Tobe Hooper’s name is firmly entrenched in the pantheon of beloved horror directors, his name just rolls off the tongue with some of the others – Carpenter, Craven, Hooper, Romero… see?
Hot off the success of POLTERGEIST in 1982, Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus snapped Hooper up for a three-picture deal with their company, Cannon Films.
Cannon and 80’s go hand-in-hand, hitting paydirt with films like ENTER THE NINJA, turning DEATH WISH into a franchise and even achieving Oscar success with RUNAWAY TRAIN.
They wanted to add a TEXAS CHAINSAW sequel to their library, but before that Hooper delivered two other projects that tickled his fancy…
LIFEFORCE (1985)
Based on a book called The Space Vampires, Cannon handed over their biggest budget at the time to Hooper and he went wild with it – delivering a bugnuts-crazy flick featuring a fully nude Mathilda May for a majority of the runtime, ALIEN-style body horror, a body jumping produceral, zombie “vampire” hordes and large scale destructive action.
With LIFEFORCE Hooper showed he could handle a large production. Lead actor Steve Railsback spoke highly of his talent, “As a director, he knew what the hell he was doing. He knew.” Unfortunately, LIFEFORCE failed to perform at the box office, losing in a head to head battle with that summer’s other sci-fi flick, COCOON. It’s unclear if the script was the culprit or the poor marketing, but the film failed to regain even half of its budget. No worries, Hooper still had two more films to tackle in that three picture deal.
INVADERS FROM MARS (1986)
A family friendly remake of a 50’s B-movie might not seem like typical Hooper territory, but it was a passion project he’d been chasing down for years.
Featuring creature effects from the great Stan Winston and some amazing set design, the film is presented through the eyes of young David (Hunter Carson, son of co-star Karen Black) as he tries to convince the adults around him that something just isn’t right since he witnessed a possible UFO crash land in his backyard.
Another financial failure for Cannon, INVADERS still hasn’t managed to build a cult following similar to the other two films on this list. But its time will come!
Designed as a horror film fit for kids, with Hooper leaning more into camp than terror, this is a perfect film to show a youngling as they take their first steps into the beautiful genre we all love.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)
Finally, Golan and Globus were getting what they paid for, a sequel to Hooper’s seminal original and their own big horror franchise. While the three picture deal hadn’t been very lucrative, Canon still showed confidence in Hooper by allowing him a lot of creative freedom to make the films he wanted as he wanted. But mere days before production began, a producer swung by set just to inform everyone they were pulling a million dollars from the already tight budget. Coming in at around $4.7 million, Hooper still managed to pull together a team of incredibly talented artists who brought his demented carnival world to life.
It wasn’t exactly what Cannon thought they would be getting, as Hooper turns up the comedy and apparently surprised execs with the tone of the film. The short turnaround time of the shoot thankfully left little time to fight with the MPAA over the rating, so the film went out to theaters unrated.
The result is one of The Reaper’s favourite sequels (the Arrow blu-ray is GORGEOUS!), with Grimmfest favourite Caroline Williams as late night DJ Stretch, Chop Top and his metal head, and Dennis Hooper wielding dual chainsaws!
There’s a clear progression from the unhinged insanity of LIFEFORCE and the candy colored production design of INVADERS that all flows straight into TCM 2. An obvious level of freedom is present within these three films that few directors are given the chance to experience.
Hooper was a madman firing on all cylinders, delivering these three films over the course of 1985/86. While there may have been some disagreements and post-production tweaking, ultimately Hooper was given multi-million dollar sandboxes to play around in. For that, thank you, Cannon, for allowing one of our Masters of Horror the chance to exorcise his neon colored nightmares onto cinema screens.
