American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper PDF
Preview American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper
A M E R IC A N T W I L I G H T THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK 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: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form 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 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK 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. ix
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