'd work on the likes of Supergirl and Runaway Train for Cannon. The only visual aspect which feels dated is the use of models which are filmed standing in for a London beset with explosive calamity and fire - obviously CGI would be used today, and while not perfect that does less to give itself away than models do (these models were stumbled on by the production, and not actually constructed for it.) Hume worked closely with John Dykstra, and was a big name in Britain, performing his photographic duties on James Bond films such as For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and A View to a Kill - another big name for the inexperienced Tobe Hooper to work with. He gets in a few artistically aligned shots on the space shuttle - making his mark and making things interesting. He probably had more time to set them up earlier into the production.

Design-wise, there's much to like as well. Tom Adams designed a spacecraft which obviously took a lot of inspiration from Alien and H.R. Giger - nearly too much inspiration, but just enough to not be thrown into the "complete rip-off" basket. He was instructed to make everything sexual (as Giger also did) and we ended up with a very phallic looking alien ship (something rather obscured by the way it's filmed.) The detail is ever so impressive (it was hand painted - by the same man who painted the alien skies in 1980 film Flash Gordon), but unfortunately, once again, is something drowned out by the film's effects and lighting. Production Designer John Graysmark was a two-time Oscar nominee when he came to work on the film (Young Winston (1972) and Ragtime (1981)) - he'd also worked on Flash Gordon. It all certainly impresses, but doesn't reach the heights of the great science fiction films like Alien or Arrival - it still has the feel of B-Movie inventions, with a bigger budget not providing artistic inspiration to go with it.

The film's score - thundering and echoing throughout as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, was composed and created by Henry Mancini. By this stage in his career he'd won an Oscar for "Moon River", and the score which we hear in Breakfast at Tiffany's along with "Days of Wine and Roses" in the film of the same name, and the score of Victor/Victoria. It was a strange choice for a Tobe Hooper sci-fi/horror film, but the bombastic, sci-fi adventure music has been praised by many - and I agree, it's not bad. I don't know if it really matches what we see on screen - it has more of a fantasy/adventure feel to it, and never really develops a hand-in-hand relationship with horror, which is obviously a part of Lifeforce. Later on, TriStar Pictures, which was distributing the film for U.S. markets, felt the same and tinkered with the film's score in places (using Michael Kamen), adding more of a horror bent to it. This post-production messing with a film never really works out well - and there was a lot of it with Lifeforce, making the original filmmaker's vision more blurry as more messing is done.

That brings us to the aspect of Lifeforce that's painful for film purists - the fact that Tobe Hooper's final cut of the film was taken by the distributor and executives - well after editor John Grover (a Bond film stalwart - being involved with the editing of Bond films from The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 to Licence to Kill in 1989) had finished his editing job and left the film. Tristar made a great number of changes, clumsily cutting and shifting scenes around to suit their aims. Tobe Hooper was of course aghast - and everyone who loves film should feel somewhat this way. Lifeforce has a great many issues that I'd put down to editing, and it's impossible to know for sure, but I have a feeling the messy aspects can be put down to this unsanctioned shuffling done to the film. The Space aspect was greatly reduced, and shifted around to get us to the vampire scenes on Earth in a shorter time span. Some performances were completely edited out of the film - and apparently one or two important scenes went missing. The film feels disjointed and uneven, and not everything makes perfect sense. Some of that, I'm sure, is on Hooper - but some is also on the people who made late changes to it.

I love certain aspects of Lifeforce, and I have a lot of admiration for it. Some scenes I enjoy to the hilt. Overall though, I don't think I could call it a "good" movie. It leaps around the place in a madcap fashion, like a story being told by someone very much under the influence. It can be tremendously silly, and now and then just plain dumb. It's uneven, and doesn't have an easy rhythm to it. That said, it's also often glorious, and revels in it's absurdity, pace and pedal-to-the-metal explosive force. It's a film full of enthusiasm, and a free creative expression writ large on the screen - with nothing held back. The acting is wooden at times, and Steve Railsback does not cover himself in glory - but Patrick Stewart arrives late and for around 20 minutes lights up the screen looking like he's the only guy completely buying into what Tobe Hooper is doing (tellingly, he's an actor who rates Hooper as one of his favourite directors.) Stewart's moment is fabulous. Then he melts and the oozing blood from himself and others turns into an apparition of the space girl. Moments like that in Lifeforce are completely normal.

Tobe Hooper didn't learn from Funhouse however, and he should have. His desire for perfection held the production back, slowed filming to a crawl and ended up costing the film some very important scenes which had to be abandoned. You feel it when you watch the film - it's not complete. He'd already been fired from productions for being slow, and cost Funhouse important scenes as well. Here, on Lifeforce, he did it again - costing Cannon more money, and at one stage halting the production altogether when funds ran out. Lifeforce could have been a lot better - and perhaps it could have performed better at the box office if Hooper had of controlled himself, and if the distributors had kept their hands off of it. In the end, he had himself a cult classic many years later - and I can see why. I have that same affection for it. Mathilda May's nudity provides one of the best representative instances of the perfect human body, the special effects look great and the camp aspect of the old Hammer Horror films is clearly detectable. It's lots of fun, enjoyably silly and never, ever boring.

