American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper

313 Pages·2021·24.705 MB·English

by  Kristopher Woofter (editor), Will Dodson (editor)

A M E R IC A N
T W I L I G H T
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A M E R I C A N
T W I L I G H T
The Cinema of Tobe Hooper
Edited by Kristopher Woofter and Will Dodson
University of Texas Press
Austin
Copyright © 2021 by the University of Texas Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 2021
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to:
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The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Woofter, Kristopher, 1971– author, editor, writer of introduction. | Dodson,
Will, author, editor, writer of introduction.
Title: The American twilight : the cinema of Tobe Hooper / edited by Kristopher
Woofter and Will Dodson.
Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020047413
ISBN 978-1-4773-2283-3 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4773-2284-0 (library ebook)
ISBN 978-1-4773-2285-7 (non-library ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Hooper, Tobe, 1943–2017. | Horror films—United States. | LCGFT:
Essays.
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.H686 A44 2021 | DDC 791.4302/33092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047413
doi:10.7560/322833
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
INTRODUCTION “No Pleasure in Killing”: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper xiii
Kristopher Woofter and Will Dodson
PART I HOOPER’S GOTHIC
CHAPTER 1 “It’s Better to Be Suggestive:” Gothic Intertextuality and Hybridity
in the 1980s Films of Tobe Hooper 1
Brigid Cherry
CHAPTER 2 Poltergeist: TV People and Suburban Rage Monsters 16
Joan Hawkins
CHAPTER 3 Tobe Hooper’s Teenage Wasteland: Youth and Disillusionment in
The Funhouse, Invaders from Mars, and Mortuary 29
Kristopher Woofter
CHAPTER 4 Salem’s Lot: Tobe Hooper’s Gothic Peyton Place 43
Tony Williams
CHAPTER 5 Feeding the Industrial Monster: A Critical Reconsideration of
Tobe Hooper’s The Mangler 54
Carl H. Sederholm
CHAPTER 6 Unsettled Architecture and Avant-Garde Strategies in Tobe
Hooper’s Down Friday Street, Toolbox Murders, and Djinn 68
Anne Golden and Kristopher Woofter
PART II EMBODIMENT
CHAPTER 7 Nightmare Images: Tobe Hooper on Horror and Aging 83
Adam Lowenstein
CHAPTER 8 Experimental Sorcery in Tobe Hooper’s Eggshells 95
Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare
CHAPTER 9 Lizard Brain Ouroboros: Human Antiexceptionalism in Tobe
Hooper’s Eaten Alive and Crocodile 106
Mike Thorn
CHAPTER 10 “Sex or the Saw, Boy, What’s It Gonna Be?”: Tobe Hooper’s
Anxious Men 116
Will Dodson
CHAPTER 11 Bad Touches: Spontaneous Combustion in the Aftermath of the
Nuclear Family 135
Alanna Thain
PART III PRODUCTION AND INDUSTRY
CHAPTER 12 Can(n)onical Hooper: A Reconsideration of Tobe Hooper’s Golan-
Globus Films 149
Ian Olney
CHAPTER 13 Hooper’s Hollywood: Investigating Occult Spaces in Toolbox
Murders 164
Nina K. Martin
CHAPTER 14 Songs in the Key of Death: Tobe Hooper’s “Dancing with Myself”
and “Dance of the Dead” 177
Jerry D. Metz Jr.
CHAPTER 15 The Past Infects the Present: Abjection and Identity in Tobe
Hooper’s 1990s TV and Video Productions 189
John Paul Taylor
CHAPTER 16 “Get Back to Work!”: Critiquing the Hollywood-Industrial
Complex in The Mangler 203
Clayton Dillard
PART IV THE AMERICAN TWILIGHT
CHAPTER 17 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Begins 217
J. Shea and Ned Schantz
CHAPTER 18 Tobe Hooper and the American Twilight 229
Christopher Sharrett
APPENDIX Cross-Referenced Tobe Hooper Filmography 237
REFERENCES 247
LIST OF
CONTRIBUTORS 259
INDEX 263
For Robin Wood
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors thank the authors for their excellent contributions. Special thanks
to Jim Burr for having faith in us; to Steve Wilson and the archival associates at
the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center for invaluable assis-
tance with Tobe Hooper’s papers; to Julius Banzon and Stan Giesea for assis-
tance with access to the impossible-to-see Peter, Paul and Mary: The Song Is
Love; and to the Horror Area of the Popular Culture Association / American
Culture Association, where this collection has its origins in a panel of essays by
Jerry Metz, Clayton Dillard, and the editors. Finally, we thank Joe Bob Briggs,
for his tireless advocacy of Tobe Hooper’s cinema.
Kristopher would like to thank Will Dodson for a truly symbiotic collab-
oration and more than a decade of friendship. Thanks also to Dawson College
and to Adam Abouaccar, David Bertrand, Andrea Cole, Mario DeGiglio-Bel-
lemare, Anne Golden, Lorna Jowett, Murray Leeder, Cory Legassic, Adam
Lowenstein, Gary D. Rhodes, Carl Sederholm, Chris Sharrett, Karl Winnower,
Aaron Woofter, Tim and Joni Jo Woofter, and Rick Worland.
Will would like to thank Kristopher Woofter for the symbiosis and friend-
ship aforementioned. Many thanks and much appreciation are due to Jeff Jeske,
Sara Littlejohn, Shelley Wald, Christine Flood, Anne Barton, Katherine Stamey,
David A. Cook, Steve Yarbrough, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gwendolyn Audrey
Foster, Ian Olney, Jeffrey T. Adams, Sarah Gore, Chelsea Korynta, Masami
Oshita, Eric and Brandy Scott, Matt McNees, Stephen Maynard, John Cocking,
Skye Dodson, Huxley Bailey, Harper Bailey, Helen Dodson, Georgia Dodson,
Bonnie Dodson, and John Dodson, who wondered why the hell I stayed up all
night watching horror movies.
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