American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper

by Kristopher Woofter (Editor, Contributor), Will Dodson (Editor)

Tobe Hooper's productions, which often trespassed upon the safety of the family unit, cast a critical eye toward an America in crisis. Often dismissed by scholars and critics as a one-hit wonder thanks to his 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hooper nevertheless was instrumental in the development of a robust and deeply political horror genre from the 1960s until his death in 2017. In American Twilight, the authors assert the director was an auteur whose works featured complex monsters and disrupted America's sacrosanct perceptions of prosperity and domestic security.

American Twilight focuses on the skepticism toward American institutions and media and the articulation of uncanny spaces so integral to Hooper's vast array of feature and documentary films, made-for-television movies, television episodes, and music videos. From Egg Shells (1969) to Poltergeist (1982), Djinn (2013), and even Billy Idol's music video for "Dancing with Myself" (1985), Tobe Hooper provided a singular directorial vision that investigated masculine anxiety and subverted the idea of American exceptionalism.

Genres: Film, Horror

312 pages, Hardcover

Published June 1, 2021

Reviews

[Josiah Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monumental achievement insofar as it fully recognises Hooper's authorial power even in the face of material conditions in which he rarely had final cut and often entered or left a production partway through. The academic work is rigorous, in particular Dillard's chapter on The Mangler & Olney's chapter on the Golan-Globus films. But the book's real accomplishment as a collection is that it seems (without becoming a hagiography) to actually capture some sort of glimpse at what the real Hooper was like - a joker, an SOB, one of the most intelligent thinkers about affect, genre and Hollywood that there's ever been in the system.

The real point-of-difference here is that Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not centred at all; most essays acknowledge the film's existence of course but American Twilight makes a serious effort to centre work that has often been neglected, including, for instance, Hooper's music video for Billy Idol's Dancing With Myself. It's a must-read for any Hooper acolyte, or for anybody convinced that Hooper doesn't have anything going for him.

[isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

exceptional exceptional collection. so grateful to the editors and contributors for getting this out into the world. as pointed out by josiah morgan (currently the only other person to have reviewed this), the real joy of this text is that across every essay the specter of the texas chain saw massacre, one which hooper himself was never able to evade, is sidelined in favor of (mostly) taking each film not so much on its own merit but on its merit within the broader context of the director's oeuvre, beginning to end. in plainer words; everything is important. the music videos, the early documentaries, and the later straight-to-dvd commercial failures. everything is essential to understanding the vision of one of the cinema's greatest artists. at a time when critical interest in hooper is slowly but surely on the rise online, i hope this book (as well as scout tafoya's recent cinemaphagy, which i look forward to reading) helps to inspire further investigation into the life and works of maybe my favorite filmmaker.

[Kyle Burley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great to see Tobe Hooper finally getting some serious critical attention for his interesting, if inconsistent, body of work rather than just the first TCM film.

[Redrighthand · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads like a lecture by your current-year gay neckbeard lib-arts college professor (no surprise, the author is all of the above).
Can't even pick up a book about a director of lowbrow horror movies without hearing more nonsense about "global warming", "white privilege", "Native American" genocide, MLK's assassination, violence against women, yadda.

Enjoy being buffeted by typical wokenards and mumbo-jumbo of today's indoctrinated. DNF.