Being Film #29 for Hooptober 2025 We've finally gotten to the "Hooper" of Hooptober - and Eggshells is a doozy of a debut for the director, a dark and experimental abstraction of the concept of community and utopia in a world intent on pushing back on anything that doesn't fall in line with the regimented,... Continue Reading →
Being Film #18 for Hooptober 2024 I usually save the Tobe Hooper entry for the end of the marathon, but I had a few hours to kill and a pal had Spontaneous Combustion on his Plex server, so off to the races with what looks to be his last original film in terms of story... Continue Reading →
Being Film #26 for Hooptober 2023 Make no mistake: Tobe Hooper may be the director of Crocodile, but this is not Eaten Alive. This is a fast buck direct to video movie that normally would be utterly forgettable except that Hooper can't help but out a few flourishes that almost - and I mean almost... Continue Reading →
The Mangler represents a rare meeting of three horror icons; director Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist), actor Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street), and Stephen King (the most commercially successful horror writer of all time). It’s the not the first time any of these people connected with... Continue Reading →
What's in a list, anyway? It's something I've struggled with throughout my time as an online writer. But when you're considering a set list of, as the BFI so brazenly puts it, the greatest films of all time, it becomes apparent that a list - any list - must encompass both a sense of inflexibility... Continue Reading →
Being Film #23 for Hooptober 2022 Of course, every Hooptober must contain a review of a Tobe Hooper film, and Dan has maybe forced me to re-assess my negative experience with Eaten Alive based on his review. And I may still do that, but for this year's entry I needed to return to something else,... Continue Reading →
Poltergeist is a film where I have a little bit of a personal connection with it. We almost share a birthday. Both of us were unleashed in 1982, though I’m a day older. But even before I knew that information, I’ve always felt drawn to this film. It’s one of the few horror films I... Continue Reading →
A couple of years ago, when Chris reviewed Eaten Alive for Hooptober 2015, he asked two good questions. Why do we praise Tobe Hooper and what makes a film uniquely one by him? Out of the Four Horsemen of 70s horror (the other three being George Romero, John Carpenter, and Wes Craven), Hooper’s work might... Continue Reading →
Being Film #17 for Hooptober 2021 For a director with some many bonafide horror classics under his belt, including one of the greatest horror films of all time, Tobe Hooper got a bit of a bad break. By the time the 90s arrived he was relegated to smaller and smaller films with little opportunity to... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 