"Don't get nightmares!" wrote actor
Robert Englund (aka Freddy Krueger) after I spotted him pearched on a coach sipping a large scotch on the rocks in the foyer of the Empire Cinema in Leicester Square. "It's a little too late for that" I gleamed at the seemingly shy horror icon who was attempting to inconspicuously blend into the geeky ambiance of
Film4 FrightFest. He simply smiled back, then, aided with a walking stick, the tattoo clad, suited and booted 63 year old horror icon limped, sans beverage, into the auditorium with a female companion for a screening of Tammi Sutton's
Isle of Dogs. Prior to this surprise encounter I had attended the Total Film on-stage retrospective interview on
Tobe Hooper; another seemingly shy horror veteran. Following a screening of his remastered 1969 debut
Eggshells, the gravelly voiced director of the original classic horror masterpiece
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and
Poltergeist (perhaps the most controversially mooted film on his cv) was poised to justify his horror roots, his perhaps unfairly overanalysed collaboration with
Steven Spielberg on the aforementioned studio horror flick and then list his favourite modern horror auteurs.
Total Film's deputy editor
Jamie Graham conducted the affair which, though noticeably strained at times, revealed some interesting insights into the horror helmer; including tapping into the childhood origin of the director's renowned raw and relentless terror tactics:
TH: "I think what really did it was when some relative passed away and my parents took me down {to an attic} looking for a casket...and it was really very freaky because I didn't know what death was and someone told me when I was three years old that the world will come to an end...so anyway I walked into this very dark room and I was looking for the light switch and the fluorescent lights went 'blink' 'blink' and it came on and the room was full of little caskets, about 3ft long, and that scared me a lot."
And what of
Hopper's early intervention into horror filmmaking:
TH : "I learned the language of cinema before I learned a language....I can remember I really loved the Hammer Frankenstein with Christopher Lee {The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957} and so I shot a version of The Fall of the House of Usher and I was 16 years old when I made my first 16mm movie...Skull of the Abyss."
When
Hooper grew a little older he attended the University of Texas and studied film but it was an oddly solo expereince:
TH: "I was the only student {there} and... then the fellow at the teaching school {left} and I got his job teaching myself (audience laughs) and they let me have film and a camera and I just shot and shot footage."
Talk swiftly turned to
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and where the source of all that intensity and savagery came from:
TH: "I wanted to do something that hadn't been done, because in cinemas in those days someone would be struck with a knife and they would be instantly killed or they would get shot once and there was no bullet hole...and I had been through a terrible car accident with a skull fracture and people have these spasms and so I wanted to mirror reality and scare the hell out of people... and I was interested in a story where the situation loops and turns in on itself and a kind of situation where you can't escape, like where Sally {the 'final girl' in Chainsaw} continues to try and escape...and I like to be outrageous and break convention, and in no Hollywood film had there been an actress who jumps through two windows in the same movie and so I just wanted to make something that would get a lot of attention...".
From an aesthetic point of view
Chainsaw appears to have been burnt into the celluloid or 'dipped in dread'. Was this intentional for
Hooper or was it the accidental result of working incredibly long hours in incredible heat?
TH: "Its all those things...preferably if I can shoot the end of the film first then it tells me where I am going...a spirit does come up and if you treat it with respect and you circus around...in a way if you start it right it will help you along."
And how intentional was the black humour in the film?
TH: "Well it was very important to me because originally I wanted to do comedy but I had this dark humour, which wasn't even recognised for the first seven or eight years after it came out, and I thought on that level it hadn't been noticed for what I had done...but there is this very dark humour and if you're not prepared for it the more powerful it is. I wanted them {the audience} to scream...the timing {of which} is very similar to comedy."
In 1986
Hooper went on to direct a sequel to his slasher hit but, with its bold overpowering humour, the follow up was in stark contrast to the haunting mystic and terror of his original. Did he intentionally set out to do something completely different?