Lifeforce seems to have walked a fine line, and at times seems to have been close to becoming a fiasco - but it's cult credentials are secure and it's a film I firmly like despite it's flaws. A big budget B-movie based on Colin Wilson novel "The Space Vampires" (which is what it was nearly called.) It would have felt more accurate to call this The Space Vampires - more in tune with it's off-the-wall, anything-goes mentality. It kept Tobe Hooper's perfect record intact up to 1985 - although he maintained that perfect record in one of the most uneven, see-sawing ways I've ever seen, with his record of being fired, adding loads of arthouse to his horror, and having Spielberg help him out and making no-budget experimental films like Texas Chain Saw. He had a keen eye for filmmaking though - and this was a talent that outshone many of his contemporaries. Rumours abound of unusable footage being filmed, drug addiction, mental breakdowns and the like - but he had a distinct eye for cinema, and his success thus far was no fluke. His eye, though, might sometimes take him places his audience wouldn't recognize or understand - and this clash led to an animosity between him and film executives, determined to keep audiences happy on a large scale. They wouldn't have been happy with "cult classic" - they wanted "blockbuster".

With Invaders From Mars Tobe Hooper succeeded in creating exactly what he set out to create, and did this well - he had a vision and manifested exactly that. Unfortunately, from a financial standpoint for Cannon, this vision didn't have wide appeal in 1986 - and this vision doesn't appeal all that much to me. Specifically, Invaders From Mars is a film for children, from a child's point of view - a remake of the 1953 science fiction B-movie of the same name, which had left a lasting impression on the director as a child himself. Some aspects are enjoyable to watch - and some fall a little short, especially when it comes to creature design and score. There's nothing substandard about any of it though, and it in fact went on to leave an indelible mark on some of the children of the 1980s much as the original had on the 50s kids who watched it - as if part of a recurring chain. It's silly and nonsensical, but that's part of the point - it's from the point of view of a child's imagination. Adults might find it fails to measure up to their usual standards of narrative complexity and believability.

David Gardner (Hunter Carson) lives an idyllic kind of life and enjoys stargazing with his loving father George (Timothy Bottoms), while being doted on by his mother Ellen (Laraine Newman). One night, from his bedroom window, David notices a U.F.O. descend into the area of Copper Hill, and after informing his father, thinks this will be handled by the grown-ups. Unfortunately, his father comes back from investigating the area a changed man with a strange scar on his neck. In fact, everyone who does go there comes back changed, and soon David doesn't know who to trust. His teacher, Mrs. McKeltch (Louise Fletcher), is untrustworthy and combative at the best of times, and seems to have been turned - David witnesses her swallowing a frog - so he runs into the protective arms of nurse Linda Magnuson (Karen Black) - and after convincing her by taking her to Copper Hill to witness strange alien activity they both go to General Climet Wilson (James Karen) to get the military involved, and he in turn has help from scientist Mark Weinstein (Bud Cort). Together, they take on the strange aliens hell bent on invading planet Earth.

It's even more silly up on the screen than it is on paper - and although the 50s Invaders From Mars had the general paranoia of Cold War era American life to relate to in terms of aliens taking over the minds of people you once trusted, there's not much going on under the surface of this Alien Invasion movie. The creatures themselves, brought to life by Stan Winston and John Dykstra, don't look particularly memorable. They were created so that a large man carrying a little person on his back could operate the latex costume in tandem, with reverse-jointed legs that necessitated the big guy to walk slowly backwards to make them work. They're slow, don't do much and seem about the least threatening alien menace I've ever seen in a science fiction film. The master of these big-bodied, slow and clumsy soldier monsters manifests itself as a brain with eyes - particularly slow and vulnerable, as all these creatures are, and the easiest-to-defeat planetary threat since those aliens from Signs who were revealed to have water as their Achilles heel. They have futuristic laser-type weapons, but neglect to use them most of the time as they necessitate coins to operate.

For Hooper though, this looks like it must have been a fun shoot - rare for him. He had beloved friend Daniel Pearl take up director of photography duties - the man he made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with, and who had shot the Billy Idol "Dancing With Myself" video with him. Pearl had just won an MTV Video Music Award for shooting the video for The Police's "Every Breath You Take", and he brought along with him a lighting machine which was commonly used in these music videos - most noticeable when the alien ship is landing and when it's flashing it's disco-fever balls of light in the master alien brain's control room. If any stressed-out and hounded director needed a good time on a film shoot it was Hooper, and he was also aided by the fact that he was good friends with star Karen Black, and had known young Hunter Carson (who was Karen Black's real-life son) all his life. Daniel Pearl would shoot most of Invaders From Mars from a low-down, child's perspective - because this is what this film is. An alien invasion from a child's perspective - straight from his imaginative, over-stimulated mind. This was half kids film, half rock video kind of stuff.

One excruciating lost opportunity though, lies with the original score Christopher Young at first turned in after being charged by Tobe Hooper with replicating the kind of experimental track that was put together for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Apparently he produced a remarkable and extraordinarily strange-sounding accompaniment that had all kind of creepy and out-of-this-world vibes to it. When Golan and Globus heard it, they immediately demanded something much more mainstream, customary and normal - and this is how we got our perfectly ordinary orchestral score, credited to Christopher Young and Dave Storrs. Young has produced some enjoyably strange scores in the years since his lost opportunity here, and worked on Sinister - producing a score there that I admire quite a bit. I'd love to have the opportunity of hearing what he originally put together for Invaders From Mars, and concede that it might have made all the difference for me. Just listen to some of the Sinister score to see what I mean - it might have been great. Dumb decision - Invaders From Mars's score feels like it's coming from someone who has decided "fine...here..." and stuck a 'conventional science-fiction' label on it.

