I woke up Sunday morning to discover that Tobe Hooper, director of horror movies such as Lifeforce and Eaten Alive, had passed away Saturday evening. The loss of the amazing director touched me deeply, as I know it touched all of the horror community.
According to USA Today, Hooper appears to have died of natural causes at the age of 74. Although he directed hits like Poltergeist and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Hooper is best known for the 1974 cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Texas Chainsaw could be considered on of the first slasher-movies, and it’s true-to-life style really sets it apart from Hooper’s other movies. In four short years after the film’s release, John Carpenter’s Halloween hit theaters, and then the slasher movies began to pour in. It is because of Texas Chainsaw that the slasher sub-genre began to find it’s way into people’s lives.
In the past year, the horror genre has suffered other tough losses, including George A. Romero’s passing in July, and the recent anniversary of Wes Craven’s passing as well. This leaves many horror fans, including myself, believing that this is the end of an era of horror. That’s a little scary to the fans; with fewer and fewer icons around anymore, what will become of the genre?
The horror community recognizes that this golden age of horror is beginning to die off (no pun intended). All three of the aforementioned directors, not to mention the numerous others that are still alive, crafted amazingly terrifying movies that made very bold, unapologetic statements about the society in which they lived. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and subsequent sequels were very well known for making commentary on social issues such as consumerism and racial discrimination.
Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left was an extreme commentary on the Vietnam War that was going on at the time of the film’s release.
And as the Blumhouse article discussed, Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw brought attention to both mental and physical illnesses. These are just a few examples of the tools these directors used to show us the world we really live in.
However, Hooper’s passing gives me hope. Now that some of the horror greats are gone, it will perhaps give younger filmmakers the push necessary to do the same. With the loss of these prominent horror filmmakers, other filmmakers have a space to fill, and a big one at that.
Thankfully, some new people have come into the spotlight. Jordan Peele’s Get Out, for example, has some incredibly obvious commentary on race. It’s time that other filmmakers begin to follow suit. There is a real opportunity to once again revolutionize the horror genre, and perhaps Hooper will be able to spark that change, just as he did in 1974.