TH: "Yes I did, I liked that film a lot beacuse it is comedy but it was ceratinly the wrong approach. But those were John Hughes times, I mean that was The Breakfast Club that was the eighties so...I am really influenced by the times and commercially that film didn't work and only in the past few years it is beginning to be recognised."
When did he decide to take this bold new direction with the sequel; exemplified, most defiantly perhaps, in the opening scene where Leatherface is surfing on the top of a car with his chainsaw?
TH: "Well it was over ten years later and I didn't really wanna make another slasher film...but it was one of those things that had to be made so quickly. I was on automatic pilot and I thought the humour that was missed in the first film...well I would play it for humour."
Later he talked briefly about his first studio picture the 1977 DC Comics' style horror
Eaten Alive (aka Death Trap):
TH: "That look came from {Martin} Scorsese. In Marty's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore there were these dream sequences where there were these great big cut-outs against amber...the sunset and the sunrise and so I wanted to give it that surreal look but yes I was a great fan of DC Comics."
Discussions turned to his biggest commercial hit: the 1982 supernatural horror film
Poltergeist and the controversy concerning its suspiciously '
Spielberg' stylings (who was the credited writer-producer) and how it may have hampered
Hopper's subsequent career:
TH: "Yeah well it did harm my career and it started with the LA Times who came out when I was shooting the funeral sequence for the little bird and I needed, to pick up the pace...and Steven was shooting {second unit} and the LA Times came out and saw two people directing a movie and didn't consider the second unit...and I think that was the best second unt direction I have every had (audience laughs). So that got the ball rolling on the whole thing and yeah it very definitely damaged me."
But what was his working relationship with
Spielberg?
TH: "Well you know he wrote the screenplay... he was prepping me and he travelled a lot too {he was prepping E.T at the time}..but he was a presence and he and I would have discussions about the movie. He would make changes in the script and I would go and re-shoot the scene and he was watching it being put together...and I am still the best of friends {with him} and I continue to work for him (in 2002 he directed the pilot episode for Spielberg's mini series Taken). He was around, may be more, may be less I am not sure, but the producers are always around and so are the writers if that's possible."
Did
Spielberg attempt to restrain the horror director in terms of his renowned relentless cinematic style?
TH: "When he was completely out of town, things would get a bit...edgy."
When questions opened out to the audience the topic changed to other interesting
Hooper projects; one of which was his work on adapting
Stephen King's renowned novel
Salem's Lot:
TH: "The studio was constantly on me as I really wanted to stay true to King's book and things with the children...and things like that would take too much time and then as they saw the dailies they thought 'this is the thing he should be putting the time into' and so one of the things I love doing in films is working with actors...so then I started taking too much time working with the actors and I saw the special effects were working really well and then I heard them say 'tell that guy to hurry up with that dialogue bullshit so he can get on with what's really important'...But working with James {Mason} was really really cool and there was a moment when he's driving down to the antique shop and, well James had a kind of wicked sense of humour, and anyway so we were shooting with a close up of him and he turns into the driveway of the antiques store and he backed up and hit a bump and he said 'oops I ruined that take Tobe but if you just insert a shot of a baby's head getting run over you can fix this!' (audience laughs)."
Tobe also had a bit to say about the 2003 remake to
Chainsaw: TH: "Well the remake of Chainsaw was not in the proper context and wasn't done in the context or perhaps it didn't have a context...but there was a shot I liked: the shot across Jessica Biel's ass - that I really like!" (audience laughs and claps).
Graham then brought up the fact that
Hooper was originally slated to make
Spider-man: TH: "It would have been cool..an origin story...but we really needed CGI to do it properly."
So which of the young horror directors of today did
Hooper rate?
TH: "Definitely Guillermo del Toro (audience cheers enthusiastically)...and I have to say that as far as blood and gore and torture go Eli Roth is certainly doing something that gets noticed."