The film was put together in the Airport Hanger on Terminal Island, L.A. - an enormous studio space which once in the past housed Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" experimental aircraft. The production design by Leslie Dilley (Oscar wins for Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars) along with the art direction by Craig Stearns - aided by effects and creations by Stan Winston - could be kindly compared to a kind of H.R. Giger Alien-lite. More colourful, and more sparse - not the living breathing alien mothership interior Hooper wanted, and not as strange and surreal as it could have been. The creatures were once coloured in fantastic ways - and this made them look more poisonous and threatening. I can only imagine that Golen and Globus stepped in and demanded they look more mainstream. They ended up with dark features which made all their appendages and details disappear in the general colour tones they'd been painted with. Added together, I'd say on the whole the design was disappointing - but ask the ones who matter, the kids who originally saw it, and you'll get a different perspective. This film scared them - so perhaps I'm the wrong person to ask.

Tobe Hooper did have one major breakthrough which improved the movie 100-fold however - after a big refusal from the U.S. Air Force for help the U.S. Marines stepped in and gave the production considerable co-operation, which meant various vehicles, tanks, and soldiers along with varied equipment could be utilized - and that kind of co-operation is really up there on the screen. Hooper even got advice when it came to military tactics and the fact that soldiers do not carry loose change in combat (all the more difficult to operate those darn expensive alien laser guns!) He was also sure to put a lot of effort into getting his creative teams to recreate the iconic wooden fence from the original - a kind of hypnotic, suggestive, mind-twisting visage that is difficult to explain, but when you see it in the original film it sends a shiver down your spine. It's like a twisted, rotten boundary you follow until over the hill you sense your worst nightmare lurking. It's an indicatory image. A sign. A metaphor with enhanced meaning - and the image from Invaders From Mars (the original) that stays with you.

After being edited by Golan/Globus hack Alain Jakubowicz, Invaders From Mars was released and simply went nowhere at the box office. It was another cult movie in the making, and one with more than it's fair share of missteps and unrealistic expectations. Louise Fletcher won a Razzie for her performance - rather unfairly, for I actually enjoy her in Invaders From Mars - her crazy, bitter and twisted teacher who always has it in for "David Gardner!" is the spark of insanity that livens the film up, and her frog-swallowing is legendary. Should I be worried that, when eaten by one of the alien creatures, she has to virtually lean in and crawl inside the alien's mouth herself? Nah. It adds to the charm. The special effects also won a Razzie - and I don't fully agree with that either, although I thought the creature design missed the mark a little. For adults, the film doesn't have the pace or complexity to really sustain interest, and lacks finesse. Watching Hunter Carson interact with his mother onscreen is nice - but although the kid might have been a shining beacon in Paris, Texas, the more frenzied and frightening sci-fi field exposed his acting ability and range a little.

In the end, Tobe Hooper reached the children that were probably like him at a similar age in the 50s - they all remember Invaders From Mars to this day, and it left it's imprint there. I've watched it a few times since it's release - and not once have I really enjoyed it. It's far too good to enjoy in an ironic "so bad it's good" kind of way, and far off the beaten track when it comes to my kind of science fiction or horror. I love watching Karen Black and Louise Fletcher strut their stuff as if B-movie camp is in style - and that's just about the only aspect of Invaders From Mars that really engages me in a serious way. Even the opening titles seem like a cheap knock-off of the Christopher Reeve Superman ones. It's full of little in-jokes (for example, Jimmy Hunt - the kid from the original - plays a police officer in this, and states "I haven't been here since I was a kid!" when he investigates Copper Hill.) You can spot Lifeforce playing on television, and many little things like that - but all added together, this is as niche as a film can get, and best left for 7-year-olds looking for something a little wild and weird. For Cannon and Hooper, it was 0 from 2 (financially - nearly all of the time Hooper is a winner artistically) with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel up next.

For those creating sequels, a real no-win situation must be faced. If you make a film that differs a great deal from the first film, you'll disappoint people who return for more of what you gave them originally. If you make a film just like the previous one however, people will complain that you're simply repeating yourself and adding nothing new to what you gave audiences in the first place. Exceptions can be made for continuing a story, as long as that continuation isn't too contrived - but overall sequels, for the most part, have trashy reputations. There was no topping The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the sequel would likewise not have that cinéma-vérité style that suited the first so well - thus Tobe Hooper made the right decision as far as the follow-up was concerned. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 would satirize the genre, Texas and the first film - it would simply be a lot of fun. This, of course, was bound to upset a fair few people who were expecting something a little different and more serious - but I think Hooper got close to making a film that was perfectly in tune with what he wanted here, and it's one that I, for the most part, like.

It has been over 10 years since the events in the first film occurred, and the cannibal family that Sally escaped from have remained undetected despite a month-long manhunt, and numerous subsequent disappearances. One night, radio D.J. Vanita 'Stretch' Brock is dealing with a couple of prank callers when she hears what sounds like their murder. She finds the man most interested in finding these killers, former Texas Ranger Lieutenant 'Lefty' Enright (Dennis Hopper) and offers him the audio tape with the killing on it. He initially refuses to have anything to do with her, but later returns and asks her to play the tape over the radio that night - obviously setting a trap. Stretch plays it, and after coworker L.G. McPeters (Lou Perryman) leaves she soon finds herself face to face with Chop-Top (Bill Moseley) - the geek-like brother of the Hitchhiker in the first film - and Leatherface (Bill Johnson). Stretch manages to avoid getting killed by pretending to be romantically interested in Leatherface, but when L.G. comes back to the station he's butchered. Stretch then proceeds to follow the pair, along with Lefty, to their lair where Cook (Jim Siedow) and Grandpa (Ken Evert) await their fresh meat.

When you find out that practical make-up effects master Tom Savini is lending his talents to this film, you know that it's going to be a change of direction as far as Chainsaw Massacre is concerned. Perhaps Tobe Hooper had the same fortunate "artistic choice" that Steven Spielberg had enforced upon him during the making of Jaws (ie, less shark, more foreboding build-up) as far as horror effects were concerned in the first film. This, however, was about to change. I wouldn't call this film one of the goriest I've ever seen, but we do get a few nice effects thanks to Savini. These were the days when actors would spend upwards of 4 hours in make-up chairs early in the morning to prepare to shoot scenes, and you can just imagine how stultifying that would be for the people stuck in that chair. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is so silly that the gore in it is to a large extent inoffensive - and the only places where the film really becomes uncomfortable are the scenes which slightly suggest sexual violence, but the film never veers into the arena of bad taste. The tone makes it feel about as far from the more realistic original as you could get.

Screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, a Texan who knew Hooper from his younger days, had just come off a huge success adapting Paris, Texas coming into this - but the writing process was messy and particularly hurried with constant revisions being reworked into each day's shoot - at the same time the film's budget was being adjusted by Cannon. The satire Carson was writing wasn't necessarily what the producers wanted either, and might have gone a lot further if creative freedom had of been granted to the people actually making this film. The end result isn't quite as funny as Hooper and Carson would have hoped it would be, but the light-hearted elements make it a lot more fun than what it otherwise would have been. It didn't have any need to be believable, and as such production designer Cary White, early on into what has turned out to be a successful career, was able to transform an abandoned theme park into a cannibal lair which has tunnels that go on for miles and are decorated by various skeletal remains and everyday items. Just admiring what was created there would take numerous viewings, and is admittedly very impressive. It's lit by literally hundreds of everyday lamps and globes throughout the tunnels.

Cinematographer Richard Kooris was another Texas native, and another person getting into the film business that Tobe Hooper had known for a while. He'd actually considered using Kooris for the first Texas Chainsaw film, and this influenced his decision to go with him this time. Kooris did not have a great career, and this film would be the most notable on his scattered resume. Visually, it's a film which uses dark shadows to hide potential menace - and that can creep into scenes gradually. The score has a low-budget horror feel to it and is credited to Tobe Hooper himself, and Jerry Lambert. It's not a score I'll ever want to listen to again, or particularly examine in any detail, and doesn't live up to the bizarre score that accompanies the original Chainsaw film. It feel rushed, as does the editing by Cannon go-to schlock-editor Alain Jakubowicz - and this aspect of the film feels way off. There are all kinds of accusations that have been aired about the editing being taken away from Hooper - and I do think that this was put together by someone who didn't really care all that much about the film.

The biggest mystery in the film for me personally is Dennis Hopper, who gave a wonderfully strange performance in Blue Velvet, which came out the same year this did - and although David Lynch would be nominated for an Oscar in that case, Hopper never received a Best Supporting Actor nod - which is a shame. In this, Hopper looks a little unsure of what he's meant to be doing, and what kind of tone he's meant to be setting - and this film obviously suits the same kind of "crazy" acting we saw in Blue Velvet. Sure, he gets to stomping, sawing and yelling in the cannibal's lair late in the film, and he features in a chainsaw buying scene which is a lot of fun. He does act crazy - but he still holds a lot in reserve, and to me it just seems like he wasn't communicating all that well with his director. Hopper would go on to call The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 the "worst film [he'd] ever appeared in" - however I don't think that's coming from seeing the end result, but by the frustrations he may have had while giving his performance. A lot of people still enjoy what he does give in this - and he's by far the best actor amongst a group doing their best to either scream or act downright loony - I just think that was a missed opportunity.

Despite all of these flaws, and the fact that the film was taken out of Hooper's hands again and mangled, the basic spirit of anarchy and good-natured fun still manages to shine through all of it. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 can be very enjoyable at it's best moments, and of course like all of Tobe Hooper's Cannon films, it has become a cult classic adored by it's multitude of fans. If you approach it fairly well forewarned that it's a broad satirical riposte and not a serious horror film, and keep in mind that this is a low budget Cannon production, then you won't be on the same kind of wrong track so many other people were when first seeing it. In fact it's becoming something of a horror classic to the latest generation of film fans who have gone back to examine it. Even a half-good performance from Hopper can be transfixing, and the Carson/Hooper team kept their vision alive through the hurried production. Like a fever dream turned carnival ride, with great production design which produced an unreal underground lair, it's entertaining to say the least. It's not a masterpiece, but it was misunderstood in it's day and has come back to claim it's due.

This thread mainly focuses on the films of Tobe Hooper, but I can't help but want to keep the thread of his career intact, and as such I'd like to include brief notes on his sojourns in television.

Come 1987, Hooper's contract with Cannon had expired after directing his three films, and it seems that he struggled to find backing for another feature film at the outset of this period. So, over the two year period from '87 to '88 he found work directing episodes for three major television series. Two of them were stand-alone stories for anthology series, and the other, more surprising, is an episode of The Equalizer.


Amazing Stories never quite clicked with me, and instead of being really interesting or exciting it usually ended up being silly - with frequent attempts at ill-directed humour. Nevertheless, many a star crossed paths with the series. This ended up being the final episode of Amazing Stories - it only ever lasted for two seasons, and Tobe Hooper ended up it's last director. Miss Stardust features Dick Shawn (in one of his last ever roles) as a PR man who starts a Miss Stardust competition, and who is accosted by alien "Cabbage Man" (played by 'Weird Al' Yankovic) who wants the competition to be more representative. As such Miss Mars, Miss Venus and Miss Jupiter perform - all of them horrifying aliens. The creatures are interesting, but the jokey nature of the episode really dates it (or more accurately, pre-dates it, being more at home in Dick Shawn's heyday) and the fact it isn't really all that funny kills it. Jim Siedow, from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and it's sequel gets a small role in this.

Rating : 4/10


Interesting episode from the four season-long crime drama which featured Edward Woodward as Robert McCall, a fixer who could be hired to solve problems - someone who always knew the best course of action. This one involved a family, the Whitakers, being evicted from their flat in New York for non-payment of rent (the father, Bill, is played by a young Michael Rooker.) McCall comes in when their young son spots his ad and calls him - seems that the hotel they've been sent to by a welfare agency is being run by a crooked gangster - Amar (Michael Lerner) and McCall intends to end this guy's illegal ownership of the place and his exploitation of people in need. I have to admit, it's a pretty good episode and it would have been good to see more non-horror stuff like this directed by Hooper.

Rating : 7/10


Along with ending a series, Tobe Hooper also started one during this period - the two season long anthology series Freddy's Nightmares. Hosted by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) it would usually feature a weird, freaky pair of interlinked stories that would drift around in a dream-like fashion - centering on the fictitious town of Springwood, which Freddy seems to have a hold on. Sometimes though, episodes would be like an A Nightmare on Elm Street short film featuring Krueger himself. Surprisingly, Freddy's origin story was never covered in the films, but with the first episode of Freddy's Nightmares we get to see a kind of Nightmare prequel - the character's brief trial, him getting let off, released and being burned alive by angry parents and concerned citizens - only to return in dreams. The series wasn't very good, and this first episode seems to suffer from a lack of resources, including talent. If you're looking for a well-acted, thoughtfully written and well filmed backstory to Freddy Krueger then you'd be best leaving it up to your imagination or some enterprising filmmaker of the future. Tobe Hooper at least gets credit from less discerning fans who simply enjoyed seeing a rare glimpse of the character before he was burned.

Rating : 2/10

The most ardent fans of Tobe Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion admit that on the whole this is a terribly constructed and shoddy film, but not only does a spark of creative inspiration exist within it, the film on the whole is a lot of fun. After spending time on it, and after listening to opinions, my affection for it has grown to the point where I can't just let it go, and it has become a full fledged guilty pleasure. My rating for it, however, has to take into account just how disjointed and nonsensical it can be - the narrative wildly striking out in myriad directions as Brad Dourif's performance becomes more hysterical and untethered. It feels like three jigsaw puzzles haphazardly put together to create one picture, but it's saving grace is that non compos mentis aspect to the film, full of fire and fury, which alleviates what otherwise could have been an unintelligible boredom consigning it to being forever forgotten. I won't be forgetting Spontaneous Combustion in a hurry, despite it's somewhat sluggish start.

A government experiment concerning an anti-radiation vaccine makes Brian Bell (Brian Bremer) and his wife Peggy (Stacy Edwards) minor celebrities, and before long they're welcoming a newborn son into the family. Suddenly, while in hospital, both parents spontaneously combust - an event possibly caused by the vaccine. Years later, their son Sam (Brad Dourif) lives his life as a teacher, unaware of what happened to his parents or why he often has intense migraines. His girlfriend, Lisa Wilcox (Cynthia Bain) helps him as best she can with homeopathic medicine, but Sam is troubled when he hears news of someone he's just had an argument with dying in a fire. After an altercation with his ex-wife Rachel (Dey Young) flame spurts from his finger, burning it. When further instances of spontaneous combustion and eruptions of fire follow altercations, Sam becomes embroiled in a race to discover the secrets from his past which include a Dr. Marsh (Jon Cypher) and Rachel's grandfather, Lew Orlander (William Prince).

Spontaneous Combustion's plot description doesn't do justice to the utter madness that engulfs this film much the way flames do whenever Sam loses his temper. A John Landis cameo ends with the filmmaker burning to death inside a radio station's booth after a heated exchange between his character and Sam. Venerated filmmaker André De Toth (director of such films as House of Wax and The Bounty Hunter) appears as a scientist, who then goes on to remove a tiny skull from the head of a spontaneous combustion victim. Reaction shots don't fit into scenes. Melinda Dillon, as Nina - one of the scientists who unravels some of the mystery by contacting Sam - is sporting a bizarre Eastern European accent she struggles with. Phones at various locations sport a wonderful, transparent neon look. Tobe Hooper even manages to squeeze George "Buck" Flower into his movie, along with a cameo for himself as a guy smoking a cigar in a restroom - there's an entertaining spin to everything, and that's why I slowly came to the conclusion that I kind of like it.

Obviously Hooper struggled to raise enough money to continue his feature film career, and on Spontaneous Combustion he lacked the talent to back him up. The most notable film that cinematographer Levie Isaacks ever worked on was 1993 horror film Leprechaun. The composer of this film's score was Graeme Revell - talented, but at the very start of his career. Production Designer Gene Abel only ever worked on a dozen or so B-films before disappearing from view. Art Director Richard N. McGuire worked on a couple of B-films before finding a niche on television. Editor David Kern, who didn't cover himself in glory, worked mainly on B-films like Maniac Cop. Throughout, Tobe Hooper was now working with a crew that were light years away from the talent he had with him on the likes of Lifeforce and Invaders From Mars. To make things worse, those who were financing his film had their own ideas which clashed with what he'd written - and they would make their presence felt.

Brad Dourif stated in interviews that Spontaneous Combustion didn't turn out the way it was meant to - and that it was at the "mercy of people who didn't know what they were doing." He bluntly says that "the producers destroyed it" and the love story that was initially envisioned morphed into something more lowbrow and schlocky, with his character running around shooting flames - killing people and being a general menace. In other words, it would have been a far better movie, but wouldn't have been as much fun as it is now - and probably not championed by the people who have a certain tenderness for it. He also says that the "better my acting was in some of the later scenes, the funnier film was," and I have to admit that nobody plays "crazy" as entertainingly as Brad Dourif does. When he loses his temper in this he really goes places. When you combine that with the various effects created to make it seem like he's shooting fire it's a sight and sound to behold.

Apart from the awful pacing, continuity errors, and confusing plot twists the story tries to add more to it's 'government interfering in our lives' theme with an interesting discourse on being pro-choice when there are medical concerns during pregnancy, and also the inherited harm that can be caused when biological experimentation collides with gestation. It's not The Matrix or A Clockwork Orange, and we've seen plenty of horror and sci-fi films use 'scientific experimentation' to show governments intruding into areas recklessly and causing lasting harm, but it's at least something. As Dourif says, the love story is going nowhere and we're more concerned with Sam's rage. It would have been interesting to explore the topic of rage more in this - but unfortunately that's not well set up, and by the time Sam starts flying into fits of fury we're not sure if it's his anger causing the combustion or the combustion causing the anger. For the most part it veers towards exploitation by burning as many characters alive as it can.

It's films like these that create a large separation between my emotional feeling for the movie itself and what I rate it. Conversely, I might dislike a film, or be bored by it, but rate it highly because of it's attributes and how well made it is - but for the most part I try to combine the two and give some indication to how I feel. My low rating for Spontaneous Combustion might mislead people as to how I feel about it, but I have to admit that this is a very poorly made film - in almost every regard. It's a lot of fun - but not put together very well. It does still contain that Tobe Hooper vision that outstripped his ability and budget when he actually started making a film - and that vision still has a heart and soul to it, despite residing in a trashy horror film like this. The producers wanted terror and fun though, and whatever Hooper was thinking, it wasn't on the same wavelength as what the people with the money had in their minds. When you get right down to it, Spontaneous Combustion is the very definition of a hot mess.

Tobe Hooper kept on working as the 1980s slowly faded and the 1990s arrived, but producers and studios were wary of giving him films with which he could lose them a significant amount of money. He had a reputation in the industry now that outweighed the good will he'd accumulated by making The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist - plus rumours abounded over whether he'd really fully directed the latter. 1990 saw the release of his first 'made-for-TV' film - the cheap but functional I'm Dangerous Tonight, which lives on in semi-cult fashion mainly due to the fact that Anthony Perkins has a small role in it. Hooper had worked for television before, by making the mini-series Salem's Lot, but this time he wasn't able to translate the restricted TV horror element into 'still-scary' visuals. Instead he only just did enough to create a passable low-budget affair - and it's not something that invites detailed analysis.

I'm Dangerous Tonight starts with a professor having an Ancient Aztec stone coffin delivered to a storage room, and inside he discovers a corpse and a red cape. Putting the cape on transforms him into a murderous devil, killing a security guard and later his wife, but before he's out of the picture he stores it in a chest. The chest is bought by college student Amy (Mädchen Amick), and when she discovers the red material she turns it into a dress. After wearing it, she becomes convinced that it's cursed, but this doesn't stop cousin Gloria (Daisy Hall) from stealing it and becoming unhinged herself, killing boyfriend Mason (Jason Brooks) before immolating herself in an auto wreck in a chase with Amy and her suitor Eddie (Corey Parker). Afterwards, one of Amy's professors, Buchanan (Anthony Perkins) makes it known that he's looking for it and knows it has great power. Amy believes it went up in flames, but it soon turns up when morgue assistant Wanda Thatcher (Dee Wallace) starts a killing spree. Amy takes it upon herself to end the curse once and for all by obtaining it again and shredding it.

I must have seen this kind of story on television anthology shows and low-budget TV movie marathons a hundred times before, and I'm Dangerous Tonight is no different to what they deliver. It's based on a Cornell Woolrich novella that belongs as a short on something like Tales from the Darkside and as such the story is stretched particularly thin in it's 92 minute glory. The most interesting feature it has is the famous and once-famous names that appear - Mädchen Amick once had a promising career ahead of her after starring in Twin Peaks from 1989 to 1991 as Shelly Johnson, but her transition to features petered out after starring roles in the likes of Stephen King adaptation Sleepwalkers in '92 and bomb Dream Lover in '93 took her nowhere. Luminous, lovely and attractive with endearing personality and talent, Amick fell victim to a poor choice of projects and this was certainly one of those bad choices. You can see what was possible for her though, and she's the only performer who treats the material seriously.

One person who certainly doesn't treat the material seriously is Anthony Perkins, and as far as I'm concerned it's debatable whether it's a good performance. It's certainly weird, and off-center - but Tobe shows he still has a devilish sense of how he can wink at the audience when he has Perkins deliver a haunting monologue which ends with him addressing us by staring directly into the camera and quoting Nietzsche with, “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” I'm Dangerous Tonight has it's rare wacky moments, and that's one of them where the director's sense of irony was in full force. This is not the kind of film that merits that kind of quote. Perkins isn't in the film a whole lot, but does sneak in a multitude of brief encounters and makes his presence felt. R. Lee Ermey, who shows up as Police Lieutenant Ackman, investigating the various murders that surround the film's red dress, either looks uncomfortable or else I was a little embarrassed for him having to appear in this. Probably both.

Finally, there's Dee Wallace, who had spent most of the 1980s playing various Moms in middle class American suburbs around the country in different genres. She doesn't mess around when it comes to playing against type, as her morgue assistant character snorts cocaine, kills drug dealers and generally acts nefarious. You kind of get the impression that she might actually be like this without the red dress (Perkins' professor does speculate that the material simply accentuates the person you really are deep down) - so she can really play 'bad' when she wants. With black hair and trashy accessories, you'd be hard pressed to recognize that it's Wallace if you were watching it without knowing it's her. The movie is almost worth watching, just to see Wallace, R. Lee Ermey and Perkins play their parts in a tacky horror film like this - but we spend most of our time in the desert of the mundane, and it would be better to just watch a review that singles out the best moments from those particular characters. I'm skipping what's boring - which is at least 80% of I'm Dangerous Tonight.

It showed on the USA Network and reviews were mixed. Most concluded that it was fairly innocuous, and not at all like Tobe Hooper's normal output. We were being expected to turn our brains off when tuning in to I'm Dangerous Tonight, and it seems that the film's director had already turned his off when he started making it - there's no heart or passion in it. Mädchen Amick is the only one taking it seriously, and everyone else is doing a job for a paycheck, knowing full well that this movie was not going to stick around in any form or in any serious way - TV ratings for a couple of hours was all it was aiming for. Cursed objects were a kind of horror movie staple when it came to straight-to-video or made-for-television content, and as such having an Ancient Aztec cloth possess people who wear it isn't all that original, novel or interesting. What I am surprised by is the number of people still seeking it out, and the fact that because of this it got a boutique Blu-ray release recently. Names like Tobe Hooper and Anthony Perkins are giving all kinds of forgettable stuff like this a life beyond death - and through this I come to the happy conclusion that most films will get a second and third chance, and plenty of forgotten films deserve cult status, even if this one certainly does not.

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After directing the direct-to-television movie I'm Dangerous Tonight, Tobe Hooper's career continued to crumple as the 90s went on. In 1991 he found himself in a place where no self-respecting director should have - helming the first episode of the excruciatingly awkward 'real life ghost' docu-drama series Haunted Lives : True Ghost Stories. Narrated by Leonard Nimoy, it's 43 minutes of interviews and reenactments which are so poor they'll actually convince you to keep any strange encounters you might have to yourself. From 1991 to 1995, this series tried to get itself off the ground, but only three episodes were ever made. This could possibly be Tobe Hooper's lowest ever moment.

Rating : 1/10

An unexpected note of positivity in Tobe Hooper's early 90s work can be seen in this episode of Tales from the Crypt, called Dead Wait. It was the sixth episode of the show's third season, and featured John Rhys-Davies, Whoopi Goldberg, Vanity and James Remar - a great cast for this little 29 minute horror/crime story, and Hooper lifts accordingly, delivering us something with suspense and icky putridness in good measure. Rhys-Davies plays a sad, ageing character and is a real highlight - in a story about a criminal (Remar) who ingratiates himself with a man (Rhys-Davies) who owns a priceless black pearl. In stealing it, he has the man's girl (Vanity) assist - but alas she's a real viper who wants the pearl herself. In comes a mysterious woman (Goldberg), who has been warning and aiding the crook from the start - but what does she really want from him? Gruesome and a lot of fun, this episode features some of Tobe's best television work.

Rating : 7.5/10

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I'd love to be able to say with eager assuredness that Night Terrors is a misjudged masterpiece, or even that it was better than people give it credit for. I know there are those out there who will go in to bat for Tobe Hooper and give an analysis full of hidden meaning and intellectual suppositions. The truth though, as far as I'm concerned, is that Night Terrors is poorly made - and in fact, extraordinarily bereft of the standards we usually demand of films we pay money to see. There are reasons for this, and it's these reasons that made me confident in how I judge this cinematic failure. Tobe Hooper, at a career nadir one decade after being at the top of the world, isn't totally to blame - it's almost like he was the person who ended up holding a grenade being passed around when it went off. When work is hard to find you'll accept anything, and it's even harder to turn down work when it involves familiar friends.

Night Terrors starts off with the Marquis de Sade (played by a powder-puffed Robert Englund) being tortured in a dungeon - I'd assume in an insane asylum or the Bastille - and we return to him from time to time during the film, where he'll either quip or be contemplating out loud. From there we go to modern day Cairo where Genie (Zoe Trilling) is being met by her father, archaeologist Dr. Matteson (William Finley) - a devout Christian who expects his daughter to be chaste. Genie is anything but chaste however, and after meeting up with friend Beth (Chandra West) she goes off on her own, having to be saved from a group of men who attempt to rape her by Sabina (Alona Kimhi) - a woman involved with a mysterious cult who worship the Marquis de Sade, and are looking for a religious artifact that Genie's father is looking for. It's not long before everyone Genie knows is turning up dead, and Genie herself at the mercy of one of the Marquis' descendants, Paul Chevalier (also played by Robert Englund.) Will the Arabian lover she met earlier, Mahmoud (Juliano Mer-Khamis) come in time to save her?

Muddled isn't the word - Night Terrors is the kind of film which expects it's audience to fill in massive gaps with their own imagination, because the scenes needed to help it flow don't exist. I like a film with mystery in it, but I don't like films that where I'm constantly asking myself "how did this happen?" and "what was that all about?" It interrupts the flow of the story, and this is already a clunky, tiresome and unevenly paced nightmare of a film as it is. It evolved (or slowly mutated) from a project that was originally set to be filmed in Alexandria, and was going to be directed by Gerry O'Hara - but this Globus/Harry Alan Towers produced film, made in the shadow of Cannon's final, imminent demise, couldn't get that far, and as such the production reverted to being filmed in Israel. Robert Englund - the film's major, audience-pulling star, was only on board because he wanted to do this in Alexandria, so the quick-thinking producers decided to offer the project to one of Englund's favourite directors - Tobe Hooper. The story though, had basically been completely wrecked - by filming in Israel, what was originally going to be a period piece featuring the Marquis de Sade had to be twisted into a modern-day horror film. A perfect storm of circumstance was slowly twisting this film out of shape.

The movie should have something to offer me - it features William Finley, whom I get a kick out of seeing no matter what he's in - someone rarely sighted in the 1990s (in fact, this was the only 90s film he'd ever appear in), and it also has Robert Englund in dual roles. Twice the chance of getting it wrong I guess, and indeed he struggles with the Marquis de Sade part - chewing the scenery as if de Sade is an 18th Century, gay and masochistic, Freddy Krueger. A Nightmare on Elm Street was on everyone's mind - dream scenes are included where Zoe Trilling is chased through dark basement corridors by a cackling Englund who is scraping metal weapons on the walls. Tobe Hooper is having a joke with us I guess - although it's more likely that he's just having a joke with himself. Most of the audience is asleep by this stage, and dreaming themselves. Juliano Mer-Khamis manages to appear in Night Terrors' most infamous scene - the one where he rides a horse naked, his appendage flopping up, down and in circles as we stare at it in wonder.

The crew and post-production team were very Israeli. Composer Dov Seltzer, nominated for a Golden Globe in 1974 for the song "Rosa Rosa" in Kazablan composes a typical, unremarkable and forgettable horror-styled score. Cinematographer Amnon Salomon, aside from being director of photography on some exploitation films shipped to the U.S. and beyond, mostly stuck to his Israeli homeland. Editor Alain Jakubowicz, a Cannon regular who had edited such great works as Masters of the Universe and Cyborg, wasn't given much to work with - but he still managed to make matters even worse with sloppy work that seems rushed and unrefined. The set decoration, art direction, costume design and most other areas were handled by local Israeli talent, making this film more of an Israeli one than American, despite most sources identifying this as a film from the United States. Filmed in Tel Aviv but set in Egypt, it's still a puzzler to work out why - the Marquis de Sade never went to Egypt apparently, and had few Egyptian connections. It's never clear throughout the film why it's set there, or what the connection is.

There are many mysteries attached to Night Terrors, but none more frustrating to me than the film's original poster which is bandied around every movie site on the internet. I could swear that this is not the correct poster for this film - it simply isn't. The open mouthed, decaying head with a candle in it is typical horror stuff, and doesn't bother me - but the rural setting underneath the head does. It's not Egyptian, and doesn't fit anything we see in this film. Then there's the tagline - "The Patients of Birkshire Welcome You". Wait. What? Birkshire? There's no Birkshire in this film, and there's nothing remotely close to it. In any case, the reference to patients is equally nonsensical and out of place. Is there a horror film out there somewhere where a Birkshire hospital is involved? This isn't a tagline for Night Terrors, I'm absolutely sure of that. I'm positive. This is the wrong poster, and either a mistake has been made by the IMDb, which has then been carried over to every other movie website out there - or else the error originated with those marketing the film, and nobody was bothered enough to correct it. If it's the latter, I'm kind of not surprised. A couple of people have tried to solve this mystery, but they came up empty.

So overall, the film tries to be erotic and explore sexuality, especially Genie's early steps into sex - forbidden by her strict father but invited by the world around her. She goes to parties, where fetishes are on display, and makes love with the kind of Arabic stallion you'd see on the cover of a romance novel. Snakes are the big phallic symbol in this film, and when Genie isn't exploring in the physical realm she dreams of lesbian encounters with silver-painted mythic beings. But like with Eyes Wide Shut, some erotic films don't feel all that erotic. There's a great moment of horror late into the film, where Genie opens a fridge with a severed head in it - and for a few moments we're ahead (pun not intended) of the character when we see it long before she does. If you try to analyze what all of the horror in the film means - I'd suggest you don't bother. It was simply requested by Hooper, who pushed Daniel Matmor into killing more of the characters for the sake of a good scare, and chills. When something isn't meant to be part of the story to begin with, I know not to consider it as a reasoned and meaningful work of art.

The direction is clumsy, and you can tell that Tobe Hooper was at a particularly low point in his life and career. There's little care and effort put into the performances, and nothing really inspired about any of the shots, or story. Englund's Paul Chevaller, cult leader and villain, is okay and I enjoyed watching him play that part - but as the Marquis de Sade, during portions of the film that seemed completely out of place, I felt embarrassed for everyone involved. It's a role Australian's know well, for there's a scene with him as the Marquis that features in our "ratings guide advertisement" that played before every video that came out for around a decade. Alona Kimhi is terrible, and struggles with her part as Sabina. It would be the last part the Israeli actress would ever get. The story is straightforward, but the way it's presented causes confusion and disorientation, along with boredom - there's no flow from one scene to the next. The ending is clichéd, and the religious elements in the film don't mesh well with the Marquis de Sade - two puzzle pieces that look like they're being forced together.

I wanted to be able to say that Night Terrors was a return to form for Tobe Hooper, and that the grilling it's received was unwarranted. Unfortunately, it's a lackluster Yoram Globus produced wreck - and already well on the way to becoming that before the out-of-sorts Tobe Hooper was drafted and utilized as director. It was like the Titanic getting a new captain as it was sinking, and that's why I don't blame Hooper - as unengaged with the material and uninspired as he was. Those who give the film a 5/5 rating and rave about all the nuance and meaning in it - along with brilliant filmmaking and direction - I feel are seeing what they want in it. It's a pretty bad movie with some Tobe Hooper horror shoehorned into it - jumbled together at the last minute and probably pre-sold on the strength of Robert Englund being in the cast. If you like really bad, confusing horror movies - and some of us do - then some scenes might stick in your memory. Is it a bad movie? Yes - it is. It's not deliriously bad, but it's frightfully shoddy, and insulting to those who saw it in good faith when it was released. I trust that wasn't many people though.